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Originally Posted by GoodLife
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Now this one is totally ridiculous. This Fox News contributor reports that he is managing 72 Covid positive patients. He is amazed that none have needed intubation. His expert statistical analysis was provided by his kids.
"Smith, who is treating 72 COVID-19 patients, said that he has been treating "everybody with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin [an antibiotic]. We’ve been doing so for a while.” ...not a single COVID-19 patient of his that has been on the hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin regimen for five days or more has had to be intubated. “The chance of that occurring by chance, according to my sons Leon and Hunter who did some stats for me, are .000-something,” he said, adding that “it’s ridiculously low.""
According to the description of services on his clinic's website, he provides primarily outpatient care. He is not an ICU intensivist. So it is reasonable but not certain that the everybody he is treating are mostly outpatients. As 80% of symptomatic outpatients with Covid never need hospitalization, and only 5% of patients ever make it to an ICU, and only some of them end up on a ventilator. I looked for five minutes and couldn't find a percent of outpatients that need a vent. If it were the entire 5% then does it seem nearly impossible that you might treat 72 without any of them ending up on a vent? And we don't know if all his 72 were even symptomatic. It gets worse..
Now listen to what Smith actually says about his success... play the Fox video. He tells you that he has many patients that ended up on a vent, and almost all of them were on a vent within 2 days of diagnosis. So those who end up on a vent, in his practice, all deteriorated very quickly. He then says, that those who finished all 5 days of meds didn't end up on a vent. In other words, some who were on meds for fewer than 5 days ended on a vent. So the statistic that 5% of Covid patients doesn't even work here. You'd have to know What percent of patients who after finding out they are Covid positive end up on a vent after at least five days! He has really fudged his numbers. As you don't get the Covid test back for 2 to 7 days he is throwing out of his data anyone admitted to the hospital before getting tests back. His reporting a very select group of patients who got sick slowly. Are you surprised that patients who were doing well continued to do well? And yes I am aware that patients with Covid usually have a period of mild illness first. But those people are generally not being tested. It is the retrospective report of the length of symptoms prior to being tested because of worsening that gives us that history.
This report is not only anecdotal, it is clinically meaningless.
Apparently his sons Leon and Hunter didn't take a vigorous statistics course. I don't think .000-something is a recognized value.