https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-lefts-coronavirus-narrative-is-a-myth/

tomo, the population of China is 1.4bn, so 100m doses a year should cover the ruling elite, other Government employees and their extended families, the Army, Police, Official Censors

tomo, that is interesting as a non-Medic

"The study’s authors also found one concern flagged in previous reports about hydroxychloroquine did not materialize: heart-related adverse events."

"The data here is clear that there was benefit to using [hydroxychloroquine] as a treatment for sick, hospitalized patients," said Dr. Steven Kalkanis of Henry Ford Health System. "

" The study scientists point out that other reports about hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus that had less positive, mixed, or negative results studied different populations; administered hydroxychloroquine later during illness; used different doses, and/or were not peer-reviewed."

" President Trump was widely criticized in the media for saying that if hydroxychloroquine proves to work in treating coronavirus, it could be a game changer."

There is another link, leading to:
https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study
" In a large-scale retrospective analysis of 2,541 patients hospitalized between March 10 and May 2, 2020 across the system’s six hospitals, the study found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died compared to 26.4% not treated with hydroxychloroquine. None of the patients had documented serious heart abnormalities; however, patients were monitored for a heart condition routinely pointed to as a reason to avoid the drug as a treatment for COVID-19."

" The study also found those treated with azithromycin alone or a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin also fared slightly better than those not treated with the drugs, according to the Henry Ford data. The analysis found 22.4% of those treated only with azithromycin died, and 20.1% treated with a combination of azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine died, compared to 26.4% of patients dying who were not treated with either medication."

In terms of politics and short to medium issues all over the World because of vaccine production problems:
" Henry Ford Health System is currently also involved in a * prophylactic hydroxychloroquine study*.

“Will Hydroxychloroquine Impede or Prevent COVID-19,” or WHIP COVID-19. The study is a 3,000-person, randomized, double-blinded look at whether hydroxychloroquine prevents healthcare and frontline workers from contracting the COVID-19 virus. "

Jul 3, 2020 at 4:56 PM tomo
It is not a miracle drug as a cure or prophylactic, but it certainly shifts the odds

FWIW I am not 'anti'-hydroxychoroquine.

This is a properly-done interesting paper that found a statistically-significant reduction in mortality for patients receiving hydroxychloroquine compared to those not being receiving the drug. If the results can be reproduced, it suggests hydroxychloroquine may have a role to play in certain scenarios. However, it is limited by being an observational study: ie a retrospective analysis of outcomes, rather than a double-blind randomised trial.

Limitations to our analysis include the retrospective, non-randomized, non-blinded study design. Also, information on duration of symptoms prior to hospitalization was not available for analysis.

They have done their best to control for confounding factors, however the list of caveats is still extensive. Notably the article authors point out:

confounding by severity or indication is likely. While there was a hospital treatment protocol in place, unmeasured clinical factors likely influenced the decision not to treat 16.1% of patients, in a center where 78% received treatment. These factors are often difficult to capture in an observational study. Were the decision to withhold treatment related to poor prognosis (e.g. palliative intent), it stands to reason that patients receiving neither hydroxychloroquine nor azithromycin would have the highest mortality. Indeed, the non-treated group had an overall mortality that was higher than the rate of admission to the ICU (26.4% vs. 15.2%), suggesting that many patients were not considered appropriate for critical care. Such being the case, their care may have differed in other substantive ways that was also associated with death (e.g. terminal illness or advanced directives limiting invasive care). In the hydroxychloroquine treatment groups, the inverse was true with mortality lower than the rate of admission to the ICU (16.1% vs. 26.9%). While a propensity score analysis might further account for some differences between treatment groups, this approach is still limited to the information available in the dataset.

I note the FDA revoked the Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) for the drug, judging it unjustified.

Based on its ongoing analysis of the EUA and emerging scientific data, the FDA determined that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are unlikely to be effective in treating COVID-19 for the authorized uses in the EUA. Additionally, in light of ongoing serious cardiac adverse events and other potential serious side effects, the known and potential benefits of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine no longer outweigh the known and potential risks for the authorized use. 

And in the Implications section of this paper:

In the global context, this study is thought-provoking, with results that are in opposition to other large US cohorts (Geleris et al., 2020, Rosenberg et al., 2020) . It remains fundamentally limited by its observational nature and is subject to residual confounding. The published results of the UK RECOVERY and WHO Solidarity trials are not available at the time of writing, but both studies are expected to conclude that hydroxychloroquine does not decrease mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients when compared to standard of care. Given the current polarized opinions surrounding hydroxychloroquine, there will likely be a lot of energetic discussion following their eventual publication.

True dat.

I see the PM's Dad has flown to Greece to test his eyesight.

Just noticed something odd in Table 1 of the HCQ paper. The mean age of the no-drug cohort is 71, the mean age of the HCQ cohort was just 53. Mortality rises markedly with age, from 0.5-0.8% in the 45-54 age range, to 2.7 to 4.9% in the 65-74 range, a fivefold increase. The HCQ group had 13.5% mortality, the no-drug group 26.4%. 

The authors allowed for age in their Cox regression, in which I am no expert, but their Hazard Ratio reduction of just 2.6 for age >65 seems to me both a little crude and a little small.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_due_to_COVID-19#Mortality_by_age

Does zinc supplementation enhance the clinical efficacy of chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine to win today's battle against COVID-19?

"Just noticed something odd in Table 1 of the HCQ paper"

You didn't notice anything. You've been reading WUW comments.

WUWT

After Dominic and Stanley, Nigel goes down the pub to test his eyesight.

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday that it was discontinuing its trials of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and combination HIV drug lopinavir/ritonavir in hospitalised patients with COVID-19 after they failed to reduce mortality.

The setback came as the WHO also reported more than 200,000 new cases globally of the disease for the first time in a single day. The United States accounted for 53,213 of the total 212,326 new cases recorded on Friday, the WHO said.

“These interim trial results show that hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir produce little or no reduction in the mortality of hospitalised COVID-19 patients when compared to standard of care. Solidarity trial investigators will interrupt the trials with immediate effect,” the WHO said in a statement, referring to large multicountry trials that the agency is leading.

Reuters

Turns out an overly privilged property developer and reality TV star is not the best qualified person to prevent tens of thousands of deaths in a pandemic. Who knew?

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2020/07/03/good-quality-paper-demonstrates-strong-efficacy-of-hydroxychloroquine-mortality-rate-cut-in-half/#comment-263403

https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2020/07/03/good-quality-paper-demonstrates-strong-efficacy-of-hydroxychloroquine-mortality-rate-cut-in-half/#comment-263403

Jul 5, 2020 at 12:08 AM Phil Clarke

Perpetual Climate Science failures can't be trusted in Law either.