Not talking about countering conspiracy theories. If that's what the video was, then I agree it's likely a waste of time. I'm talking about countering scientific claims that don't hold up to scrutiny. That is precisely what the scientific community should be doing for the public.
In general, I'd agree with you. But when politics becomes intertwined with the science, the range of acceptable positions can narrow.
Three of these medical professionals included an eye doctor, a primary care physician at a walk-in clinic located in a strip mall, and a pediatrician. None of them are qualified to treat people with moderate-to-severe cases of COVID-19. Their opinions on the matter are worthless. If @BallaDoc, an internal medicine trained doctor specializing in pulmonary disease and critical care medicine that is working in a COVID unit at a San Antonio hospital right now, gave his opinion, it would matter. Why? Because he has verifiable training and experience in effectively treating those with the virus. These medical professionals don’t.
too bad this thread started with such a ridiculous video. my household is super conservative about covid. we don't go out a ton except for absolute necessity and when we do all masks and the time. we are also all taking good amounts of vitamin D - though that's helpful in any case. I am still (per normal thread in the hangout) curious to see more about the specific 3 drug combo, as i have still yet to see studies either way on this 3 drug combo. I've seen positive and negative studies on 2 drug combo, but not the 3 drug cocktail.
https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeat...exists-we-need-start-using-it-opinion-1519535 Who does this guy think he is?
I will say I think the danger has been slightly overemphasized because public health officials are trying to counter the ridiculously glowing praise in order to prevent more people like fish tank guy from contending for a Darwin award. I've had a prescription since right before Covid for an autoimmune thing, and I take it 2x daily. Long term it is legitimately very seriously dangerous, (if you take for 3 years daily, up to a 5% chance of "bullseye maculopathy" which is serious vision degradation or blindness right in the middle of your visual field). Short term at appropriate dosages not so much. However the danger is absolutely greater than zero and I have read some horror stories by people who reacted poorly to it.
His original published manuscript, in case anyone is interested: https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093/5847586
Sorry for the rushed reply. It’s been a hectic few weeks here in the ICUs were way above capacity and surge with no real end in sight. first of all thank you for lending your support to my voice. One point of clarification I am an internal medicine trained doctor with my sub specialty being pulmonary disease and critical care medicine. secondly I haven’t been Able to view the videos since it was taken down but I think I understand the gist of what’s going on I’d like to say while these doctors may be good in their respective fields they have imo no authority in speaking out about a disease they will never see acutely or be expected to manage. Frankly I wouldn’t want a primary care/fam med/ohptho/derm /outpatient doctor trying to diagnose, intubate, place invasive lines, and run the ventilator, and understand the day to day complexities of acute respiratory distress. They haven’t seen it and they’re years removed from the ward s. They frankly are clueless in what they are talking about. I understand their incentive for speaking out though. The way the American medical syste runs is frankly broken. Hospitals run on elective procedures and outpatient docs run on documentation and volume. Right now all that is at a standstill. The CARES act is helping mitigate some of those losses but I imagine most docs are feeling very pinched. I would imagine they are speaking out more from an economics standpoint than healthcare utilization. let me review again what we are trying to do. We are trying to keep the ICU viable. The ICU is where the deathly ill and extremely sick people go. I can manage on my own with the help of one mid level around 18 safely. Right now We are up to 40. Way More than max of my icu. All I am seeing currently is COVID patients. Whether it’s from respiratory failure to heart failure to strokes to renal failure. They’re here and that’s all I’m managing. I usually manage patients with a whole host of other diseases but they are out of my icu and being managed by doctors not trained in medical critical care. Some of the stuff I’ve seen being charted and decisions on management are highly questionable but hey we need the bodies to manage non covids now. This is why we are asking to flatten the curve. Because when you get this disease or anything else that requires an IcU, trust me you want my specialty managing, and if we’re swamped with covid like we are currently, you won’t get my specialty managing you. Lastly the plaquenil dosing. Lolol. I have my theories as to why this is gaining traction again. See the Whistleblower report from earlier this year. Pretty eye opening stuff. All I’ll say is at this time we do not even utter the words plaquenil. From the pharmacist to the infectious disease doctor to the critical care doctor we don’t think about using it. There have been multitudes of reports out that at its very best it doesn’t help and may actually harm. I think imo the one thing that should be the death nail is the fact that our VA hospital ( possibly second highest cases of covids in America) do not use plaquenil or azithromycin. This is the federal hospital for veterans. Again let that sink in the federal hospital for veterans. A federal institution has deemed plaquenil unsafe and will not use it or even have it on our treatment algorithm as an option. If a federal institution thinks it’s unsafe and/or ineffective (and the heads of the VA icu in San Antonio or word renowned guys in infectious disease) why on earth would civilian hospitals use it. Whoever is touting these drugs isn’t up to date or actively managing patients
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-4207 Abstract Background: No effective oral therapy exists for early coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Objective: To investigate whether hydroxychloroquine could reduce COVID-19 severity in adult outpatients. Design: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted from 22 March through 20 May 2020. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04308668) Setting: Internet-based trial across the United States and Canada (40 states and 3 provinces). Participants: Symptomatic, nonhospitalized adults with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 or probable COVID-19 and high-risk exposure within 4 days of symptom onset. Intervention: Oral hydroxychloroquine (800 mg once, followed by 600 mg in 6 to 8 hours, then 600 mg daily for 4 more days) or masked placebo. Measures: Symptoms and severity at baseline and then at days 3, 5, 10, and 14 using a 10-point visual analogue scale. The primary end point was change in overall symptom severity over 14 days. Results: Of 491 patients randomly assigned to a group, 423 contributed primary end point data. Of these, 341 (81%) had laboratory-confirmed infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or epidemiologically linked exposure to a person with laboratory-confirmed infection; 56% (236 of 423) were enrolled within 1 day of symptoms starting. Change in symptom severity over 14 days did not differ between the hydroxychloroquine and placebo groups (difference in symptom severity: relative, 12%; absolute, −0.27 points [95% CI, −0.61 to 0.07 points]; P = 0.117). At 14 days, 24% (49 of 201) of participants receiving hydroxychloroquine had ongoing symptoms compared with 30% (59 of 194) receiving placebo (P = 0.21). Medication adverse effects occurred in 43% (92 of 212) of participants receiving hydroxychloroquine versus 22% (46 of 211) receiving placebo (P < 0.001). With placebo, 10 hospitalizations occurred (2 non–COVID-19–related), including 1 hospitalized death. With hydroxychloroquine, 4 hospitalizations occurred plus 1 nonhospitalized death (P = 0.29). Limitations: Only 58% of participants received SARS-CoV-2 testing because of severe U.S. testing shortages. Conclusion: Hydroxychloroquine did not substantially reduce symptom severity in outpatients with early, mild COVID-19.
Just to remind you, it was an ophthalmologist in Wuhan that first alerted people of COVID. Healthcare professionals from all specialties have experience with treating COVID symptoms.
