Rapid Censorship of Highly Positive Hydroxychloroquine Research Chart
Rapid Censorship of Highly Positive Hydroxychloroquine Research Chart
The Information Wars Part VIII
"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself." -Potter Stewart
While working on the research study chapter of the Tyson/Fareed book, the editor asked me if the following chart was absolutely necessary.
It's kind of grainy and cluttered at this point. It serves its purpose well here at its home source, but less so in a book where the over 30 studies and associated authors are not being analyzed. The editor was right to prod me to either produce a better image, or find a way to live without it.
Mild spoiler: I did not want to live without making the point about the screamingly apparent consistency of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) early treatment research. It was part of a one-two punch, following the image below. The hcqmeta.com chart is meant to give the reader a sharp mental turn upon seeing the visual explanation I created to help people understand why the WHO trials on hydroxychloroquine were meaningless (and probably designed to fail [and kill people]).
I understood the editor's concern over the first image, and set out to think up a solution. Should I just recreate the image myself? While thinking about what I could substantive on the last day of editing, I recalled my article about the HCQ pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) trials. On face, the HCQ PrEP look very good, but not quite smack-you-in-the-face amazing:
But that assumes you haven't read the research and given basic consideration to the details. As I mentioned in my article, all but two of the 14 negative research papers (not judging by statistical significance, just that the treatment arm was outperformed by the control arm) were analyses of largely or entirely immunocompromised patients, usually with autoimmune disorders such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.
Much like the way in which we separate demographics to avoid Simpson's paradoxes (here and here), we should [obviously] distinguish between the research on patients according to immune system health. In this case, the result is so obvious that it smacks you in the face: 42 of the 44 papers that exclude those patients show the treatment arm outperforming the control arm. That's…well…dramatic! Viewing the evidence this way is consistent with the dose dependence noted by (Stricker and Fesler, 2021) in each of the six trials they examined that contained enough information, and together that is more than substantial indication of antiviral action.
Pile that on top of the 32 or 33 early treatment studies (also in time for antiviral action, by definition), and we have 74 of 77 studies that would test antiviral action showing the treatment arm outperforming the control arm.
WHERE IN MEDICAL HISTORY HAS SUCH A LARGE BODY OF CONSISTENT EVIDENCE BEEN IGNORED?! WHAT KIND OF INSANITY IS THIS?!
Pardon. I have to scream into a pillow once in a while and regain my calm. Where was I…
Oh, yeah…I took this information and made the chart in the tweet at the top of this post. Here it is again for your viewing pleasure. Isn't it pretty?
Christmas colors, too!
Ho. Ho. Ho. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Yeah, yeah, I've never been the maker of the prettiest graphs. But so long as the visual element is clear…is this clear? Am I missing something? I asked 1300ish friends on Facebook if I'd gotten any of the details wrong. Nobody got the chance to respond because within minutes, this:
My tweet of the image was censored faster than that. I'd say it took a grand total of two or three minutes. This is far from my first experience of censorship. I've served around 130 days of suspension at Facebook this year, my treatment research group there deboosted constantly, and many warnings attached to my posts. But the way this happened in a matter of minutes was startling, so I'm going to assume that I'm right over the target. This is a great graph to share with friends who just haven't taken the time to see what the pharmaceutical industry, captured regulators, and media have to do to keep people from understanding the evidence.
This Christmas, give somebody you care about the chance to step outside of the Matrix.
As someone who didn't start questioning things early on, I initially bought the "HCQ is ineffective" line, but then they went way too far by suggesting HCQ is too potentially dangerous to try. Our family has traveled to regions where malaria is endemic and the pediatricians have always been quite insistent that our children prophylax, so I've seen all the safety data comparing this to other anti-malarials. Safe for kids. Safe for pregnant women. Suddenly more dangerous than doing nothing up to the time a covid patient needs to be ventilated?
Your merry HCQ studies simplified chart does a great job of showing me just how duped I was-- as a bonus I clicked through to see the original and all the data. Wow. I gotta say, though, it would definitely look more seasonal if it had a little more red on it. Too bad!
Ho. Ha.
“Always with the statistics jokes….”
Null hypothesis (Ho) and alternative hypothesis (Ha).