Hacker News Reader

Comment by chimichangga | Hacker News Reader

FDA: emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine

https://www.fda.gov/media/136534/download

Yep, and this possibility has become a right cluster-fuck for many people that have other needs for the drug.

Many Lupus sufferers can no longer get this because of possible use (https://www.kqed.org/science/1960404/at-kaiser-trumps-pharma...)

I know people that have this condition and have been told there's none available at pharmacies when in fact it's in stock (based on how they resolved their problem).

And how did they resolve their problem?

They asked until they reached the right person? Its not that uncommon of a pattern, sadly.

Basically this.

Here’s a bit on that French doctor who started this particular craze: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/didier-raoult-hy...

He doesn’t believe in evolution, nor climate change. At the end of January, he called warnings of a pandemic „crazy“. He has published 3000 papers in the last ten years. And even the photo of him is quite funny if you followed the news in 2016.

Judging by the list of trials, an awful lot of resources is spent on this. I wonder what the opportunity costs are.

There's a ridiculous controversy in France about this guy. Lots of French people see him as the misunderstood genius that could save us from the virus, if it weren't for our evil government (obviously sold to the pharmaceutical companies). We even have celebrities (actors, rappers, humorists...) begging the president to listen to this doctor. We reached the point where we trust "celebrities" more than the scientists leading the effort to fight the pandemics.

I watched the Greek daily COVID-19 update, and the epidemiologist in charge was asked about chloroquine specifically. He said that we are administering it to patients, along with 1-2 other drugs (if they want it), but the results haven't been conclusive yet.

We "only" have 2-5 deaths a day, so it's not a huge sample size, but if the drug were extremely effective, you wouldn't need a very large sample size to see a difference.

> We "only" have 2-5 deaths a day, so it's not a huge sample size, but if the drug were extremely effective, you wouldn't need a very large sample size to see a difference.

I'm not so sure about that. If the goal is to get from 97% case survival rates to 99+%, the results may not be all that obvious from small sample sizes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com