Man, with the major pandemic and economic risks we all have to deal with, it’s so frustrating to have to waste time and energy addressing the plague of crap ‘science’ being dumped on us on a daily basis.
It’s so unnecessary. Our society knows how to do science well. But due to Big Pharma protecting its profits, or political agendas, or whatever the reasons may be – we are not getting rigorous trustworthy research findings at a time when we need them most.
Yet once again, we’re find ourselves forced to wade back in the hydroxychloroquine debate. This time to respond to (or more accurately, eviscerate) the most recent study on HCQ appearing in The Lancet. Whether or not its conclusions are accurate, who knows? But its methodology is for certain shoddy as hell.
Why are we still being given such poorly-constructed and shoddy results by our science ‘experts’? By this time, we should have a plethora of rigorous, peer-reviewed studies giving us clear, dependable answers we can use to create smart health policy decisions.
But instead, we’re still being fed a daily diet of garbage ‘science’:
In today's video, Chris announces the good news that our RESILIENCE shirt production partner is finally back in action.
I have sympathy for one individual who was mistreated by authorities, but handling of HCQ science and the entire virus response should have everyone up in arms.
I forgot to mention in posted the English subtitled Didier Raoult interview late yesterday that one of the things he does is call BS on the 10% cardiac events “seen” in the data across the world in the Lancet study… in his experience across more than three thousand patients this rate is zero.
The latest, post-Lancet, Raoult interview in case you missed it; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3iwYcgcaxk
https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/may/29/icmr-writes-to-who-disagreeing-with-hcq-assessment-officials-say-international-trial-dosage-four-ti-2149702.html
Buoyed by the preliminary success observed in the treatment of COVID-19 patients through these HCQ tablets, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has written to the WHO.
In a letter via an email, Dr Sheela Godbole, National Coordinator of the WHO-India Solidarity Trial and Head of the Division of Epidemiology, ICMR-National AIDS Research Institute has written to Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at World Health Organization.
In a letter, Dr Godbole stated: "There was no reason to suspend the trial for safety concern."
When contacted Dr Godbole, she said: "Only one arm of the Solidarity trial by WHO has temporary been paused for a time being i.e. HCQ arm, other arms of the clinical trial are still active."
On Thursday, Dr VK Paul, Member Niti Aayog and Chairman of empowered group 1 said: "When we see the present evidence of HCQ, there are fewer side-effects...We have studied HCQ drug very closely with our scientists and hence as per the latest government guidelines--HCQ drug can be given to frontline workers and severe coronavirus patients. However, these guidelines would be reviewed from time to time," said Paul.
Post-Lockdown turbo-capitalism is once again reasserting itself after four decades of Thatcherization, or – to be polite – hardcore neoliberalism. Progressive forces still don’t have the ammunition to revert the logic of extremely high profits for the ruling classes – EU governance included – and for large global corporations as well.
Economist and philosopher Frederic Lordon, a researcher at the French CNRS, cuts to the inevitable chase: the only solution would be a revolutionary insurrection. And he knows exactly how the financial markets-corporate media combo would never allow it. Big Capital is capable of co-opting and sabotaging anything.
So this is our choice: it’s either Neoliberal Restoration or a revolutionary rupture. And nothing in between. It takes someone of Marx’s caliber to build a full-fledged, 21st century eco-socialist ideology, and capable of long-term, sustained mobilization. Aux armes, citoyens.
If I were prosecuting this case we’d be ready for trial.
Surgisphere has a clear pattern of misuse of data that has to constitute fraud. Exhibit A: They claimed to have hospital data on 63,315 North american Covid patients on April 14th. Problem? There were only a bit over 67,000 patients in all of North America by that date. So Surgisphere claims to have had records on 94.5% of all known patients.
Exhibit B: Surgisphere claims that its total database consisted of 671 hospitals across the world and that 65.9% of ALL patients came from North America. Therefore it must be true that the North American records came from fewer than 671 hospitals. If we weight this, Surgisphere allegedly had feeds to 671 * .659 = 442 US hospitals. Problem? There are over 12,000 hospitals in the US, Canada and Mexico. 442/12000 = 0.036 What are the chances that 94.5% of all North American patients were clustered in exactly the 3.6% of hospitals Surgisphere claims to have feeds from? Exhibit C: Surgisphere is a brand new company, barely over a year old. Problem? Establishing a data feed to any one hospital is a lengthy affair requiring review boards, ethics approvals, and constant auditing to assure compliance. This means surgisphere has been averaging roughly two complete hospital signups per day. This is beyond the realm of likely. Queried Australian hospitals deny having anysort of feeds to Surgisphere. Conclusion: There is very strong evidence of fraud here. Not simple Db errors.
About That Big HCQ Study...
— Questions arise over inconsistencies in data; confounders may impact future COVID-19 treatments
by Molly Walker, Associate Editor, MedPage Today May 26, 2020
As more outside experts have had a chance to review the huge observational study released last week on the safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and chloroquine for COVID-19, whispers that something was amiss have turned into a loud buzz.
The analysis, published on Friday in The Lancet, looked at nearly 100,000 COVID-19 patients including about 15,000 treated with the antimalarials, either with or without an antibiotic. HCQ was associated with nearly doubled risk of death in the hospital and about 20-fold higher rates of ventricular arrhythmias, the investigators reported.
Sapan Desai, MD, PhD, one of the Lancet authors and founder of Surgisphere Corp., a physician-led public service organization in Chicago that provided much of the data for the analysis, told MedPage Today there were multiple reasons for the discrepancy between the data in the study and that in the COVID Tracking Project.
"There is often a delay before public health reporting catches up to data at the hospital level," he said. Desai also pointed to "issues with data capture at the public health level from various hospitals that could lead to inaccuracies or delays in public reporting."
Question from the prosecutor: "Mr. Desai, as a reminder you are under oath. Is it seriously your contention that doctors filling out completed patient forms happens at a faster rate than simply reporting the presence of a Covid-19 patient to health authorities?"
LOL
What an obvious lie. Dude. Try harder next time.
I ordered HCQ, Azithromycin, and Chloroquine Phosphate from River Pharmacy way back in March. Modi shut down India just after my order so it didn’t get shipped.
They cannot get HCQ out of India but for some reason they can get Chloroquine Phosphate. It will take about a month. Hopefully that is.
Hat tip to drbrucedale
riverpharmacy.ca
You did not get this information from me or PP . I do not know anything about the above post. I must have been hacked.
Since I don’t know anything about this or how it got here if anyone (Dr. types, medical, scientists etc.) would care to provide any info (just to further the conversation and not medical advice) it would be appreciated. Please do not tell my big brother, he will take away my privileges and I will be grounded
Christine Grady. Amazing Polly has a recent video blog about the connections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkYen0g4TRU
No direct connection between Grady and Bill Gates that she could find, but when you’re sleeping with the intermediate, a direct connection isn’t needed.
Exhibit E: It is quite literally impossible for Surgisphere to have collected the data from Australia that they claim.
(Source)
As a co-conspirator, The Lancet is also on trial here. After all, they were responsible for reviewing and publishing the “study.”
After being faced with such insurmountable evidence of at the very least the Australian data being complete garbage, The Lancet did issue this correction today:
Problem? They refer to amending/correcting the first paragraph of the results section based on the ‘fact’ that one Asian hospital was incorrectly placed in the Australian column.
Here’s that original 1st paragraph:
LOL
They dropped ~90% of Australian patients (from 609 to 63) and then said nothing else needs amending.
Australia was the one place that 100% denied sending any data along so - guess what? - that was the one “correction” they made.
Circumstantial evidence is indeed evidence, that’s why it’s allowed in court.
The biggest lie brought forward in the Lancet paper is the idea that HCQ treatment brings about this meaty, ~ 10% death rate due to cardiac side effects. Didier Raoult addresses this directly in the attached interview, and I have transcribed his statements from the subtitles for easy reading, i.e. the translation from French is not my own. Here though is the truth as per Didier, realizing that he has lived this pandemic on the front lines, saving lives and treating over 3000 patients at his hospital;
"If someone publishes a stupidity in a journal to make me forget what we have done here for two and a half months, I will turn crazy. I am not going to change my mind because someone who has not treated any patients tells us how it (HCQ) works. We have seen patients, we now how it works and they can't make me believe this nonsense. The only thing that bothers me is that people are skeptical between the data they have received from people who got their information from secondary sources and the data we actually have. I assure you that it is true and you can take a look at the medical records here and the mortality rate. In total we had 36 people that died in this hospital and we have carefully examined the cause of their death and no one has died from ventricular tachycardia. How come in our hospital no one has died from ventricular tachycardia but this (The Lancet) study says 10%? It's impossible. Who's wrong, people who have not examined patients or the ones who have carefully examined these patients? That's ridiculous.
So I did a bit of poking around to learn more about Surgisphere and the people who work there. This is their ‘Science Editor’, further described on her YouTube channel and Instagram - all of which are tremendously confidence inspiring (cue sarcasm). She definitely has the horror part down pat…
She wrote several posts for the company in March extolling the virtues of Surgisphere’s Covid-19 Response Centre and Support Tools and Why Access to Real Time Data is Critical in which there is a whole lot of fluffy pep talk aka marketing BS and a complete absence of data to back up any of that talk. In the first link she makes this completely unsubstantiated claim (bold my emphasis):
A third challenge facing physicians is knowing how serious a confirmed case of COVID-19 is. Even suspected cases can be hard to classify and treat accordingly based solely on the symptoms that are initially present. This triage support tool, like the others, relies on real time data and machine learning to offer a classification of Routine, Urgent, or Critical. The overall accuracy is 95.5%, and the tool correctly classifies 100% of patients who are critical and require immediate attention.
No data presented to back that claim up. I guess we just have to take the word of a sci-fi writer and illustrator who fancy's herself as a science editor. No doubt her valued contribution to the posts are the illustrations.
This raises one of those ethical questions for me: how many people really know who they are working for, and to what they are contributing? Not knowing goes to culpability on some level, if only as an enabler. It's like Chris has said, if your paycheck depends on not making waves, then that is likely the way it will be. Multiply people like this woman by the millions and millions of people, and especially those who work for outfits like the B&M Gates Foundation, and we know exactly how this mess came to be.
It also tells me there is a way to help us get out of the mess. But it will take all those millions of people to stand up and do the right thing. I won't bet the farm on that happening though...
Jan
