Author Topic: Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale  (Read 1066 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale
« on: August 19, 2020, 07:43:58 pm »
Tablet by Norman Doidge 8/13/2020

A startling investigation into how a cheap, well-known drug became a political football in the midst of a pandemic

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, a survey of the world’s frontline physicians showed hydroxychloroquine to be the drug they considered the most effective at treating COVID-19 patients. That was in early April, shortly after a French study showed it was safe and effective in lowering the virus count, at times in combination with azithromycin. Next we were told hydroxychloroquine was likely ineffective, and also dangerous, and that that French study was flawed and the scientist behind it worthy of mockery. More studies followed, with contradictory results, and then out came what was hailed by some as a definitive study of 96,000 patients showing the drug was most certainly dangerous and ineffective, and indeed that it killed 30% more people than those who didn’t take it. Within days, that study was retracted, with the editor of one of the two most respected medical journals in the Western world conceding it was “a monumental fraud.” And on it went.

Not only are lay people confused; professionals are. All that seems certain is that there is something disturbing going on in our science, and that if and when the “perfect study” were to ever come along, many won’t know what to believe.

We live in a culture that has uncritically accepted that every domain of life is political, and that even things we think are not political are so, that all human enterprises are merely power struggles, that even the idea of “truth” is a fantasy, and really a matter of imposing one’s view on others. For a while, some held out hope that science remained an exception to this. That scientists would not bring their personal political biases into their science, and they would not be mobbed if what they said was unwelcome to one faction or another. But the sordid 2020 drama of hydroxychloroquine—which saw scientists routinely attacked for critically evaluating evidence and coming to politically inconvenient conclusions—has, for many, killed those hopes.

Phase 1 of the pandemic saw the near collapse of the credible authority of much of our public health officialdom at the highest levels, led by the exposure of the corruption of the World Health Organization. The crisis was deepened by the numerous reversals on recommendations, which led to the growing belief that too many officials were interpreting, bending, or speaking about the science relevant to the pandemic in a politicized way. Phase 2 is equally dangerous, for it shows that politicization has started to penetrate the peer review process, and how studies are reported in scientific journals, and of course in the press.

Those who have their doubts about hydroxychloroquine rightly point out that the public is scared, and we are longing for a magical potion to rescue us. The history of plagues is rife with such potions and the charlatans who sold them were well documented in Daniel Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year. A pandemic is not a remedy for the innate tendency toward wishful thinking.

More: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/hydroxychloroquine-morality-tale


Offline mountaineer

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Re: Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2021, 01:40:36 pm »
I just came across this article via Twitter. Interesting.
Quote
... While the Chinese Communist Party and government were engaged early in the pandemic in a well-documented deception of the naive West—withholding information about the virus, and even banning their physicians from publishing research on the corona outbreak—behind the scenes many brave Chinese physicians were nonetheless communicating with Western colleagues.

Wuhan was the epicenter, and the Chinese physicians at the People’s Hospital of Wuhan University told their Western counterparts that they got the idea of using HCQ because none of the 178 patients they had admitted for COVID-19 had lupus—a surprise, since lupus is an immune disease, and some thought it might have made these patients especially vulnerable. They wondered why this might be, and whether HCQ, which these patients had been taking for this preexisting condition, might in some way be protecting them against COVID-19.  ...
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Offline PeteS in CA

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Re: Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2021, 02:59:55 pm »
Quote
... how a cheap, well-known drug became a political football ...

Easy. The Bad Orange Man said it might be a useful treatment. Covid was the next object of anti-Trump attacks after the collapse of the Shampeachment, and the possibility of HCQ being a useful treatment was an existential threat to that anti-Trump narrative.

One of the reasons I started following and info-packratting Covid news in January and February last year was that I guessed that what came to be called Covid-19 would be the Dems' next object of politicization. I was correct, though not, IMO, especially insightful.
« Last Edit: May 31, 2021, 03:04:12 pm by PeteS in CA »
If, as anti-Covid-vaxxers claim, https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/robert-f-kennedy-jr-said-the-covid-19-vaccine-is-the-deadliest-vaccine-ever-made-thats-not-true/ , https://gospelnewsnetwork.org/2021/11/23/covid-shots-are-the-deadliest-vaccines-in-medical-history/ , The Vaccine is deadly, where in the US have Pfizer and Moderna hidden the millions of bodies of those who died of "vaccine injury"? Is reality a Big Pharma Shill?

Millions now living should have died. Anti-Covid-Vaxxer ghouls hardest hit.

Online Hoodat

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If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.

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"The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government."

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Offline PeteS in CA

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« Last Edit: May 31, 2021, 03:07:58 pm by PeteS in CA »
If, as anti-Covid-vaxxers claim, https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2021/robert-f-kennedy-jr-said-the-covid-19-vaccine-is-the-deadliest-vaccine-ever-made-thats-not-true/ , https://gospelnewsnetwork.org/2021/11/23/covid-shots-are-the-deadliest-vaccines-in-medical-history/ , The Vaccine is deadly, where in the US have Pfizer and Moderna hidden the millions of bodies of those who died of "vaccine injury"? Is reality a Big Pharma Shill?

Millions now living should have died. Anti-Covid-Vaxxer ghouls hardest hit.

Offline mountaineer

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Re: Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale
« Reply #5 on: May 31, 2021, 03:39:40 pm »
One of the games the Dems and their MSM shills played and continue to play is to act as if SARS-CoV-2 is unlike any virus encountered in human history.
:yowsa:
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Offline MajorClay

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Re: Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale
« Reply #6 on: May 31, 2021, 05:14:02 pm »
So true.

Hydroxchloroquine should be sold over the counter.

Online Texas Yellow Rose

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Re: Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale
« Reply #7 on: May 31, 2021, 05:52:44 pm »
 888high58888  What a great article!  Facebook and You Tube should read it and weep for banning the flow of information.

Offline Smokin Joe

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Re: Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale
« Reply #8 on: June 01, 2021, 03:19:44 am »
I noticed the missing component is still missing.

Hydroxychloroquine, like Ivermectin, acts as an ionophore. It transports zinc ions across the cell membrane into the cells. If you have plenty of zinc in your system (primary source: red meat), the HCQ or Ivermectin has something to work with, and can get that zinc into your cells. It is the zinc ions which disrupt the viral replication.
 
Zinc supplements guarantee additional zinc to increase efficacy for those whose zinc levels were low, through diet or other effects, and are commonly in cold and flu remedies, for that reason.
 
Azithromycin is a macrolide antibiotic which, aside from acting to fight any opportunistic bacterial infection, also acts to dampen the immune response and prevent that from becoming what is known as a "cytokine storm", where the immune system attacks the body. That's an observed, but not much understood (idiopathic) effect of macrolide antibiotics. Doxycycline, commonly used in concert with Ivermectin and zinc,
In concert the regimen would prevent viral replication in a patient and was most useful at early onset, when there was relatively little damage done, before the virus had reached high titers. it was stressed by Zelenko and others that the combination should be administered as soon as symptoms were noted, without even waiting for the results of tests, with the idea that the benefit of stopping the virus at the earliest opportunity would far outweigh any risks of adverse reactions to the regimen.

In the studies conducted to prove that Hydroxychloroquine was useless, the regimen was administered in the late stages of the disease, to patients already in serious trouble, often with multiple comorbidities which placed the study group at particular risk. NOT ONE of those studies administered zinc supplementation. Most did not administer a macrolide antibiotic. The studies were designed to 'prove' that HCQ was a failure. People died who might have been otherwise saved from COVID to prove a political point, to denigrate a viable regimen, to keep fear going, or other considerations, all removed from good science.

Having listened to Zelenko's explanation of the strategy behind the regimen, as a scientist, I was appalled at the blatant shortcomings of the studies, and the sweeping damnation if the regimen that those studies were used to support.

Even so, that was compounded by the censorship and denigration of the earlier results and methodology undertaken zealously by "Social" Media, the MSM, and the Medical establishment, for the apparent purpose of burying effective treatment options and establishing and continuing draconian measures in the penumbra of terror so heavily promoted by the media and the medical establishment.
Because, with viable, available, and inexpensive treatment, none of the tyranny, "emergency" election rule changes or spending would have been tolerated, and by the time Biden/Harris was the selected pair to headline the Presidential Ticket, the mechanisms to install them in office were in place or being planned to ensure that tainted victory--but in order to pull that off, the levels of FEAR had to be maintained. Masks were a daily reminder (if a useless gesture, medically) that life was not normal, and even the "new normal" was touted to try to get people to accept measures tailor made to ensure people did not gather to discuss the pandemic, politics, worship, or just interact, while the censorship of social media had the same effect in cyberspace.

I do not believe those who unleashed the virus or were familiar with it knew that either Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin, in concert with zinc and antibiotics would prove to be effective treatments, and these regimens would have thwarted their plans, taking the fear out of the equation, negating any perceived need for emergency measures. That's why the treatments were squelched, without regard to lives lost as a result, a clear violation of the Hippocratic oath, and a crime against humanity.

While the 2015 Nature paper noted that the chimera virus created by splicing Bat Corona viruses into a "mouse adapted" SARS backbone were resistant to known antivirals, neither Hydroxychloroquine nor Ivermectin were known as antivirals, but rather, as anti-parasitic drugs primarily, although HCQ was also used in the treatment of Lupus. I think the effect was a surprise for the creators of the virus, whether here or in Wuhan, and I think there are people in both places responsible for the existence of SARS-CoV-2: they made it or did the gain of function research that led to it being made.
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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

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