Monday, March 23, 2020

i flipped through this study, and it doesn't present a mechanism or otherwise explain why you would use an antibiotic to treat a virus - it just suggests some kind of "synergistic effect".

i didn't think this was worth commenting on until i saw that cuomo was ordering clinical trials, and it sort of clicked.

given that most people that get this thing will clear it from their system fairly quickly, that the mortality rate is probably around 0.5%, there is a very high likelihood of false positives in a randomized trial. the reality is that you could have observed roughly equivalent results by giving them pixie dust.

so, what's going on then?

my best guess is that some drug companies are looking to cash in on this by eliminating supply of a drug that has essentially no use in the northern latitudes, and they're betting on people being too hysterical about the whole thing to think it through.

and, the more people that you prescribe this to that will beat the virus very easily on it's own, the more evidence that you'll build that it works.

as mentioned, given that 99% of people will beat this thing with absolutely no medical intervention at all, clinical trials are unlikely to produce much of anything of value, unless they're very narrowly targeted.

what you actually want to see here is a mechanism, which means you should be handing this off to those spectroscopy labs.

but, trump is apparently more interested in increasing profits for drug companies than he is in crafting any kind of serious response to this.