"Dr Jeff Colyer, the former governor of Kansas who is a practicing physician, reported Sunday in the Wall Street Journal that the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin is continuing to show "promising" results in coronavirus patients.
From The Wall Street Journal:
In the fight against Covid-19 though we might look forward in doom, one day we will look backward in awe. In an article last week, I discussed a promising drug combination to treat the disease. There is now new data supporting this treatment. Since then, Kansas City area physicians, including Joe Brewer, Dan Hinthorn and me, continue to treat many patients, and some have shown improvement. Major medical centers including the University of Washington and Mass General have added hydroxychloroquine to treatment options. [...]
Physicians are using two drugs in combination—hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, which I’ll abbreviate HC and AZ—to treat patients with advanced Covid-19 symptoms. We use a regimen reported in a recent open-label trial in Marseille, France, which was updated March 26, and which doctors may modify in any given case.
[...] Clinical information has also emerged from Covid treatment. During the initial Chinese outbreak, Wuhan doctors observed that patients with lupus—a disease for which HC is a common treatment—did not seem to develop Covid-19. Of 178 hospital patients who tested positive, none had lupus and none were on HC. None of this Wuhan hospital’s dermatology department’s 80 lupus patients were infected with the novel coronavirus. The Wuhan doctors hypothesized that this may be due to long-term use of HC. They treated 20 Covid-19 patients with HC. Their result: “Clinical symptoms improve significantly in 1 to 2 days. After five days of chest CT examination, 19 cases showed significant absorption improvement.”
Second, consider AZ—the antibiotic marketed as Z-Pak—combined with HC. The French study showed that 57% of 14 Covid-19 patients receiving HC without AZ tested negative for the virus on a nasal swab on day six. But 100% of the six patients who received both HC and AZ tested negative on day six. Compare that with 16 infected patients at another hospital who didn’t receive either treatment: only 12% tested negative on day six. These are small samples, but significant.
The authors of the French study last week published the results of an additional 80 hospitalized patients receiving a combination of HC and AZ. By day eight of treatment, 93% showed a negative nasopharyngeal swab for the virus. “This allowed patients to rapidly be discharged from highly contagious wards with a mean length of stay of five days,” the authors write. “Other teams should urgently evaluate this cost-effective therapeutic strategy, to both avoid the spread of the disease and treat patients as soon as possible before severe respiratory irreversible complications take hold.” I agree." informationliberation
------------------
Well, pilgrims? pl
"Trump chose to believe Xi."
They cooperated from early on? OK, that may have escaped me.
If so, I am back on boat. Trump, Putin and Xi may able to first deal with Corona, enabling Trump to deal with the deep state/Borg/blot longterm? Helping him to Drain the Swamp?
Posted by: Vig | 01 April 2020 at 10:15 AM
Trump, Putin and Xi may able to first deal with Corona ...
may have been/were able to ...
But it all escaped me?
Posted by: Vig | 01 April 2020 at 10:17 AM
turcopolier
I am not saying don't try it, i am not saying don't test it. I am saying fingers crossed, but the info so far is nowhere near a slam dunk or anywhere near that. I am a physician and i agree with Rod's earlier comment, as to how rare silver bullets are in medicine.
I would recommend trying it on 1000 patients in a reputable institution and see what happens. Hopefully it is as effective as shown in these few patients.
Remember most patients get better by themselves without any treatment what so ever.
Posted by: sam | 01 April 2020 at 10:41 AM
walrus et al
Yes, people who are not responsible for making decisions in evolving situations pretty much always want to believe that knowledge was perfect from the beginning.
Posted by: turcopolier | 01 April 2020 at 10:41 AM
Give the drug combo a try. I can't hurt and, if it works, we're all set - this time around anyhow.
Posted by: Eric Newhill | 01 April 2020 at 11:02 AM
sam
It is my understanding that the test you want is underway in NY. Surely you would not let people die who might be saved by a combination of drugs not yet tested to the satisfaction of Fauci and Birx?
Posted by: turcopolier | 01 April 2020 at 11:52 AM
Fred,
BLUF: Trump was warned about the virus. He chose to downplay the risk until reality slapped the orange off his face. Why? The booming economy was the centerpiece of his reelection strategy. He did not want to jeopardize that.
CDC issued an advisory about a pneumonia inducing virus from Wuhan on 8 January and dispatched over 100 staffers to three airports to begin screening arrivals from China for Covid19. Trump did declare a public health emergency on 31 January. But as late as during Trump’s trip to India, he whined about the CDC and HHS reports on the virus because they were spooking investors. HHS moved to replenish strategic stockpile of masks, respirators, etc. on 26 February when there were 60 cases of Covid19 in the US. CDC was predicting wide community spread by that time. HHS anticipated a need for up to 500 million masks. That would have been the time to invoke the DPA as a club to induce private industry to cooperate fully, not two months later .
The CIA was warning the Trump administration in January and February that Xi was downplaying the severity of Covid19. They briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee at least once. On 27 February Senator Burr was telling his private Tar Heel Circle that Covid19 was going to clobber the US like the 1918 Spanish Flu after unloading his stocks on 13 February. He believed the CIA and knew something about pandemic response since he helped write the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act.
I think Trump should have issued travel bans back on 8 January and expanded those bans a lot sooner than what he did. Of course his critics would scream bloody murder. So what. He’s the President, not them. All he had to do was publicize the dire warnings of the CDC, HHS and IC rather than claiming it was all a hoax and that it would soon miraculously disappear on its own. Our initial cases were in people returning from China, Italy, Egypt and other places. Identifying any returning travelers and closing international ports and airports early may have prevented further viral spread and further economic disruptions. All those dire predictions may have been avoided if Trump took such bold and prescient actions. That would have made his critics looked foolish and guaranteed his November reelection no matter what hit our economy took .
I never thought Trump’s call for quarantining NY was all that wrong. He could have approached it from a travel limitation point of view like no unnecessary interstate travel in harder hit regions or at least talked with Cuomo about it first. Actually, I’m surprised Cuomo didn’t excoriate those NYC and Westchester County jackasses about their fleeing to the Catskills and upstate.
Posted by: The Twisted Genius | 01 April 2020 at 12:52 PM
I think Trump keeps Fauci and Birx around to humiliate them, I sure hope so anyway.
Posted by: BillWade | 01 April 2020 at 12:55 PM
Yes, people who are not responsible for making decisions in evolving situations pretty much always want to believe that knowledge was perfect from the beginning.
Posted by: turcopolier | 01 April 2020 at 10:41 AM
Obviously. But this nugget was from a briefing last Friday.
... This whatever they want to call it. You call it a germ, you can call it a flu, you can call it a virus. You know, you can call it many different names. I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is, but the children do very well.
So if "they" don't know what it is, either? Are they making it up to confuse us with all those different terms? If so, what prevents us from simply going to the pharmacy and getting this combination wonder drug? The Borg? The Medical Industrial Complex?
Posted by: Vig | 01 April 2020 at 01:34 PM
TTG,
Trump was correct to not want to damage the economy, whether it be for re-election reasons or to protect from the massive harm that the damage will cause, or both. Was he supposed to trust Chinese figures? Blindly trust "The Scientists" (aka the guys who say we will all be dead in 12 years because global warming)?
I still say this virus - media hype and statistically ignorant consumers of the media hype aside - is nothing worse than anything we've experienced before - like H1N1 or the Hong Kong Flu in 1968. We didn't shut the economy down for any of that and we shouldn't have shut it down now either. The S. Koreans did not elect to destroy their economy over this flu. I think Trump wanted to follow a more conservative model, like the S Koreans. He was correct, IMO. Then he got pressured into draconian measures by the socialist/lets-remake-the-economy-through-govt-power Obama holdovers in the CDC, the globalist/socialist WHO and other agencies and by the media. And by all of the opportunists who have an interest in keeping the virus apocalypse story alive.
We should try the drugs (or whatever within reason) to help the vulnerable and the sick. But the doomsday scenario just isn't there and the rate of serious infections and deaths simply does not justify the damage to the economy and to the Constitution. Are we going to this again in a year or two or three when the next bad new flu comes through? Some other excuse?
Posted by: Eric Newhill | 01 April 2020 at 02:01 PM
Evidence available that high doses of intravenous Vit C, used in China extensively, and also in some NYC hospitals now, may be even better in terms of outcomes and side effects.
Posted by: J. Casey | 01 April 2020 at 04:20 PM
TTG,
"HHS moved to replenish strategic stockpile of masks, respirators, etc. on 26 February"
When did Trump talk to the heads of private industry? Is that available from your current intel sources or just what is written in the WAPO/CNN press? You left out Senator Feinstein and a couple of others on the insider trading issue, which is irrelevant to the President's decision making.
What were the other political leaders of the Republic of the United States of American doing?
Pelosi -January 31:
"The Trump Admin’s expansion of its un-American travel ban is a threat to our security, our values and the rule of law. Barring more than 350 million people from predominantly African countries from traveling to the US, this rule is discrimination disguised as policy." Sounds like she is really on board with helping keep America safe and suports a travel ban.
https://www.wcbm.com/2020/03/31/flashback-january-31-2020-nancy-pelosi-called-trump-travel-ban-bigoted/
Where O'Where is the NO BAN ACT now? "the President has doubled down on his cruelty..."
https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/13120-2
Pelosi- Febraury 25 'I’m here.' We feel safe and sound, so many of us coming here."(https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/nancy-pelosi-visits-san-franciscos-chinatown/2240247/) Sounds like she is really on board with helping keep America safe.
"I’m surprised Cuomo didn’t excoriate those NYC and Westchester County jackasses about their fleeing to the Catskills and upstate."
You left out all the Floridians who are going to die because of New Yorker's showing thier true worth and fleeing here. Cuomo didn't "excoriate" any of them and he's the reason there is NO quarinine of NYC.
"Identifying any returning travelers and closing international ports and airports early may have ..."
Identify them with what and based on what legal authority at the time? Feel free to find what was available to CDC, oh, yeah, the CIA said China was lying, so what the heck were we to test for and with what?
Posted by: Fred | 01 April 2020 at 05:27 PM
Fred,
On 5 February Azar asked the White House for $2 billion to replenish federal stockpiles of emergency medical supplies. Trump nixed that amount and only submitted a request for $500 million on 24 February. I doubt Trump spoke to industry about this until later since he told the CDC to stop talking about community spread and disruption the next day. He still wasn’t a believer that the virus would have any effect on us.
Who cares that Pelosi, Cuomo, Biden and all Trump’s other critics didn’t like his half-assed China travel ban. None of those people are president. Trump still should have issued a temporary total travel ban into the US at the end of January by EO and back it up with WHO, CDC and IC data. Relax it only as effective testing and isolation procedures were put in place. The Democrats and the Press would go crazy. So would the airlines and travel industry. As president, Trump is uniquely charged with protecting our national security and this virus poses a unique foreign threat to our people and our national security. I would think such an action would be defensible before the Supreme Court. It probably would have done far less damage to our economy than what is about to happen. Unfortunately, Trump didn’t become a believer in Covid19 as a threat to the US until quite recently.
There’s no evidence that any other president would have done this any better. It was a systemic failure, not just a Trump failure. But Trump did screw the pooch early and often on this one. I hope he can do much better from this point on.
BTW Fred, I enjoy our little back and forth conversations. I think they bring out some worthwhile points.
Posted by: The Twisted Genius | 01 April 2020 at 08:38 PM
TTG:
If you recall, January and half of February was all impeachment all the time.
Should have listened to the IC?
LMAO.
Given their track record of dishonesty and incompetence, why would he do that?
Posted by: Upstate NY'er | 01 April 2020 at 10:11 PM
"The French study showed that 57% of 14 Covid-19 patients receiving HC without AZ tested negative for the virus on a nasal swab on day six. But 100% of the six patients who received both HC and AZ tested negative on day six. Compare that with 16 infected patients at another hospital who didn’t receive either treatment: only 12% tested negative on day six. These are small samples, but significant."
The French study had a flawed design, therefore, the studiy does not tell anything, esp. not that the malaria drug works.
Do youself a favour and try to get a translation of the podcasts of Prof Christian Drosten (Charite Berlin), he is a leading expert for Corona virusses and is able to assess studies.
Last week he explained in detail the issues of the French study performed by people who did not know what actually to measure and how to pick groups of patients. The studies tells you nothing.
Posted by: Ulenspiegel | 02 April 2020 at 05:04 AM
Sorry, forgot the link:
https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/Coronavirus-Update-Die-Podcast-Folgen-als-Skript,podcastcoronavirus102.html
ATM the best you can get.
Posted by: Ulenspiegel | 02 April 2020 at 05:22 AM
Israel's Health Minister and his wife positive for Covid.
Mossad's chief now in quarantine.
Posted by: J | 02 April 2020 at 07:14 AM
We are using HC-AZ on all of our ICU pts and hospitalized patients not in the ICU. While our N is only about 80, still growing, for our ICU pts, most on vents, there is no noticeable effect. No obvious effect yet for other inpatients but we are still pretty early in our stage of the outbreak, maybe 10 days. It is being prescribed to outpatients. Have no idea if is having effects for them. Of note our inpatient population is just bit older than expected.
Posted by: steve | 02 April 2020 at 07:19 AM
TTG
In my experience the process of going to war is quite messy, especially when the attack (Black Swan) is unexpected. Prior policies and priorities are hard to abandon in reaction to incomplete and often incorrect information. IMO neither Trump nor any other president would have been likely to anticipate a plague like this. It takes the "vision thing" at the genius level to provide effective warning in a transition to unanticipated war. If you want villains look at the epidemiologists. They want "herd immunity" and don't really care about a few hundred thousand deaths along the way to getting there so long as their "science" is in control. If it were up to them there would be little attention paid to therapies. Vaccines yes, but not therapeutics.
Posted by: turcopolier | 02 April 2020 at 08:37 AM
Terrance
Kaiser Permanente has contacted their customers with Lupus to tell the they will stop filling their prescriptions as they are diverting supplies to COVID patients. This is very bad news as the effect on COVID is mild and largely unproven where for Lupus it is known to work very well. All the other drugs being tested exist because they work in some other disease and production is based on that need. None of them have been shown to have any obvious effect on COVID most are in large clinical trials which will show if there reproducible measurable benefits. Only then can we make an informed decision as to whether our limited supplies should be used for HIV, Lupus etc. or COVID. The bottom line is nothing that has been tried works to the extent patients given them clearly do better than those that don't, any benefits are marginal.
Posted by: JJackson | 02 April 2020 at 08:37 AM
Ulenspiegel
The only really useful studies underway are the WHO solidarity trials which about 70 countries have signed up for. If drug X works you need to understand by how much and on whom. This needs very large controlled trials at multiple sites where the drug is given to all age groups at all stages of disease progression. Then you can answer questions like when to administer it, at what dosage and for how long. One trial with a dozen patients and no control group can not answer this or tell you anything you should base a public health decision on. There is a bigger and better study from Wuhan but it to is flawed as they were also using a whole load of other treatments at the same time. Even taking the two together does not help much as there is no consistent protocol between trials.
Posted by: JJackson | 02 April 2020 at 09:00 AM
TTG,
"Who cares that Pelosi, Cuomo, Biden and all Trump’s other critics didn’t like his half-assed China travel ban."
Yes, we certainly wouldn't want a racist! travel ban to inconvenience people spreading the virus around, expecially citizens of communist China or residents of NYC. As multiple other commentators pointed out, there was an impeachment going on January 16th through Febraury 5th. I'm sure a natoinal lockdown would not have influenced that at all. The anti-Trumpers can take solice in knowing that there's another call from Schiff for yet another investigation.
"back it up with WHO, CDC and IC data. Relax it only as effective testing and isolation procedures were put in place. "
That's the 17 intelligence agencies that condluded that Russia interfered in the election the Hilary lost? Does that include the FBI with recently published information from the IG show followed FISA procedures 7% of the time? Did anyone notice we still haven't jailed any of those corrrupt bastards?
" Trump is uniquely charged with protecting our national security and this virus poses a unique foreign threat to our people and our national security. "
I agree. That viral enemy was released into the world, intentionally or not, by China. China has repeatedly and consistently lied to everyone including the WHO, whose career professionals still won't even mention "Taiwan" because of communist chinese influence. They are engaged in an ongoing anti-American and anti-Western propaganda campaign with every tool at their disposal included paid agents, useful idiots and the I'm certain are loyal to the USA not China H1B visa holders, student visa holders, green card holders and opportunists of every stripe.
JJackson,
Did they also call the rheumatoid arthritis sufferers? How fast does Lupus kill somebody, Covid appears to do it in less than 14 days. How about arthritis?
Posted by: Fred | 02 April 2020 at 09:49 AM
Fred
My wife is an unusual case with Lupus as her pituitary was damaged also. Without plaquenil before the Lupus diagnosis we had 15 or so visits to the ER without a firm reason why she was so ill. I believe it was due to adrenal crises as she is not manufacturing her own cortisol. For some reason she manages ordinary infections much better now.
I would imagine both arthritis and lupus patients will have more need for admission to the hospital without the medicine.
Posted by: Terence Gore | 02 April 2020 at 12:18 PM
Terence,
I'll pray for your wife. I don't think arthritis is an immediate threat to life and have never heard of anyone dying from it.
Posted by: Fred | 02 April 2020 at 02:04 PM
In some European studies elderberry reduces shortens the duration of cold and flu. The following is from the Cleveland Clinic.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/elderberry-a-natural-way-to-boost-immunity-during-cold-and-flu-season/
Posted by: optimax | 02 April 2020 at 04:16 PM