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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

President Trump encouraged trying hydroxycloroquine early on when there were early indications it might work. The problem is that he is considered such a villain by the left that they want it not to work just to prove him wrong. Such is the state of politics in the US.

IMHO he was right to lean on the FDA to find out if its effective. Since it's already available, it would make sense for doctors to try it, but most are not trained in doing controlled trials so the results are all over the map.

Most noticable to me is that when referring to this issue/drug, the media always points out that HCQ is not approved for covid-19. They neglect to point out that there is no approved treatment at all. It seems like an attempt to make Trump look reckless and irresponsible.

Objectivity and politics dont mix.

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You do realize that, yes, "most [doctors] are not trained in doing controlled trials" because they have another job, the job of being a doctor? Running large RCTs takes time and a different sort of education.

Source: married to a physician who usually has a 1,200 patient panel, with a diversity of conditions; said physician spouse was at one point recruited to run an RCT for a drug company and did a lot of work to prepare and then pulled out because spouse figured out they'd not be allowed the latitude to improve the study design, and felt that the study design was slanted inappropriately to supporting the efficacy of the drug (it was not being compared to standard of care but instead to a demonstrably inferior treatment, a previous standard of care).

Yeah, objectivity and politics don't mix. There are people who do RCTs and do them well, and they're not just random doctors kind of scattering drugs among their patient panel.

>> You do realize that, yes, "most [doctors] are not trained in doing controlled trials" because they have another job...

Absolutely. It wasn't a criticism, just the way things are. For example, one doctor is claiming HCQ + zinc + antibiotic has treated over 700 covid-19 patients without a single death. I think it would be appropriate for someone to audit his records to see if that's true (was it even covid? or just some cold going around in his area?). If another doctor wanted to replicate his alleged success, I could easily see them using a slightly different protocol (skipping the zinc, using a different antibiotic, changing when or how much to administer, etc) and then claiming he's wrong when it doesn't work for them. That's just how a lot of people behave unless they've been trained otherwise.

The problem wasn't that Trump encouraged trying it, but that he clearly exaggerated what we knew about its effects and continued to do so for a long time even after having been confronted about it.

Trumps history of exaggeration goes before and anyone sane accounts for it.

I can personally discount everything he says, that doesn't make it any less legitimate to say that the President of the United States shouldn't hold press conferences in which he over-hypes the proven effectiveness of certain drugs during a pandemic.

Otherwise anyone can just claim anything whenever they want without any proof whatsoever.

One must live in the world as it is, not as we wish it would be. Thus we need to consider actions, words and results separately.

Independent of whether that is actually right, where did I consider them to be connected in this discussion? I'm not even inferring a political motive, I'm just stating that it is a dumb thing to say.

So everyone, including frightened elderly people, is supposed to have a prior that the president is a liar and should be ignored, and thus it is acceptable for Trump to say what he wants? That's a frankly bizarre approach.

It’s almost funny that the best that Trump supporters can come up with these days is “but everyone knows he has no clue and lies a lot”.

It's like they think we don't remember hearing about how he was the only honest, incorruptible candidate in the field because he was self-funded and "said what he thought," rather than "talking like a politician." Or how his competence as a businessman and hard-as-nails negotiator was worth more than any amount of political expertise.

We don't even hear about four-dimensional chess or "draining the swamp" anymore.

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