WHEN THE DENIALATI SPEAK, TRUMP LISTENS
The President's endorsement of a meme touted on Breitbart and Whats Up With Watts went viral last week.
The tempest in a tonic bottle began when Roy Spencer incorrectly claimed that the coronavirus pandemic had spared warm, malaria prone nations, and suggested this reflected the tropical ubiquity of antimalarials like chloroquine.
Dellingpole & Watts then jumped on the fever bark bandwagon with Schweppervescent glee. Confusing synthetic chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine with quinine Cinchona bark, extract. Watts posted an Amazon link to Schweppes Tonic Water : gin & tonic was originally concocted to wash down the bitter daily dose of quinine that quivvered stiff upper lips in the malarial outposts of the British Raj.
The World Health Organization responded to Trump's press conference prescriptions by emphasizing research on using existing antiviral drugs for coronavirus treatment, as Science reported today :
The tempest in a tonic bottle began when Roy Spencer incorrectly claimed that the coronavirus pandemic had spared warm, malaria prone nations, and suggested this reflected the tropical ubiquity of antimalarials like chloroquine.
Dellingpole & Watts then jumped on the fever bark bandwagon with Schweppervescent glee. Confusing synthetic chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine with quinine Cinchona bark, extract. Watts posted an Amazon link to Schweppes Tonic Water : gin & tonic was originally concocted to wash down the bitter daily dose of quinine that quivvered stiff upper lips in the malarial outposts of the British Raj.
The World Health Organization responded to Trump's press conference prescriptions by emphasizing research on using existing antiviral drugs for coronavirus treatment, as Science reported today :
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine
At a press conference on Friday, President Donald Trump called chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine a “game changer.” “I feel good about it,” Trump said. His remarks have led to a rush in demand for the decades-old antimalarials. (“It reminds me a little bit of the toilet paper phenomenon and everybody’s running to the store,” Caplan says.)
The WHO scientific panel designing SOLIDARITY had originally decided to leave the duo out of the trial, but had a change of heart at a meeting in Geneva on 13 March, because the drugs “received significant attention” in many countries, according to the report of a WHO working group that looked into the drugs’ potential. The widespread interested prompted “the need to examine emerging evidence to inform a decision on its potential role.”
The available data are thin. The drugs work by decreasing the acidity in endosomes, compartments inside cells that they use to ingest outside material and that some viruses can coopt to enter a cell. But the main entryway for SARS-CoV-2 is a different one, using its so-called spike protein to attach to a receptor on the surface of human cells. Studies in cell culture have suggested chloroquines have some activity against SARS-CoV-2, but the doses needed are usually high—and could cause serious toxicities.
Encouraging cell study results with chloroquines against two other viral diseases, dengue and chikungunya, didn’t pan out in people in randomized clinical trials. And nonhuman primates infected with chikungunya did worse when given chloroquine.
“Researchers have tried this drug on virus after virus, and it never works out in humans. The dose needed is just too high,” says Susanne Herold, an expert on pulmonary infections at the University of Giessen.
“Researchers have tried this drug on virus after virus, and it never works out in humans. The dose needed is just too high,” says Susanne Herold, an expert on pulmonary infections at the University of Giessen.
Results from COVID-19 patients are murky. Chinese researchers who report treating more than 100 patients with chloroquine touted its benefits in a letter in BioScience, but the data underlying the claim have not been published. All in all, more than 20 COVID-19 studies in China used chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, WHO notes, but their results have been hard to come by. “WHO is engaging with Chinese colleagues at the mission in Geneva and have received assurances of improved collaboration; however, no data has been shared regarding the chloroquine studies.”
Researchers in France have published a study in which they treated 20 COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine. They concluded that the drug significantly reduced viral load in nasal swabs. But it was not a randomized controlled trial and it didn’t report clinical outcomes such as deaths. In guidance published on Friday, the U.S. Society of Critical Care Medicine said “there is insufficient evidence to issue a recommendation on the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine in critically ill adults with COVID-19.”
Hydroxychloroquine, in particular, might do more harm than good. The drug has a variety of side effects and can in rare cases harm the heart. Because people with heart conditions are at higher risk of severe COVID-19, that is a concern, says David Smith, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Diego. “This is a warning signal, but we still need to do the trial,” he says. What’s more, a rush to use the drug for COVID-19 might make it harder for the people who need it to treat their rheumatoid arthritis or malaria.
