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WHO Pulls HCQ from Global Trial After Research Shows Increased Risk to Patients

The World Health Organization is pausing the use of hydroxychloroquine in a global clinical trial on coronavirus treatments:

The move comes after the medical journal The Lancet reported on Friday that patients getting hydroxychloroquine were dying at higher rates than other coronavirus patients.

The WHO has 3,500 patients from 17 countries enrolled in what it calls the Solidarity Trial. This is an effort overseen by the WHO to find new treatments for COVID-19. The patients in the trial have been randomly assigned to be treated with hydroxychloroquine, which is a common malaria drug, or three other experimental drugs for treating COVID-19 in various combinations. Only the hydroxychloroquine part of the trial is being put on hold [Jason Beaubien, “WHO Halts Hydroxychloroquine Trial over Safety Concerns,” NPR, 2020.05.25].

No word yet on whether the doctors at Sanford Health or Governor Kristi Noem will take similar precautions and suspend South Dakota’s HCQ trial. But Donald Trump, who just finished taking HCQ to ward off the coronavirus that broke out in the White House, blindly insists that HCQ is (like everything else for which he lacks evidence and vocabulary) tremendous:

Well, I’ve heard tremendous reports about it. Frankly, I’ve heard tremendous reports. Many people think it saved their lives. Doctors come out with reports. You had a study in France, you had a study in Italy that were incredible studies. Look, if somebody else were promoting it other than me, call it a promotion because I want people to get better. I don’t get anything. I don’t gain anything other than if it’s something that helps, that’s a good thing. That’s what I want. That’s all I want. I believe in it enough that I took a program because I had two people in the White House that tested positive. I figured maybe it’s a good thing to take a program. You know, we take a little bit of a period of time, I think it was two weeks. But hydroxy has had tremendous, if you look at it, tremendous, rave reviews [Donald Trump, interview with Sharyl Attkisson, Sinclair Broadcasting: Full Measure, 2020.05.24].

World health experts pull hydroxychloroquine from a big scientific experiment out of evidenced concern for patient safety, while the occupant of the White House, the man with the biggest microphone in the world, tells people to keep popping those pills. I feel like we’re stuck in a third-world country and need the WHO to parachute in with some blue-helmeted peacekeepers to save us from our own destructive leaders.

12 Comments

  1. mike from iowa

    Last updated: May 26, 2020, 17:05 GMT
    United States
    Coronavirus Cases:
    1,713,463
    Deaths:
    100,046

  2. Debbo

    I think Medical Moron should continue taking it along with his snorted Adderall and whatever other random drugs he ingests.

    An interesting stat was just published in Axios:

    The N.Y. Times calculates that counties won by Trump in 2016 — with 45% of the population — have recorded just 27% of virus infections and 21% of the deaths.
    And Bloomberg reported: “In states Trump won in 2016, 23 people have lost a job for every 1 person infected. In states Democrat Hillary Clinton won, 13 people have lost a job for every person infected.”

    But I wonder how many of those red states are honestly and diligently reporting their cases and deaths? Haven’t some of them admitted that they’re changing the way they count? IOW – lying.

    It’s apparent they aren’t managing their economies as well. Axios also says it does not appear likely that people will attend various functions en masse. Polls continue to show that most people across the country are going to be very cautious about returning to “normal.”

  3. leslie

    67 more positives in SD, 9 west river. How Many in Penn Cty?

    Grrrr. Trump/Noem hydroxy distraction.

    Lots of reporting of cancelled Pandemic Plan in place and diligently implemented since 09. Trump cancelled it along with many other health/environment saving “regulations”. Criminal corrupt crony malicious Republican abettors.

  4. Debbo

    Twitter is fact checking Liar-in-chief’s BS about HCQ!
    NPR
    is.gd/SDzlBo

  5. grudznick

    West river needs to rip off the mask and get a little herd immunity, or we’ll be dealing with this nonsense for the next 2 years. At least, that’s what a fellow I spoke to tonight told me. He’s old, and frail, and grumpy about this, but he hid from the glaring sun as he was washing off the back of his $200,000 motor home as he explained the herd immunity.

    The spiking of the covids is still to come, grudznick fears. Time will tell. Time will tell.

  6. More to come indeed, Grudz. I’d like to see if your RV acquaintance would like to step out of his abstractions and volunteer to die for our sins. I’d like to see if he’d let us hop him up on double-doses of HCQ heart-racing pills.

    Selfish jerks like the guy with the expensive want a solution that doesn’t require them to make any immediate personal sacrifice. They think they can luck out and not get sick, and that it will only be someone else’s wife and child who catch the disease, suffer, and die so he can go on enjoying his carefree lifestyle.

  7. Donald Pay

    That extended quote from Trump is just mind-blowing in so many ways. First, you have the child-like story-telling. Then, of course, the limited vocabulary to reinforce the child-like nature of his speaking. There’s the repetition, a sales technique, but also something you do when you are thinking about the lie you just told, and want to reinforce it or deny it or both at the same time. But the nut in this rambling answer is this:

    “Look, if somebody else were promoting it other than me, call it a promotion because I want people to get better. I don’t get anything. I don’t gain anything other than if it’s something that helps, that’s a good thing. That’s what I want. That’s all I want…..”

    He outed himself here, realizes it, and then spends the whole rest of the quote trying, like a dog, to bury the bone. He didn’t say how much he was getting paid (or which one of his LLCs were getting slipped the cash) to “promote” (his own words) hydroxychloroquine. But there is little question that he is taking money. “Promoting” is, after all, what Donald Trump’s business is. That’s all he’s done all his life. And that is what he gets paid to do.

    Not convinced? Look at his double denial that comes next. Then his fabrication of a false reality he wants you to believe. This is classic Donald Trump. He outs himself in public view, then tries his best to cover it up or minimize it.

    I had an advantage over Donald Trump. My Mom told me I should never lie because I’m bad at it. She told me she could always tell when I was lying. And, so, gradually, over the years, with my Mom pounding that into my pea brain, I came to appreciate my Mom’s advice, and began to do less lying. Apparently, Donald Trump didn’t have a perceptive enough Mom, or one who would give him the advice he needed to hear.

  8. marvin kammerer

    does anyone have any proof that the the long nosed president. isnt’lying ?

  9. Richard Schriever

    Donald – “Donald Trump didn’t have a perceptive enough Mom, or one who would give him the advice he needed to hear.” In reality, he spent lot of his youth “away” at boarding schools, not at home with Mom much ever – and when he was around home, his dad dragged him around with him from one shady business enterprise to another as “training”.

  10. Here’s the update, Steve:

    The statewide hydroxychloroquine trial, a collaboration among Sanford Health, Avera Health and Monument Health, and sponsored by the state of South Dakota, has been discontinued following the publication of new research from a large controlled trial that found no efficacy in preventing COVID-19 for people exposed to the virus.

    The University of Minnesota this week published the results of its study in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is one of the nation’s first randomized trials with the drug. The study, which had a similar design to the planned South Dakota trial, found no benefit of hydroxychloroquine over a placebo as a post-exposure preventive therapy [“South Dakota Hydroxychloroquine Trial Discontinued After New Research Finds Lack Of Efficacy,” Vermillion Plain Talk, 2020.06.05].

    Any questions?

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