Health Care Provider Suspends Chloroquine Prescription for Woman With Lupus | Hacker News Reader

Health Care Provider Suspends Chloroquine Prescription for Woman With Lupus

buzzfeednews.com

Drug is 8 cents a pill produced generic in India. They aren’t going to export it any more but you had your chance. You wanted to protect local pharma against generics. They’re protected.

Healthcare is full of artificially induced shortages in America, and Americans pay for that every day with their lives. Now, that’s just slightly more obvious.

The HN title is abysmal, here is the one from the site:

A Woman With Lupus Said Her Health Care Provider Is Stopping Her Chloroquine Prescription And Thanked Her For The “Sacrifice”

Gosh title case is jarring to read sometimes :/

Sorry about the abysmal title, but 'A Woman With Lupus Said Her Health Care Provider Is Stopping Her Chloroquine Prescription And Thanked Her For The “Sacrifice”' is 45 characters too long.

Understandable :)

"Kaiser Lauds Lupus Patient's Cancelled Chloroquine Prescription as a Sacrifice"

Or just

"Kaiser Sacrifices Lupus Patient's Chloroquine Prescription"

So title is silly. They explained the drug builds up in the body and lasts ~40 days. Kaiser goes on to explain why it's necessary, steps to take if you start feeling worse, and that it's only expected to be temporary.

I really don't see the problem here. If you really can go 40 days then why not let people that critically need it have access?

Because the evidence that it is effective against Corvid-19 is shaky as best.

The problem is that the drug doesn't stay at an effective level in the body for 40 days (it also takes more than a month for the drug to take effect), and the consequences of allowing lupus to flair include accumulating permanent damage to, for example, heart, lungs, kidneys and joints. Additionally, there's no good information yet on how an immunocompromised patient in a flair will react to coronavirus infection, beyond the general notion from our rheumatologist that putting your malfunctioning immune system into a state of dysfunction and then getting the virus that puts your immune system into a state of dysfunction is probably really bad.

source: my partner has rheumatoid arthritis and takes hydroxychloroquine, and we've been concerned about exactly this sort of thing happening for a while now.

https://www.virginiamercury.com/2020/03/27/virginia-pharmaci...

https://people.com/health/kaiser-permanente-temporarily-stop...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com