[bertil]

He’s not asking for reviews, or using the usual precautionary tone: he’s claiming that his solution work, explicitly seeking limelight. I’m afraid of two things:

1. Without professionals pandemic specialist to deliver the message, people who care about rumours, organisation and industrial capacity, there will be runs on pharmacies and hospitals won’t be able to treat severe patients in time. Or that people start taking large amount of a fairly toxic compound. Or that people leave quarantine because they have taken an (unproven) treatment. The 200,000 people who have seen this video, how many know how to measure a viral load? How many will decide to order Chloroquine vs. have the lab experience to measure that? Chloroquine is available OTC in many countries because most people take it as a prophylactic. Can you guarantee that the same people won’t double the dose, to an amount that even Pr. Raoult sees as hard to manage? There’s already been some problematic situations with masks.

2. Other doctors in this pandemic or the next, admire his success, stumble on a treatment that has similar numbers but isn’t a solution (because of confounding factors, lack of random control trial) publish it through the same channels.

I’m not a clinician, but I teach people how to use proper scientific method and avoid listening to the loudest voice in the room, even when that voice is right, because science was built on giving time to the less appealing criticism.

I’m not criticising his work: he’s onto something. I am criticising his presentation because he’s explicitly ignoring good practices.

[heyoni]

I think he just wants to get this out there and in use by people. It's a fairly harmless drug that can even be taken long term (so long as you don't start hallucinating -- I have) and there are long term effects on respiratory capacity from this infection in some people who might otherwise be healthy.

But I completely agree though that once we're through this, we need proper clinical trials. And people are going to be stupid and overdose or break quarantine and all that stuff...but there's not much you can do about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZamrmTMs6w

Better to have that stuff out there than not, though honestly I think we're going to end up having to have a forced quarantine like China, because whatever we're doing now may not end up working.

[bertil]

I'd love to have your reaction to this: https://twitter.com/MicrobiomDigest/status/12414295448478638...

[heyoni]

Fox news, bitcoin..the communities surrounding these two entities are cesspools of misinformation and do pose a risk that I don't believe should be abated by throwing away the idea of abridged trials during times like these.

Look, my brother is infected, and he's positive and under 40 without any underlying disease and weeks of respiratory symptoms. Doctors now think he might suffer permanent lung damage in the form of reduced lung capacity, so on a personal/emotional level, the risk of doing nothing is far greater than any side effects such a dose could bring.

On the other hand, we have people still going out for spring break and crowding the parks in Florida and NYC respectively...and a drug with this effect might close the gap between a proper lockdown and whatever it is we have going on now. With those two risk factors in mind, I think it's fair to let this half-assed study out into the wild. It's not like chloroquine is available without a prescription, and people will be vomiting their guts out from the sugar long before they get a clinical dose of it from tonic water.

But come to think of it...did the author of the original paper go on Tucker Carlson and say that it's 100% effective or was that the random eye doctor? If it's the former, then yea I'm furious, but I can't seem to find the clip. Otherwise, stuff like this is never going to stop from happening. It sounds to me like the real culprits here are the news agencies responsible for diluting down the information responsibly.

[bertil]

> did the author of the original paper go on Tucker Carlson and say that it's 100% effective

He did so, in French but he absolutely offered to go on the French talk shows, with a clear snide to Cauhet, the French equivalent of Tucker Carlson, because people who were not him where scaring people into quarantine while he “has a treatment that cheap, reliable and safe”. So yes, he absolutely did that.

There was no reason to make his presentation public beyond specialists — hell, he quotes studies on the same molecule who have shared temporary results without the same publicity.

[heyoni]

This is some good research...reading it now.

[heyoni]

Found the clip. That doctor is insane.

[bertil]

I don’t know what he wanted, but he walked into creating this aware, awake and knowing:

https://twitter.com/BostonJoan/status/1240626380020289539