[HN Gopher] Hydroxychloroquine lowers Alzheimer's disease and re...
___________________________________________________________________
Hydroxychloroquine lowers Alzheimer's disease and related dementias
risk
Author : JPLeRouzic
Score : 142 points
Date : 2022-12-29 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| citilife wrote:
| Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat Lupus by interfering with the
| communication between cells (not exactly clear in the research
| tbh). Lupus, Rheumatoid arthritis, and other uses for
| Hydroxychloroquine appear to be autoimmune responses where the
| body attacks connective tissue.
|
| If Hydroxychloroquine reduces inflammation and reduces immune
| responses damaging connective tissue I could see it generally
| useful for incidents where the body damages itself (such as
| Alzheimer or dementia)
| ffssffss wrote:
| > incidents where the body damages itself
|
| I don't think this is right, isn't the etiology of Alzheimers
| still pretty much completely unknown?
| everdrive wrote:
| Do we think that mere inflammation-reduction alone is the
| explanation here?
| napier wrote:
| There'a nothing "mere" about HCQ's inflammation reduction.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| HCQ associated with a 12% reduced risk of getting Alzheimer's
| disease.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Yeah, it's interesting that they mention it as a
| "neuroprotective therapy" rather than any kind of treatment.
| That suggests that it doesn't do anything to reverse damage,
| but can only slow (perhaps halt?) the progression of the
| disease.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| horse paste? I mean fish paste?
| bad_username wrote:
| Worm dehorser
| 8note wrote:
| Presumably they're observing people prescribed the version for
| people
| electric_mayhem wrote:
| [flagged]
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| No. Interestingly, the root cause of all these positive
| correlations might be the same. One thing that
| Hydroxychloroquine is undeniably good at is that it's a very
| effective dewormer. Anything that is either caused or made
| worse by worms, or by the immune system going haywire because
| of worms, will be improved by Hydroxychloroquine.
|
| So, it helped against covid (in key populations) because one of
| the key interventions against covid will kill you if you also
| have worms. So in places like Bangladesh and Pakistan where
| intestinal worm infections are common, covid outcomes improve
| because the worms got killed. If this[0] is correct (and it is
| a very new result, so might as well not be), the positive
| correlation might well be that your immune system stays calmer
| if you have no worms.
|
| [0]: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01463-5
| leot wrote:
| I think you're confusing hydroxychloroquine with ivermectin.
| foehrenwald wrote:
| > So, it helped against covid (in key populations) because
| one of the key interventions against covid will kill you if
| you also have worms. What intervention?
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| A lot of modern health woes are turning out to be caused by
| inflammation, and HCQ is a relatively safe, cheap
| immunosuppressant. It makes sense that it would help out. As
| far as conspiracy theories go, it's been profitable for various
| parties to suppress knowledge of it over the years, as they
| can't patent it then sell it for extreme markup. I myself take
| a $10k/month immunosuppressant to treat a condition that HCQ is
| also effective for.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > it's been profitable for various parties to suppress
| knowledge of it over the years, as they can't patent it then
| sell it for extreme markup
|
| Just like NAC, which the FDA tried to outlaw from being sold
| as supplement when it's a completely harmless, proven-beyond-
| doubt miracle drug for anything between significantly
| reducing bipolar disorder symptoms, preventing symptomatic
| flu and reducing covid mortality.
| cpr wrote:
| No, it's available in generic form.
| fexecve wrote:
| But at what cost?
|
| Not drinking water or eating food leads to lower risk of choking
| to death, but...
| rednerrus wrote:
| What is the cost of taking hydroxychloroquine? Seems like a
| well understood drug with minimal side effects.
| [deleted]
| benj111 wrote:
| So is my evening G&T good for me, or will quinine not work?
| kcplate wrote:
| I attribute never having contracted Covid-19, Malaria, and
| scurvy to my daily G&T therapy.
| TylerE wrote:
| Modern tonics contain far less quinine than the "real" stuff.
| Like 95% less
| christkv wrote:
| If this is true they already have several big patient groups
| taking it on a daily basis for the rest of their life so should
| be possible to look at if the prevalence of Alzheimers is lower
| in those groups.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It seems like researchers would be able to gather data from the
| natural experiment due to some places in the world where this
| drug is routinely used against malaria.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I can see an awful lot of potential confounding factors
| there, though. Life expectancy in most countries in Africa,
| for instance, isn't even long enough for non-early onset AD
| to develop. You'd expect less AD just because half or more of
| the population is going to die from other stuff at 65 or
| earlier.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1218173/life-
| expectancy-...
| fbdab103 wrote:
| From reading the abstract, it looks like they picked up on this
| association from arthritis patients.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| That makes me instantly sceptical that the arthritis and/or
| associated conditions might have played a role. I'm sure
| they've controlled for that as much as possible, but it's
| easy to miss some confounding factor since the cause and
| mechanism of AD is poorly understood. That makes it harder to
| tease out what confounders to look for.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| HCQ is a much misunderstood substance as a result of the
| political furor around it.
|
| It is not a miracle drug and it is not useless for all medical
| purposes. It is a relatively mild anti-malarial drug with some
| anti-inflammatory properties. It is prescribed for autoimmune
| disorders in addition to malaria. Its anti-inflammatory/immune
| regulation effects are probably not that strong but its safety
| profile is well understood.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ummonk wrote:
| "for something for which there was no initially no evidence"
| - that's not true. There was evidence that it had antiviral
| properties against covid-19 in vitro. This is extremely weak
| evidence (most compounds which are effective in vitro are
| ineffective when administered to an actual human in safe
| doses, as HCQ proved to be), but it isn't "no evidence".
| ars wrote:
| > for something for which there was no initially no evidence
|
| That's not true:
|
| "The FDA has, however, issued an emergency use authorization
| for the drug.
|
| In press releases, the FDA has stressed that "there are no
| currently approved treatments for COVID-19." However, the
| agency says both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine phosphate
| "have shown activity in laboratory studies against
| coronaviruses,""
|
| This is back in 2020, so yes, there was some evidence. Later
| studies showed it didn't work - but that wasn't known in
| 2020.
| ben_w wrote:
| At least one of the snake oil salesman was a politician,
| which caused there to be as much of a political furor about
| HCQ as Ivermectin, the vaccines, the masks, the lockdowns,
| etc.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| This is such a depressing comment to read.
|
| Yes, there _was_ political furor over it. The original people
| who were supporting the _possibility_ that this drug MIGHT be
| useful against covid were legitimate doctors and researchers.
|
| Some politicians got overly excited about that, some
| politicians got overly upset about that. All of the
| legitimate discussion happening around it got lost in the
| crossfire of annoying politicians.
| tptacek wrote:
| It didn't work. It was, in fact, COVID snake oil.
|
| Meanwhile: exactly zero people campaigned that HCQ was an
| evil substance that should be taken off the market.
| Opponents of COVID snake oil weren't Lupus deniers.
|
| This entire thread is completely off topic; it's the kind
| of thing we get ourselves mired in when we don't have the
| expertise to engage with the actual story, which is whether
| or not HCQ is protective against Alzheimers.
| api wrote:
| It went like this:
|
| 1. Some legitimate research suggests that it might be
| useful against COVID.
|
| 2. Quacks announce that it definitely is the miracle drug
| against COVID that "THEY" don't want you to know about.
|
| 3. Legitimate doctors counter the quacks and explain that
| its utility against COVID is not proven.
|
| 4. Trumpist Populists back the quacks because if the
| establishment is against it it must be good. It must be
| something "THEY" don't want you to know about.
|
| 5. Democrats and other anti-Trumpists react hard in the
| other direction and conclude that it must be quack
| nonsense. There is no chance it could be legitimate because
| quacks and populists said it was legitimate.
|
| 6. Legitimate researchers from (1) are utterly forgotten
| because now it's politicized and rational discourse is
| impossible. In the end all we have is evidence-free
| screaming and conspiracy theories.
|
| Same exact sequence of events happened with Ivermectin, the
| debate over whether vaccine mandates were needed, debates
| over the utility of the vaccines themselves, the question
| of whether having had COVID is equivalent to having been
| vaccinated (or better?), and many other topics.
|
| People need to learn that statements without evidence are
| like the "null" value. They mean precisely nothing,
| especially if they are from people without expertise.
|
| Meaning "precisely nothing" means that they are neither a
| positive indicator nor a contrarian indicator. They are
| meaningless noise that should be completely ignored.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| 2-6 could also be described as 'political furor'.
| ummonk wrote:
| I'd argue only 4-6 is 'political furor'.
| ars wrote:
| This should be higher, that's exactly how it went.
|
| The FDA even said: "both hydroxychloroquine and
| chloroquine phosphate "have shown activity in laboratory
| studies against coronaviruses,"", but they stressed it
| was not proven yet. i.e. your step 1 was based on current
| evidence.
|
| Then everything went insane exactly as you describe.
| polishTar wrote:
| This seems a bit revisionist. Nobody got upset at people
| getting excited, everyone was excited about its potential
| initially. The annoyance came specifically about certain
| politicians endorsing its use, without any disclaimers,
| without evidential support, and even _after_ the evidence
| showed it didn 't work.
| AustinDev wrote:
| [flagged]
| ummonk wrote:
| There is nothing in that article to indicate those
| studies may have been biased.
| remote_phone wrote:
| [flagged]
| freejazz wrote:
| "The original people who were supporting the possibility
| that this drug MIGHT be useful against covid were
| legitimate doctors and researchers."
|
| You can't be serious
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The original person who suggest HCQ, and pushed for its
| use was this guy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult
| comeonbro wrote:
| Didier Raoult was the original person who _received
| western popular media coverage_ for it.
|
| It had been part of the scientific conversation for over
| a month* before his involvement (an eternity in 2020
| time), eg
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Are you saying he's a legitimate doctor and researcher?
|
| Because
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult#Controversies
| has him being censured for falsifying diagrams, being
| credibly accused of "ethical, procedural, and
| methodological problems" in his HCQ trial, and conducting
| illegal clinical trials on people who could not legally
| consent.
|
| I mean, sure, he _might be_ credible but his track record
| suggests otherwise.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Who has been well-known in France for his hot takes in
| media about how sun rays don't cause skin cancer or how
| alcohol is more beneficial than harmful. He was also
| involved in an long list of academic malpractices
| (including faking data in research papers, but that's
| mostly related to the fact that he has put his name way
| too many papers from people in his lab to review them
| all).
|
| He's basically a former good scientist with excellent
| political skills which helped him climb to the top and
| has been slowly been corrupted by his own hubris.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| You're moving the goalposts here.
|
| The fact is that the original claims about HCQ weren't
| coming from politicians, they were coming from doctors.
| You might not _like_ the doctors, those doctors might
| have heterodox ideas, _but that is okay_.
| ummonk wrote:
| The claim was that they were " _legitimate_ doctors and
| researchers ". He clearly was not considered a legitimate
| researcher anymore.
| josephcsible wrote:
| This is a no true Scotsman fallacy, just like "no true
| implementation of socialism has ever failed" is.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Look at the guys career history, awards won, research
| published etc. Yeah, he was wrong about HCQ, but the idea
| that he is just some fake doctor, or not legitimate in
| some way is as disinformative as the idea that some
| mysterious "they" is hiding HCQ from everybody.
| [deleted]
| vixen99 wrote:
| If you don't accept that statement how about providing
| some evidence for the contrary. 'You can't be serious'
| says nothing.
| Supermancho wrote:
| To be fair, providing evidence of no evidence, is not
| worth the effort.
| freejazz wrote:
| It definitely doesn't say nothing. It says that I don't
| believe the poster can be serious. I don't. It's not my
| burden to disprove unreasonable assertions.
| remote_phone wrote:
| The use of ivermectin and hcq were started because
| doctors were trying to develop a protocol to help with
| treating Covid in 2020 and there was anecdotal evidence
| that it worked.
| dham wrote:
| Spray and pray drug therapies work. That's how the best
| drugs have been invented. The fact that Doctors would
| rather just let a patient die then try a few known drugs
| was very sad. It was known in April that ventilators
| didn't really work. Tons of doctors on youtube blowing
| the whistle.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| None of the legitimacy ascribed to HCQ compares to the
| legitimacy of the vaccine. The only reason HCQ rose to
| prominence was because of COVID denialism, not because of
| actual scientific or therapeutic concerns as a reasonable
| alternative to the vaccine.
| remote_phone wrote:
| False. We didn't have a vaccine available until early
| 2021. People were scrambling to find a therapeutic way to
| treat Covid and there was anecdotal evidence that hcq and
| ivermectin might work. They wanted large scale trials but
| they were unscientifically denied which made people very
| suspicious about the reasons why.
|
| Yes, they turned out to be ineffective but the reaction
| against them was mindblowingly biased and filled with
| propaganda.
| 312c wrote:
| > They wanted large scale trials but they were
| unscientifically denied which made people very suspicious
| about the reasons why.
|
| False. There was an large scale international trial and
| it showed that HCQ did little to nothing to treat covid.
|
| https://www.who.int/news/item/04-07-2020-who-
| discontinues-hy...
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| There was quite a lot of political furor, including treating
| it as much more dangerous than it really is to prevent people
| from using it off label as COVID prophylaxis.
| schlafschaf wrote:
| [flagged]
| peter422 wrote:
| If you are willing to dilute a few large, high quality
| studies with a multitude of small or low quality ones, then
| I'm fairly sure you could conclusively prove anything
| regardless of reality.
| schlafschaf wrote:
| Right, you could. For example you could "prove" that
| masks work by citing a single hairdresser that didn't
| spread covid while wearing a mask and so dilute decades
| of evidence against masks. Goes both ways, see?
|
| It's one thing to debate the effectiveness of something
| and quite an other to declare that the only/main reason
| for a certain stance is moral deficiency.
|
| Btw did you know that there were promising trails for
| using hcq against sars cov 1 and even hiv? https://www.th
| elancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
|
| Turns out HCQ has antiviral properties. Hmmmm.
| ummonk wrote:
| There have been large scale controlled studies on masking
| (via recommending mask usage, sending masks, etc. to a
| randomly selected group of villages / districts). They
| showed that masking has a moderate effect on COVID
| spread.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic but after the
| announcement that was made to "prevent a paucity of masks
| for health care workers", there were several studies that
| came out showing how masks were ineffective! The
| methodology of course was to get someone with COVID, put
| a mask on them and them have them cough into a petri
| dish. Then check the dis to see if COVID was present, it
| was so obviously masks were bad. The science had spoken.
|
| These studies were posed all over the place including HN
| as proof that you didn't need masks.
|
| Then a little while later, someone changed their mind or
| something and all of a sudden we all needed masks, even
| homemade cloth ones would do. Or even a bandana on your
| face.
|
| The point is that if there is a political will, science
| will be made up to support or debunk it. Which is bad for
| science and society in general.
|
| I have no idea about HCQ or it's usefulness but I have a
| feeling that if it had a different political backing then
| we might be talking about HCQ deniers instead of HCQ
| conspiracy supporters because we had the same thing with
| masks.
| peter422 wrote:
| Are you aware that things have changed in the last two
| and a half years?
|
| The CDC has been talking about the limitations of cloth
| masks for over a year!
|
| If you want to be upset at the lack of perfect guidance
| initially, fine, but don't pretend it's still that way.
| schlafschaf wrote:
| Bangladesch right? The one that showed that red masks (or
| was it purple) worked better. It's hard to get this stuff
| right but it's such a double standard. The hcq guys are
| morally condemmed while people eat up anything that looks
| good for masks no matter how shoddy. I get it, you all
| want to do something that helps and be seen doing it. But
| it aint masks. Dropping 10kg though...
| ummonk wrote:
| It showed that masks worked. Unscientific people with an
| agenda then sliced and diced it into smaller subgroups
| (such as purple masks) where there was insufficient
| statistical power to consistently show whether masks
| worked for all the subgroups.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| Now explain how it could affect Alzheimers
| WaxProlix wrote:
| > some anti-inflammatory properties
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6214864/
|
| Lots of literature 1 google/ddg search away for you, but
| there's an example.
| [deleted]
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| >We additionally show that HCQ exerts dose-dependent effects
| on late long-term potentiation (LTP) and rescues impaired
| hippocampal synaptic plasticity prior to significant
| accumulation of amyloid plaques and neurodegeneration in
| APP/PS1 mice.
|
| iirc (I am not qualified!!) Alzheimers relates to plaques in
| our brain, and this sounds to me like it fixes a precursor to
| the plaque accumulation (the loss of plasticity?)
| pelorat wrote:
| The plaques are a side effect of something we don't
| understand yet. Treating the plaque or slowing it is not a
| solution, we need to find and fix the cause.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Quite apart from the validity of this study, isn't a
| purely palliative measure still valuable?
| mattkrause wrote:
| Literally billions of dollars has been spent, futilely,
| on the idea that removing plaques would stop/reverse the
| symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease.
|
| This "amyloid hypothesis" has not been a smashing
| success, to put in mildly.
| ummonk wrote:
| It's not clear that treating amyloid plaque is actually
| palliative for Alzheimer's patients.
| api wrote:
| Being anti-inflammatory?
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| How is HCQ misunderstood due to the recent political furor?
| It's been used since the 1950s.
| caddemon wrote:
| It's a little weird that this pilot research* made the front
| page of HN, in that respect there probably is a political
| factor.
|
| But for the research itself I agree, there's no indication
| this article was in any way motivated by COVID or contains
| any misunderstandings of HCQ.
|
| (* the sample is large but since it's purely observational in
| a very specific population it obviously requires follow-up
| work)
| treeman79 wrote:
| [flagged]
| baggachipz wrote:
| It's not that he "supported" it, he touted it as a COVID-19
| cure (an utterly baseless claim) when mask-wearing and
| distancing were the only available true preventers of
| transmission at the time. He politicized it, not the "other
| side".
| h43z wrote:
| It's not an utterly baseless claim
| https://c19hcq.org/meta.html
| tptacek wrote:
| No, they declared it ineffective for COVID and unsafe when
| taken without physician supervision, both of which are true
| statements.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| It was promoted by a politically-homogenous group of people
| as a COVID-19 cure
|
| https://theintercept.com/2021/09/28/covid-telehealth-
| hydroxy...
| NikkiA wrote:
| Really going all-in on trying to find an off-label use that'll
| allow them to repatent this, aren't they?
| DanBC wrote:
| I don't think you re-patent an off-label use, you re-patent a
| minor modification. See for example ketamine to eskatamine; or
| citalopram to escitalopram.
|
| Once you have the new med you use the courts to prevent the
| off-label use. See eg lucentis or avastin for Wet AMD.
| dariusj18 wrote:
| Or someone has a lot in stock and wants to offload it ;)
| tptacek wrote:
| "Re-patent"?
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Yes, HN has something of a COVID-19 denialism streak.
| dang wrote:
| HN is divided on topics where society at large is divided. It
| would be strange if it weren't.
|
| It's also a highly international forum and divisive topics
| play very differently in different places. Readers often
| mistake a comment for something weird and radical coming from
| a person nearby, when in fact it's an unremarkable comment
| coming from a person far away. It's unfortunate that this
| leads to so many brutal online arguments. In person, people
| instinctively modulate their communication with respect to
| such variables; online they don't, because the information
| isn't available and we can't make it available.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098
| canadiantim wrote:
| That's great news. Alzheimer's and dementia are so such
| terrifyingly difficult conditions to try and help someone with.
| Glad we're finding atleast some possibilities to help. Does
| anyone know of anything others like this?
| mortehu wrote:
| I post this comment quite frequently on HN, but yet again this is
| not a randomized controlled trial, but rather an observational
| study. On top of that, they state several insignificant
| statistics using the point estimate (e.g. "Hydroxychloroquine
| initiators had an 8% lower rate of Alzheimer's disease and
| related dementias compared to methotrexate initiators (95%
| confidence interval 17% to 0%)" (paraphrased).
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| In this case at least the sample is good. 100k people with
| rheumatoid arthritis, who are likely taking HCQ for the rest of
| their lives.
| carbocation wrote:
| When interpreting the observational literature (including my own
| work) I find it helpful to think like a threat actor: how can
| this association be broken?
|
| Note that this is an article making huge claims about Alzheimer's
| but is published in Molecular Psychiatry. Given that signal, I'm
| just going to look at the abstract and not read the full text.
|
| Here, the study population is patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
| This tells you up front that we don't have a typical population,
| but a highly selected one.
|
| The use of HCQ is observational, not randomly assigned.
|
| So, how could HCQ look protective even if it had no effect on
| Alzheimer's biology?
|
| 1. Maybe more rheumatoid arthritis patients should be on HCQ.
| It's a disease-modifying drug, after all. So it may be the case
| that people with better care, or more wealth, are more likely to
| be on HCQ. And that could be associated with other lifestyle
| factors that are never fully accounted for in an observational
| analysis.
|
| 2. Or it could be the case that people with dementia are less
| likely to have their HCQ prescriptions renewed, so the arrow of
| causation could even be reversed.
|
| Additionally, one could imagine that HCQ might actually protect
| against Alzheimer's disease in people with rheumatoid arthritis--
| but not in a general population. That would be very big news, but
| would require further study.
|
| And sure, it could be the case that HCQ reduces Alzheimer's risk
| in everyone. But you'd need a lot more evidence to buy that.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| It might be that among the causes of dementia, inflammation
| plays a decent role, which is also the cause of rheumatoid
| arthritis
| carbocation wrote:
| Yes, I think the hypothesis is conceptually interesting. But
| rather than thinking about how it could be true, I try to
| think about how the data could be misleading. I do this to
| try to avoid making broader claims in my own work than I
| should.
| ummonk wrote:
| I think the study is somewhat more robust than you're letting
| on, since it compares HCQ against an alternative rheumatoid
| arthritis drug - Methotrexate. It's possible that the choice of
| prescribed drug itself is correlated with some other
| confounding factor, but it's certainly less likely to be so
| compared to HCQ vs nothing.
|
| Also, the study itself is clear about the amount of evidence
| needed to validate whether HCQ actually reduces Alzheimer's
| risk: "This hypothesis merits testing through adequately
| powered clinical trials in at-risk individuals during
| preclinical stages of disease progression."
| loosescrews wrote:
| In that case, couldn't it be that Methotrexate makes the risk
| worse rather than Hydroxychloroquine reducing the risk?
| travisp wrote:
| Methotrexate is standard of care, considered "strongly
| recommended" over hydroxychloroquine (source:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/acr.24596 )
| for rheumatoid arthritis. If I read the paper right,
| hydroxychloroquine may be favored in "low disease" states.
|
| So I would certainly expect some sort of difference in
| patient population. It would suggest those initiated on
| hydroxychloroquine would normally have less severe rheumatoid
| arthritis (or have some other difference that their doctor
| would choose to not use methotrexate by default), although I
| don't know if that's the case in reality.
| carbocation wrote:
| Not having prescribed either since I was a PCP years ago, I
| would just say that I agree with this line of inquiry.
|
| If both drugs were equally good and were pretty much used
| at random, then they could be good instruments. But if
| there is confounding by indication, then it's harder to get
| value out of an analysis that compares them.
|
| It doesn't mean the conclusions are wrong (and nor does my
| comment above), it just tempers my interpretation.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| This summary right here is what I would like to accompany any
| medical study that pop up online. Thanks for helping us stay
| skeptical (doesn't mean that I'm not hopeful and that the
| claims is true)
| emccue wrote:
| See I believe this.
|
| There are remarkably fewer demented people as a result of people
| taking Hydroxychloroquine.
| mattboardman wrote:
| Relishing in other people's actions that were driven out of
| fear during a crisis when our institutions (media and state)
| failed to keep public trust for millions. Empathy, even for
| those who make foolish decisions is difficult but necessary,
| you should try to understand rather than judge.
| ergonaught wrote:
| Why is empathy "necessary"?
|
| Why "should" someone try to understand rather than judge?
|
| What's the actual rationale for it?
|
| What is the mutually agreed desired result of acting in those
| ways?
| mattboardman wrote:
| >why is empathy necessary?
|
| I don't really have an objective answer for you. I do find
| personal value in empathy, I get less mad when I can
| understand why someone did something I disagree with. It
| doesn't change what they did nor does it excuse it.
|
| >What is the mutually agreed desired result of acting in
| those ways
|
| Harmony.
| troutwine wrote:
| Keeping just to the utilitarian perspective, cooperative
| strategies in humans overwhelmingly have better outcomes in
| both individual well-being and output (innovation,
| manufacturing, zero-sun games). Cooperation is extremely
| hard to achieve and sustain without some empathy for your
| peers. Similarly, judgement runs counter to group cohesion,
| except in the divergent strategy of establishing an Us/Them
| dynamic, sustainable in the short term but leading to
| homogeneity, worse outcomes.
|
| Tossing the utilitarian perspective, being transactional
| and self-serving in your daily life tends to get you
| invited to less parties.
| joenot443 wrote:
| >Why is empathy "necessary"
|
| This is a philosophical question that man has sought to
| answer since the Stone Age. Much smarter people than us
| have dedicated their lives to the study of ethics and come
| up with wildly differing ideas, I don't think you're going
| to find an objective answer here.
| shawnz wrote:
| I think it will be easy for you to come up with some
| possible answers to these questions if you have some
| charity for their argument.
| brookst wrote:
| People who pride themselves on lacking empathy are kind
| of trapped because no one can explain in a way that
| doesn't require some empathy to understand.
| mint2 wrote:
| "When our media and state failed to keep public trust" on
| this topic the only reason people didn't trust the media was
| because the prior potus himself was undermining the truth and
| encouraging the ones promoting falsehoods. Don't blame the
| media for quack Covid "cures", it is was coming from a
| certain individual and his backers. Which did include right
| wing media, but not media in general
|
| Edit, shooting the messenger doesn't change fact. But If it's
| cathartic and helps one cope with reality and face
| "unpleasant" facts, I don't mind.
| ebisoka wrote:
| Now for some actual facts...
|
| https://c19hcq.org/
|
| HCQ for COVID-19 374 studies from 6,195 scientists 496,030
| patients in 55 countries
|
| Statistically significant improvement for mortality,
| hospitalization, recovery, cases, and viral clearance.
|
| 62%, 19% improvement for early and late treatment CI
| [52-70%], [14-23%]; 36, 247 studies
|
| 23% improvement in 8 early treatment RCTs CI [-20-51%]
|
| 72% less death in 15 early treatment trials CI [57-81%]
| [deleted]
| adamredwoods wrote:
| We've been through this already.
|
| >> On 5 June, researchers in the United Kingdom announced
| the results from the largest trial yet, Recovery, in a
| press release. In a group of 1542 hospitalized patients
| treated with hydroxychloroquine, 25.7% had died after 28
| days, compared with 23.5% in a group of 3132 patients who
| had only received standard care. "These data convincingly
| rule out any meaningful mortality benefit," wrote the
| investigators, who ended the study early and promised to
| publish the full results as soon as possible.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/three-big-
| studies-di...
| ebisoka wrote:
| That one study is part of the meta analysis that I posted
| : https://c19hcq.org/recovery.html
|
| It was a late treatment study, and in the summary you can
| read "Late treatment and high dosages may be harmful"
| mint2 wrote:
| Your source itself says " Late treatment and high dosages
| may be harmful"
|
| And the summary doesn't discuss the commonly cited
| confounding factor of parasites.
|
| If only there was some preventative measure that was more
| sound... oh wait
|
| Edit: once again if downvoting is cathartic and helps one
| face "unpleasant" facts then go for it. I literally
| pointed out what that comments source's intro states.
| That being objectionable really speaks for itself.
| ebisoka wrote:
| Late treatment and high dosages may be harmful" and it
| goes on "while early treatment consistently shows
| positive results. "
|
| The treatment study they did in my country had a result
| of 30% less dead.
|
| But then came the obviously fake hcq study that was
| published in the lancet (lancetgate) that stopped all
| research into hcq, just think how many lives could have
| been saved otherwise.
| mattboardman wrote:
| Whether you blame Fox news, CNN, Trump, the deep state, the
| CDC, doesn't matter when addressing the failures of the
| state and the media. They lost trust with the public. This
| is measurable in polls and has created a divide in the
| American people. The result is that individuals and fringe
| institutions gained ground with millions of Americans;
| misinforming them and creating controversies that should
| not have happened.
|
| If the mainstream media and the state didn't lose trust
| then why would people turn to less credible sources?
| Because everyone is dumb/crazy? If that is the conclusion
| people are coming to it seems rather harsh and elitist in
| my opinion.
| mint2 wrote:
| Blaming the media as a whole when one well define group
| was promoting the misinforming is not sensical.
| mattboardman wrote:
| I think it's more than fair to blame the media, which has
| had centuries to build up their reputation and
| credibility. They were incapable of preserving public
| trust during a national crisis. They have all the
| advantages over individuals or fringe organizations. We
| aren't talking about a few thousand people that got
| indoctrinated into a cult, we are talking about millions
| of people, some highly educated, who turned away from the
| mainstream media altogether.
| mint2 wrote:
| That's not the way psychology works but okay.
| torstenvl wrote:
| It is the media as a whole. It isn't accurate to insist
| that it's only Fox News promoting misinformation about
| election fraud or HCQ, in the face of MSNBC promoting
| misinformation about the mortality of COVID, or promoting
| misinformation about hydroxychloroquine, or CNN promoting
| misinformation about BLM riots, or both of them promoting
| misinformation about Russian active measures, etc., or
| vice versa. It is emphatically all media. To say
| otherwise is just engaging in partisan flamewar.
|
| With regard to HCQ, the evidence supporting its use was
| from small scale studies and not reproducible (hence why
| Fox News's take was misinformation); however, there _was_
| evidence that it improved survivability, especially in
| some less-developed countries, so saying "no evidence"
| or even "bogus" like MSNBC did was also misinformation.
|
| (Personal theory: Comorbodity of COVID and other
| conditions HCQ is effective against was a confounding
| factor in less-developed countries; and the remaining
| delta is due to HCQ's immunosuppressant qualities calming
| the cytokine storm.)
| mint2 wrote:
| A comment chain here will not reconcile the bubble
| realities. I disagree strongly with your comment, as you
| seem to with mine. It's not going to go anywhere from
| here.
| dude187 wrote:
| The public health agencies worked hard to rightfully
| shatter all trust in them from those who are aware and pay
| attention
| [deleted]
| thrwawy74 wrote:
| I agree with you. There were several agencies putting out
| responsible messaging and trying to keep public trust.
| Ultimately it was a failure. Millions of people didn't
| trust the gov and turned to alternatives like this. I'm not
| sure why you're being downvoted. Key figureheads undermined
| public trust.
| fwungy wrote:
| The government's information was obviously was filled
| with inconsistencies that were obvious to anyone with the
| slightest prior mistrust of them.
|
| Ivermectin has a long history of safe and beneficial
| usage in the developing world, billions of doses. Yet it
| was actively discouraged as "horse medicine" here. Anyone
| with experience or relatives in the developing world
| would immediately question the veracity of such a
| discouragement.
| dragon-hn wrote:
| It was discouraged (correctly in hindsight) because there
| was no evidence it would do anything for Covid.
|
| It was called horse medicine because the unfortunate
| people that fell for the kooks resorted to vet sources
| for it because doctors correctly refused.
|
| I can't believe the revisionist history on this.
| fwungy wrote:
| No IP = no research = no evidence.
|
| Welcome to $cience 2022.
| dragon-hn wrote:
| What a lazy response. At least you got the no evidence
| part right.
|
| For about a year governments around the world were
| willing to do _anything_ to get past Covid ASAP. To
| ignore that and chalk this up to a lazy conspiracy theory
| has less than zero merit.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I don't see it as necessarily relishing, just a dark joke.
| emccue wrote:
| ^
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to
| HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is
| for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| I thought I read somewhere that it's easy to overdose on
| hydroxychloroquine? If so I'd be worried about a forgetful senior
| accidentally taking a double or triple dose.
| BryantD wrote:
| I'm not a doctor but it doesn't look highly risky. The usual
| adult dose for malaria is 2000 mg over the course of two days.
| Long term usage may be a different matter.
|
| I suspect that concerns about safety were because people were
| using it off brand without medical supervision these last
| couple of years, which is less safe.
| seanhunter wrote:
| THis is true of most medications and as a result there are a
| lot of solutions that have been developed to help people ensure
| they get their drug regime right. Firstly, a lot of people in
| altzheimer's care will have full or part-time carers to
| help[1].
|
| Secondly there are things like "pill organizers"/dossette
| boxes[2] where the pharmacy will actually dispense the drugs
| into a container which is designed to make it simple to ensure
| people take their correct daily dosage of drugs.
|
| [1] Here in the UK the national health provides some community
| care and there are also voluntary organisations. Obviously
| individuals can also pay privately to have enhanced levels of
| support.
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pill_organizer
| [deleted]
| miked85 wrote:
| Wouldn't this be true for almost any medication? I'm not aware
| of anything unique about this one.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Different medications have different ratios between their
| effective doses and their harmful doses. The smaller the
| ratio, the more sensitive the results to an overdose.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_index
| [deleted]
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