Unreported Facts Yield Questions Without Answers



Questions about the current state of things:

NYC Critical care physician Dr. Steve Kassapidis appeared on Fox News Tucker Carlson  on 3/27:  "I've been one of the lucky ones who started on Plaquenil as prophylaxis..."

Plalquenil is the name for the generic hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug.

3/19 Trump talks about Hydroxychloroquine for the first time...

In what was otherwise a Trump hit piece, The Guardian:

"The US president last week used a press conference to promote the use of hydroxychloroquine, a common anti-malaria drug, to treat Covid-19, saying: “I sure as hell think we ought to give it a try.”

He followed this with a tweet that claimed the use of the drug in combination with azithromycin, an antibiotic, could be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine”.

Trump was immediately contradicted by public health experts including his own top infectious diseases adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, who warned that there was only “anecdotal evidence” that the drugs could be helpful."

Question -- if it's only "anecdotal evidence", why are medical workers taking it? How many are taking it? In NYC or elsewhere? Was this done on their own or by hospital officials? The Doc interviewed on Tucker sounds as if it was recommended by a higher authority... but doesn't say. I can't find any stories specifically citing medical officials prescribing it for their workers. However, some doctors are using it on patients right now.

From Science Magazine:

“The president was talking about hope,” Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said diplomatically at one of the White House briefings where Trump praised the drugs’ potential.

“The best way to know whether a medication for COVID-19 is effective is through a high-quality clinical trial,” says Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former principal deputy Food and Drug Administration commissioner. “Efforts to widely distribute unproven treatments are misguided at best and dangerous at worst.”

Question: OK, if it's 'misguided and dangerous', why are health care workers taking it? If it shows promise, why would you want to delay treatment for a "high-quality" clinical trial that could take months?

From The Daily Beast:

Drug researchers and medical experts say that hydroxychloroquine requires further research before being implemented on a wide scale. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that a trial to test the drug will begin on Tuesday.

Some...medical providers around the country have jumped on the hoarding bandwagon, trying to amass a supply of a drug that is not yet proven to work on COVID-19 and that should be reserved for the sickest patients if it is.

From NBC News:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and other experts have emphasized the need for large clinical studies to determine what can be effective in fighting COVID-19. Over the weekend, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that New York will begin testing drugs, including hydroxychloroquine, for treatment of the coronavirus. And on Monday, Cuomo signed an amended executive order that restricts pharmacists from dispensing hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine “except when written as prescribed for an FDA-approved indication, or as part of a state approved clinical trial related to COVID-19 for a patient who has tested positive for COVID-19.”

From KGW/Portland:

NBC News reports in a handful of states, some doctors have been prescribing hydroxychloroquine and Z-Paks for themselves and their families as a precaution or inappropriately prescribing hydroxychloroquine to patients, causing a run on the drug in pharmacies across the United States.

Why wouldn't NBC's reporting be considered "inappropriate"? Wouldn't Doctors taking precautions for their own health and safety be a positive course of action? Would NBC prefer to have a shortage of healthy doctors or plenty of 'confirmed cases' among medical professionals who may have inadvertently helped spread the virus by continuing to practice without taking every available "precaution"?

Finally, CBC News reports "Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle begin an anxiously awaited first-stage study of a potential COVID-19 vaccine developed in record time after the new virus exploded from China and fanned across the globe.".

The story details the first volunteer to be vaccinated. Why can't anyone volunteer to take the same medication(s) being taken and prescribed by doctors and medical staff? The same DPA used for ventilators could be used for manufacture of the drug.

The hydroxychloroquine questions need some hard, fast and honest answers at a time when Government and Media aren't doing their best jobs in keeping citizens accurately informed rather than contributing to the the problem with untimely comments and political cheap-shot 'reporting'.









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