Home » Bolsonaro, the press, and hydroxychloroquine

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Bolsonaro, the press, and hydroxychloroquine — 21 Comments

  1. One of the many things we’ve learned from this entire fiasco is people have no clue about sizes of countries and math. First saw this with the total lack of awareness that thousands of people die every day in the US. Then we get the raw numbers people who are either too stupid or willfully dishonest to realize that in very large countries with widespread testing you are going to see lots and lots of their beloved ‘cases’.

    Then finally the survey that came out that said Americans thought that 9% of the population had died from COVID. That would be about 30 million people instead we have an extremely loose 150,000 deaths.

  2. “Remdesivir was developed by Gilead with over $79 million in U.S. government funding.” From the Wikipedia on Gilead. Along with many other acquisitions, Gilead paid 12 billion for Kite Pharma in 2017. I always bristled when people complained about Big Pharma but I’ve been looking at things a little differently through this pandemic response. Is it any wonder that the world of extreme high-finance wants to see a certain drug used rather than the inexpensive, highly-available alternative?

  3. I am beside myself over this blacklisting of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. It has a record worldwide of reducing the death toll from the virus. See this article, by a professor of epidemiology at Yale:

    https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exists-we-need-start-using-it-opinion-1519535

    He refers to the slum in Mumbai (Bombay), which I have seen. If there were ever a place for a massive death toll from an infectious disease, this is it, but they’ve controlled it well with HCQ, zinc, and vitamins.

    I had my annual physical with my internist, and asked him if he’d prescribe HCQ if I got the virus. No, he said, there weren’t enough clinical studies to support it. So I have bailed out of working for the Board of Elections in November because I don’t feel I would get adequate treatment. This may be why we have still so many people dying in nursing homes around here. And the worst thing is that the drug is very safe and does no harm. Why not prescribe it outpatient, when it’s cheap and does no harm?

  4. Sharon W, I think I agree with you. A new drug is a lot sexier and a lot more lucrative than a 60-year-old generic, plus cheap zinc tablets.

  5. Laura Ingraham has been following HCQ very closely. She has two doctors who appear on her show regularly who have used it extensively during this pandemic. The key is to use it early – before pneumonia sets in, and to supplement it with Zinc. I don’t know if Azithromycin is actually required, but some doctors use it as a treatment for any secondary bacterial infections that might occur.

    One thing that is unexplored is the fact that COVID-19 has not been very virulent in sub-Saharan Africa, where people take HCQ as a malaria preventative. More investigation of that would make sense, IMO.

    I’m no doctor but it seems to me that it could do no harm to prescribe HCQ and Zinc to out patients who haven’t yet gotten to the pneumonia stage. My wife and i have taken HCQ on two occasions – when we traveled to Africa and Vietnam. Neither of us had any side effects. It’s a safe drug taken by millions of people every year.

    That the media has politicized the drug is an crime against humanity. It might yet save lives.

  6. One of the big problems we have is that those who either have no aptitude for math, even arithmetic, or who have no desire to learn any because its “hard”, seem to gravitate towards journalism because it really does not have any right or wrong answers. Math has right answers, and many wrong ones. These journalists start thinking they are smart with their degree from some journalism school and think they can write about anything. Not knowing what you don’t know is dangerous.

    HCQ appears to have some application to Covid-19 when the virus is identified early. In more advanced cases, maybe not so much. Maybe it is too complicated for people to see the difference.

  7. A far greater number of people recover from CV19 without hydroxychloroquine. So saying that hydroxychloroquine cures them when they aren’t deathly ill and using it as a last resort is a stretch. It is an unproven drug in the sense that if people get CV19 they can’t expect hydroxychloroquine to magically cure them any sooner than the normal two to three weeks. Might was well take a placebo. And actually a placebo wouldn’t have the side effects. The only cure is not invented yet. But a vaccine is hopefully on the way.

  8. Montage:

    Do yourself a favor – don’t quit your day job in order to design scientific studies. You don’t seem to understand how they work.

  9. Montage,

    The vaccine dream is probably a pipe dream and even if there is one how effective will it be since the flu vaccine isn’t exactly a sure thing and are you going to force people to get the vaccine? How about kids? Will the teachers union insist on it?

    The rational response (haha I know) would be to continue to protect the at risk and work on treatments whether it’s HCQ or whatever and let everybody else live their damn lives without masks (unless you want to then go for it) or insane government rules.

  10. In case you haven’t seen these items…. First is the MedCram YouTube site. The doctor explains the disease and treatments. And, he works with C19 patients. Video #34 includes an explanation of the science of how HCQ and zinc work to disrupt the virus.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vMXSkKLg2I&list=PLQ_IRFkDInv_zLVFTgXA8tW0Mf1iiuuM_

    Second item is a paper to take to your doctor in case you get C19. The paper is the work of frontline doctors, so they know what they are talking about. On page three, there is a list of vitamins and drugs to take now – before you get sick. And, if you wonder why you should take them, go back to the MedCram videos.

    https://www.evms.edu/media/evms_public/departments/internal_medicine/EVMS_Critical_Care_COVID-19_Protocol.pdf

    I trust these doctors over Fauci – primarily since they are practicing medicine and not just pushing papers.

    It is my understanding that HCQ is an ionophore which affects the cell wall and lets the zinc get into the cell to disrupt the virus reproduction. On that list of things to take is quercetin, which is also an ionophore. You can take quercetin and zinc as pills or just check out what foods contain them.

  11. “Its effectiveness against Covid-19 has not been demonstrated in clinical trials.”

    Maybe the next time that Dr. Fauci, as head of the NIH, contracts with China to bio-engineer a virus he’ll stipulate that they must complete a 3-year 100,000 patient double blind Clinical Trial before they release their “novel virus” to the World.

  12. So Rush Limbaugh is on the radio right now going on about Twitter’s censorship of the video of doctors vouching for HCQ as a treatment for COVID-19. How is it, he asks, that Twitter can presume to suppress doctors offering professional experiences with medical treatment?

  13. New insights on the antiviral effects of chloroquine against coronavirus: what to expect for COVID-19?

    The multiple molecular mechanisms by which chloroquine can achieve such results remain to be further explored. … preliminary data indicate that chloroquine interferes with SARS-CoV-2 attempts to acidify the lysosomes and presumably inhibits cathepsins, which require a low pH for optimal cleavage of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein

    Zn2+ Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity In Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture

    The risk profiles are well-established. The only question that remains for clinical review is efficacy, but anecdotal and retrospective studies both support their use to reduce viral load and function, mitigate disease progression, and improve patient viability.

  14. I have never heard whether or not such a study has been done with remdesivir.

  15. I am awestruck by the power and reach of Big Pharma. So many “unprecedented” actions taken in an effort to discourage use of a drug regimen that has been in use for well over half a century, one that has a proven track record of success, all in an effort to cash in on a potential “vaccine” that, if it’s anything like a common cold vaccine, will either never work or never appear. To me, steering people away from a proven remedy, for whatever reason, is tantamount to killing them.

  16. if it’s anything like a common cold vaccine,

    Last I heard, what we call ‘colds’ can be caused by one of over 100 viruses, and there isn’t a common surface antigen for our immune system to identify. This is a single virus.

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