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(04-21-2020 01:56 PM)shankapotamus1 Wrote:  Early study on the efficacy of Trump's miracle drug in VA hospitals. Not looking good, could be harmful.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/21...udy-198590

The paper is still undergoing peer review but a pre-print is available:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/...1.full.pdf

From the summary:
"Specifically, hydroxychloroquine use with or without co-administration of azithromycin did not improve mortality or reduce the need for mechanical ventilation in hospitalized patients. On the contrary, hydroxychloroquine use alone was associated with an increased risk of mortality compared to standard care alone."

Eh, the confidence intervals in that study are massive, and it has a huge problem that the sickest patients were the ones given the drug. The only result it found within the confidence interval (they believe there's a 95% chance the result was accurate) was that using the drug alone (without azithromycin) is bad. Any other result you want to take from it is not supported. It wasn't within the confidence interval, but the raw numbers showed the drug plus azithromycin kept people off of ventilators.

Here's an example. Their confidence interval for using the two drugs is that there's a 95% chance that its effects are between cutting the risk of death by half and doubling it: (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.56 to 2.32; P=0.72). That's a big difference.

That's like saying your prediction for WMU's season next year is between 3 and 12 wins.