29 Comments

From what I see scanning the study results on c19early, I would conclude that HCQ gives good results in early treatment, but not so much in late treatment. Ivermectin on the other hand, seems to score well in every stage.

Is that a fair conclusion in your eyes too?

Interesting article by the way!

I am really appalled nu the lack of research done/written on in the main stream media!

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Currently I would prefer IVM late if forced to make a choice, but I'd take both ideally, unless my doctor said my QTc started to elongate more than a small amount.

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Seemed logical from the evidence as it stands for me too, thanks.

But here in the Netherlands it is currently not only advised against to prescribe HCQ or IVM, doctors who do so stand to be fined. So not many dare to do so. A sad state of affairs, EU national policies are only aimed at pushing through vaccination and they are succeeding even better than in the US...

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Yes, the data seems to match what you say.

The source of your being appalled is deliberate scientific disinformation. Union of Concerned Scientists describes it thusly:

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/disinformation-playbook

All five of these techniques have been applied to suppress C19 therapeutics. It's not incompetence or error, it's malice coupled with plentiful funding.

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Excellent read as always! I also enjoyed the verbal spanking you gave to the troll.

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Very interesting Mathew. I have been wondering a bit about what is happening there. My question was - HCQ and Ivermectin not working, or are they not using it? This helps to clear things up. Will share. BTW, what are the perks of a paid subscription, and the cost?

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Right now, the paid subscription includes some posts that aren't public. I may go back and make those public a few months down the road, but subscribers can always read them. The cost if $5/month or $50/year.

I am kicking around the idea of putting together a round table discussion group for sharing/comparing information from the pool of subscribers. My only worry would be that as subscriptions go up, it might become unmanageable. I have not yet decided.

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Hello Anne : I don't know how reliable this information is but in a recent youtube video I watched, someone in India said that they had run out of medicine and that some people were hoarding it. The Indian man did not imply that the medicines didn't work but rather that there was a severe lack of them at the moment.

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Last year, India cranked up HCQ production from 120M doses per month to 300M doses per month within a few weeks as they lifted their export ban. They aren't running out of those supplies any time soon. Ivermectin is cheap and easy to produce, also.

But the oxygen situation looks to be difficult. Sadly, that was a choice that involved eschewing HCQ and IVM, likely baited or pressured by Western pharmaceutical power.

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Here in Burkina, the govt hoards HCQ and you can get it only if you are tested positive. I was able to get some privately with the argument that I was travelling and did not want to be caught empty handed should I catch it. I talked to one person of the outer circle of the the inner circle of scientists who advise the govt. They are working at making rapid tests widely available, and I said please - make the medication widely available too! In the rural areas with no lab, and no doctor, just a nurse-run clinic that prescribes according to your symptoms, you are pretty much on your own.

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If we every get a spike of cases that need oxygen, - be ready to meet your Maker.

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One important point about Covid numbers in India which you may or may not be aware. Several states are not just under reporting the count but not reporting counts at all from several districts in their state. It's all for political reasons. The count in Maharashtra is close to accurate. Delhi also could be accurate.

States like UP and Rajasthan are under reported. The local newspaper had 250 obituaries on 1 day However the total count of deaths for that district was 140 since the pandimic hit.

I'm not saying your analysis is wrong.. just don't rely on data

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Can you show the source from which you make your observations?

I am in contact with several doctors, analysts, and researchers in India (including at the ICMR). They all seem uniformly in agreement that the early treatment protocols for HCQ and IVM have saved much of the nation from larger disaster. That is not to say there may not be some underreporting, but it would be good to get a handle on how credible such information might be and check with multiple sources outside of the media. At this point, I think most everything published in the media should be verified before assumed.

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Under reporting is rampant in States ruled by BJP. counting at Crematoriums is telling the real stories. You can see @iScrew Twitter handle for details. Especially in Gujarat Modi's native state, he is more towards image building person, many deaths are not reporting at all. Chief minister says they count Covid death only if Pneumonia is the cause.

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What can you document for me aside from "read through a few hundred tweets and you'll see"?

I doubt that the states using HCQ/IVM are hiding 90% of their deaths, and I am talking with several people in several places in India. I would like to gauge as well as possible the effects of different philosophies and protocols, but vague descriptions are not well suited to that.

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I see no figures on the % of the population that has received these drugs at what dosage and for how long. Maybe I missed something

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In a nation where people are free to buy medicine for their own consumption, finding that percentage will be challenging. Sometimes full measurement isn't desirable.

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So there is literally no way of knowing how many people were treated with HCL or any other drug and for how long. As 70% have no health cover at all and are immensely poor what are the chances they bought medicine that we consider cheap but not by their standards. Also there is very little obesity one of the main risk factors. It is a population that dies young, life expectancy 69 and the average age for covid deaths is over 80. When you take all this into account can you really suggest that the figures show that these 2 drugs have any kind of efficacy?

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You act as if clean data is necessary to form a judgment. I think that is not correct. People do not form judgments that way. In particular, as a Quant trader, I have never made many assessments with clean data, but I've outperformed every hedge fund in the world. Not trading until there is clean data is a path to mediocrity.

But the article I posted does reference a floor for doses, and the production ramp suggests that the floor is likely much higher. Additionally, putting health care workers on prophylaxis is likely effective the way that ring vaccination strategies work. Treat those at high risk and get more impact.

But if you want a complete case for full analysis, you are asking for a 200,000 word response. I'm going to have to rely on the number of articles that I can write. There will be much more evidence presented.

And if this is your level of skepticism, remember to apply is uniformly to all such data subjects during the pandemic.

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I have also read that the Indian government had distributed 112 million individual pills the population. The protocol for this treatment is 3 pills per day for 10 days which means that this was enough to treat less than 4 million people. So only 0.3% of the population could have been treated correctly. Can you confirm these figures?

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"I have also read that the Indian government had distributed 112 million individual pills the population."

Please share the source.

I doubt anyone has particularly good data, and it should be noted that the medicine can be bought OTC. It is not clear how tracking is done.

The ICMR has focused prophylaxis efforts on health care workers.

As per one of my earlier articles, India ramped up production of HCQ from 120M to 300M pills per month 12-13 months ago.

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How much of that was for domestic consumption? All of that is academic because a) we don't know who took it and over what period b) no double blind tests have shown it to be effective against Covid c) the stats coming out of India are massively incomplete d) the demographics and health of Indians are not at all similar to western countries so to compare them and suggest that the "better" Indian stats are due to HCQ or other unproven drugs is at best very shaky and at worst intellectually dishonest.

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"is at best very shaky and at worst intellectually dishonest."

At the point at which you throw around a phrase like "intellectually dishonest", after stating the provably false assertion (and nearly reverse of reality) that "no double blind tests have shown it to be effective", you have lose all credibility.

I'd ask that instead of writing here, you write your own commentary up and publish it where you like. Either that, or schedule with me a conversation about the research that can be recorded and posted in perpetuity on the internet. It is easy to make absurd claims on the internet, but I have no respect for it sans analysis, of which I have provided several score pages of to this point in this series of articles. But a public conversation is a test of veracity. Perhaps I simply don't understand your points, or you can put them together better, but if you cannot do better than rhetorical claims that look like a hitjob by somebody who hasn't read the research, then please go away and do your own thing and write it up elsewhere.

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"b) no double blind tests have shown it to be effective against Covid"

Why would you say something like that? Have you been following the research at all? Nearly all of the double blind tests showed efficacy. The ones that did not used doses and treatment regimes unlike what any doctors around the world have used and too late to be effective as an antiviral.

If you respond again with these kinds of vague suggests that puts includes false statements without references to studies you're willing to defend, and cannot otherwise be argued without 500 pages, I'm going to block you.

My goal is to make the best possible use of all data, and that is pointing heavily in the direction of efficacy by trials, observational studies, national analysis, natural experiments, and the closer you drill down to optimal usage (early vs. late, and at reasonable doses), the better the numbers look as I've documented in many of my other articles.

"d) the demographics and health of Indians are not at all similar to western countries so to compare them and suggest that the "better" Indian stats are due to HCQ or other unproven drugs is at best very shaky and at worst intellectually dishonest."

I have done my own analysis on whether age profile matters, and it turns out that the correlation between national results and age demographics is almost zero. I will lay that out soon in an article, but have many priorities at the moment.

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It's difficult to enter into a debate with a true believer. The latest meta studies have yet again proved that HCQ is not effective against Covid and the fatalities are higher amongst users. You can cherry pick as much as you like to try and prove you're right but sadly the science is not there to back up your claims. Please do block me because it would simply end up in an exchange futile I believe as you do not seem to understand the difference between correlation and causality. You have fallen into the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

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"The latest meta studies have yet again proved that HCQ is not effective against Covid"

I'll translate:

"The ones I'm saying exist, but I'm not linking to, though I'm not going to respond to the metastudy you dropped that includes all of the studies and still call you a cherry-picker."

It makes sense to look at the optimal protocols, right? That's not "cherry picking", but including the WHO overdose trials or the "fake placebo trials" certainly is.

https://c19early.com/

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If you believe what you say, then join me for a one hour record conversation of the evidence. Demonstrate a modicum of veracity. It will be polite, and we will discuss what evidence we believe is most valuable.

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