Propaganda Campaign Against Hydroxychloroquine

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is one of the most widely used medications in human history, with a long safety record and well understood risk profile. It has been used by tens or hundreds of millions of people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It should be obvious that a study in which one person with COVID-19 take a medicine and another does not, and neither progresses to worse illness, that does not demonstrate “failure” of the medicine. Judgment of success or failure is in the eye of the beholder, always, in science. But as a principle, we are convinced by repetition and consistency of results, so the larger the pool of the results, the better. In inferential statistics, a study is said to be “powered” to demonstrate an effect size after a sufficient number (N) of participants are tested to achieve formal methodological parameters.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, many studies were not sufficiently powered to test for effects of HCQ, but those treated with HCQ did better than those who did not. The media pronounces these trials as having “shown no effect” or said that HCQ “failed”, discouraging people from delving into the larger body of evidence or studying the treatments using HCQ any further.

• June 4, 2020 The Times of India: HCQ Fails to prevent COVID-19 in a rigorous study
  • Boulware trial
• June 9, 2020 Science.org: Three big studies dim hopes that hydroxychloroquine can treat or prevent COVID-19
• July 6, 2020 Medicalxpress: Hydroxychloroquine is the most disappointing, disavowed drug that researchers keep studying for COVID-19
  • The word “disavowed” is generally used in a moral sense, so the title alone smacks of emotional manipulation.
  • Sets up association with Donald Trump from the start, using a reverse-confirmity Asch experiment model as described in a Rounding the Earth article.
  • Notes that the HERO trial was scaling back with a claim of lowered interest in participation, which seems unlikely given the split view in the healthcare field, but is not evidence against efficacy.
  • Claims the testing of HCQ was based on “desperation”, which is counter to the fact that researchers were publishing rationale papers about its positive expectations for years prior to the pandemic as explained in a Rounding the Earth article.
  • Claimed without citation that “rigorous studies” showed “it didn't help treat or prevent COVID-19” and pointed to the FDA's revocation of its emergency use authorization and World Health Organization's stopped trial, neither of which are scientific, and the latter of which was based on the fraudulent Surgisphere study.
  • Laments further research. Huh.

• Dec 22, 2021 Rounding the Earth: Manipulative Interpretation of Trial Statistics by Mathew Crawford
  • Details an analogy to basketball in which the superior player is constantly judged to have failed to ourperform the inferior one. Dozens of links are included to real world events during the COVID-19 pandemic to draw the associated parallels.

The Recovery trial involved 11,000 patients and took place in over 175 hospitals in the United Kingdom. It was finance through grants from two British institutes: United Kingdom Medical Research and National Institute for Health Research.

• June 6, 2020 FranceSoir interviewed Professor Martin Landray, Head of the Recovery Trial
  • Trial spread out over 175 hospitals in the United Kingdom.
  • Regulator requested unblinding of the trial, which took place June 5, 2020.
  • Says that “everybody” thought that the Surgisphere data was real.
  • Says that the high doses used in the trial were based on pharmacokinetic modeling.
    • “But the HCQ dosage used are not dissimilar to that used, as I said, in for example amoebic dysentery.”
  • “The treating doctors did not report that they thought any of the deaths were due to hydroxychloroquine.”
  • “Yes, we have demonstrated that this drug is no good for this disease whatever one wants to believe.”
    • This statement is purely illogical since a late stage protocol cannot possibly demonstrate the lack of efficacy of an early stage protocol for an antiviral medication as explained in a Rounding the Earth article. It is extremely hard to believe that a seasoned medical scientist would make that error by accident.

• Aug 4, 2020 - Statement from Yale Faculty on Hydroxychloroquine and its Use in COVID-19¹⁾