How come hydroxychloroquine is suddenly — the apparently most dangerous pharmaceutical on the planet?

© 2020 Peter Free

 

04 May 2020

 

 

Trump Derangement Syndrome destroys even science and medicine

 

From the perspective of the medically knowledgeable — there has been a surprisingly coordinated campaign to discredit hydroxychloroquine as a potential COVID-19 treatment option in the United States.

 

Remdesivir is, we are told, the Hope of the Planet. At least in the United States. And as a matter of Establishment policy.

 

 

Evidently

 

This scientifically unwarranted bias (against hydroxychloroquine) arrives partially because Toddling Donny liked hydroxychloroquine's potential.

 

And the rest of the entrenched American Elites, including Anthony Fauci — who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and is also a very prominent member of the Trump Administration's White House Coronavirus Task Force — decided that they could not.

 

After all, how closely does one really want to be associated with an Alleged Moron's opinions?

 

Even when the Alleged Moron just might be correct?

 

Consider, for example, anecdotally favorable hydroxychloroquine COVID reports from China, Italy and France.

 

 

Looking deeper

 

For the origins of this unwarranted pro-remdesivir and anti-hydroxychloroquine American policy, follow the money.

 

Expensively new remdesivir is poised to make some very prominent hydroxychloroquine opponents lots of jingling COVID loot.

 

How nice is that, except maybe for the dying?

 

 

Who knew?

 

Look at the conflicts of interest noted in NIH's financial disclosure chart regarding its Panel on COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines.

 

Nine of this lot have direct ties to Gilead Sciences, remdesivir's manufacturer.

 

Fabulously expensive remdesivir will probably make the conflicts of interest group lots of COVID-19 money.

 

Inexpensively generic hydroxychloroquine will not.

 

Even the World Health Organization jumped aboard the hydroxychloroquine-discrediting trend, despite the fact that it, above all, should know better as to the drug's decades-long safety record.

 

 

Hydroxychloroquine is a routinely used pharmaceutical

 

Hydroxychloroquine has been successfully used for decades in treating millions and millions of folk suffering from any of the four main types of malaria (in non-drug-resistant) patients.

 

Not to mention millions of other patients suffering from lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

 

Yet today, the FDA is pretending that hydroxychloroquine is extremely dangerous outside a hospital setting.

 

The quasi-hysterical FDA caveat comes despite a CDC handout promoting exactly the same drug for malaria prevention in non-hospitalized American travelers. See here.

 

 

When cornered, our American shipload of dissembling devils . . .

 

. . . fall back on the excuse that hydroxychloroquine has not been thoroughly tested in a COVID application.

 

And further, that COVID has cardiac and kidney effects that hydroxychloroquine's already established toxicities might target.

 

But, so what?

 

Almost all pharmaceuticals have frightening effects in some people. We use them anyway because their benefits exceed their risks in most patients.

 

 

The 'other' anti-hydroxychloroquine excuse

 

This is the legitimate one about preserving existing quantities of hydroxychloroquine for the patients that it is already being used to help.

 

Yet, why not say that — rather than promoting the demonstratedly wrong idea that hydroxychloroquine is always exceedingly dangerous?

 

 

Then — this added bit of propagandizing nonsense

 

A widely media-cited 'study' pointed to conclusive 'evidence' that discounts the use of hydroxychloroquine in COVID contexts:

 

 

Joseph Magagnoli, Siddharth Narendran, Felipe Pereira, Tammy Cummings, James W Hardin, S Scott Sutton, and Jayakrishna Ambati, Outcomes of hydroxychloroquine usage in United States veterans hospitalized with Covid-19, MedRXiv (23 April 2020) (see PDF here)

 

 

This pretended study is garbage, scientifically speaking

 

First, the purported study was not really a scientific investigation. Instead, it was retrospective review of 368 male veterans' COVID charts.

 

Second, hydroxychloroquine was more likely to be prescribed to people already severely ill. Thus, no randomization.

 

The authors claimed (in one thoroughly obscure sentence) that they statistically countered the predilection for having given mainly sicker patients the drug. That's scientifically impossible.

 

This impossibility is exactly why randomization exists in study design. You cannot not randomize, and then afterward say that you statistically rectified its absence.

 

Furthermore, initiating medication so late in the illness runs exactly counter to the way that hydroxychloroquine has been (anecdotally successfully) used early on in treating COVID in other countries.

 

Last, the authors provide no numbers that I could find regarding dosage amounts, timing or even when (relative to the duration of the illness) medicating began.

 

In short, this purported 'study' is actually un-medical and anti-scientific foolishness.

 

The fact that its hydroxychloroquine-negating conclusion is so widely quoted, demonstrates what a bunch of colossally ignorant people populate American media and government.

 

Overall, this supposedly definitive elimination of hydroxychloroquine in the COVID setting is nonsensical disinformation.

 

 

By the way

 

The hydroxychloroquine disinformation campaign reminds me of the CDC's early COVID announcement that wearing face masks was of no public benefit.

 

That was a bald lie.

 

We found out later that the misdirection was considered convenient, so as to preserve the mask supply for the medical people who needed them most.

 

 

Notice another telling aspect

 

Remdesivir has not even been fully tested in anyone — for anything — yet.

 

Contrast this ignorance with decades of usually favorable hydroxychloroquine experiences:

 

 

in millions and millions of folk

 

distributed across a wide variety of medical contexts

 

across many decades.

 

 

The US approved hydroxychloroquine in 1955.

 

 

Why does this unscientific bias in remdesivir's favor exist?

 

Could it be the Big Pharma loot potentially to be gained?

 

Especially, if one prevents other outrageously more affordable treatments — like hydroxychloroquine — from being substantially tested in the COVID context?

 

 

The moral? — Greed stomps efforts to obtain truth

 

Don't trust anything that American Government, Business and Establishment tell you.

 

What they say — almost 100 percent always — is self-profiting bullshit. All day, every day.

 

Propaganda tries to kill everything decent that it touches.