This is a comment I posted to HN three weeks ago, when I was pretty sure (but unfortunately wrong!) that the suggested chloroquine dosage for purportedly treating covid-19 was being reported in the wrong units because it was so high, using only the information in the FDA docs on the chloroquines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22611041
Choloroquine is very well known to have an extremely low therapeutic index (ratio of fatal dosage to effective dosage) and people (well, non-infant children) have been known to die from just a 1g dose. The recommendation for Covid-19 starts at an order of magnitude higher than the recommended FDA dosage for malarial suppression.
(Pretty much) everything can kill viruses at high enough doses. The question is if it can do it without killing the patient as well, and it is eminently clear from existing, solid research that choloroquine doesn’t fit that bill.
Hydroxychloroquine is better tolerated than chloroquine base, but not that much more to sufficiently matter. It also has its own horrible dangers (including complete blindness from accelerated macular degeneration) that have been well documented at long-term “low” dosages; it is not a stretch to assume they would happen with short term high dosages.
There is a reason these only work in vitro - you don’t have to worry about killing the patient there.
Also can you cite the solid research showing hydroxychloroquine + arithromycin failing for covid-19?
Keep in mind that the lack of rigor in the current pre-peer review literature coming out means that you have to take everything into account and with a grain of salt. For example, a drug showing effectiveness might have been with a mild case that started with a low viral load and wouldn’t have progressed any way (this is just an example, I’m not saying that is the case). Since the therapeutic index is so low, you can’t just dial up the dosage to treat severe cases that actually require pharmaceutical intervention, because it’s a non-starter.
But anyway, I see that metformin is used to treat type 2 diabetes mellitus. And I vaguely recall that the incidence of that disorder has been increasing dramatically. So this is arguably a key red flag for hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19. But not for me, fortunately.
I mean, I could have increased the modafinil dose. But it was easy enough to take hydroxychloroquin at night, and naproxen in the morning. And hopefully my kidneys will be happier, even if my retinas etc are more at risk.
"Brain fog" is a more commonly used term, although no doubt people experience different things and would describe them differently. For me, it's a weird feeling of vagueness, and to what extent varies significantly. Sometimes it's hard to focus and do work, but not always. Usually it's just like everything is sort of "passing me by". You wouldn't know talking to me, I function just fine, so maybe it mostly just affects my perception of time and/or memories. It's subtle and weird.
As far as humans are concerned - who knows...
Original article: https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/carl-40-fick-kramp-och-syn-...
I expect this will appear in international media soon, if it's true. Note that I don't speak Swedish and I used an online translating tool to read the article.
Edit: https://covid19-druginteractions.org/
PDF page 9 (April 3rd version) lists green for Metformin with all drugs, including CLQ and HCLQ.
The drugs are very old and very well understood and have very modest safety profiles.
I will also severely limit the scope of people who can be treated this way.
Maybe just read the introduction instead of writting this kind of complotist nonsense? I know that's not the first thing to read in a usual, well-written scientific paper, but there is a lot of papers about covid19 everyday and clinical papers are weird anyway.
HCQ enters trial testing and if we can reduce the number of trial death due to wrong medicamental interactions, it will probably boost the survival of tested people using HCQ, so even if a conspiracy exist, you should be happy that paper like this exist, no?
A thing i saw that works against a conspiracy against HCQ is that on french and US website, everyone is talking about HCQ, well or not, but a lot of other, poorer countries put their hope on interferon (as i do: i take chlorphetamine and other antihistamin drugs that can cause tachycardia especially in spring/summer, and i have arythmia => i'd like to avoid another drug with heart-related secondary effect, my kidney and may spleen are in perfect condition, i'd rather ruin them)
If i couldn't read spanish, i wouldn't even know about interferon tbh, it's much more promising that HCQ: like HCQ it works in vitro against HIV, but unlike CA that agravate AIDS, interferon works in vivo too. Here an AFP article about interferon and sras-cov2 (spanish, works with google translate: https://factual.afp.com/el-antiviral-cubano-interferon-alfa-...)
EDIT: I should probably note that stopping cell division isn't the primary mechanism by which Methotrexate treats Sarcoidosis. You basically take Methotrexate then 24+ hours later counteract it with folic acid. They actually don't know how it works!
In my case it probably doesn't help that "brain fog" is also a side effect of Sarcoidosis itself; I mean that's obviously pretty minor in comparison to the fact if left unchecked it'd destroy my lungs.
[0]: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroq...
Also you do a lot of work to make it sound like a foregone conclusion it doesn’t work (appeals to authority in “anyone paying attention”).
The problem is there is now a lot of anecdotal evidence of it working from good sources (teams of doctors on frontlines from around the world). So really you can’t appeal to anyone paying attention.