What is true or false in media today? Let me clarify my position before I continue writing this article. I stopped watching and reading any commercial news presentations/newspapers/articles in the late ‘80s. The credibility of a news story is difficult to verify. I want the facts, not opinions.
I gained access to the Internet and discovered that some stories never made it to the American public. Some stories were handpicked, and parts left out. Some stories seemed to have a different slant or interpretation of what I had read or seen earlier.
I know the news media thrives on fear – it sells! I know that media thrives on political views. I read headlines nowadays and rarely read further than the first paragraph unless I am doing some research for one of my articles. One of the current news headlines is about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine. Allow me to create the acronym HXQ to make it easier to type and read.
There are several headlines telling the public that HXQ is doing more harm than good. For instance, a CNN headline today states, “Large study finds hydroxychloroquine Covid-19 treatments linked to a greater risk of death and heart arrhythmia.” The Guardian has the following headline, “Hydroxychloroquine: Trump’s Covid-19 ‘cure’ increases deaths, global study finds.”
Yet, the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents in a March 20, 2010 study reported, “This provides evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not apparently treat patients with COVID 19,” said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Even worse, there were side effects caused by the drug — heart toxicities that required it be discontinued.”
This last study doctors looked at CVOID-19 patients who had pneumonia and required supplemental oxygen. Half of the patients had taken HXQ within 48 hours of hospital admission and the other half did not take HXQ. The doctors were unable to statistically say one group survived better than the other or that the death rate of one group was better or worse than the other.
The study did state that there were concerns for some patients who developed abnormal heart rhythms. HDX had side effects like every prescription drug. HDX can cause vision changes or damage the retina, heart rhythm disorder, diabetes, stomach disorders, and allergy to quinine, liver disease, kidney disease, psoriasis, alcoholism, and more. Sweden and Brazil have studies reporting similar heart problems from the drug chloroquine.
Another ‘new’ study showed that 2.8% of the patients who took HXQ died and 4.6% of the patients who did not take it died. Not quite twice as many deaths, but the CNN Health’s weekly newsletter with Dr. Sanjay Gupta stated, “These results do not support the use of [hydroxychloroquine] in patients hospitalized for documented SARSCoV-2-positive hypoxic pneumonia.”
France was one of the first countries to use DXQ with great results. A March 20, 2020 study led by Didier Raoult, MD, Ph.D., reported “a significant reduction in the viral load (83% patients had negative results on quantitative polymerase chain reaction testing at day 7, and 93% had negative results on day 8)”. There was a “clinical improvement compared to the natural progression.” One death occurred, and three patients were transferred to intensive care units.
This study represented 80 patients and did not have typical study controls to make more definitive statements. However, a larger French study with over a thousand COVID-19 patients had the following conclusion, “Administration of the HCQ+AZ combination before COVID-19 complications occur is safe and associated with a very low fatality rate in patients.” (HXQ = HCQ and AZ = azithromycin)
There are news stories telling us how bad HXQ is. There are news stories telling us how well HXQ helped patients survive. We did not hear from these ‘bad’ stories if conditions of age, pre-existing conditions, and severity of COVID-19 impacted the doctors’ decisions to use HXQ.
Statistics can be used in a myriad of ways. We need the details to determine what aspects of a test or study was used to figure the results to report.
Live Longer & Enjoy Life! – Red O’Laughlin – https://RedOLaughlin.com
