Comment by justsee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by justsee | Hacker News Reader

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It was disappointing to see that segue from Gates.

Consider that the pile-on of that doctor - an African from Cameroon where Christianity is blended with traditional tribal superstition - happened around the same time as the Professor of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health published a Newsweek piece on how HCL is a valid early-stage treatment [1].

I understand this is how the media works: an advocate of HCL who has fringe cultural beliefs was retweeted by Trump, so the story was irresistible and endlessly amplified (including here by Gates).

But the quality of debate would be so much better if the media engaged with the (superficially) strongest proponents of a position (such as Harvey Risch) and aimed withering criticism and analysis at them instead. Shouldn't the focus be on dismantling the claims of the most, not the least, credentialed proponents?

Instead the media from all quarters deliberately amplifies the most fringe proponents, so now HCL is shorthand for expressing disdain for particular cultural beliefs, and those 10 million views were significantly driven by most media outlets covering her.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exis...

Yes, objectively the evidence I've seen supports that HCL and zinc, if given early enough, improve the outcome for the patient.

The media, which is mostly left leaning, ignores this and instead prefers to take cheap shots at Trump whenever possible on the subject. It seems very biased, very childish, and entirely divorced from reality - actually that more or less sums up the state of US politics lately.

In the above comment I'm advocating for honest debate, not HCL.

That debate has of course not been particularly honest: amplifying the weakest proponents, fabrication of negative data with the Surgisphere scandal [1] and fixating on studies which don't replicate the claimed beneficial outpatient (pre-hospitalization) treatment processes (low-dose HCL, zinc, azithromycin).

However none of that means HCL is actually effective, just that the public debate being prosecuted is quite weak when looked at carefully.

It could just be that once a mainstream position is established (which might be correct!) it becomes easier to engage in influencing to enforce or signal tribal commitment to the established consensus in place of continued honest debate.

I really don't want to hear about the cultural beliefs of the weakest advocates, or of studies which don't replicate the claimed treatment.

I want to see engagement with the strongest advocates, and studies which irrefutably rule out the specific treatment, and if they rule this out as just another alluring low-cost, ineffective treatment, then at least we've reached that point honestly.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/12/covid-19-studi...

I'd like to see people approach the debate with enough nuance to recognize that the science on recent topics is extremely flawed, and the trustworthiness of results is decreased significantly when it becomes politicized.

And honestly, doing placebo-controlled studies might be a colossal mistake. If people genuinely benefit from the placebo effect, it's a feature, not a flaw. If people get HCQ+Z-pac+zinc and recover then it's a victory either way. If people are incorrectly led to believe HCQ is poison and get a reverse-placebo effect then we're not really helping anyone, are we?

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