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The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-61
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert. <
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Other issues:
From the UCSF Grand Round video (~1:20 h) – Randomized controlled trials are the gold standard of testing pharmaceutical effectiveness. In six such trials given at various stages of Covid-19 Hydroxychloroquine showed none.
bigger
The NSA's favorite browser and network …
Multiple Tor security issues disclosed, more to come – ZDnet
The 'anti-imperial' PKK Kurds …
US oil company signs deal with Syrian Kurds – AL-Monitor
U.S. Civil War of 2020:
I’m in Minneapolis. First place I stop, most of the block is still boarded up. This grocery and tobacco store is owned by an Iranian, neighbor tells me. “They took everything.” Owner is deliberating whether to permanently close after the riots … – Michael Tracey
Two months since the riots, and still no “National Conversation” – Michael Tracey
In Portland, some Black activists frustrated with white protesters – Reuters
Use as open thread …
@ Posted by: Grieved | Aug 2 2020 23:27 utc | 68
One more example of a commenter posting a link without reading the content.
The headline of the link to the Turkish website is completely misleading. The Cuban doctor in charge clearly states, out of the bat, that Cuba is operating “in the framework of the protocol for management of coronavirus patients”, i.e. there’s no Cuban protocol to treat COVID-19: it is following the WHO.
He then merely states that “We are aware of the polemics around this product. Physicians here mostly have a good opinion of the results it has achieved, provided that it is used at an early stage in low doses and only with patients without comorbidities, which could be complicated by hydroxychloroquine”. In other words, hydroxycloroquine, in the context of the protocol, is just ok (that could mean anything: from it being a placebo to it really curing patients).
But this part is crucial:
He said Cuba will continue to use hydroxychloroquine on the “few active patients” left in the country, although it is “not the main” component of the Cuban protocol.
Praising BioCubaFarma’s role in battling the disease, Dr. Davila emphasized that hydroxychloroquine is only one of several drugs used in the protocol to treat coronavirus patients, and five other key drugs they use are unique to Cuba.
It is not the main component of the Cuban protocol (“Cuban protocol” is a term used by the journalist; it is actually the WHO protocol).
And this is still at the beginning of the article. It then abandons the subject about hydroxycloroquine entirely, and begins to talk about BioCubaFarma and its cooperation with other countries (one of them being Turkey).
In no moment the Cuban doctor told the journalist hydroxycloroquine is a “potent against the virus”. That’s pure invention by the journalist.
In fact, I found this headline weird from the start. I read the Granma daily since much before the pandemic started, and I’ve never seen any article praising hydroxycloroquine in any way. It is a drug that’s just there, among the large cocktail of drugs used in the now standard protocol.
If there really was a conspiracy theory around Big Pharma and hydroxycloroquine, we would be reading on Cuban and Chinese media very positive news about the drug already. China, for example, could be inserting the drug alongside its humanitarian help to the Western countries. It could have “whistleblowed” to the WHO (the WHO’s COVID-19 treatment standard we have today was mainly shaped from the Chinese experience). That’s certainly not the case, so there’s no reason to think there’s a dark operation to hide an allegedly efficacy of hydroxycloroquine against COVID-19.
Another fact that plays against the hydroxycloroquine hysteria lies in the fact that it only exists in the West. Well, if the drug really was that effective, it should work with Asians, too. But we’re not observing a pro-hydroxycloroquine political movement happening in China, Japan or South Korea. The reason for that can only be one: the hysteria begun with an Youtube video from French doctor Didier Raoult. Acting irresponsibly (or criminally?) he did a not randomized, not blind test with 86 patients from his local French clinic. He then spread the news on the internet. This has all the marks of a “fever”/mania – a propaganda move that viralizes outside of the context of big ads (TV, newspapers, social media).
The most likely explanation for this obsession with hydroxycloroquine is then this: a Western doctor announced a fake treatment on the internet and viralized in the West. Coupled with the typical Western distrust in the governments, and with the strong interests of the Western petite-bourgeoisies, it gained traction outside of the vehicles of the big corporations. In this context, hydroxycloroquine represents more of a messianic figure, a second coming of Jesus Christ, a symbol of hope of the conservative movements in the West, a symbol of David against Goliath (small business-owner vs big business) than a viable treatment.
Posted by: vk | Aug 3 2020 0:01 utc | 66
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