The COVID-19 pandemic has been a golden opportunity for quackery and conspiracy theories, such as the willful misinterpretation of a study in order to claim that the influenza vaccine makes people more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, or that 5G networks and glyphosate somehow make the infection more deadly. Pseudoscience like this is to be expected from cranks, of course; so it is no surprise that antivaxxers, anti-GMO cranks, and other conspiracy theorists are fusing their favorite pseudoscience and conspiracy theories with conspiracy theories about COVID-19 in order to create meta-conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has also revealed just how weak the allegiance to evidence- and science-based medicine is among physicians, who have embraced unproven treatments, in particular chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, the latter sometimes with azithromycin. True, President Trump and his allies have been promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine with minimal evidence as the latest bright shiny object that let Trump’s magical thinking run wild with the hope that a magic bullet had been discovered to get us out of this crisis. However, before that it was Chinese and European physicians who had embraced the idea of using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, none more prominently than French brave maverick doctor Didier Raoult, who is now not reacting well to criticism at all. In fact, he just doxxed a French physician and critic and threatened to sue him, as you will see.
Didier Raoult: Bad science on hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin
Although there are other opportunistic doctors touting their “experience” with hydroxychloroquine to promote it as a “miracle cure” for COVID-19, as I discussed when I argued that the FDA’s emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine was a very bad idea, the evidence base for using hydroxychloroquine comes mostly from Raoult’s group, and the three studies from his group are horrible studies. The first of his trio of scientific crap was an unrandomized study that claimed that the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin eliminated the virus completely compared to controls or hydroxychloroquine alone. Its flaws were so numerous and manifest as to make the study painfully uninformative. Indeed, based on the shenanigans Raoult engaged in with the data, plus his history of fabricating data, I now suspect, but obviously cannot prove, scientific fraud. Even the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (ISAC), which publishes the journal that published this study, backed away, even going so far as to state that the article “does not meet the Society’s expected standard, especially relating to the lack of better explanations of the inclusion criteria and the triage of patients to ensure patient safety.” Muddying the waters is a second statement issued a week later, apparently at the behest of Elsevier, that seems to soften the criticism and points out that the journal’s peer review process had been followed, even as it suggests a possible joint investigation with Elsevier.
The second study in the trio was a single arm case series that consisted of a huge percentage of COVID-19 patients treated with azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine who were not very ill at all. Only 15% of them even had fever, even though data from around the world show that 90% of symptomatic COVID-19 patients have fever during the course of their illness. Basically, the vast majority of these patients were patients who would have been sent home and told to self-quarantine, with instructions to call or go to the emergency room if they get significantly worse and especially if they start experiencing shortness of breath. Raoult claimed that the combination of azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine was very effective in clearing the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but there’s no way of knowing if these patients wouldn’t have cleared the virus anyway. It, too, was a singularly uninformative study.
The third study is no better. As of last night, Raoult has published only an abstract and a data table for 1,061 patients treated with his azithromycin/hydroxychloroquine combination, with no full manuscript yet. Of course, this dataset suffers from even more issues than his previous papers, as there are no methods to look at, and we can’t look at his study design in depth or his inclusion/exclusion criteria. Taking the results at face value, between March 3 and April 9, Raoult’s group tested 59,665 specimens from 38,167 patients for COVID-19 by PCR. There were 3,165 patients who tested positive, of which 1,061 met Raoult’s unstated inclusion criteria and were treated with his azithromycin/hydroxychloroquine combination. The mean age of the patients was 43.6 years old, and 492 (46.4%) were male. The results further state that a “good clinical outcome and virological cure” were observed in 973 patients within 10 days (91.7%), with prolonged viral carriage in 47 patients (4.4%), with viral clearance in all but one by day 15. They further observed:
A poor outcome was observed for 46 patients (4.3%); 10 were transferred to intensive care units, 5 patients died (0.47%) (74-95 years old) and 31 required 10 days of hospitalization or more. Among this group, 25 patients are now cured and 16 are still hospitalized (98% of patients cured so far). Poor clinical outcome was significantly associated to older age (OR 1.11), initial higher severity (OR 10.05) and low hydroxychloroquine serum concentration. In addition, both poor clinical and virological outcomes were associated to the use of selective beta-blocking agents and angiotensin II receptor blockers (P<0.05). Mortality was significantly lower in patients who had received > 3 days of HCQ-AZ than in patients treated with other regimens both at IHU and in all Marseille public hospitals (p< 10-2).
This study suffers from the same issues that Raoult’s much smaller study. The overwhelming majority of patients (1,008, or 95%) had a low national early warning score (NEWS), with 97.4% of the patients with a “good clinical outcome” (not defined). The table shows patients taking beta blockers and angiotensin II receptor blockers having “poor virological outcome,” while patients taking metformin (used to treat type II diabetes), beta blockers (used for hypertension and angina, as well as certain cardiac rhythm disturbances), dihydropyridine derivatives (a class of calcium channel blockers, often used for hypertension, cardiac rhythm disturbances, and angina), angiotensin II receptor blockers, HMG CoA reductase inhibitors (statins), and diuretics (used to treat hypertension and heart failure) were more likely to have “poor clinical outcomes.” Of course, it is most likely the diagnoses for which these drugs are used, rather than the drugs themselves, that are responsible for the poor outcomes in COVID-19 patients, and there’s no indication that Raoult’s group tried to do any sort of analysis to tease out whether these associations were with the drugs themselves or with the conditions being treated with the drugs.
The bottom line is that this study is also uninformative. For one thing, a 0.5% fatality rate is at the low end of current estimates and might even be the “true” case fatality rate when all cases of mild and asymptomatic infections are included in the denominator. Consequently, this study certainly doesn’t show that Raoult’s treatment was responsible for the low mortality rate. When the overwhelming percentage of the patients you treat have mild or asymptomatic disease, then of course should expect to observe that the fatality rate among these patients will be low, no matter what you do. The reason Didier Raoult refuses to do a truly randomized trial is because he’s now a true believer in his combination, which has led him to conclude that it’s unethical to randomize COVID-19 patients to a placebo control group. Worse, French President Emannuel Macron has started emulating our President Donald Trump and become a booster for Raoult’s bad science. Whether it’s out of a misplaced nationalistic pride or other reason Macron has been talking up Raoult’s results, even though Raoult has produced no data sufficiently compelling to know if his combination is safe and effective or not, particularly given the high percentage of patients with mild or asymptomatic disease in his treatment group.
Didier Raoult: Brave maverick doctor
I’ve referred to Didier Raoult as a “brave maverick doctor.” It’s a term I use to describe a wide variety of arrogant cranks who think they have “The Answer” to a disease, even if the evidence says otherwise. Not all brave maverick doctors are quacks, but nearly all quack physicians are brave maverick doctors. In any event, “brave mavericks” are doctors who think they’re “bucking the system,” that they know more than other doctors (whom they view as hidebound and lacking in their imagination and intelligence), and that they are somehow special. This term definitely describes Didier Raoult, whose persona is downright Trumpian, pure bullshit artist. Prior to his promotion of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin being picked up by President Trump, celebrity doctors like Dr. Oz and Dr. Drew, and a wide variety of right wing pundits, Raoult was pretty much unknown outside of France, other than in some international scientific circles. That’s why this post was of great interest to me, as it described his history. And what a dubious history it is, at least with respect to COVID-19. On January 23, 2020, Raoult was saying things like:
You know, this is a crazy world. The fact is that some people have died from the coronavirus in China, you know, I don’t feel so concerned. It’s true to say that the world has gone completely crazy, that is to say that if something is happening where there are three Chinese people who are dying and that becomes a worldwide alert, the WHO gets involved, it’s on the radio and on television. […] In other words, there is no longer any sense of lucidity.
Whenever there is a disease in the world we wonder whether we are going to have the same thing in France. It has become utterly insane. [ …] I don’t know, people don’t seem to have anything to worry about, so they try and find something to be afraid of in China, just because they are unable to face what they might be afraid of if staying in France. That’s it, this is not serious.
Eventually, he discovered hydroxychloroquine. One thing that bothers me is how few people know the origin of the idea that hydroxychloroquine might be effective against COVID-19. The hypothesis that antimalarial drugs might be effective treatments for COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China during the early phase of the pandemic in January. There, Chinese researchers reported that none of their 80 patients with lupus erythematosus who were taking hydroxychloroquine went on to become infected with SARS-CoV-2. As a result of that and old evidence of antiviral activity for the drugs, they became interested in using these antimalarial drugs to treat COVID-19. (Never mind that immunosuppressed patients are exactly the patients most likely to assiduously follow the recommendations of public health authorities during a pandemic.) A number of clinical trials were registered, and, based on anecdotal reports and small clinical trials (nearly all of which are as yet unpublished), in February the Chinese government published an expert consensus recommending CQ or HCQ for patients with COVID-19. Soon after, a number of nations followed suit. Apparently Raoult found out about this, and suddenly, at the end of February, he posted a video entitled Coronavirus: End of the game, later renamed “Coronavirus: A way out of the crisis?”
In the video, Raoult said:
- “From all respiratory infections, it is probably the easiest to treat.””
- “There’s no need to get excited.”
- “Be careful, there will soon be no more chloroquine in drugstores.”
The article lists numerous other examples of Raoult downplaying the severity of COVID-19, comparing it to seasonal influenza, and denouncing government actions to stop its spread as an overreaction. There’s also a recounting of his history of abusive behavior towards his underlings, charges of sexual harassment leveled at him, his history of being a climate science denier, and mismanagement at his institute. Meanwhile, evolutionary biologist P.Z. Myers has dissected in detail Raoult’s painful misunderstanding of evolutionary biology, while others have described a history of data fabrication by his group. Oh, and did I mention that he might be an antivaxxer? In 2018, he published a book entitled La vérité sur les vaccins. The title and the blurb for the book sure sound at least borderline antivaccine to me. The very best thing that can be said on this score is that Raoult strikes me as someone who exaggerates the risks of vaccines and buys into too much false balance with claims made by antivaxxers.
A French physician reacts
Raoult’s been doing real harm, and his fellow French physicians have become more vocal in their criticism. For example, yesterday a French physician at the Metz-Thionville CHR named Damien Barraud lambasted Raoult for “medical populism”:
“I haven’t seen a better description of what happened. Take everyone hostage and want to pass as the savior with the miracle drug that will save the world, by ignoring all the methodological and ethical rules yes, this is medical populism,” said Damien Barraud, guest on RMC this April 13.
And:
“Outside of a protocol I don’t prescribe it, and I won’t prescribe it. And neither for me, nor for my loved ones, nor for anyone. (…) There is no reason to give it. You must have seen the alerts from the pharmaco-vigilance center of Nouvelle-Aquitaine and the ANSM pass over fifty cardiac accidents which occurred while taking this medication.”
Barraud has also said that he’s “monstrously angry” with Raoult and accused the him of having generated “unnecessary psychological fatigue” among caregivers, noting:
“Very early on, from the start of the patient’s arrival and the communication from the IHU, some conventional doctors were asked to prescribe this. We had to (put a policy in place), hold meetings and waste time on some something that should not have happened because at this time there is for the time being no tangible proof of any effectiveness to have a beneficial effect in the patients in general “, he assured.
Here’s the full interview for those who understand French. It’s blistering:
We in the US have been unaware of just what a crank Dr. Raoult is, but his colleagues in France are trying to educate us.
Didier Raoult: Thin-skinned bully
Given how sharp Dr. Barraud’s criticism was and Raoult’s history of being thin-skinned and using his unfortunately not inconsiderable power to punish and humiliate underlings, critics, and others who displease him, it should come as no surprise that Didier Raoult did not react well to Dr. Barraud’s criticism:
Here’s the original French text:
Dr. Damien Barraud médecin réanimateur au CHR de Metz-Thionville, profite en ce moment d’un quart d’heure de gloire worholien en enchainant les interviews sur RMC, BFM TV et La Marseillaise.
Les propos qu’il tien dans ces interviews sont étrangement similaires à ceux tenus par le compte Twitter anonyme @fluidloading qui revendique être un médecin de la même région que le Dr. Damien Barraud.
Si ce compte Twitter est bien celui du Dr. Damien Barraud, nous somes heureux que dans les interviews données en son nom, ce médecin n’ait pas repris les injures publiques et les attaques diffamatoires que le propriétaire du compte @fluidloading se permet quotidiennement.
Nous espérons que, si le Dr. Damien Barraud n’est pas l’auteur des attaques portées par le compte @fluidloading, il s’en désolidarisera rapidement. Elles pourraient en effet justifier une plainte pénale et le lancement d’une procédure auprès de l’order des médecins. Poursuites que nous ne souhaitons pas lancer, car nous sommes aujourd’hui concentrés sur le soin des malades hospitalisés et suivis à l’IHU. Au-delà des polémiques nous espérons que le Dr. Damien Barraud trouvera le temps de se reconcentrer sur sa belle mission de médecin.
And here’s the translation (from a combination of Google Translate and me, although, surprisingly, I understood all but a few words of this):
Dr. Damien Barraud, critical care specialist at CHR Metz-Thionville, is currently enjoying a quarter of an hour of Warholian glory by doing serial interviews on RMC, BFM TV and La Marseillaise.
The comments he made in these interviews are strangely similar to those made by the anonymous Twitter account @fluidloading who claims to be a doctor from the same region as Dr. Damien Barraud.
If this Twitter account is indeed that of Dr. Damien Barraud, we are happy that in the interviews given in his name, this medicine did not take up public insults and defamatory attacks that the owner of the account @fluidloading allows himself daily.
We hope that, if Dr. Damien Barraud is not the author of the attacks carried by the @fluidloading account, he will quickly dissociate himself from it. They could in fact justify a criminal complaint and the initiation of a procedure with l’Ordre des Médicins. Pursuits that we do not wish to launch, because we are today concentrating on the care of hospitalized patients and followed at the IHU. Beyond the controversies we hope that Dr. Damien Barraud will find time to refocus on his beautiful medical mission.
Lovely. Dr. Raoult just doxxed Dr. Barraud in a despicable and passive-aggressive manner. “If Dr. Damien Barraud is not the author of the attacks” by @fluidloading, we hope that he will “quickly dissociate himself from it.” Particularly amusing is his “we’re too busy taking care of patients” shtick, a diversion beloved of brave maverick doctors the world over to excuse their lack of evidence for their treatments. He’s also destroyed another one of my irony meters, given that le Dr. Raoult seems to have plenty of time to do media interviews and appear on The Dr, Oz Show hawking his risibly bad science.
Raoult clearly meant to sic his 345K followers on Dr. Barraud on Twitter in retribution. Unfortunately, his threat to complain to l’Ordre des Médicins is not an idle one. As I discussed in February, in a time that seems fanciful in its normality from the lense of mid-April and the COVID-19 pandemic, l’Ordre des Médecins values “collegiality” and civility above all. It took the side of homeopaths against French physicians who signed a statement lambasting homeopathy as quackery and urging the French government to stop funding it, even going so far as to temporarily suspend the license of one of doctors who signed the statement. So it’s not at all clear that Dr. Barraud would be in the clear if the bully Dr. Raoult decided to follow through with his threats.
Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin likely don’t work
Here’s the bottom line. Hydrochloroquinine, with or without azithromycin, almost certainly doesn’t work against COVID-19. That’s certainly the way that the evidence is trending, and it’s also showing evidence of harm. For instance, a Brazilian study was curtailed after patients in the high dose hydroxychloroquine arm started suffering serious adverse events, while a study from NYU found evidence of cardiac toxicity from hydroxychloroquine. Meanwhile, Sweden is reporting a similar experience, with several hospitals no longer routinely using these antimalarial drugs, due to adverse events. Meanwhile, in France itself, adverse events due to these drugs are leading doctors to rethink routinely using them.
That aside, my medical alma mater, the University of Michigan, recently published a blog post about its experience with COVID-19, including with the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat it. Basically, doctors at U. of M. have decided to stop routinely using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, because they have seen no evidence of efficacy but have seen toxicity:
Michigan Medicine just changed its guidelines on prescribing these drugs. There’s a lot of excitement about whether these already existing options for malaria could be useful in COVID-19, but so far that excitement hasn’t materialized in patient care data.
“Our infectious disease division and our antimicrobial pharmacists have reviewed all the available data and we found no convincing evidence that these drugs were effective in treating people with COVID-19,” Kaul says.
That’s consistent with what’s been observed firsthand in Michigan Medicine’s hospitals.
“We haven’t seen any clear evidence of benefit so we aren’t going to use hydroxychloroquine routinely anymore,” Chopra says. “We were initially recommending it to both inpatients and outpatients, but we’re no longer doing that routinely. That’s based upon the fact that we’ve been prescribing hydroxychloroquine for a few weeks, did not see therapeutic benefit, but did see adverse effects.”
Those side effects Chopra has seen in his patients include liver function toxicity, nausea and vomiting.
The evidence is definitely trending in the direction of the conclusion that these drugs don’t work and have more toxicity than benefit. Indeed, I’m now 95% sure that these drugs don’t work against COVID-19. Could I be wrong? Sure? Do I think I’m wrong? No, but I actually would like to be wrong about this. In any event, thanks to “brave mavericks” like Didier Raoult, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, and sadly numerous others, bolstered by President Trump and his sycophants, toadies, and lackeys, hydroxychloroquine became the de facto standard of care without evidence. When they bypass rigorous science and rely on anecdotes and poor quality science, “brave maverick doctors” like Dr. Raoult do real harm not just to science, but to patient. It’s not Dr. Barraud who should be subject to lawsuits and criminal proceedings. It’s Dr. Raoult. Unfortunately, France being France, there’s no guarantee that it won’t be the other way around. The powerful bullshit artist might just win.
176 replies on “Dr. Didier Raoult: Bad science on COVID-19 and bullying critics”
Although I didn’t get “worholien”**, ” reanimateur” and a few other words, I got the gist of his passive aggressiveness.
Cranks resort to lawsuits because their research can’t stand on its own merits. As Orac knows only too well.
** although the “quarter hour” gives it away.
I guessed “Warholian” from the spelling and the context (“quarter hour of fame”). As for “réanimateur,” I’m not sure if that means he’s a critical care doctor or an ER doc. It’s an odd term, to be sure, one that doesn’t have a direct parallel in medicine in English.
“Réanimateur” stands for “médecin anesthésiste réanimateur”. So: intensive care specialist. The guy who “reanimates” you, typically.
Reminds me I need to get this huge DNR tattoo on my chest.
Thanks. I figured it meant that he was an intensivist. I think I’ll go back and clarify that in the post.
My first thought was: Lovecraft?
I’m not actually that much of a sci fi fan but I DO know that!
Not simply anesthetist?
^ I guess not, sorry.
Yeah, he is laying it real thick.
The way I read “réanimateur”, Raoult is basically saying “not even a real doctor”.
As you may know, the hierarchy/pecking order in the operating room has the main surgeon at the top and everybody else are “just” subalterns.
As F68.10 explained, the réanimateur is the guy who put the patient to sleep and then re-awake them once the surgeon has finished with his important job. A bit like the nurse is just here to handle surgical tools and stitch up the patient at the end.
IOW, technicians. The physicians who fall for this view are overlooking both the importance and the difficulty of the job. Either one.
Raoult should know better, if he was really that involved with an hospital. Although, as infection disease specialist, he may be rarely involved with surgical procedures. OTOH, given that a number of covid19 infected people end up on ventilators, and I suspect keeping care of these patients is right in the purviews of réanimateurs…
Given Raoult’s personality, I’m not surprised his reaction was basically “go back to the stables, peon”.
Among French, it is often said that our medical system has a strong hierarchical slant, with the “mandarins” sitting on top and enforcing their views of what’s proper in medicine.
I found it very funny, in a bad way, that Raoult plays the anti-system card while showing himself all stereotypical signs of the “mandarin”.
The surgeon may think he’s King of the Hill but it’s the pathologist who tells him what to do.
I’m a pathologist so I can say that.
If you go to PZ’s website, comment 19, by jrkrideau, has a link to an April 7 article in the French blog Les Crises analyzing the Rouault study. Here’s the original link: https://www.les-crises.fr/les-enormes-failles-ethiques-et-methodologiques-dans-l-essai-raoult-analyse-par-olivier-berruyer/. My French is marginal at best, so I ran it through Google Translate, which seemed to do a good job: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&tab=wT&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.les-crises.fr%2Fles-enormes-failles-ethiques-et-methodologiques-dans-l-essai-raoult-analyse-par-olivier-berruyer%2F. It’s lengthy, well done to the extent that I can tell – definitely not my field, and absolutely devastating.
Please understand that Les Crises has been branded as a conspiracy theory website.
And these conspiracists have been able to successfully prosecute one of the main french newspapers because of this ongoing feud on conspiracy-theory charges.
So it seems that we do not have evidence-based medicine in France, but that we do have evidence-based conspiracy theorists. Go figure…
That link is hilarious. Not large fines but a real slap in the face for Le Monde.
@ John Kane
Newspapers in France, due to dwindling audience because of the Internet among other things, have bought really hard into the belief that only they hold the Truth and that blogs are nothing more than conspiracy theorists who should not dare speak up. I’m simplifying here, but they’ve really been overdoing it.
With Les Crises, what has happened is that Olivier Berruyer did take some information coming from russian sources that contradicted the main french narrative on foreign policy. Among other things. And because the concept of conspiracy theory in France has little to do with analysis of facts but rather with political positioning (in short, in France, conspiracy theorist means either being antisemite, pro-russian or, worse, being critical of our institutions; but on the other hand, being a flat earther, an antivaxxer, pro-homeopathy, denying evolution or a Raoult fanboy is considered somewhat OK), that’s what earned him this badge of honour of conspiracy theorist.
Wikipedia on Cécile Vaissié: “She was then attacked for libel by six people designated in this book as “pro-Kremlin”: Djordje Kuzmanovic , Véra Nikolski, Olivier Berruyer , Hélène Richard-Favre, Pierre Lamblé and Gueorgui Chepelev. On June 14, 2019, the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance condemns Cécile Vaissié and her publisher for a passage from her book Les Réseaux du Kremlin in France accusing Olivier Berruyer of having had the will to distort the facts, attack or deceive, at least with regard to Russian-Ukrainian issues. They are each sentenced to a suspended fine of 500 euros and to pay the blogger 2,000 euros in damages and 2,500 euros in legal costs. Finally, the offending passage from the book must be deleted in the event of a reissue. However, the complaints of the five other complainants were dismissed by the court and of the twenty passages prosecuted, only one was the subject of a conviction.”
These allegations by Vaissié were taken as is by Le Monde, which earned Berruyer the Conspiracy Theorist of the Year Award from Le Monde (exaggeration here, but that’s the gist of it). That’s what I call politically motivated institutional bullying on the basis of fabricated conspiracy theory charges.
But Raoult can run free. He’s a Big Professor. A Mandarin. A marji’ taqlīd. He has Authority. Therefore he’s the Truth Incarnate. So that’s OK…
But with respect to “medical truth”, there’s a deeper institutional and legal issue at work here, which has to do with the way Medicine and the State historically negotiated their domain of competence. Something a bit like the separation of Church and State. You can read more about it by one of the highest ranking civil servants at the Conseil d’État, Bruno Lasserre. You’ll find items within it that will help explain why eminence-based medicine tends to be historically baked within the legal structure of the medical profession in France. I think it’s worth a careful read if you’re interested in institutional power dynamics (or institutional power standstill, rather, in this case…).
Real question: branded conspiracy theorists by whom?
@ Dorit Reiss
Sorry: Did only see your message now.
Branded conspiracy theorist by Le Monde. They instituted a thing called the Decodex, which basically is an index of trustworthy sources. So they did get things right and things wrong with this index. But the reason they indexed Berruyer and Les Crises so badly is because he doesn’t indulge in over-the-top russian bashing. To simplify. And Le Monde piggy-backed on work by Cécile Vaissié to justify its indexing. The twist is that Cécile Vaissié had made some rather unfounded claims because she had a (not fully unfounded, mind you…) axe to grind against the Kremlin.
French media and french officials have been engaging in a Cordon Sanitaire against anything russian. We all know that there is a “problem” with RT… not disputing that. But the guilt by association argument can be a rather weak one when assessing “conspiracy theorists” on the basis of “russian sympathies”.
Apparently the news that this guilt by association argument is a weak one hasn’t reached Le Monde and the Decodex.
Hence the fact that they were sentenced for libel.
Seemingly, Le Monde has improved a bit meanwhile. But it does highlight that “Conspiracy Theorist” can mean many things depending on who wields the slingshot to throw shit around onto people they do not like.
Gee…! I do enjoy this french bashing.
We french are notoriously efficient at french bashing and self-deprecation. But it’s never as much fun as when bashing comes from the US. Reminds me of so-called “liberty fries” and “freedom fries” quite a few years back.
Please keep up with the french bashing! Very much enjoyed!
I’m an equal opportunity “basher.” Had Raoult been Spanish, I would have bashed him just the same, particularly if Spain had taken away the medical license of a homeopathy critic. Or if he’d been German, or British, or Dutch, or any nationality. I actually very much like the French. Otherwise, I would never have gone to the trouble of learning the language those many years ago. ?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302179
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-covid-19-treatment-turkey/
@ Randall
Yawn…
We’ve beaten this specific horse to death.
To me the issue is not bashing, especially not French bashing, and I do remember the idiocy of “freedom fries”; but there is a real concern that the malevolent orange moron in the Oval Office (apparently) believes and (certainly) promotes this nonsense, with help from other “brave mavericks”. This has a lot of unfortunate effects, not the least of which is that patients who need hydroxychloroquine for diseases such as lupus are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain – one person on my local news last night said that she had a three-week supply and no obvious prospects of obtaining more. There are also the issues of useless treatment and side effects at a time when effective treatments are being desperately sought.
Were this just Linus Pauling promoting megadoses of vitamin C for the common cold and, as someone said, “creating a lot of expensive urine”, it would not be so bad. But it is not.
My grandfather has asthma, and was diagnosed with COVID-19, and it was really touch-and-go until he was treated with the hydroxychloroquine COVID-19 protocol; saved his life. His symptoms were much improved and he was clear after about ten days.
@ F:
I really like the French ( and French) as well. Art, architecture, literature, fashion, sarcasm- what’s NOT to like? I visited France several times and have enjoyed other francophone locales. What I studied in French helps me to comprehend other Romance languages like Spanish and Italian.
What you say about the dismal state of psychiatric care there causes me to wonder what else is wrong: it can’t be an isolated case. Just like Trump isn’t the only crazy in the US- he’s a symptom of a larger mass( as in “cancerous mass”)
@ Denice Walter
“What you say about the dismal state of psychiatric care there causes me to wonder what else is wrong: it can’t be an isolated case.”
Wait wait wait… I’m venting here… do not extrapolate my personal hatred (I’m rooting for the coronavirus, so that’s that…) to a general law. I believe there are issues that are shrugged under the carpet, true, but I do not make the claim that it’s that much worse than the rest of the world. As Joel Harrison has repeatedly pointed out, there are objective measures that show that things are overall decent in France when it comes to access to medical care.
But there are unique issues in the psych domain in France, I believe, though my personal situation is, I also believe, quite specific and should not be generalized (you do not choose your family, you know… I never chose to be born in a family of MDs out of the womb of a psychiatrist…). Doesn’t change that I see or hear too often things that remind me of everything that has been going wrong in my case. That’s why my outlook on medicine is so bleak. I’m pretty sure an antivaxxer or even Gary Null has more trust in real medicine than I do…
And I have even more hatred towards cranks, believeroonies, theocrats and the like because they’re the best path to make everything that went wrong in my case way worse and even more undecipherable than it is today.
French dormmate: “Shit, are those my feet?” Anyway, I maintain that Fairport Convention improved upon Dylan with “Si tu dois partir.”
Replacing Dylan’s voice with Sandy Denny’s was a huge first step.
@F68.10,
I’m in north america, Quebec province to be precise and my only two psychiatrist I ever had in my life are Frenchs who migrated here because they didn’t what was done on the other side of the Atlantic…
You may know better than me what is offered in term of psychiatric treatment for autism over there.
Alain
Didn’t like
@ Alain
Many things I do not like about the medieval way autism is handled over there. Moreover the Mandarin at the Hôpital Necker who has been in the center of this autism war is also the one in charge of factitious disorders imposed on another. And given how many things have played out over the years, both in psychiatry itself, in the field of autism and the unhealthy relation it developed with MbP, I do hold severe grudges. I won’t name the aforementioned Mandarin by name, but he’s on the editorial board of this (ahem…) scientific (ahem…) journal, and I really do wonder what happens when you try to diagnose MbP on purely psychoanalytic grounds… The Rachel case? No shit…
But again, these issues do not mean that the french system overall is bad, as it does grant rather easy access to healthcare. It’s more that there are some rather serious domains where criticism cannot thrive, and where appeals to authority prevail, which tends to go hand in hand with a culture where consent of patients is not really sought out. These two sentences are two distinct matters and should not be confused.
Many things I do not like about the medieval way autism is handled over there
From what I have read, ‘medieval’ is too kind. The French psychiatric perspective on the etiology and treatment for autism is positively Merovingian.
@ Smut Clyde
I wouldn’t used the word “merovingian” as that would be an indirect recognition of the Nature of Causality.
But this 2005 article, “French Psychoflap” in Science is a good illustration of the nature of the problem in french psychology and psychiatry. Note that this article mentions Philippe Douste-Blazy, cardiologist, university professor in Toulouse and now at Harvard Medical School, and french politician that had some responsibilities at the UN and failed at his rather recent effort at his bid to lead the WHO.
Damien Barraud mentions Philippe Douste-Blazy at 5:20 in the interview Orac linked in, explaining that the IHU Marseille website asserts the existence of medical ties between The Druid, Sanofi (Big Pharma…) and Philippe Douste-Blazy. Of course, this is merely “connecting the dots”… but I notice that it is not me who is connecting the dots, but essentially Barraud himself…
@ F68.10
Well, Douste-Blazy has been spearheading a petition in favor of the immediate use of Raoult’s favorite molecule, HCQ.
So, I don’t know about medical ties, but they are definitively on the same boat.
Also, I’m going to steal your “eminence-based medicine”.
When I first heard about Raoult’s research (before it was popularized by a certain politician), I went to the primary sources in the scientific literature–such as they were. I winced.
I then called up a longtime friend (not French) who is a virologist and asked his opinion of Raoult as a scientist. The response I got was not complimentary to say the least. Raoult had attempted to steal the data from manuscript being readied for publication by one of my friend’s grad students (who was French). This kinD of crap is all to common — there is no coherent mechanism to police scientific behavior. A government agency can yank funding but what’s to do when the gov’t is part of the problem?
As to whether Raoult is antivaccine, he doesn’t seem to be an antivaxer on a par with Andrew Wakefield, Bob Sears etc. Some of Raoult’s statements that I’ve been able to track and translate do raise eyebrows – note this blurb for his vaccine book on Amazon:
“Being pro or anti-vaccine does not make sense. The question to ask is: which vaccine is useful, for whom, under what circumstances? However, do you know that 3 of the 11 vaccines now compulsory in France are obsolete in this country? What others are not recommended while preventing serious illnesses? That the flu vaccine, not very effective in the elderly, should instead be distributed to children?”
“As for dreading the harmful effects of a vaccine, the only valid attitude is to assess the risk / benefit ratio for choosing intelligently, instead of listening to manufacturers for fear as was the case with the hepatitis B vaccine , today cleared of all suspicion.”
“Our vaccination policy is inconsistent, outdated and ineffective,” says Didier Raoult, supporting proposals to avoid aberrations like those concerning avian flu and HIN1, and to regain the confidence of the population.”
(thanks to Google Translate)
One would love to know which mandatory French vaccinations Raoult considers “obsolete” (only polio vaccine would seem to lend itself to a feeble argument on that score).
A potential clue to Raoult’s mindset can be found in another Amazon blurb (to the only one of his many books which seems to have an English translation, “Of Ignorance And Blindness”). This one references the need to open our minds to revolutionary new science while ripping off the blinders of the past, citing…you guessed it…Galileo.
Shame, shame on Orac for being part of the Modern Inquisition threatening this trailblazing visionary!*
the least we can do is buy and wear the magnificent Didier Raoult t-shirt which can be had (again on Amazon) for only $18.99 plus $9.99 shipping.**
is there an Orac t-shirt? I thought not.
***this deficiency must be remedied, and soon. The website should have an Orac shop where we can buy memorabilia, supplements and one day, books.****
****suggested titles: “Pseudoscience: The Greatest Face-Palming Moments” and “Dogs I Have Fostered”.
He’s not antivaccine is the mainstream sense that people understand on Respectful Insolence. Without going into too much details on his position, I’ll stick to a general statement (which may be an approximate misrepresentation for all I care) that highlights his “ideology”:
When it comes to measles, I’ve never heard him bashing vaccines themselves. What he has claimed however goes along the following lines: Epidemiologically, almost all measles cases that have occurred in France have been in nomadic portion of the population such as gypsies. And these people are not people over which vaccination laws are bound to have great effect (semi-fair point). Basically, he claims that vaccination rates are not bound to have a great impact on those who are most concerned, and he believes that most outbreaks can be managed without enforcing vaccination in a way that is overly coercive on people.
OK, this kind of argument flies in the face, on RI, of concepts such as the mathematical characterisation of immunisation ratios necessary to avoid outbreaks. And that’s where the second part of his argument kicks in: He believes, in a nutshell, that mathematical models are not reliable enough to model reality in a way to produce reliable vaccination policies. Models have flaws, true, and there likely is some overreliance of it in such matters. Doesn’t change the fact that if you’re locked in a speleological maze, a little light couldn’t hurt that much… Seems he claims he can do without the light…
As far as I understand it, he seems to believe that these models provide a false sense of security (which is a semi-valid point) and that ad-hoc policies at the level of local authorities and fast reaction of hospitals would be better. I think that’s some kind of medical hubris – in the sense of “I’m a doctor, I can deal with it” – but as we see on the ground in France with the coronavirus epidemic, we do have issues with our hospitalocentric model of care (we wait for patients to come to the hospital instead of doing like the brits did and getting to patients infected with the coronavirus directly at their home to detect and handle them early on). So it may be a view that makes sense as a call for a more proactive institutional management of outbreaks, but he makes that call by throwing the safety net of immunization coverage ratios away on the grounds that models are not reality.
His distrust of models extends outside of his area of expertise, such as climate change. I have not heard him denying climate change per se, but I have heard him casting mathematical models about climate change into doubt.
So that’s the kind of things that seems to have been going on in his head over the years. So it’s not Wakefield-style antivaxxer. He’s more like having issues with mainstream methods of doing things. And recently, with the coronavirus outbreak, he indeed, in one of his internet speeches, starting casting doubt on “overreliance on method” by “doctors in offices”, pitting them against “doctors on the grounds” who have no time for methodological arguments.
In a nutshell: he’s not overly overly irrational. He’s merely an advocate for eminence-based medicine.
Here’s to you, Dédé The Druid. Just found the lyrics fitting.
As much as I have read of his work and comments, I would agree that Raoult is not antivaccine in the normal sense that we understand it. He is just supremely sure of his own ideas and his thinking could never be wrong.
Hey, at least he was correct about Galileo: the improvement of the telescope by Galilee. Most scientists seem to think Galileo invented the blasted thing.
On the other hand PZ Myers seems to think his knowledge of evolution is abysmal.
SARS-COV-2 PSA:
Don’t smell your farts!!!
{nondescript daily jizz rag that I choose not to link to for my own personal safety}
Some of the only symptoms in mild cases that test positive are gastro-intestinal. It may well be that it only gets into the lungs by breathing (and not at all eyes).
So;
–don’t smell your farts.
–Don’t stick your hand down into the bowl to hold your balls up whilst having a massive colon blow.
–Definately don’t then smell your fingers after doing that anyways.
–Put the lid down and look away when flushing the toilet; Even better, sit on the toilet in the ‘reverse cowgirl’ position and flush before getting up.
–Don’t play ‘lumberjack’ where you take a giant sir John Harrington, stand up, turn around, and cut your log in half with your urine stream (sorry, liberatarians, just don’t. For now, anyways.)
https://nypost.com/2020/04/20/can-the-coronavirus-be-spread-through-farts/
Farticles. don’t sniff it (even though, everyone likes their own brand). huu? my south park video link of how to use a porcelain toilet machine got gone.
Why is this link blanked???????
I’ll try this one of lesser quality:
https://youtu.be/sBBBwuk5YNE
Why was it banned, Orac? DMCA orr…
I take it you dont know much about virus use of the FDA EUA provision. To fill you, it is standard. Ebola treatments and vaccines were approved with even flimsier evidence and no evidence of safety. At a 10+% mortality rate in select populations, it is beyond belief that you would oppose a last chance option that has been studied as an antiviral for decades. You are making it political and trump as well. What is not political is the drug and the preliminary evidence that hundreds of physicians found compelling. Alternatively you dont understand what EUA is in which case you should simply read.
Of course, I understand what an EUA is, silly anonymous troll.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2020/04/01/fda-eua-chloroquine-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19/
Also, as I mentioned in the post, the longer hydroxychloroquine and the HCQ/AZ combination is used, the less impressed physicians are with it. At my medical alma mater the University of Michigan, they no longer routinely use either of these drugs because they saw no evidence of efficacy but did see toxicity.
Citation needed. Which treatments andvaccines?
Do a Google Scholar search before making claims:
Milligan ID, Gibani MM, Sewell R, et al. Safety and Immunogenicity of Novel Adenovirus Type 26– and Modified Vaccinia Ankara–Vectored Ebola Vaccines: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2016;315(15):1610–1623. doi:10.1001/jama.2016.4218
Interesting thing is that Vaccinia virus (Ankara) does not cause symptoms in a nude (immunodeficient) mouse.
I don’t imagine that this will come as much of a surprise.
What’s your take on the initial Remdesivir study?
Not impressive, but it’s impossible to say without a randomized trial.
I think they are trying it in Germany. Saw it in the German morningshow I always watch.
Yes I know I’m Dutch but I like to watch German television.
Hoo, boy.
An interesting pre-print on the safety of hydroxychloroquine
Safety of hydroxychloroquine, alone and in combination with azithromycin, in light of rapid wide-spread use for COVID-19: a multinational, network cohort and self-controlled case series study
I have only read the abstract but it is not directly addressing the use of hydroxychloroquine with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It it interesting to see n-sizes in the 10s of thousands rather in the 10s.
Andrew Gelman’s blog has some information on the origins of the research Update: OHDSI COVID-19 study-a-thon.
I still haven’t seen the lab results of hemoglobin fe2/3 content in COVID-19 confirmed patients with severe hypoxemia… I wonder why that is…
HIPPA?
Like, is there a study going on of hemoglobin? It’s not like you can just go around randomly releasing people’s lab results.
And why would anyone be looking at that anyway? I haven’t read anything that suggests a problem with RBCs in patients with COVID-19.
One crap pre-print was going the rounds, arguing that COVID-19 worked in a manner similar to carbon monoxide: capsid proteins were somehow getting into red blood corpuscles, and then binding to the iron atoms and sucking them out of the heme groups. The authors came to this conclusion by incompetence in reading molecular-binding simulations,
There is quite a lot of hemoglobin in your body, and the total weight of virus capsid required to block enough of it and impair respiration would have to be of comparable magnitude.
Anyway, since HCQ stops malaria from eating up hemoglobin, it will also stop the COVID-19 from binding to it, in the minds of people circulating this pre-print. I can only imagine that Thomas was thinking along similar lines.
Don’t forget the zinc.
Somewhere on WebMD there is a transcript of an interview with a doc whose name I don’t remember. It is probably the most painful to read thing I’ve encountered in a long time (I don’t read Trump transcripts).
The gist of it was that patients were presenting with little difficulty in breathing but with very low blood oxygen saturation.This doc was proposing some changes to protocols for putting patients on ventilators, but I wasn’t up to re-reading enough times to make sense of what he was advocating.
Another thing I saw on an Italian site was a doc saying the problem was with micro thrombi in the vasculature of lungs.
Just more things that may warrant further investigation.
@ doug:
I wonder if it is the same clip I saw on @ High Wire Talk ( with Del Sequoia) – last week , 9th April- it was a NY doctor saying that patients in the ICU had problems like mountain climbers, perhaps the treatment being done was all wrong. I think he was dismissed from there and sent to the ER. It’s towards the start of that video- featured now ( I don’t regularly listen to the whole 1-2 hour fiasco)
Ooh. I think there was a post about this (and how bonkers it was) over at PZ Myers.
Maybe some of the problem is that humans have a hard time with scale once it’s past “too small to see”? Like, a 2-atom molecule is obviously much smaller than any protein, but unless you’re used to thinking about the size difference I could see how a lay person might get confused.
So the latest news seems to be proning patients (placing them on their stomach), which seems to be based on previous studies done in non-COVID 19 ARDS cases. Not sure of any formal studies being done, but at least no one can accidentally poison themselves with this possible treatment.
Yes. Prone. In case no one saw my link the other day, please take a look at that interesting thread (has to do with nitric oxide and SARS).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22840057
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article242012816.html
“But sometimes in medicine, we don’t have time”
Tell that to the people who were given steroids for brain injury on the theory that it would reduce swelling.
Oh THX Narad, I hate videos of people jumping out of airplanes. Nope. Shit, I hate videos of people getting on airplanes.
@Narad,
Control arm is a bungee elastic?
@Tim
You’re gonna hate me someday next year. Guess what I plan to do.
Alain
Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials
https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459?ijkey=c3677213eca83ff6599127794fc58c4e0f6de55a&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
Pfft ^^ Snarky amateur hour. Did not look beyond the fold…
Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial
https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
They have begun to give a few patients at Mount Sinai convalescent plasma. However, due to the FDA criteria for patients, it is probably doomed to fail putting all the future serum/plasma treatments and commerce thereof at risk.
https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/investigational-new-drug-ind-or-device-exemption-ide-process-cber/recommendations-investigational-covid-19-convalescent-plasma
That is not doing it right. It would seem they would want to do it the proper way first. Or, better yet, try it on both groups together. The right way is to give it early on during the period after the body has noticed the infection and is producing its’ own anti bodies to clear it. Then you give the plasma/serum to clear out the virus or at least buy time for the body to build them up itself. But give it before they have to be vented, fer goodness sake.
It just feels like there would be too much viral load in a patient that has progressed that far for the extra in plasma to amount to much. Also, there is the added vascular fluids not helped out by already strained kidneys.
Ah, well; It would be excellent if it works for those ‘not long for this world’ (80% of those on vents are not coming off) also.
Tim, you might benefit from taking come classes on bioethics and clinical trial design so you understand why those are the inclusion criteria.
Coursera used to have a nice clinical trial design class that included some of the ethics portion, but I don’t know if that class is still up.
Ethics? If they botch this study up because of the hopelessness of giving it to the ‘i don’t want to go on the cart’ crowd then others are going to come in and fill the void. Why is it that Trump, Bolsonaro, Limbaugh don’t have any fucks to give? They are sitting on liters of the shit?
You want a black market in unregulated blood products? Because this is how you get a black market in unregulated blood products. People are going to Walter White the fuck out of this treatment — let not your heart be troubled, the unlicensed centrifugist will test the precursors as to purity and quality before processing and shipping the product up inside some amazon drivers’ a-hole.
The precursor producers will face life in prison or even death for harvesting the stuff, of course. Ethical? Do not worry, I’ll put the red bits back in so that my well-paid, volunteer farmers can produce again within a few hours.
Tim, what on earth are you talking about?
Do you know anything about how clinical trials are designed?
Here’s a hint: you’ll never know (statistically) if you treatment works if you only give it to people who will most likely get better by themselves. If a treatment like this works then it will work on the very ill.
Look up clinical equipose.
The only people engaging in anything like a “black market” for human blood products are those ridiculous Silicon Valley wackos who think they can live forever by getting infusions of young people’s blood.
No one with an iota of sense will try for “black market” plasma.
Seriously, where do you get these ideas? You need to chill out a bit.
No, I do not believe it will. There is too much concurrent damage from the mechanical ventilator itself.
@ Tim
First, if you give the convalescent plasma to those early on, since the vast majority are surviving, you won’t know if it works; but you certainly will be wasting something in short supply. Second, as for extra vascular fluids, they are giving patients intravenous fluids already and the amount being used from plasma won’t add that much, literally billions of antibodies and T-cells can be in small amounts of fluid. The first successful treatment for diphtheria was similar and they only gave it to those with clear signs of the disease, that is, swollen throats, difficulty breathing. And during the flu pandemic of 1918-19 they saved lives using convalescent plasma; but, of course, the amounts available were very little. I could go on; but you obviously don’t understand infectious diseases, etc. You write based on emotion, not science.
I suggest you take JustaTechs advice regarding bioethics and clinical trial design. I just checked out JustaTech’s suggestion, coursera, and they have quite a few courses in epidemiology and courses in infectious diseases, all free. However, an excellent online intro text to epidemiology can be downloaded from CDC website, https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/index.html
@ TIm
I should have added that, as you wrote, ventilators do damage, so best time to use would be just as they begin on ventilators, so if plasma works, time on ventilators will be short. However, they are now trying alternatives to using ventilators; but decision when to use convalescent plasma should be at point where some sort of breathing support clearly indicated.
JustaTech, Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH,
Ok, I guess you guys are right. THX for straightening me out.
That did not come out right — l was thinking more along the lines of positive support for the study. It just seems that there are too many variables for the unlucky few who end up there depending on demographics, comorbidities, …, even who is running the machine and how closely it is attended. Some places it is 75/25, some 50/50, and some 20/80. You know, noise.
And besides, I read the criteria wrong. It is one or more of those indicators, not all of them. So, of course, the best candidates are those not yet on a vent but obviously headed in that direction. I’d still give it to those vented at any point along their journey anyways but not have those patients be part of the study.
Does this have to stay the truth? Is it not a thing that they can take your blood, get the plasma, and stick the RBCs and platelets back in; rinse, repeat?
They could give good-paying summer jobs to all those incubating spring breakers! 4-5 hours a day, just sitting watching netflix while spitting out t-cells. Just a thought.
As you probably know, I survey a sampling of the most despicable sinkholes of pseudoscientific / anti-vaccine misinformation that exist ( PRN, NN, Mercola, AoA, TMR, High Wire, Bolen, Stop Mandatory Vaccination, etc)
Because of COVID-19, we may have a measure of just how entrenched woo is amongst people.
The idiots I survey- like right wing fanatics- consistently attack real world information like that which comes from WHO, the CDC, Dr Fauci, Mr Gates**, SB governors/ leaders and reality-based news outlets.
If anti-vax/ woo was as popular as partisans claim, wouldn’t we be seeing more people breaking rules about social distancing and gatherings? If they are true believers, why would they follow through with difficult rules and activities? They couldn’t do much about school or work closures but there are other ways they can taunt the Man ( Woman).
Although I’ve read about planned protests in Michigan, LA and Bundy family ranting in Idaho/ other areas, it seems that people are following orders around NYC and CA. Oh, they’re sheeple!
** Bill and Melinda Gates ” have no background in science” says Gary Null. Tattoos showing your vaccination status are next!
If anti-vax/ woo WERE
“Bill and Melinda Gates ” have no background in science” says Gary Null. Tattoos showing your vaccination status are next!” Gee, I wonder where he got that idea? https://www.sciencealert.com/an-invisible-quantum-dot-tattoo-is-being-suggested-to-id-vaccinated-kids
Natalie, you fail to get the point of my sarcasm:
Null ( on the 15th) insults the “uneducated” Gates and Dr Fauci ( ” not worth his science degrees” ) then warns his listeners about the dire consequences of their interventions ( next, they’ll tattoo you! Horrors!) WHEN
–he himself has an extremely deficient/ non-existent education in the life sciences ( and everything else) so how could he discern that? AND he tells people what to do. ( see Quackwatch, SBM, RI, Wikipedia)
–Mr Gates doesn’t need a degree in bio or medicine because he hires experts- like Dr Fauci- to inform him and to run the medical aspects of his foundation.,
Anyone who listens to Null’s swill knows that he merely strings together concepts he reads somewhere to fit into his own idiosyncratic take on “science” which resembles nothing you might study in university level courses.
And yes, I studied life sciences as well as social sciences. So I can tell the difference.
The PI of a lab I worked for had to give a presentation to Bill Gates in person as part of getting a grant from the Gates foundation. BillG might not have a science background, but my boss said he was very, very smart and asked all the kinds of questions to really pick apart the grant proposal. My boss said it was scarier than his dissertation defense.
One of the greatest strengths a leader can have is knowing how to pick experts. BillG seems pretty good at that, at least at the Gates Foundation.
(Technical note, the Gates Foundation itself doesn’t do a lot of science; they support other people doing the science. Beyond funding most of the Gates Foundation’s work is in policy.)
Hey Natalie: stay safe and wash your hands, OK?
talk/talk/talk/…..hhmmmm stop it & work out & solve the bloody problem …will ya ..??? cheers happy bob from oz …
And when was the last time you held a pipette or cultured a virus or ran tests on ferrets?
What makes you think that there aren’t literally thousands of scientists out there all over the world busting their collective asses to make a vaccine?
What are you doing, Bob? Are you making media? Running the autoclave? Hauling away the biohazardous waste? Or are you sitting on your tuchas whining to the internet?
Go plant a tree. And wash your hands.
@ JustaTech
“And when was the last time you held a pipette”
Well, if taking a hit from the bong counts as holding a pipette, it might just as well be today or yesterday…
“Go plant a tree. And wash your hands.”
Hey… You’re talking to Dr. Greenthumb, here… Show some respect…
Given that the link is b0rk3d, I’m going with the option of more recency.
With this character, I’m willing to interpret that as prurient, the various restrictions on ferrets in Oz notwithstanding.
@ Narad.
Yeah, I screwed up with the link. It was supposed to refer to Cypress Hill’s Hits from the Bong song.
@ F:
I liked the illustration for that cut.
Cypress Hill is a part of Brooklyn which was famous for its CEMETARY before it was famous for rappers.
@ Narad, I didn’t know there were restrictions on having ferrets in Australia (although that’s very sensible).
I mentioned ferrets specifically because they’re a model organism for human respiratory infections (their lungs a re very long, and they’re easier to keep than pigs).
@ F68.10: I have been told (by people who would know) that you can make a bong out of most anything, so I guess one could be made from a great big 100mL sero-pipette. Something tells me Bob isn’t into anything that is done in 100uL (micro-liter) doses.
Not to defend Dr Raoult’s behaviour, but there are suggestions in the literature of mechanisms by which Hydroxy-chloroquine and Azithromycin might work e.g. https://www.aging-us.com/article/103001/text
I’m well aware of this. What’s also true is that these drugs have never been effective in in civil models.
Not to defend Dr Raoult’s behaviour, but there are suggestions in the literature of mechanisms by which Hydroxy-chloroquine and Azithromycin might work e.g. h[]ttps://www.aging-us.com/article/103001/text
For certain values of “the literature.”
Chloroquine has been tested against influenza:
David J. Vigerust Jonathan A. McCullers
Chloroquine is effective against influenza A virus in vitro but not in vivo
Influenza and other respitatory viruses
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-2659.2007.00027.x
Another virus, of course, but perhaps a pattern is emerging
Supports this commentary https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220301145
“In past research, chloroquine has shown in vitro activity against many different viruses, but no benefit in animal models.”
I see a market for giant test tubes. The patient steps into the test tube and we pour in the drug purported to work in test tubes. Confidence is assured by all the positive in vitro studies. Please pay before stepping inside.
@ Say What?
“Might work” AND there is also good evidence of serious adverse reactions, which are being found. Historically there has been “evidence” that many interventions “might work” only to fail and often do more harm. In vitro studies are almost worthless and as Orac has pointed out in several reason articles here and on sister blog, Science-Based Medicine, Raoult’s papers were bogus.
An example, outside of my area of expertise, is bone-marrow transplants for cancer. Please correct me Orac if I’m wrong. Transplants worked for leukemia but not solid tumors. Why? Leukemias divide rapidly, so if give mass dose of chemotherapy which only kills dividing cells, several times, kills, hopefully, all of them; but also kills bone marrow, so transplant. However, solid tumors often most not dividing, so because chemotherapy only kills dividing cells, just kills a small percentage. Thus, killing bone marrow, not destroying cancer, dooms patients. But some thought it “might work.”
Remember, order your Didier Raoult t-shirt or hoodie today. Arrêtons d’avoir peur!
https://www.amazon.com/TrochoiTee-Didier-Classic-T-Shirt-Sweatshirt/dp/B086YCV21Q/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=didier+raoult+t-shirt&qid=1587064554&sr=8-4
In Covid-19 news…
( 538 website; Nathaniel Rakich, yesterday)
This might surprise anti-vaxxers but Americans support the CDC in recent weeks- around 80%.
The government in general doesn’t do as well – over 50%- but fares better than The Orange One, Pence is middling.
Anti-vaxxers write horrible critiques of the CDC and Dr Fauci ( see RFKjr’s latest Children’s Health Defense/ PRN.fm) but they seem to be a minority opinion.
AS I’ve said previously, people seem to be following CDC guidelines to a great extent around here.
JustaTech writes, “The PI of a lab I worked for had to give a presentation to Bill Gates in person as part of getting a grant from the Gates foundation.” BG has the money, so you must serve your master…look the other way regarding his many conflicts of interest and his affiliation with one of the most prolific pedos/child rapists/human traffickers, Jeffrey Epstein. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/
Then there is his “philanthropy” in India – https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/controversial-vaccine-studies-why-is-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-under-fire-from-critics-in-india/articleshow/41280050.cms
Regarding, washing my hands, no worries there. I was a germaphobe before the Covid hysteria, before it was okay to be one and remain one. Things that make me go, “Ew”…doorknobs, handles, touch pads, shopping carts and the worst, shaking hands! When forced to shake someones hand, I can’t wait to wash my hands. My hope is Covid will kill this outdated and unnecessary tradition. At the very least, no social awkwardness if I decline handshakes in the future. Can’t we just bow to each other like the Japanese?
Good day.
@ Natalie White
I’ve written in comments on several occasions that I consider myself reasonably intelligent and highly educated; but I’m not an Einstein and never had a course nor even read Scientific American articles on structural engineering, so if I were, for instance, mayor of a city, or head of some foundations, and was asked to choose the best design for a new bridge, I couldn’t. However, even in areas I am knowledgeable about, I often phone or e-mail colleagues, just to be sure. And if I were mayor or head of some foundation, I would choose advisors, not because they agreed with me; but for their expertise. And I have had three semesters of calculus, one of linear algebra, etc. In addition, if during my time we had built several bridges, I would have learned to ask the right questions. Bill Gates is not an Einstein; but quite intelligent and he has sought advice from experts. I have either read transcripts or seen videos of him and, though I personally know more about epidemiology, etc. his questions are excellent and his advisors more knowledgeable than me.
I spent two years aboard U.S. Naval Ships in the Western Pacific. Many of the Captains were really great; but they weren’t experts at every aspect of the ships, e.g., weaponry, engineering, etc.; but they had able subordinates and listened to them. We now have a President who from the gitgo dismissed advice from experts, only listens to those who agree with him, and keeps telling us he is an intuitive genius.
I’ve exchanged comments on various blogs with antivaccinationists, e.g. Age of Autism’s UK Editor, John Stone, who states clearly that he has NO background, not even read articles, on immunology, microbiology, epidemiology, infectious disease history and current status in the world; but bases his position on “experience and careful reading” and he ignores when pointed out just how unscientific and illogical his writings are. Is he a personal friends of yours?
I’ve asked before and I’ll ask again: What is your background, e.g. education, courses, training, job experience? At least Stone admits his and even Christine Kincaid claims she is an RN, though she didn’t seem to learn any immunology, etc. in her education. So, what basis do you use to arrive at your positions? Seems to me that you are the perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. If you even have the slightest interest in learning some basics, an excellent start, costs less than $50 from Amazon.co, is Lauren Sompayrac’s “How the Immune System Works (6th Edition).” About 150 pages. I’ve read several undergraduate tests, around 850 pages, and audited courses; but sometimes got lost in the forest because of all the trees. He does an excellent job of guiding one through the forest. Also, you can, when the pandemic ends, go to local library and start reading articles in Scientific American on the immune system. Maybe, if you consider yourself open-minded, just maybe, you will understand how vaccines actually work; but I doubt you are an open-minded person.
Note that I have read, starting with 3rd edition of Sompayrac’s book through 5th edition and ordered, should arrive today or tomorrow, 6th edition. And am almost through with latest book on influenza history, especially focus on pandemic of 1918-19. I’ve read every book I could find on it and probably 50 journal articles or more.
Since you are a particularly unpleasant person,
BAD DAY TO YOU
[…] Dr. Didier Raoult: Bad science on COVID-19 and bullying critics April 14, 2020 […]
Oh Joel, what I find particularly entertaining is your need to respond to me. Most rational/normal people would not give “a despicable moron” so much of their energy and time. You are a strange, little man.
Here’s more PR for BG – https://www.mintpressnews.com/faux-generosity-how-bill-gates-bought-his-power-and-influence/263208/
BG is another asshole.
“I’ve asked before and I’ll ask again: What is your background, e.g. education, courses, training, job experience?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2j-djuqUeY
Good day Joel.
@ Natalie White
I don’t give a rat’s ass about you; but I respond so that others who may be following this blog, who are open-minded; but not knowledgeable understand just what a moron you are.
As for calling me “a strange, little man”. I hope you get your jollies from such stupid statements. How is having spent a life-time reading, studying, and working in preventive medicine, and finding you and other antivaccinationists not much different from those who in the Middle Ages believed the world flat, make me strange and “little.”
Bill Gates is like a lot of others in American history, made their fortunes in other than ethical ways, e.g. Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc.; but then tried to erase their earlier deeds by doing good. Yep, he stole ideas from Apple, betrayed what Steve Jobs thought was a friendship, etc. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Rockefeller Institute became a leader in researching infectious diseases, that the Carnegie Foundation similar things. Personally, I don’t think the brutality that Carnegie steel imposed on its workers, including the Homestead Strike, can ever be erased, regardless of how many good things Carnegie did afterwards; but one can’t go back and erase history and today Gate’s Foundation spend money helping people, not so for many other billionaires who do little to nothing.
One doesn’t have to like Bill Gates to evaluate what he is currently doing. Just one more example of your idiocy. It was in Soviet Union that radiokeratotomies was developed. But my friends didn’t reject them just because developed by communists. Almost 100% of Nazi medical research on holocaust camp inmates was garbage, brutal/cruel and worthless; but they did develop putting steel pin in fractures of large bones, used today. If I had a large bone fracture, e.g. femur, even as a Jew I wouldn’t refuse such treatment. And Gates has done nothing even remotely as bad as Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, just was a dishonest businessman, no one died, no one tortured. And I have an iMac, not a PC.
As usual, you are incapable of objectivity. Again, Gates foundation, despite his earlier history, despite your antivaccinationists stand, is doing good, and Gates has advisors that are experts.
And you write: “Oh Joel, what I find particularly entertaining is your need to respond to me. Most rational/normal people would not give “a despicable moron” so much of their energy and time.”
So you only want irrational/abnormal people responding to your comments? You want to be able to make any claim without being challenged? Not only a moron; but like Trump, someone who doesn’t like being disagreed with. As I’ve suggested before, post your comments on Age of Autism, an echo chamber for people like you, you will get lots of applause.
@ Natalie White
So you give URL to a YouTube on using correct grammar. When writing comments I don’t double check my grammar. And if I used absolutely correct grammar it wouldn’t sway you. However, I’ve got articles in peer-reviewed journals, magazines and newspapers, etc. and I am listed in acknowledgements in several books, including statistics and microbiology for proof-reading and editorial suggestions, plus acknowledgments in a number of peer-reviewed articles.
As for the article on Bill Gates, one can say the same about the Koch Brothers, Trump, etc. all wealthy people use their fortunes to their benefit; but, again, despite your stupidity, I’ve followed the Gates Foundation and it is doing good.
So, screw you and grammar. You and others following these exchanges can easily understand the points I’ve made.
Och jag kunde skriva dem på svenska
Je peu aussi écrit en français
Ich künde auch es auf deutsch schreiben.
However, I am only fluent at Sweden; but had courses in French and German almost a half century ago. Actually, at one time I knew about 1200 words in Japanese and even more in Hebrew and could carry on elementary conversations.
In any case, you still refuse to explain what your background is???? I guess you are ashamed of it and think you can just make any claims and people will either accept them or ignore them, not refute them as I do.
You are truly a despicable excuse for human being.
@ Natalie White
The article by Alan Macleod is actually quite good, though one-sided. Yep, on the whole I agree with his critique of billionaires having more say that we the people. And, yep, Gates fortune has increased even as he has given away around half of it; but, to some extent, these are mutually exclusive. If I own shares in a company that keeps increasing i value, not increasing because I donate money, so what? And, compared with Jeff Bezos who has publicly stated he doesn’t see anyone who deserves his help, who has had brutal working conditions at Amazon and no matter how much he makes, doesn’t seem to care at all about his workers, Gates is preferable. Microsoft has, on the whole, treated its employees well. I don’t like that our government mainly works for Corporations and the Billionaires, that we cut taxes, claiming the monies will be invested in research, product development, etc. when studies show the corporations just use to buy back their own stocks, driving up the prize, so their higher ups make even more money, and the billionaires just buy up more things, e.g. Bezos “The Washington Post” and/or play the stock market. We live in a society where no matter how wealthy someone is, it seems never to be enough. But, that doesn’t change the fact that the Gates Foundation is doing good things. As for the “flawed study” in India, it would be a waste of my time to discuss it, as it wouldn’t change your mind. It wasn’t the best; but not as bad a portrayed.
In Columbia the Cartels give a lot of money to schools and Catholic Church for charity. The Cartels are really evil; but it doesn’t change the fact that the monies going to schools and charities does good. I would love to see total destruction of the cartels and societies where people actually help each other. I don’t like where the monies come from; but if the cartels didn’t give it, no one else currently would. I wonder if you or a loved one was dying of some disease and a local mob boss offered to pay for the care that might save you or the loved one, would you reject it?????
Well, Gates isn’t even close to being like the Cartels. And his Foundation does do good. I would prefer that we had a much more fair tax system, that we enforced anti-trust laws, that when corporations do things that actually harm people, e.g., withhold product defect information, then they should get prison, not fines. I would love for the American people to understand that we live in communities, to accept multiculturalism, to have a tax system and overall system that allows those who come up with new ideas, who work harder to do better; but at the same time that sets a decent minimum for everyone else. We are the only health care system in the world, paid for by the taxpayers; yet designed for profit. Read Elizabeth Rosenthal’s book “An American Illness.” And our mass media with interlocking board of directors lies by, for instance, omission. My local newspaper has had numerous articles on what Medicare for All will cost; but when I submitted a letter to the editor giving estimated costs of our current system, 50% higher, they didn’t publish it, nor that 17 independent studies have found that Medicare for All will save more than 68,000 lives per year, cost less, and guarantee quality medical care for all. Doctors today spend 15 hours or more in excessive paperwork and fighting with insurance companies, hours that could be devoted to patient care, etc. So, it isn’t Gates, it is our entire corrupt system. And what Trump and others do is classic, divide and conquer. Play groups who are suffering against each other, so they won’t unite against those who are doing damage to them. Rural rednecks against Medicaid because minorities get it; but they don’t realize it also pays for much of cost of rural hospitals, etc.
So, again how Gates got his money and the fact he is still getting richer doesn’t change the fact that the Gates Foundation, based on everything I know about science, is doing good.
Your world of black and white just doesn’t allow you to see shades of gray.
And for the umpteenth time, what is your background, what level of education/knowledge do you base anything you write on????????
@ Natalie White
I wasn’t going to discuss the India HPV vaccine trials; but out of curiosity reviewed the articles I saved. First, the deaths were NOT shown to be associated with the vaccine, 7 deaths of 20,000 vaccinated in a land with high mortality. In fact, one of the girls died from a snakebite and another fell into a well. I won’t repeat what was written, except prime example of antivaccinationist dishonesty. You can find on internet:
Dan Evon (24 October 2019). Was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Kicked Out of India? SNOPES.
Jon Greenberg (20 December 2016). Anti-vaccination blog revived debunked HPV story. Politifact.
AND an excellent article on the burden of cervical cancer in India:
K. Kaarthigeyan (2012 Jan-Mar). Cervical cancer in India and HPV vaccination. Indian Journal of Medical and Pediatric Oncology; 33(1): 7-12.
All three available on internet. I would give links; but ORAC informed me that when three or more links in comment, gets held up for screening, so could be hours before he gets a chance to check what has been held up.
I realize that you probably won’t read the articles or even if you do, won’t admit that you jumped to a wrong conclusion based on what you want to believe; but others following this blog will see one more example of why I consider you a despicable moron.
@ Natalie White
I agree with you regarding shaking of hands. It began as a way of showing one didn’t have a weapon. I lived in Japan for six months and thought a polite bow quite nice. I personally hate shaking hands. So, as they say, even a broken clock gets the time right twice a day, so I agree with you on hand shaking.
I’m a big fan of the fist bump, myself, and was pleased when this study came out. JAMA has called for an end to handshakes in hospitals, IIRC?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196655314006592?via%3Dihub
Joel writes, “Bill Gates is like a lot of others in American history, made their fortunes in other than ethical ways, e.g. Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc.; but then tried to erase their earlier deeds by doing good”
Should be – tried to erase their earlier “misdeeds”. So they tried to change their image, straight from the Ed Bernays PR playbook? Not buying it. A zebra doesn’t change his stripes. BG is a eugenicist, like his poppa, a ruthless businessman. His mother was the head of the Seattle branch of the Federal Reserve. If he really cared about the world, he would use more of his resources to help with infrastructure. He could do a lot of good. Instead, he continues to wealth build and hide his money through his various “charitable” foundations and corporate ties. https://hangthebankers.com/the-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-exposed?fbclid=IwAR2b7wZ3KSnJ95uT0_d5DIBy2ZAPDqJJiOGMifLF-mNd4nJ0J1CnHwH6SFg
As far as sending you a link for better grammar? I didn’t. Maybe that was just an ad tailored to you? Grammarly? My grammar is not perfect, however, I strive to be clear and brief in my posts. The link in my previous post is to a Salt-n-Pepa song, “None of Your Business” in response to your question about my qualifications, etc. This is just a blog. Anyone can comment. Get over yourself.
Good day Joel.
@ Natalie White
First, I clicked on the link you gave. I just reclicked on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2j-djuqUeY and it went to Salt and Pepper; but all I did was click on it and it went to a lesson on grammar (internet has been doing weird things lately, slowing down, and when I clicked to watch PBS Passport, didn’t work; but half hour later, did); but, all the same, you want to post comments unchallenged, refuse to admit when you are wrong, see world in extremes of black and white and think, as with the Salt and Pepper, that you should be free to do this unchallenged. And you have attacked others and claimed you know that you are absolutely right.
As for Bill Gates, first, as usual you focus on one aspect. As I pointed out giving numerous examples, how he got his money and what his motives are do not change that the Gates Foundation does a lot of good. And you refuse to acknowledge you were wrong about the HPV vaccine tests in India. Expected.
Yep, as you say: “This is just a blog. Anyone can comment.” But when they make comments that are either completely wrong, as with HPV vaccine trials in India, or display a black and white world view, they need to be put in their place.
I don’t personally know Bill Gates, so don’t know his motives; but as I pointed out, I repeat, how he made his money, betraying a trust, creating a monopoly, DOS, etc. doesn’t change that the Gates Foundation is doing good. And compared to other wealthy people, he has provided far more funding that does good.
Just for your moronically small mind, one more example, Oscar Schindler. The movie “Schindler’s List” actually downplayed all the risks he took to save Jews. Schindler was a gambler, pro-Nazi, and serial adulterer, then he risked his life numerous times to save Jews, and after the war reverted to his gambling, serial adultery, etc. So, given your way of seeing people, he was “an asshole.” Most people are complex, good aspects, bad aspects, and everything in between, some more of one than the other; but for you ALL OR NONE.
And you refuse to disclose who you are, your education, training, occupation, etc. And I have recommended a good intro to Immunology; but obviously you refuse to even consider reading it as it might result in your realizing just how wrong you are about vaccines.
I could care less about you as an individual; but you represent much about what I hate, people who see the world in black and white, people who are perfect examples of Dunning-Kruger, people who are so stupid that they hurt others and even themselves. I have had friends who are Libertarians, Republicans, even Communists, as a Jew, been good friends with Catholic Priest, lay minister in Baptist Church, several Moslems, etc. We disagreed on some things. However, when I, for instance, pointed out that Adam Smith wrote two books, The Wealth of Nations, and a Theory of Moral Sentiments and in the latter, Smith being a devout Christian, discusses how some things, like human life and well-being, are more important than the efficiency of markets. I also pointed out that F.A. Hayek, the founder of Libertarian economics, wrote in his book “The Road to Serfdom” that some things, specifically health care, should be supplied by society. The point is that they listened to me and didn’t change their overall positions; but modified them regarding health care as not fitting into a competitive market system. As John Meynard Keynes once said when a reporter challenged him for changing his position (paraphrasing): “When I get new information/facts, I evaluate it and use it, what do you do?” And I have actually modified my position based on what others have said; but you say nothing that would change anyone with an open mind, you refuse to admit when absolutely wrong, you label things in black and white, you are an absolute despicable moron; but, unfortunately, you are just one among many. As I wrote above, racism, going back to colonial times, was hit upon as a way for the wealthy class to pit poor whites against blacks, two groups that should have united, instead then and today allow divide and conquer to rule. Permeates our politics, our higher levels of violence, antivaccinationists like you.
I wonder what you would think of Bill Gates if he had spent monies supporting antivaccinationists websites or supporting various forms of alternative medicine? Joseph Mercola gave $1 million dollars to National Vaccine Information Center. My bet is you would be praising him.
So, will you admit you were wrong about HPV vaccine trials in India? Will you admit that, not just Bill Gates; but others can give monies to worthy causes, regardless of what overall type of person they are, regardless of their motives? And despite what you think, people do change. Ever heard “born again?” I’m not saying yes or no regarding Gates; but your absolute black and white opinion that people never change goes against not only psychology; but all religions. But, of course, you know more than all others. Again, I could care less about a low life like you; but when I write, it is against what you represent, it is not to change your mind, not even to get you to compromise, something you are not capable of; but for the vast majority of those following this blog.
And as an admission, I was wrong about your linking to a grammar video, not my fault; but still resulted in my being wrong. A minor mistake compared with all of yours; but I regret it.
I’m disappointed that you didn’t also include the “Bill Gates Admits to Chemtrails” entry.
@ Natalie White
Narad has supplied you with more bogus ammunition from a blog entitled “Hang The Bankers”.
According to Media Bias/Fact Check: “Overall, we rate Hang the Bankers a Questionable Source based on promotion of conspiracies and an extreme right wing bias in reporting.”
And they report on, yep, your favorite, anti vaccination campaigns. So, please read the two articles on Bill Gates and don’t question their validity, just include them in any future moronic comments.
You can find them at: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/hang-the-bankers/
I’m sure if your were a DA or jurist, you would do you best to allow hearsay as testimony and, of course, believe it.
You do realize that user-agent isn’t particularly tricky, right?
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.
From the heading of this comment, the first is the name of the virus, the second is the name of the disease it causes in humans. There is too much, yet at the same time, too little information about the virus and the disease. The reported information about the disease by people who have recovered is at variance to that given by the medical professionals.
There is great debate about the best method of containing the disease and the implications of those various methods.
The data upon which governments are making decisions is very inaccurate. Any one can chose a data set that suits his or her agenda as the reporting methods have no common standard so are wildly variable.In this rather long essay I will attempt to make the case for a global approach to this novel virus!
The Recovered person speaks from a single experience which may or may not be typical. A Doctor speaks from observed responses in many patient’s. A bureaucrat speaks from what he or she has been told from various sources and with an agenda (Future remuneration). A politician speaks with his/her future career to be considered. Therefore to assess information one has to weigh the source data and possible distortions. Do not look at Lombardy (Italy) and declare this is a killer. Do not look at Veneto(Italy) and declare this is no worse than a bad flu!
Leaving aside the virus for the moment lets look at the disease.
There are several stages. The original infection, perhaps just a single virus that gets to your lungs, a moderate number, or a huge number of the virus. In the first situation the progression will be slow, your immune system has time to develop a defense so you may be asymptomatic and never know you had it. If you get a moderate number you get sick. If it is a huge viral load you will sicken quickly.
It is NOT known at which point you become infectious!
Then there is the possibility of getting multiple exposure, There are reports of many strains of SARS-CoV-2 already, how will your immune system mange the defense if you have been exposed several different strains?
Ok so here is my first item of advice. Get your Vitamin D levels checked, or if you cannot get that done then consider taking the minimum recommended dose of a Vitamin D supplement which is an over the counter medication, to overdose you need to take an entire bottle a day for quite a long time.
Why do I give this advice, there is anecdotal information that dark skinned people in NY suffer worst effects of COVID-19. Dark skinned people convert less UV into Vitamin D than people with light colored skin. Good levels of Vitamin D are the way to boost your immune system. Good immune response equates to a better response to infection, all infection.
Ok You got exposed and stage two begins with an elevated temperature and a dry cough. The temperature is due to inflammation, the cough is your body telling you there is something in your lungs that should not be there. In my opinion you are now infectious!
If you do not manage to remove the source of the cough then the disease will advance at a rate dependent upon your immune systems ability to combat the virus and the viral load you were exposed to, or being continued to be exposed to.
My Second item of advice is to convert that dry cough into a productive cough, there are many ancient tried and tested products and treatment methods that achieve this. ‘Friars Balsam’ and gentle percussion to name two. You will either recover or get steadily worse, especially if your exposure to the virus is still occurring. Social distancing and a face mask is indicated during this stage. These two strategies help to contain your infection and the possible infection of other people and reduce exposure to more of the virus. You may consider the anti-malaria, over the counter medications to help your immune system. Anecdotally regions where this medication is in common use seem to indicate a lower infection rate. This may be because the people taking the anti-malaria medication and exposed to the virus never get to stage three.
You decide you need help as your health is deteriorating and get sent to hospital. This is stage three. Treatment is not standard with significant variation and the reported outcomes are equally variable. There are good reports and reports of death by medication!
I suspect that the good reports by doctors who have had success have inadvertently not told the full story, probably because they think other doctors should know the requirements of a specific regime.
Stage three is where the tried, tested and safe existing medications should be provided. The medications hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin in conjunction with Aspirin and Zinc creams are a proven formulae. They are not as effective when used as individual medications, indeed people have died as a result of large doses of chloroquine.
Stage four follows alarmingly soon if stage three treatment is not effective, the reasons for this are poorly understood, but initial viral load and exposure to multiple strains and continued exposure to yet more viral load while in hospital are some logical reasons why the patient does not respond and ICU care is indicated. Clinically this is determined by low Oxygen stats and continued elevated temperature. The worsening cough and aches and pains persist as in flu.
At this time it is way too late to treat with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, aspirin and zinc cream. Supplementary Oxygen and a productive cough is indicated.
Stage 5 is often arrived at within hours and a respirator is indicated.
I offer this advice to those administering this treatment. Face Down, Bum Up, Feet elevated and regular percussion, drainage may be indicated. This is to drain the fluid that is slowly drowning the patient!
There is anecdotal evidence that if you get to Stage 5 you have a 50-50 chance of survival!
Why Aspirin and not Paracetamol? Ancient remedy with many beneficial effects, Paracetamol often has adverse side effects on some people and how they gonna tell you if they are in an induced coma!
Remember there are over SEVEN BILLION people who do not have an immune defense against this virus, prevention is better than cure. Why is there NO advice from Main Stream Media and Senior Health Officials about basic prevention that does not destroy entire economies of the working class and small businesses?
WHO missing in action!
Regarding SARS-CoV-2, I find it very odd that the Chinese were able to provide the genetic detail in such a short time. There was a report of ‘Patient Zero’ a female seller of prawns in a wet market in Wuhan, mid December, very short time scale to sequence the virus that gave her the disease COVID-19. There is new information of a different ‘Patient Zero’ a technician at the Wuhan Virus research lab in mid-November and who died mid-December. These dates give longer time to sequence the virus. There are reports of what that virus research lab was doing, ‘Gain of Function’ experiments, this poses the question about the time when the virus’s genetic sequence was known about and being manipulated. Gain of Function is supposedly to improve the time line requirement to produce vaccines. It seems to me another way to weaponize a virus! Could China already have a vaccine?
The spread of the virus around the world also raises some questions. Internal flights out of Wuhan were stopped very early on, but international flights out of Wuhan were not stopped. China seems to have allowed the deliberate export of the virus to all parts. This begs the question about the health of those millions of Chinese who left Wuhan before nations acted to stop the spread. How many Chinese nationals who left Wuhan December, January and February are among the dead outside of China?
There should be a representative number. How many Chinese people on those flights out of Wuhan have tested positive to the anti-body test.
One of the photos that did get out of China the day after the Wuhan lock down showed 38 high speed train sets each able to transport 500 people PARKED in a railway siding in Wuhan, were they there to be disinfected after the exodus of CCP party officials and family prior to the lockdown?
What is the age group range of those who died in Wuhan?
Why is Wuhan death rate so different to Shanghai or Beijing?
Why is the infection curve so different in other parts of China?
The world currency is NOT the almighty $$$ or Euro it is TRUST. I for one have very little trust left for anything Chinese.
In Conclusion I offer this to all those who have not yet been exposed to this virus.
Prevention is made more positive when you have a strong immune system!
I am a Logician, I look under stones, I cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ but with this pandemic I get more questions than answers.
Have you read the commenting policy and its discussion of sock puppetry?
It tends to help if one actually reads a blog for a while before unleashing crazy screeds.
Oh, I guess that explains it.
Logic without expertise is like a bicycle without a seat. Sure you can still get around on it, but you’re going to get yourself a major case of butthurt.
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.
From the heading of this comment, the first is the name of the virus, the second is the name of the disease it causes in humans. There is too much, yet at the same time, too little information about the virus and the disease. The reported information about the disease by people who have recovered is at variance to that given by the medical professionals.
There is great debate about the best method of containing the disease and the implications of those various methods.
The data upon which governments are making decisions is very inaccurate. Any one can chose a data set that suits his or her agenda as the reporting methods have no common standard so are wildly variable.In this rather long essay I will attempt to make the case for a global approach to this novel virus!
The Recovered person speaks from a single experience which may or may not be typical. A Doctor speaks from observed responses in many patient’s. A bureaucrat speaks from what he or she has been told from various sources and with an agenda (Future remuneration). A politician speaks with his/her future career to be considered. Therefore to assess information one has to weigh the source data and possible distortions. Do not look at Lombardy (Italy) and declare this is a killer. Do not look at Veneto(Italy) and declare this is no worse than a bad flu!
Leaving aside the virus for the moment lets look at the disease.
There are several stages. The original infection, perhaps just a single virus that gets to your lungs, a moderate number, or a huge number of the virus. In the first situation the progression will be slow, your immune system has time to develop a defense so you may be asymptomatic and never know you had it. If you get a moderate number you get sick. If it is a huge viral load you will sicken quickly.
It is NOT known at which point you become infectious!
Then there is the possibility of getting multiple exposure, There are reports of many strains of SARS-CoV-2 already, how will your immune system mange the defense if you have been exposed several different strains?
Ok so here is my first item of advice. Get your Vitamin D levels checked, or if you cannot get that done then consider taking the minimum recommended dose of a Vitamin D supplement which is an over the counter medication, to overdose you need to take an entire bottle a day for quite a long time.
Why do I give this advice, there is anecdotal information that dark skinned people in NY suffer worst effects of COVID-19. Dark skinned people convert less UV into Vitamin D than people with light colored skin. Good levels of Vitamin D are the way to boost your immune system. Good immune response equates to a better response to infection, all infection.
Ok You got exposed and stage two begins with an elevated temperature and a dry cough. The temperature is due to inflammation, the cough is your body telling you there is something in your lungs that should not be there. In my opinion you are now infectious!
If you do not manage to remove the source of the cough then the disease will advance at a rate dependent upon your immune systems ability to combat the virus and the viral load you were exposed to, or being continued to be exposed to.
My Second item of advice is to convert that dry cough into a productive cough, there are many ancient tried and tested products and treatment methods that achieve this. ‘Friars Balsam’ and gentle percussion to name two. You will either recover or get steadily worse, especially if your exposure to the virus is still occurring. Social distancing and a face mask is indicated during this stage. These two strategies help to contain your infection and the possible infection of other people and reduce exposure to more of the virus. You may consider the anti-malaria, over the counter medications to help your immune system. Anecdotally regions where this medication is in common use seem to indicate a lower infection rate. This may be because the people taking the anti-malaria medication and exposed to the virus never get to stage three.
You decide you need help as your health is deteriorating and get sent to hospital. This is stage three. Treatment is not standard with significant variation and the reported outcomes are equally variable. There are good reports and reports of death by medication!
I suspect that the good reports by doctors who have had success have inadvertently not told the full story, probably because they think other doctors should know the requirements of a specific regime.
Stage three is where the tried, tested and safe existing medications should be provided. The medications hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin in conjunction with Aspirin and Zinc creams are a proven formulae. They are not as effective when used as individual medications, indeed people have died as a result of large doses of chloroquine.
Stage four follows alarmingly soon if stage three treatment is not effective, the reasons for this are poorly understood, but initial viral load and exposure to multiple strains and continued exposure to yet more viral load while in hospital are some logical reasons why the patient does not respond and ICU care is indicated. Clinically this is determined by low Oxygen stats and continued elevated temperature. The worsening cough and aches and pains persist as in flu.
At this time it is way too late to treat with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, aspirin and zinc cream. Supplementary Oxygen and a productive cough is indicated.
Stage 5 is often arrived at within hours and a respirator is indicated.
I offer this advice to those administering this treatment. Face Down, Bum Up, Feet elevated and regular percussion, drainage may be indicated. This is to drain the fluid that is slowly drowning the patient!
There is anecdotal evidence that if you get to Stage 5 you have a 50-50 chance of survival!
Why Aspirin and not Paracetamol? Ancient remedy with many beneficial effects, Paracetamol often has adverse side effects on some people and how they gonna tell you if they are in an induced coma!
Remember there are over SEVEN BILLION people who do not have an immune defense against this virus, prevention is better than cure. Why is there NO advice from Main Stream Media and Senior Health Officials about basic prevention that does not destroy entire economies of the working class and small businesses?
WHO missing in action!
Regarding SARS-CoV-2, I find it very odd that the Chinese were able to provide the genetic detail in such a short time. There was a report of ‘Patient Zero’ a female seller of prawns in a wet market in Wuhan, mid December, very short time scale to sequence the virus that gave her the disease COVID-19. There is new information of a different ‘Patient Zero’ a technician at the Wuhan Virus research lab in mid-November and who died mid-December. These dates give longer time to sequence the virus. There are reports of what that virus research lab was doing, ‘Gain of Function’ experiments, this poses the question about the time when the virus’s genetic sequence was known about and being manipulated. Gain of Function is supposedly to improve the time line requirement to produce vaccines. It seems to me another way to weaponize a virus! Could China already have a vaccine?
The spread of the virus around the world also raises some questions. Internal flights out of Wuhan were stopped very early on, but international flights out of Wuhan were not stopped. China seems to have allowed the deliberate export of the virus to all parts. This begs the question about the health of those millions of Chinese who left Wuhan before nations acted to stop the spread. How many Chinese nationals who left Wuhan December, January and February are among the dead outside of China?
There should be a representative number. How many Chinese people on those flights out of Wuhan have tested positive to the anti-body test?
One of the photos that did get out of China the day after the Wuhan lock down showed 38 high speed train sets each able to transport 500 people PARKED in a railway siding in Wuhan, were they there to be disinfected after the exodus of CCP party officials and family prior to the lockdown?
What is the age group range of those who died in Wuhan?
Why is Wuhan death rate so different to Shanghai or Beijing?
Why is the infection curve so different in other parts of China?
The world currency is NOT the almighty $$$ or Euro it is TRUST. I for one have very little trust left for anything Chinese.
In Conclusion I offer this to all those who have not yet been exposed to this virus.
Prevention is made more positive when you have a strong immune system!
I am a Logician, I look under stones, I cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ but with this pandemic I get more questions than answers.
@ Slithers AND Michael J Clarke
There is good research that vitamin D does boost our immune systems; but only so much and suggesting basically one can’t overdose is WRONG. I have researched this for years and take two 1,000 ius/25 milligrams vitamin D daily, breakfast and dinner. Also get additional vitamin D3 from soy milk. Our bodies can only use so much at a time and overdosing is a risk.
As for: “At this time it is way too late to treat with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, aspirin and zinc cream.”
I guess you haven’t been following ORAC’s articles on hydroxychloroquine. Not only majority of studies found it doesn’t help; but indications it actually worsens condition, especially contributing to irregular heart beats. As for aspirin, it was one of the killers during 1918 flu pandemic. High does of aspirin can be deadly. And no indication it works with COVID-19.
Also interesting how you post same comment under two different names.
Finally, you write: “Prevention is made more positive when you have a strong immune system!
I am a Logician, I look under stones, I cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ but with this pandemic I get more questions than answers.”
As for a “strong immune system” our innate immune system reacts immediately to any foreign invader;
but our strongest immune response is our acquired immune system, B-cells that make antibodies and T-cells and they don’t react until they have recognized a specific new invader and it takes 2 – 3 weeks for them to reach full capacity, a time too late with many infections. No matter how healthy you are, vitamin D3, etc. the acquired immune system must be activated and it takes time.
As for “look under stones, I cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’” you obviously don’t understand immunology, haven’t been following discussions of how COVID-19 works, what we know about it, and, for instance, hydroxychloroquine and vitamin D-3 AND posting twice under two different names makes me wonder if you are, as Dorit mentioned, a sock puppet??
ADDENDUM
You write: “I find it very odd that the Chinese were able to provide the genetic detail in such a short time.”
Add to your lack of knowledge is modern techniques of gene sequencing. PBS has a great two part series entitled “The Gene” while just basics, it explains how we not can take samples and sequence genes in very short times. So, not odd at all that Chinese were able to sequence it in such a short time. There level of technology is as good as ours.
ADDENDUM 2
You write: “Why is Wuhan death rate so different to Shanghai or Beijing?
Why is the infection curve so different in other parts of China? I for one have very little trust left for anything Chinese.”
The best available evidence is that the Chinese did a lockdown in the region where Wuhan lies and did it rather quickly. In addition, as information developed about COVID-19, other regions would be better prepared to treat patients. So, a simple, non-gut reaction negative about China, would be they did a reasonable job of slowing its spread to other regions and as it did spread were better prepared to treat. They did a much more draconian lockdown than we have and are conducting much more extensive testing.
China is a large country. Use your logic (of which you boast).
@Joel, the link in the article takes you the BMGF taxes from 2012…around page 30 the list of contributions begins. I attempted to attach the pdf but was unable to do it without my identifying info. https://hangthebankers.com/the-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-exposed?fbclid=IwAR2b7wZ3KSnJ95uT0_d5DIBy2ZAPDqJJiOGMifLF-mNd4nJ0J1CnHwH6SFg
As far as the legitimacy of the publication, they referenced the 2012 taxes. Think for yourself Joel. You are highly educated AND seem to be very much indoctrinated. MSM is bought by pharma and other corporate interests. Don’t you get it? Operation Mockingbird and the propaganda continues. At least you didn’t go to Snopes and that twit Mickelson for confirmation.
@Narad – Hi Cheeky, As far as chemtrails, what you are referring to is called geoengineering/stratospheric aerosol injections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection. Some believe this is already being done to our skies.
Good day to you both.
So, a couple of their corporate contributors may or may not have done something wrong. Therefore, they shouldn’t be spending money to vaccinate children around the world to save millions of lives every year. And we shouldn’t be doing planning meetings to anticipate the problems a novel disease like this can cause? And he warned about the possibility of a dangerous disease like this several years ago, so obviously he caused it?
And therefore we shouldn’t believe anything else he or his foundation says?
/sarcasm
Is that your argument?
It seems like ad hominem by Kevin Bacon.
….pointing out that your source is a crankfest.
@ Narad – The guy behind Media Bias/Fact Check, David Van Zandt. All I needed to see MIT, board member Council on Foreign Relations and AMC Network, David is compromised and a tool of the system. I’m out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Van_Zandt
Did you see “MIT” there with your Third Eye or something?
Anyway, you’ve dug up “dirt” on the wrong Dave Van Zandt, Sherlock.
@ Natalie White
Your level of moronity just keeps increasing. Even I am amazed.
You refuse to even admit that you were wrong about the HPV vaccine trials in India. You refuse to even consider that the Gates Foundation does good, vaccines, clean water, etc to developing countries. You refuse to even consider this despite whether Bill Gates is a good or bad person, that people can be complex, not unidimensional in your world of black and white. As I pointed out with numerous examples, the source of money, regardless of how bad, doesn’t change the fact that it sometimes does good. The cartels in Columbia are as evil as can be; but they give tons of money to orphanages, schools, etc. Should they refuse the money when there is NO other source? I would prefer that the United States, instead of spending trillions of dollars to kill, maim, cripple, and impoverish people in developing nations, spend it on helping them. I would prefer that we as a people helped others, not individual rich people; but until that happens, I prefer Bill Gates to Jeff Bezos and others who do little to nothing.
As for who the Gates Foundation Trust invests in, yep, I don’t like their choices (I saw and downloaded the tax return, you seem to have missed that I referred to the article in a previous comment). ; but that is how they make money, just like many other foundations and individuals. I have my little 401k in a social fund which supposedly doesn’t invest in tobacco stocks, arms industry, etc. It usually earns less than other funds; but it is my choice. And I don’t particularly like Walmart because of its treatment of workers; but even they are not black and white. Because so many customers want antibiotic, hormone free dairy products, Walmart, being one of the largest purchasers, has led the charge to remove from dairy. I could give a few more examples. So, even Walmart is not black and white. And I absolutely hate private prisons. And global warming? Are you invested in a retirement mutual fund? Check who they invest in. Again, the Gates Foundation is just one of multiple groups and individuals who invest in such. I don’t like it one bit; but I live in the real world. Again, the dividends, etc. they make from their investments is helping people in the developing world. If you don’t like this, then I suggest you get involved in politics, write letters, e-mails, etc. to your members of Congress, to newspapers, addressing how we fund the military, including tanks and planes that our military made clear they don’t want nor need (Congress bought and paid for by industries, so monies often spent to enrich a few as opposed to benefiting the American people). Lobby, protest, fight to get Congress, etc. to actually help developing countries. This is what I do. I write OpEds in magazines and newspapers, go to town hall meetings to address politicians, etc. Once again, you conflate the source of money with how it is used. In the real world, unfortunately, most people compromise. We should destroy the cartels; but also fund orphanages, schools in developing nations.
And you continue with the absolutely stupid focus on pharmaceutical profits. As I’ve written umpteen times, of course, they make profits. Profits don’t determine the value of a product. If you or a friend had Type 1 diabetes would you see insulin as bad and refuse it. One can challenge the level of profits for many industries; but profits say nothing about a product worth.
As for the chemtrials, not worth the effort discussing them.
And you write: “At least you didn’t go to Snopes and that twit Mickelson for confirmation.”
First, I and friends have found Snopes to be quite good; but I usually, if important, do further research, find other sources. If you have ever read even one of my articles supporting vaccines you will find some have over 150 references and often I actually read twice as many. And I continue to try to keep up with developments, including just ordered a new edition of an immunology book. And I have bookmarked several fact checking websites, not just Snopes.
And you write: “twit Mickelson” just one of many examples of your name calling; but you don’t like it when people call you names. You are a friggin hypocrite.
And I wrote that I am fairly convinced if the Gates Foundation was donating money to, e.g. Age of Autism, Complementary and Alternative Medicine websites that you would be praising them. As I wrote, Joseph Mercola donated $1 million dollars to National Vaccine Information Center. Wonder which stocks he invests in???
And, as I wrote previously, I find you such a despicable person, refusing to say anything about your self, refusing to admit when wrong, seeing world in black and white, and hypocrite about name calling, since you started it, so
I WISH YOU A BAD DAY!
p.s. if you are sheltering in place like the rest of us, you have plenty of time to read, why not prove you are open-minded and order from Amazon the book on immunology I suggested? Lauren Sompayrac “How the Immune System Works 6th Edition”. You might actually learn something; but I doubt it. Yep, I am educated, including courses in formal logic and philosophy, including epistemology, numerous research methods, etc And I continue to learn. Currently reading everything on coronaviruses, including molecular biology, history etc. and also on the 1918-1919 Influenza pandemic.
ADDENDUM
U.S. Military – Our Government Lies Used for Defense when, in reality, used to further Corporate Interests
William Blum (2003). Killing Hope: US Military & CIA Interventions since World War II. Available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF1531746AAD6AC03… [also for purchase on amazon.com
Major General Smedley Butler War Is A Racket. Available at: https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdf [Butler is the most decorated marine in American history]
Mason Gaffney (March 2018). Corporate Power and Expansive U.S. Military Policy. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 77, No. 2. Pages 331 – 417. Available at: https://www.globalresearch.ca/corporate-power-and-expansive-u-s-military…
Stephen C. Schlesinger (1983). Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Inexpensive copies available on Amazon.com Also available San Diego Public Library
@Joel – Joel, I don’t care what you call me. I said I find it entertaining you give “a despicable moron”, so much time and energy.
Mikkelson, from Snopes, is a twit. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4730092/Snopes-brink-founder-accused-fraud-lying.html
Good day Joel
It looks, to me, as if Natalie is the personification of the extreme partisanship that contaminates American politics. Hence, it is not possible for anyone in the opposing camp to do good. Even if the evidence slaps you in the face with a wet fish, there is no good. Of course the opposite is true too. Nothing done by the home team can possibly be bad.
I especially enjoy it when the home team does exactly the same as the opposing camp. Suddenly the idea gains merit, the proponents gain moral stature.
I, for one, long for the day of our robot overlords.
Consider yourself: either everybody but yourself and some illuminated people are part of conspiracy, or you and your buddies are wrong. What is more probable ?
And no, dispersing aerosols from aeroplanes do not change climate. Only a nuclear weapon would have enough energy. There was an idea to fertilize oceans, but it did not go anywhere.
To back up Aarno’s point…
I’ve been trying to find this cartoon for a while now.
https://biginsanehappy.com/2018/07/28/scientific-consensus/
@ Natalie White
Once again you ignore what I wrote, focusing on one thing. As I wrote, on the whole Snopes does a good job and I always do additional research on areas I think important. I currently have 11 fact checking websites bookmarked and don’t just rely on them. If a medical topic, for instance, I search PubMed and Google Scholar.
So, let’s look at the Daily Mail article you refer to. It states: “after founder is accused”. The article is from July 26, 2017. It is now almost three years later, so, were the accusations proved??? I did a search of the internet using Google using various search strategies and found NOTHING. So, what do we know about the Daily Mail? According to Wikipedia (I’m sure you won’t believe anything from them; but the Wikipedia article gives an extensive reference list):
The Daily Mail has been widely criticised for its unreliability, as well as printing of sensationalist and inaccurate scare stories of science and medical research . . . Racism accusations. . . Homophobia accusations. . .Sexism accusations. . . The Mail’s medical and science journalism has been criticised by some doctors and scientists, accusing it of using minor studies to generate scare stories. . .the Daily Mail’s reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism, and flat-out fabrication. . .”the Daily Mail’s reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism, and flat-out fabrication”.
However, it has also won several press awards, lost a number of lawsuits; but won some also. Winning a press award doesn’t say anything about the newspaper in general. It means one or more stories were excellent. As I’ve written before, even a broken clock gets the time right twice daily. Just to be clear, I mention the press awards and winning lawsuits because as opposed to you, I don’t see the world in black and white. As I wrote in other comments, I’ve read Adam Smith and Karl Marx, F.A. Hayek, founder of Libertarian economics. The world is complex as are people and I have often found I agree with certain “facts” even among those I generally disagree with; but I also learn from them. As a Jew I hate Adolf Hitler; but in Mein Kamp his insights into mass psychology were sometimes quite good.
As it turns out the accusations against Snopes owner David Mickelson were brought against him during divorce proceedings by his wife. Golly gee, people never makes accusations during divorce proceedings???Again, can you give any reference that the charges were upheld in court?
I’ve found a number of articles that claim Snopes has a liberal bias; but others that clearly refute this. See references below of some of the articles I’ve found (I don’t give links but all easily found just type in titles).
So, once more you leap at one or, perhaps, a couple of articles, accept them as proof because they confirm your biases AND ignore everything else I wrote, e.g., being wrong about HPV vaccine trials in India, that whatever Gates motives are, those who have evaluated Gates Foundations works, find them good, that people aren’t unidimensional, that the source of money doesn’t automatically determine whether its uses are good or not, that almost all of us invested in 401ks probably include stock in companies we don’t like. Your sick world or black and white, cherry-picking confirmation bias.
Just to be absolutely clear, I personally believe Gates as well as most of the super rich acquired their fortunes by unethical, often despicable means. And they manage to maintain them by our corrupt bought and paid for government. Doesn’t change the fact that Gates treats his employees well and, as opposed to many other billionaires, at least uses some of his fortune to do good, maybe just to help him in other endeavors, maybe not, still Gates Foundation does good. I personally don’t like any of our billionaires; but if I ran a group to help, for instance, poor people pay for their insulin, and Gates offered money, I wouldn’t hesitate to take it, at the same time fighting to get our government to stop the extortionist exorbitant profits of our pharmaceutical industry. And yes, again, they do make a profit on vaccines.
And you write:
@ Narad – The guy behind Media Bias/Fact Check, David Van Zandt. All I needed to see MIT, board member Council on Foreign Relations and AMC Network, David is compromised and a tool of the system. I’m out.
Once more you didn’t do your homework. From Media Bias/Fact Check:
“Who in the heck is Dave Van Zandt?
Dave M. Van Zandt obtained a Communications Degree before pursuing a higher degree in the sciences. Dave currently works full time in the health care industry. Dave has spent more than 20 years as an arm chair researcher on media bias and its role in political influence. For the record, he also is not the President of the New School, that is a different David E. Van Zandt who is the head of a liberal college in New York City. I am an unaffiliated voter from North Carolina.”
So, yep David E. Van Zandt is a member of Council of Foreign Relations, though I couldn’t find his affiliation with MIT; but you got it WRONG! And you immediately seeing MIT, Council of Foreign Relations, AMC network as proof of someone’s bias is absurd. MIT is one of our premier universities, with professors representing the political spectrum. Council of Foreign Relations has many members and they aren’t clones of one another. Besides, I agree with some of their positions, disagree with others, and am neutral on still others. You just immediately see world in black and white.
You are incredible. You are a moron on steroids.
@Joel – Joel, I don’t care what you call me. I said I find it entertaining you give “a despicable moron”, so much time and energy.
As I wrote, I could care less about you; but you represent much of what is wrong in this world, a moron who thinks they are right, who cherry picks, confirmation bias, who ignores most of what others write, picking only one or a couple things, then still get it wrong. And, again, so you think you should be able to post comments that are so absolutely wrong and no one should challenge you.
Once again, I ask you to tell us about you, your education, training, profession, why you think you are right about anything. YOU ARE A DESPICABLE MORON! ! !
References:
Media Bias/Fact Check. Frequently Asked Questions
Rich Buhler (2015 Aug 11). Snopes CEO Arrested on Fraud, Corruption Charges-Fiction! Truth or Fiction?
Carole Fader (2012 Sep 28). Fact Check: So who’s checking the fact-finders? We are. The Florida Times-Union.
David Folkenflik (2017 Jul 26). Who’s The True Boss Of Snopes? Legal Fight Puts Fact-Check Site At Risk. NPR
Keith J. Kelly (2017 Jul 25). Bitter divorce fuels Snopes’ slow demise. New York Post.
WIkipedia. Daily Mail.
WIkipedia. Snopes.
AND BAD DAY TO YOU
I’m from the UK. The Daily Mail is a despicable rag, famous for spinning every story into a racist Armageddon. Frankly, anyone who uses it as a fact check is a fool and probably racist. We’re not even talking bias. Those at least can be read with a pinch of salt and cross referenced against other sources. Nope, we are talking full on, living in a universe of their own making.
As for Snopes, I’ve seen plenty of anti-Trump stories debunked on there. Good enough for me to prove at least some allegiance to facts rather than spin.
I guess its impossible for some people to realise that they can be wrong. Their idea of a fact check is ‘does it agree with me?’.
I’m sure Natalie will be back in a nonce with an appropriately contrite tone.
@Narad writes, “Anyway, you’ve dug up “dirt” on the wrong Dave Van Zandt, Sherlock” Yes, I messed up! Jokes on me! Apologies to both Davids.
Now, if I could just get my third eye to open….all the way.
Good day Cheeky.
@ Natalie White
And you were wrong about Bill Gates and deaths from HPV vaccine trials in India. And you based your opinion of Snopes on an article in a scandal newspaper, not much different from the National Inquirer. And your opinion of Council on Foreign Relations, AMC, MIT, just plain black and white stupidity. Oh well, par for the course with you.
I no longer trust Yahoo! Answers for all my COV-2 laundry questions.
https://bgr.com/2020/04/15/coronavirus-tips-covid-19-virus-might-survive-high-temperatures/
I don’t think I want to do my laundry in a boiling cauldron and none of the detergents (HE so it’s low on surfactants/high on stupid shirt-eating enzymes) at the store are on this list:
https://www.americanchemistry.com/Novel-Coronavirus-Fighting-Products-List.pdf
My ineptitude with bleach has left my favorite dark blue-black shirt looking like somebody did something unsavory all over the bottom left side of it.
I’ve been just keeping the exposed clothes in weekly rotation save for the in-home ones.
Any suggestions?
@ Tim
If you’ve got enough sunlight where you live, hang on a line after washing. Give it time. Sunlight kills most viruses and if dried in sunlight clothes smell really good.
On the other hand, if you wash your clothes with a decent detergent, then dry hot in dryer, then hang in closet overnight, the risk is extremely small. Being cautious is one thing; but don’t become paranoid.
Bwwaahahahah. That ship has sailed long before cofefe-19 got here. Ggood point about the sunlight, though. I’ve got tanning bed bulbs but their cathode heaters are burned out and it is hard to know how to regulate them running on high frequency (15 kHz) current.
@ TIm
I don’t know about the bulbs, it is ultra-violet rays from the sun that kills viruses. I found some articles online that claims the amount of uv light from sun not enough to kill viruses. Not was I was taught; but I’ll have to investigate further. However, if you wash the clothes well, then hang in sun, until I find at differently, I still think you should be safe. And drying at hottest temperature after washing, then hanging in closet for a day or two should be OK.
If I dry my jeans at the ‘hottest’ temperature, my Ken doll would find it hard to fit into them.
@ Tim
Apparently you don’t really want advise. As I explained, if you wash well, dry (sunlight or hot), then hang in closet for a couple of days the risk is extremely small that any virions will remain. Don’t bother to respond.
I have a hypothesis on what happened in Dr. Raoult’s initial trial.
The combination of oddly balanced treatment arms and maddeningly vague criteria for assignment of azithromycin (“depending on their clinical presentation”) screams post-hoc analysis to me. That is, Raoult went through concomitant medications/conditions in the HCQ group and latched onto a subgroup that had good outcomes.
If true, this would explain why the HCQ arm and HCQ+AZ arms had a ratio of 6:16 (not planned as separate arms), and why there was no concrete assignment criteria for AZ (clinicians applied their individual judgements, which were inconsistent enough that a unifying set of criteria couldn’t be build afterwards).
This is of course a big no-no in statistics, since post-hoc analysis inflates the chance of getting a positive result. If you feel compelled to perform one (perhaps to generate hypotheses for future investigation), you must report that you are performing post-hoc analysis to avoid misleading your audience.
“I guess its impossible for some people to realise that they can be wrong. Their idea of a fact check is ‘does it agree with me?’.”
Alternately, their idea of fact-checking is “That site is terrible. Hahahahahaha!”
No matter how unreliable one thinks an informational website is, the correct response to someone citing a dubious story from one is to debunk the story using evidence, and only then laugh at the website.
Gene Ray is not Shinichi Mochizuki.
Why is this link banned???????
I’ll try this one of lesser quality:
Why was it banned, Orac? DMCA orr…
[…] Dr. Didier Raoult: Bad science on COVID-19 and bullying critics April 14, 2020 […]
Ahh. But people without sense might buy into it. It’s probably pretty scammy and totally without QC at this point but:
https://nypost.com/2020/04/30/blood-of-supposedly-recovered-coronavirus-patients-sold-on-dark-web/
https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/coronavirus-vaccines-allegedly-made-from-blood-of-recovered-covid19-patients-for-sale-on-dark-web/news-story/fe3a50907ff58e2c9f5d75588d2927e4
[…] again all over French media over the last few days, sounding very Trumpian while promoting himself, denigrating and bullying his critics, and generally portraying himself as a scientific genius, whom other doctors and scientists just […]
[…] ce sujet les explications d’experts médicaux bien plus compétents que moi notamment ici, ici, ici, ici, ici, ici, ici, ici et ici) : sélection de patients avec des symptômes légers, […]
[…] hard as it is to believe, it’s been a month since I’ve written about Didier Raoult and his promotion of the combination of the antimalarial drug […]
[…] necessary to detect any effect) and causes harm through cardiac arrhythmias, the hydroxychloroquine con men, grifters, and cultists are unrelenting. But this morning I’ve been feeling signs of snapping […]
[…] low or zero (more likely zero). Nonetheless, a “brave maverick” French scientist named Didier Raoult, grifting doctors (including Dr. Mehmet Oz), and Donald Trump with his sycophants, toadies, and […]
[…] being touted as a cure for a deadly infectious disease based on its promotion by a French “brave maverick scientist” and the President of the United States, I’d have told you that, even during the Trump era, […]
WTF is this crap?! ^^^
Oh yeah, fake news, that’s what it is.
Real news:
THE HCQ SCANDAL
https://drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9RqfsmEx55FDum4xY_IlWSHnGbj/view
https://www.dailywire.com/news/french-peer-reviewed-study-our-treatment-cured-100-of-coronavirus-patients
You’re citing Del Bigtree and Didier Raoult? ???♂️
Who are citing studies refuting this articles “claims”. Don’t make connections very well do you? 🙄
There have been 100’s of thousands of people cured of Covid-19 in the U.S., both with and without HCQ. Several well organized trials are underway to see if there is a real benefit to this drug. But all the results published so far are negative.
But you are welcome to find any that do show a real benefit and cite them for us.
“There have been 100’s of thousands of people cured of Covid-19 in the U.S., both with and without HCQ.”
“both with and without HCQ.”
So HCQ IS a good therapy. Got it!
Thanks
Way to twist an argument.
@ Randall
Jim Meehan really is a piece of work. How does he manage to crank up so much nonsense in his webpage, his twitter feed and this video?
If I want “medical freedom”, it’s because I know that there are crackpots like Meehan out there doing just what they feel like doing with their patients, regardless of what the rest of the world roughly knows to be true.
So I assume you are an M.D.?
What’s your background?
Jim Meehan really is a piece of work. How does he manage to crank up so much nonsense in his webpage, his twitter feed and this video?
So he cites evidence that the study participants who were administered HCQ by Oxford and W.H.O. were overdosed causing harm to some of them and you are calling that nonsense.
Yet Turkey and a France are reporting good results.
Wow, SMH.
I think the crank is the one responding to me.
@ Randall
“So I assume you are an M.D.? What’s your background?”
Nope. Not an MD. Orac is. Joel Harrison is. Christopher Hickie is. And I’m probably missing quite a number of regulars on this blog. Stick that smart question up to their faces and see how well it goes down.
But if my ‘nym is not too explicit, I’ll maybe stick a cornucopia of letters. Like “F68.10 MBP X ENS UR”. And I’ll let you do the figuring out of the meaning of the letters yourself…. I’d rather die than stick an “MD” to these. If you want to talk to an MD, talk to Orac.
And if you want to continue playing the “credentials game” with me, please check how it goes down when I’m full of warm fuzzy feelings.
There also are some nurses on this blog, some scientists with other backgrounds, scientifically minded people who are not scientists. Some cranks too, some loons, people with experience as medical patients, some lay people with view ranging from far left to far right, who are “more or less” welcome and usually can get on quite a ride as they get mildly bullied by regulars to improve on their critical thinking skills. Try taking on Joel Harrison, for instance. He can be quite the “Shufflepuck Café Experience” at times.
Welcome, wanderer, to a place that offers you a much needed respite from the trials of bleak existence.
“So he cites evidence that the study participants who were administered HCQ by Oxford and W.H.O. were overdosed causing harm to some of them and you are calling that nonsense.”
Pretty much.
“Yet Turkey and a France are reporting good results.”
Bullshit.
“I think the crank is the one responding to me.”
Double-check your brain wiring and rewatch the video you posted. There’s a french kindergarten saying that goes “c’est celui qui dit qui l’est”.
And you kind of missed what squirrelelite claimed: “But all the results published so far are negative.” And went on pretending he claimed just the opposite.
And you wrote to Orac:
“Who are citing studies refuting this articles “claims”. Don’t make connections very well do you?”
I can quote many things by many peoples. Nazis, criminals, flat-earthers among others. Doesn’t make them true. Squirrelelite has already told you that studies do not show benefits of hydroxychloroquine. Did you miss it?
Seems like it.
[…] shamelessly touted as a highly effective treatment—cure, even—for COVID-19 its promotion by a French “brave maverick scientist” and the President.. How did this come about? I’ll repeat the story, because it’s clear […]
[…] hydroxychloroquine, as a very effective treatment for COVID-19 by a group that includes a “brave maverick” French Doctor named Didier Raoult, as well as Donald Trump, his economic advisor Peter […]
[…] hydroxychloroquine, as a very effective treatment for COVID-19 by a group that includes a “brave maverick” French Doctor named Didier Raoult, as well as Donald Trump, his economic advisor Peter […]
[…] hydroxychloroquine, as a very effective treatment for COVID-19 by a group that includes a “brave maverick” French Doctor named Didier Raoult, as well as Donald Trump, his economic advisor Peter […]
[…] Raoult and Vladimir Zelenko. I’ve written about Didier Raoult, a “brave maverick” true believer in his combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and a bully, on several occasions, starting with his truly execrable study claiming that his combination of […]
[…] original recommendation about hydroxychloroquine, one Didier Raoult, is an interesting character. Significant parts of the medical community regard him as a lunatic and a quack, and he apparently has a history of fabricating data and results. The original trials in which he […]
[…] Un alt cercetător care a criticat studiile lui Raoult și l-a acuzat de „populism medical” a fost amenințat că va fi dat în judecată pentru defăimare. Asta direct de pe contul de Twitter al […]
” Dr. Raoult do real harm not just to science, but to patient. ” How can you dare write such things. What a shame! His first concern is towards his patients.
“This term definitely describes Didier Raoult, whose persona is downright Trumpian, pure bullshit artist” Do you know Raout’s curriculum vitae? Have a look at it in order not to say this crap on line. And Trump has nothing to do with that.
“The first of his trio of scientific crap was an unrandomized study ” are you talking about yourself because for me you are a crap when you say these things. Unrandomized studies are not cheap, take a lot of time and therefore are not systematically carried out nowadays .
I write such things because they are my opinion based on science and my observations.
@ VPO
“His first concern is towards his patients.”
Which doesn’t change a darn thing.
No matter how much emotional bullshitting you may spew, that doesn’t change a darn thing.
Full of non sense this blog
Shame on you
[…] The abstract itself is singularly unimpressive and, in fact, isn’t even a study but rather published as an editorial citing an article by antivaccine “scientist” James Lyons-Weiler. (No wonder I couldn’t find an entry for the study on ClinicalTrials.gov!) The study was retrospective, not randomized, not blinded (much less double blinded), and involved all manner of quackery, including oral vitamins A, C, D, and iodine given to 107 subjects (99%), with intravenous solutions of hydrogen peroxide and Vitamin C were given to 32 (30%) and 37 (35%) subjects, 37 patients (35%) of the cohort receiving intramuscular ozone, and a nebulized hydrogen peroxide/saline mixture, with Lugol’s iodine used by 91 (85%). This is about as quacky as it gets. Brownstein claims that 100% of the 107 patients treated recovered, with a high degree of rapid symptomatic improvement. This is the very definition of an utterly uninformative study, even less informative that Didier Raoult’s awful studies. […]