Quote:
Originally Posted by blueash
Most of the time you make some sense when you look at data. Not this time. How do you think the study was "designed to produce a negative result?" I don't believe that authors had any outcome they desired when they designed the study; they wanted to examine the outcome of giving HCZ in " all United States Veterans Health Administration medical centers "
The authors are very clear about who they studied, men admitted all of whom were over 64. That was who they had because that is who got admitted. They didn't manipulate by throwing out younger men, none got admitted to the VA system. They did have a few women but too few to study independently. Their outcomes were not studied or reported.
The question is : Does HCZ help our patients? How to answer it - Look at all the patients we have treated. How to do that? Use the electronic records across several hospitals and extract the data. What data? There are specific codes entered into the record that show if a patient did or did not get HCZ at some point in the hospitalization. One group did, one group did not. The people who got HCZ were then subdivided into whether they got it before they went on a vent or after. Now look at how they did with outcome data. The outcomes checked were Died, and needed a ventilator.
Yes, these were sick older men, the exact population that is highest risk, exactly the patients who need an effective therapy. And you completely wrongly then state they were on "intubators" I think you meant ventilators. There were 368 patients in the study. Only 44 ended up on vents. This is NOT a study of old men on vents. You are wrong, you are misstating easily checked facts.
In the group who never needed a vent, which is 344 patients, there is no difference in outcome whether treated or not treated with HCZ. It did them no good at all. It did them no harm either. The drug was useless.
In the group that progressed to needing a vent, those who had received HCZ at any time were more likely to die. The finding of increased death rate for the group as a whole is because of the increased deaths in ventilated drug recipients. This is why I have consistently written that the increased death rate may be a less reliable finding as it is a small sample size.
Bu the overall finding that the drug was useless is the kindest interpretation possible. It clearly did not help at all in the population studied which was overwhelmingly COVID positive men who were not sick enough to need a ventilator.
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Again, most of the Doctors reporting good results advocate using the HCQ cocktail early and are emphatic about using zinc sulfate as well. Don't see that in the study.
The death rates once you get admitted to a hospital are really bad for older patients. 11.5% for 65 to 74 and 25.5% for 75 plus
lymphopenia is twice as common in the HCQ groups (25% in the HCQ, 31% in the HCQ+AZ group versus 14% in the no HCQ group, p =.02) and there is an absolute correlation between lymphopenia (<0.5G/L) and fatality rate, which is well known
Looks like a stacked deck to me.
If you want to see a drug fail, study hospitalized old black men with a host of pre existing maladies plus coronavirus. Stick more of the guys with lymphopenia in the drug group.
I love to see a drug that cures people who are really sick, but even better would be one that cures people before they have to go to the hospital.
Hopefully there will be a study using the correct cocktail, at the correct time. Until then there are a lot of Doctors reporting success who don't have time for full on clinical trials.