Finding their backbones

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has withdrawn the emergency use authorization for two controversial coronavirus treatment drugs promoted by President Trump because of serious safety issues.

The agency said recent clinical trial failures mean chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine may not be effective at treating COVID-19 or preventing it in people who have been exposed, and that their potential benefits do not outweigh the risks.

Doctors have warned that the drugs can cause serious heart problems, but the FDA had previously allowed their use for hospitalized patients and during clinical trials.

Trump spent weeks promoting the drugs as a potential miracle treatment for COVID-19, despite scant evidence. The FDA then issued the emergency use authorization in March. Critics accused the agency of caving to pressure from the administration, which the FDA has denied.

[...]

Clinical trials studying the drugs can also continue. The World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health are still conducting trails.

  The Hill

As Trump loses support, people in high places are suddenly finding some grit.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Hydroxychloroquine study

A major study of the way hydroxychloroquine and its older version, chloroquine, have been used on six continents – without clinical trials – reveals a sobering picture. Scientists said the results meant the drug should no longer be given to Covid-19 patients except in proper research settings.

While the paper, published online in the Lancet medical journal, is not a trial designed to assess the drug, it shows that the rush to use it around the world may be ill-advised. Significant numbers of doctors have been prescribing it without evidence. It is known that the drug can cause heart irregularities, but many have claimed it is safe because of its long use treating malaria.

  Guardian

If by many you mean the Trump cabal.

There was a rush to use the drug in Covid-19 cases after the French doctor Didier Raoult said he was curing his patients at La Timone hospital, in Marseille. The US president then claimed hydroxychloroquine – less toxic than the original chloroquine – was a cure, and later said he was taking it himself against coronavirus.

The drugs are fairly safe for patients being treated for malaria, but Covid-19 is a very different disease. The authors of the paper pulled together results for more than 96,000 patients in 671 hospitals, taking one of the drugs, with or without an antibiotic such as azithromycin, between 20 December and 14 April.

The death rate among all groups taking the drugs was higher than among people who were not given them. One in six of those taking one of the drugs died, while one in five died if they were taking chloroquine with an antibiotic, and one in four if they were on hydroxychloroquine and an antibiotic. The death rate among patients not taking the drugs was one in 11.

The statistics are not exactly comparable because, as this was not a trial, there were differences in the age, gender, general health and stage of illness of the patients.

[...]

The team also found that serious cardiac arrhythmias, which cause the lower chamber of the heart to beat rapidly and irregularly, were more common in all the groups receiving one of the four treatment regimens. The biggest increase was in the group treated with hydroxychloroquine in combination with an antibiotic, where 8% of patients developed a heart arrhythmia compared with 0.3% of patients not given the drugs.

[...]

“Whilst controlled trials will be required for confident affirmation, the indications are that these drugs certainly ought not to be used outside of a trial setting where patients can be monitored for complications. One might also question whether the resources necessary for large studies might be better diverted to other causes, at the same time allowing the drugs themselves to be used for their original purpose.

“Furthermore, it is clear that high-profile endorsements of taking these drugs without clinical oversight are both misguided and irresponsible.”

That's our president: misguided and irresponsible. Not to mention ignorant and cruel.

It is definitely a waste of time and resources, not to mention irresponsible, to conduct trials (assuming you can find enough voluntary human guinea pigs), for covid-19 purposes when the study already shows the more likely negative - and fatal - results.

“It might even be said that to go on giving them, other than in a trial, is unethical, given this evidence that is not yet contradicted by other available evidence.”

Yeah. Unethical.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

He says he's taking hydroxychloroquine

And he probably has stock in it.

That's not all Cavuto said.  Listen to the clip.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Indeed.

And I'm wondering how a civilian would get access to/a prescription for HQ outisde of a clinical trial or for treating malaria, arthritis or lupis.

UPDATE:

"Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. I'm not a doctor."

Jesus.

Yeah, he's got stock.

UPDATE:

Aaaand they're off!

UPDATE:

LOL.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

“Not a chance,” said [former Trump Organization executive vice president Barbara] Res. [...] “I don’t think he would subject himself to any potential harm. He wants everyone to think he’s taking it and to think everything he has said all along about it has been right. That’s what he wants. That’s why he’s saying he’s taking it.”

[...]

“He’s going to prove that he was right,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump political adviser, “when everybody else said he was wrong.”

[...]

“He’s got to tell those people, ‘Of course I’m taking hydroxy,’” former Trump White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci explained. “‘They’re telling you it doesn’t work, but I’m telling you it does. I am your chief of the red tribe of Trump.’”

  Politico

Haven't heard anything from Trump about hydroxychloroquine lately

I wonder why.

A panel of experts convened by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends against doctors using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of COVID-19 patients because of potential toxicities.

"The combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin was associated with QTc prolongation in patients with COVID-19," the panel said.

QTc prolongation increases the risk of sudden cardiac death.

[...]

As for using the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine alone, the panel said there was "insufficient clinical data to recommend either for or against." It reached the same conclusion about the drug remdesivir.

  NPR

Which Trump also touted at one time.

[T]he panel recommended against using Lopinavir/ritonavir or other HIV protease inhibitors because of negative clinical trial data. It also recommended against using interferon because it seemed to make patients with SARS and MERS worse. Those diseases are caused by a coronavirus related to the one causing COVID-19.

[...]

The expert panel, convened by the NIH Institute that Dr. Anthony Fauci directs, produced a set of guidelines for doctors to use in treating COVID-19 patients. The panelists come from a variety of health care disciplines. For the most part, the guidelines are agnostic about the use of experimental medications, pointing out that strong scientific evidence is lacking to make a firm conclusion one way or the other.

[...]

The panel also concluded that there was insufficient evidence to recommend any kind of treatment either to prevent infection with the coronavirus or to prevent the progression of symptoms in those who are already infectious. That recommendation could change based on clinical trials presently underway.

[...]

The plan is to update the guidelines frequently as new results become available. Swindells said there could be an update about the recommendations regarding remdesivir in the coming week or so.

Stay tuned.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

The deep state is out to get him

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Not a doctor

He says he's not a doctor, but he has common sense.  He has neither a doctor's license or common sense, or he wouldn't be doing this shit...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Just as we've been saying

He owns stock.

While Dr. Anthony Fauci has urged caution in using hydroxychloroquine, some doctors are prescribing it to patients who have the virus despite the fact it has never been tested for it.

[...]

President Trump made a rare appearance in the Situation Room on Sunday as his pandemic task force was meeting, determined to talk about the anti-malaria medicine that he has aggressively promoted lately as a treatment for the coronavirus.

[...]

Day after day, the salesman turned president has encouraged coronavirus patients to try hydroxychloroquine with all of the enthusiasm of a real estate developer. The passing reference he makes to the possible dangers is usually overwhelmed by the full-throated endorsement. “What do you have to lose?” he asked five times on Sunday.

[...]

Bolstered by his trade adviser, a television doctor, Larry Ellison of Oracle and Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former New York mayor, Mr. Trump has seized on the drug as a miracle cure for the virus that has killed thousands and paralyzed American life.

[...]

If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.

[...]

Sanofi’s largest shareholders include Fisher Asset Management, the investment company run by Ken Fisher, a major donor to Republicans, including Mr. Trump. A spokesman for Mr. Fisher declined to comment.

Another investor in both Sanofi and Mylan, another pharmaceutical firm, is Invesco, the fund previously run by Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary. Mr. Ross said in a statement Monday that he “was not aware that Invesco has any investments in companies producing” the drug, “nor do I have any involvement in the decision to explore this as a treatment.”

As of last year, Mr. Trump reported that his three family trusts each had investments in a Dodge & Cox mutual fund, whose largest holding was in Sanofi.

[...]

Several generic drugmakers are gearing up to produce hydroxychloroquine pills, including Amneal Pharmaceuticals, whose co-founder Chirag Patel is a member of Trump National Golf Course Bedminster in New Jersey.

[...]

Amneal announced last month that it would increase production of the drug and donate millions of pills to New York and other states.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Trump pills

In mid-March, a cryptocurrency investor, a law school graduate and a self-described philosopher found each other on Twitter. They discussed their hopes that a little-known drug called hydroxychloroquine could help contain the accelerating coronavirus outbreak.

Two days later, two of them published a paper about the drug’s potential on Google Docs, falsely claiming the imprimatur of two major universities and the National Academy of Sciences.

[...]

All three institutions, as well as Thomas Broker, a third researcher listed as a coauthor, subsequently said they were not involved in the paper and had no knowledge of its existence before it was published.

[...]

Still, the early association of these institutions gave the paper the prestige it needed to go mainstream, landing [the authors] on entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Twitter feed, then on Fox News.

[...]

Within days, the paper scored one of its authors a spot on on both Laura Ingraham’s and Tucker Carlson’s Fox News shows. The day after Carlson’s show, Trump made his first mention of hydroxychloroquine from the White House podium.

[...]

At the White House the next day, Trump announced the FDA had approved the “promising” drug for immediate use — a pronouncement that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, had to walk back, clarifying that it had been approved only for clinical trials.

[...]

Three weeks later, the president of the United States said he himself may take the drug and encouraged others to do the same.

“What do you have to lose?” Trump asked on Saturday. “I’ll say it again: What do you have to lose? Take it.”

[...]

Now, Trump is vowing to distribute millions of doses of the drug to people through the country’s strategic national stockpile, even though there’s no conclusive research that the drug works for coronavirus.

[...]

The Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drug for that purpose, and initial small studies from China and France had defects that make it impossible to draw firm conclusions.

[...]

A small early study out of France suggested benefits, but experts have since questioned that research, saying the lead researcher has a dubious history with manipulating data and noting that the researcher chose who would get the drug, skewing the results.

[...]

More recently, a Chinese study suggested no effect from the pills.

[...]

Meanwhile, Trump’s promotional monologues have led to shortages for people who rely on hydroxychloroquine for other conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

[...]

An upstate New York doctor in a Hasidic Jewish community claimed he cured hundreds of coronavirus patients with the drug. “Hawaii Five-0” and “Lost” star Daniel Dae Kim claimed hydroxychloroquine was his “secret weapon” in his fight against the coronavirus.

[...]

The sudden, intense interest in the drug has had downsides. A man died after ingesting a drug normally given to fish in the belief that one of its ingredients, chloroquine phosphate, was the drug that Trump had touted. It’s also led to a shortage of the drug for lupus and arthritis patients who take the medicine regularly.

[...]

But that hasn’t stopped a segment of Trump’s supporters from loudly trumpeting the drug’s potential. Some have started calling the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, another commonly available drug, “Trump Pills.” Twitter has deleted tweets from Trump allies like Giuliani, Ingraham and conservative campus organizer Charlie Kirk for touting the drug as a “promising cure,” citing the lack of scientific evidence backing it.

[...]

Through official channels, the FDA and New York state have dramatically ramped up trials for hydroxychloroquine, ordering millions of doses of the drug and conducting wide-scale clinical trials. The FDA also authorized emergency use of the drug for coronavirus patients — a move that makes it easier to use the drug but is not an endorsement of the drug’s effectiveness in fighting the illness.

  Politico

We will never hear the end of it if they find some combination using chloroquine that works to cure or even mitigate the effects of the virus.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The man in the alley

UPDATE:

Gee, that sounds like a really in-depth study.

He's baaaaack

I'm telling you, they own stock.

Bet: He has stock in the company that manufactures hydroxychloroquine

Jesus Tapdancing Christ. 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Odd

He'll get more people killed

The Food and Drug Administration on Sunday (FDA) issued an emergency-use authorization for a pair of anti-malaria drugs as health officials work to combat the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus.

The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) said in a statement that the authorization would allow 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine sulfate and 1 million doses of chloroquine phosphate to be donated to the Strategic National Stockpile. The doses of hydroxychloroquine sulfate were donated by Sandoz, while the chloroquine phosphate was developed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals.

The products will be "distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible," HHS said.

President Trump has repeatedly touted the anti-malaria drugs as a possible coronavirus "game changer," despite warnings from health officials that not enough is known about their effects on COVID-19. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said during a press briefing earlier this month that much of what is known about the drug is based on "anecdotal reports."

[...]

The department said that clinical trials are still needed to "provide scientific evidence that these treatments are effective."

  The Hill

Unbelievable. If he says drinking clorox will cure it, will they bow to that?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Do we even need an FDA?

Does Trump have stock in chloroquine and mask sterilization?

Trumpistas must own stock in the chloroquine companies

He can't even pronounce it.

This is unconscienable on the part of both Rudy and the host, Laura Ingraham.  Fox News should be canceled.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Let me guess...they bought stock in these drugs

The White House is reportedly planning to promote the use of two malaria drugs frequently touted by President Trump as a potential treatment for coronavirus despite their unproven benefits, using a platform built by the tech firm Oracle.

The platform is slated to be used to collect information about off-label uses of the two drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still reviewing both drugs’ effectiveness in treating the coronavirus, and top public health officials have warned against jumping to conclusions on their effects.

Health and Human Services agencies such as the FDA and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are part of the Oracle efforts, as is the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the Times reported, citing two senior administration officials, who said the platform could be used to gather data from doctors who prescribe the drugs and track symptoms in patients.

Dr. David Agus, a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California, is also reported to be working with the White House and Oracle and has repeatedly promoted the use of the drugs against the virus, saying on television recently that “the earlier you use them, the better.”

Health officials within the administration have reportedly expressed dismay about Trump’s promotion of bypassing standard clinical trials for the drugs as a coronavirus remedy.

[...]

Trump, meanwhile, has grown increasingly bullish on the drugs, which numerous Fox News personalities and contributors to whom he plays close attention have promoted. Trump said last Thursday that “we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately,” while Hahn said at the same conference that the FDA would ensure any such products were “safe and effective” first.

[...]

Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, met Tuesday afternoon with Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus coordinator; Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Stephen Hahn, the FDA's commissioner, to discuss concerns with the plan and Chinese data indicating the drugs are ineffective, the Times reported.

  The Hill

Yes, and we don't see Dr. Fauci any more do we?

Meanwhile, on Monday, an Arizona man died while his wife was hospitalized at Banner Health after they both ingested chloroquine phosphate, a substance often used to clean fish tanks. The woman told NBC News that she took the product after seeing Trump tout its effectiveness.

And why is that man still in office?

Why is he still in office????

Impeach Trump and fire Sean Hannity.

He's finally gotten somebody killed

"A man has died and his wife is under critical care after the couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate," one of the anti-malaria drugs that President Trump has mentioned in recent days, according to Banner Health, the hospital system that treated both patients.

[...]

People who self-medicate risk serious side effects or death, and it's why any messaging about chloroquine and the related hydroxychloroquine should emphasize that these drugs have not been approved to prevent or treat the new coronavirus.

[...]

Nigeria is reporting two poisonings from the drug chloroquine, a drug that's been touted as a potential but as-yet unproven treatment for coronavirus, Bloomberg reports.

  Axios

Also...

With Fox on the job, who needs Russian destabilization efforts?

Also...

UPDATE:   Did Hannity give Trump the false information, or did Trump give it to Hannity?