CNN Reporter Breaks Down After Devastating Covid-19 Report

[Agema]

1) p value.

p value represents statistical significance. The way that it works is that an experiment is set up with a "null hypothesis". The null hypothesis roughly equates to meaning "no effect". So in a study of whether HCQ improved mortality from covid-19, the null hypothesis is that HCQ makes no difference to covid-19 mortality.

The p value is the likelihood that the null hypothesis is true. Conventionally, p=0.05 (i.e. a 5% chance) is considered the boundary, where if it is equal to or lower, the chance that the null hypothesis is true has become sufficiently low that it is rejected, so an effect was observed. What this means is that every single study that has a "negative" effect (i.e. the null hypothesis is true) will have a p value greater than 0.05. It is inherently what the p value represents, therefore, these are not "shit studies". They are studies that show no significant effect.

That said, there are two issues here: firstly, what this website means by a "negative" effect is that HCQ is harmful when taken for covid-19, not that it is ineffective. Here there may be a complication, because the p value in such cases may actually be a test of whether the null hypothesis is being rejected for the case that it is harmful. You'd need to read the paper to see. There is a second, massive issue, which then relates to how they assess papers as showing benefit ("positive") or harm ("negative"). More on that later.

 

[Agema]

2) So, what is a shit study?

p values tell us about statistical significance, but it's actually a lot more complicated than that, because variance of the data and the sample size matter too. For instance, in my field, due to false positives a p value of 0.05 with an n=6 actually equates to the data being only about 50% likely to be true (!!). So, in many cases, the statistical significance may not actually reflect reality as accurately as a non-expert might think. The long and short of this is that the bigger the n value, the more reliable the data tends to be. A study of 20 people for something like this (HCQ effect on mortality) approximates to useless. 200 iffy. 2000 pretty good, 20,000 great. All else being equal, one big study of 20,000 is better than 5 of 200. This has major ramifications for why their analysis is fake.

The other factor is general methodology. All studies differ in design, and some designs are better than others. Variables account for, etc. Some rules are easy: randomised controlled trials tend to be better than other studies. Others aspects of methodology much trickier, and would often require an expert in the field to see. Many people doing meta-analyses might discount studies that technically meet their basic criteria because they have seen significant methodological errors.

So when we want to compare studies, we can't just compare them like for like either. At minimum, we might need to find a way to weight them so that good studies count for more than bad ones. I do not believe they have done this either, and that is not good.

 

[CriticalGaming]

You believe these politicians want to be shutting businesses, and thus cutting off their own primary source of revenue?

I mean they get revenue from lobbyists not the state. Is the state goes broke, they don't give a fuck.

Also in line with Newsom. The big dinner that he got caught at without wearing a mask, was a big dinner with lobbyists from the medical industry.

Hmm....really makes ya think. So we have a Gov, who is caught not wearing a mask at a dinner gathering that is supposed to be banned, with a bunch of medical lobbyists only to later then go out and make a big push for more shutdowns and more covid pushing....crazy.

 

[Silvanus]

I mean it's not their primary source of revenue. It's their states'. The politicians will get paid either way.

Well, it depends who we're talking about. Countless figures from both main US political parties reap huge financial donations from big business. And those aren't going to state coffers; they're going to party coffers or campaign funds. And very often politicians will also be directly making money through personal links with those businesses (maybe a family member works for the business in some high-pay, low-effort position, as a favour; maybe the politician simply has a bloated investment portfolio).

But yes, mostly the dividend goes to the state budget. But this also directly benefits the politicians in charge of the area: more local success means more political capital.

 

[SupahEwok]

I mean they get revenue from lobbyists not the state. Is the state goes broke, they don't give a fuck.

Who do you think funds the lobbyists?

 

[Silvanus]

I mean they get revenue from lobbyists not the state. Is the state goes broke, they don't give a fuck.

Lobbyists literally work for businesses. Politicians do what businesses want, and lobbyists make it worth their while. That's the whole sordid deal. This is why the Conservative Party here was so unwilling to lock down, and so eager to reopen.

So politicians are going to be pretty unwilling to do something so immediately damaging to profit unless there's an overwhelmingly huge reason to do so. Not just for some kind of childish power trip, as you seem to be imagining.

Also in line with Newsom. The big dinner that he got caught at without wearing a mask, was a big dinner with lobbyists from the medical industry.

Hmm....really makes ya think. So we have a Gov, who is caught not wearing a mask at a dinner gathering that is supposed to be banned, with a bunch of medical lobbyists only to later then go out and make a big push for more shutdowns and more covid pushing....crazy.

I don't know why you would expect lobbyists for the US medical industry to be acting in accordance with sound medical advice.

They're not medical experts. They're not even particularly knowledgeable about the risks or the medicines in question. They're representatives for an industrial, profit-driven sector, hired to help other people make money. They're not personally particularly moral or clever people.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

A big issue here is college expenses. Obviously it's nowhere near as bad as the States but it's still bad and rent costs make going to college out of town a fucking nightmare. When I was in college my rent was 320 a month and that was considered high. Now you'd be lucky to spend less than 800-900. Also when I was in college pretty much everyone had their fees paid by the state and there was financial aid for most people. I got 6k a year and it's not like my family was dirt poor or anything.

Now people my age are calling students complaining about rising costs entitled.

Man, for real. I went to college in California in 2008. Every year that I was in college tuition costs went up around 20%, and classes and professors were constantly getting furloughed because of lack of funding. At the same time California state colleges had a SURPLUS of several billion dollars. State schools aren't supposed to have surpluses at all, they're non-profit!

 

[Agema]

3) Now let's consider some flaws in their analysis.

A general problem is the mixing and matching of papers in ways that are arguably incompatible - different categories for measurement, different methodologies, etc.

Look at the details for HCQ, figure 5. This uses a scale from 0 (HCQ is beneficial) through 1 (no effect) to 2 (HCQ is harmful). It colours beneficial in green and harmful in red. But lots of this is wrong. Take a study that scores 0.97 on their scale. This is not statistically significant - it is so close to 1 that it cannot meaningfully be called beneficial. The same goes with 1.05 harmful - it's indistinguishable from no effect. Check many of these out, and these papers will not say they found HCQ was effective, their p values show so, and they clearly say so. They should therefore not be counted that way.

They've included confidence intervals (CI), in the horizontal lines around the dots. The confidence interval reflects the fact that studies are necessarily approximations of truth, and how likely they are to be accurate. So a 95% CI means that they believe there is a 95% chance the truth lies in that range based on their results. CI is not the same as a p value, but the concept is similar. A better way to interpret the data in that figure is that anything with a CI that crosses the value of 1 they cannot be confident is beneficial or harmful, because "no effect" is within the confidence value. Suddenly, that data starts looking very, very different and it becomes clear the majority of studies do not clearly find HCQ is beneficial.

Now let's go to figure 4, and let's take pre-exposure prophylaxis. They In one graph, they attempt to argue there is a 1:1000 likelihood HCQ is not beneficial, and there's a trendline indicating this. It is instantly observable that this calculation is fake. Essentially, every "positive" finding is used to make the claim HCQ is effective more reliable, and every negative one the opposite. However, here two things are clear. Firstly, studies that are counted as "beneficial" are not. Gendelman, Konig, Macias, Gianfrancesco, Gendebien, etc. You can see they do not show benefit, because of p values, although the minimal effectiveness should also give it away. Yet they are used to argue HCQ was beneficial for this trendline. Secondly, we see weighting has not been applied. Rentsch, for instance, was a massive, major study with tens of thousands of participants, about a sixth of all participants if we were to add all the total from all studies. It should have a massive effect on their trendline. (They've screwed the numbers up on the n values in figure 5 - sloppy.) Huh, the first, has 65,000. These two studies alone are half of all the participants in the total PrEP group, and neither show a benefit for HCQ. But individually they seem to carry the same weight as a study of about 100 participants. Nor does the robustness of the study design seem to factor in. Thus this argument for likelihood is completely false.

This is simply a taste of how inaccurate their analysis is. It is incredible unlikely that an honest, competent scientist who works in the field would make these sorts of errors, still less so a team (as they claim to be) who would have the advantage of cumulative expertise.

Given their claims of expertise, I am unfortunately forced to conclude that the creators of this site are intentionally dishonest.

 

[Agema]

4)

There are other examples of problems. Take the statement "There is evidence of bias towards publishing negative results. 88% of prospective studies report positive effects, and only 75% of retrospective studies do." What the hell? That evidence does not remotely justify such a bald conclusion.

But now add it to the statement "Studies from North America are 3.8 times more likely to report negative results than studies from the rest of the world combined, p = 0.00000017 ". No idea how they formed their strangely specific p value for that. Added to the previous quotation above, the cumulative effect of these seems to be to suggest biased North American scientists trying to suppress HCQ's effectiveness.

Is this site subtly trying to promote a conspiracy theory? For instance that anti-Trump liberal scientists are pumping out fraudulent results to disprove the president, or an anti-Big Pharma / medical conspiracy that they are trying to trick us into buying expensive drugs when cheaper generics are effective? I get the horrible feeling that they are.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I mean that's more likely because the narrative has constantly changed with what the virus was and still to this day keeps changing. So it is hard to separate fact from fiction when the news outlets purposefully make things as bad as possible.

What I do know is that other states aren't shutdown and they don't have it nearly as bad as the news says California have it. I went to Tennessee for business and everything was open. Wear a mask when possible, but open. And that state still doesn't have it the way California has it.

I suppose you could argue population as a key factor, but even in the major cities like Nashville and Memphis, it isn't the way it is in Cali. Why is that? Personally i think it's the mentality of the polictians who have a boner for the power that they have over people and businesses. Gov. Newsom likes to talk a lot of shit about how we need to shutdown and wear our masks and whatnot, but that ************ never shutdown his winery, he never stopped gathering with groups of people, and he got caught multiple times not wearing a mask in these same crowds. So what's his angle? Abusing his power most likely IMO. Put rules upon everyone else, but don't follow them himself. And yet everyone else who gets caught without a mask gets fucking obliterated on social media for it.

Not to mention Newson also has given an exception to Hollywood to continue to film movies and television at will with no restrictions of where they operate and how. Which is funny, because how in the fuck is making a new piece of shit Tom Cruise movie "essential". There even was a big story about a restaurant owner who was forced to shutdown her "safe" outdoor dining, but in her same parking lot a film crew was also to set up the catering for the entire crew and outdoor dine.

And with things like this happening all over the place, you wonder why there are so many people who think Covid is bullshit or (like me) think it's heavily overblown.

There are reports and stories of whistleblowers in hospitals where patients died and because the insurances and government were blindly paying out huge for covid, the hospital would lie and list covid as a cause of death. My Uncle's best friend was killed early summer last year in a motorcycle accident and his death report said covid on it, and his family is suing the hospital right now for a wrongful death report....or something like that. They suing that's all I know.

I'm guessing Newsom mainly wants to be seen as the governor that took every precaution possible to limit covid deaths regardless of how sensical or nonsensical the restrictions are. The media like they usually do tells stories for entertainment value more than informative value. If you just do a bit of digging, you'll uncover the truth pretty easy. They ran those reinfection stories and provided zero context or explained what it meant. Reinfection by itself is meaningless and you can get reinfected an infinite number of times whether you do have natural immunity or got the vaccine, it's nothing to get worried about. Like if it you were to "catch" the measles and you've been vaccinated, you got infected with the measles but since you got the vaccine, your body knows how to get rid of it before you even get any symptoms. I bet the media will run stories about some person testing positive for covid after being vaccinated (oh my god, the vaccine might not work!!!) but it doesn't mean anything unless they actually get the disease. The media has turned the word "infection" into some super bad word that isn't nearly that bad of a thing.

The stronger and more nonsensical stuff you have in place, the less people are going to obey or believe you going forward. Dr. Peter Hotez who develops SARS vaccines said way back in March when these lockdowns started that you can see family and close friends, you don't literally have to stay home and not see anyone. If people were instructed to just use common sense like reducing you human interactions to close circle of family and friends vs only staying at home, you would've got more people to follow the guideline then since it wasn't so extreme. Instead of telling people to basically skip the holidays, tell them to celebrate with their local family/friends and forgo travel. That's a much more realistic concession and you'd get more people following it. I also feel it adds to the polarity among people from those that are yelling at people on Facebook that you're killing people by going out and socializing to the side that thinks the pandemic is complete bullshit.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Sorry my friend, but you've been had.

That website is con job: a trap for the general public filled with fake, inaccurate analysis. I wrote a very long explanation for why their data analysis is wrong, that they are lying to you, but one of those Escapist website browser code error things crashed it. I will reconstruct it in parts across a number of posts, because I think you need to have it explained.

I really don't want to sound like I'm pulling a Houseman here or moving goalposts, and I really do sincerely appreciate your in-depth analysis on the C19Study site's graphs and analysis. I do know have a better understanding of what the P value means. However, I've never used any figures from that main site as any evidence in any of my posts. I've always said here's all the studies, I have used here's all the "data" as well (which can be implied as look at those charts on the site) but again, I really didn't mean to imply to look at those charts and graphs, I mean to look at the actual studies.

It is literally why I still pull hypothetical numbers out when I talk about things (instead of using the numbers from those graphs) because we don't know how much most of this stuff helps, but it is almost certainly likely that it does help, and there's basically no risk in taking any of these things. It's literally the same reasoning as telling people to wear masks, we don't have any comprehensive RCT proving that wearing masks help but what's the harm? For example, this is what I said in Post 22.

There's plenty of things we know work for early covid treatment. By the way "work" doesn't mean "cure", it means it lowers the chances of needing hospitalized care whether it may be 5% or 40% or whatever. Here's all the data. Are 164 peer reviewed studies not enough? Also, all these treatments have basically no downsides and do no harm.

---

I do understand that a negative study and no effect study is kinda the same thing in the sense that it doesn't show that it helps. Though HCQ became a "bad word" because it was pushed to make people believe it was actually bad for you with shit studies along with a fraudulent one too.

When looking over the actual data and studies we have, how in the world has remdesivir become the only FDA approved drug for covid? If you HAD to recommend either HCQ or remdesivir, which one would you recommend based on the studies we have?

Here's a study of over 8,000 patients and a video by Dr. John Campbell explaining it.

 

[Agema]

When looking over the actual data and studies we have, how in the world has remdesivir become the only FDA approved drug for covid? If you HAD to recommend either HCQ or remdesivir, which one would you recommend based on the studies we have?

The reason remdesevir is the only FDA approved drug for Covid-19 is because it wasn't already approved for anything; without approval it could not be prescribed outside trials.

The most effective (known) drug against covid-19 is dexamethasone, a boring and ordinary, cheap corticosteroid. But dexamethasone doesn't need approval - it already has it for all the stuff coticosteroids are normally used for. As it can be used off-label, getting official approval for covid-19 isn't necessary or important. Although corticosteroids are only useful once covid-19 is severe. The issue is that corticosteroids are immunosuppressants and this is a bad thing in early infection, but a main reason people die is hyperactivity of the immune system ("cytokine storm", etc.) The same applies to HCQ: it doesn't need official approval as it can be used off-label, it just needs an evidence base to justify it.

Be assured, there are no major medical bodies and very few relevant doctors not paying attention to the evidence base for covid-19 drugs. The reason lots of doctors and medical systems are not recommending and prescribing HCQ is because they believe it is not likely to be effective (or at least, do more good than harm). In other countries they may take a different view because - often with inferior healthcare systems - they have less chance of saving critically ill patients so they have "less to lose" by giving anything available a shot.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

The reason remdesevir is the only FDA approved drug for Covid-19 is because it wasn't already approved for anything; without approval it could not be prescribed outside trials.

The most effective (known) drug against covid-19 is dexamethasone, a boring and ordinary, cheap corticosteroid. But dexamethasone doesn't need approval - it already has it for all the stuff coticosteroids are normally used for. As it can be used off-label, getting official approval for covid-19 isn't necessary or important. Although corticosteroids are only useful once covid-19 is severe. The issue is that corticosteroids are immunosuppressants and this is a bad thing in early infection, but a main reason people die is hyperactivity of the immune system ("cytokine storm", etc.) The same applies to HCQ: it doesn't need official approval as it can be used off-label, it just needs an evidence base to justify it.

Be assured, there are no major medical bodies and very few relevant doctors not paying attention to the evidence base for covid-19 drugs. The reason lots of doctors and medical systems are not recommending and prescribing HCQ is because they believe it is not likely to be effective (or at least, do more good than harm). In other countries they may take a different view because - often with inferior healthcare systems - they have less chance of saving critically ill patients so they have "less to lose" by giving anything available a shot.

That makes some sense as to why it got FDA approved.

How can you come to the conclusion that HCQ works less than remdesivir if you actually look at the studies and data?

I know about dexamethasone, though it's nothing you would start taking early on. One doctor that treats covid patients said it's worked every time on long haulers and only had to give a 2nd dose of it to one of them. Ivermectin is also getting good results and really does no harm.

People that have just probably early covid (don't even wait for a positive test result that can take days) can start taking quite a few things like HCQ and zinc along with vitamin d and it will most likely help somewhat, maybe it's minimal, maybe it helps a lot. And you can replace HCQ with quercetin + vitamin c to do much of the same thing as HCQ if you can't get a prescription. Here's this document offering treatment options anyone can take at pretty much 0 risk of harm.

Sadly, you won't find any of this on the news. But I'm sure there will be some story about someone getting infected after vaccination even though that story is entirely meaningless and only will scare people.

 

[Worgen]

I mean they literally made this in a lab in Wuhan. Or at least modified an existing Novelcorona virus. But i mean yeah, either way they completely fucked this up and it blew into a global disaster, both in life and in economic ways.

If china literally made this in a lab then they have already won. They have won genetics and we are all at their mercy. You are giving them way way too much credit.

 

[Houseman]

If china literally made this in a lab then they have already won. They have won genetics and we are all at their mercy. You are giving them way way too much credit.

Well, first they would need to find some way to not also kill themselves with any such bioweapon. THEN they could be said to have won.

 

[Agema]

How can you come to the conclusion that HCQ works less than remdesivir if you actually look at the studies and data?

Remdesevir is possibly slightly useful. Or rather, it is perhaps useful in some very specific circumstances, although even then the evidence is not compelling.

I come to the conclusion HCQ is a bust because all the biggest, best-designed, best-run studies on it failed to show efficacy. So did health services see the data and come to the same conclusion, which is why they withdrew it as a recommendation. That's why - having only finite resources - most major research organisations gave up on it and moved their attention to more promising possibilities. That's just the way it is. I know studies out there have data that seems to show it works, but basically, they're probably wrong.

People that have just probably early covid (don't even wait for a positive test result that can take days) can start taking quite a few things like HCQ and zinc along with vitamin d and it will most likely help somewhat, maybe it's minimal, maybe it helps a lot. And you can replace HCQ with quercetin + vitamin c to do much of the same thing as HCQ if you can't get a prescription. Here's this document offering treatment options anyone can take at pretty much 0 risk of harm.

Sure, you can take all those. With the exception of Vit D for those who have a Vit D deficiency, I seriously doubt they'll do a damn bit of good, but people can choose for themselves.

Sadly, you won't find any of this on the news. But I'm sure there will be some story about someone getting infected after vaccination even though that story is entirely meaningless and only will scare people.

There's no great reason for them to be on the news: the news is not there to flog unproven treatments.

The HCQ fiasco is a textbook example about what happens with unrealistically raised expectations - although that orange idiot needs to take much of the blame, too.

 

[Worgen]

Well, first they would need to find some way to not also kill themselves with any such bioweapon. THEN they could be said to have won.

No, just being able to engineer something like covid is so beyond what our scientists can do, that if china can do it then it means they are lightyears ahead of us. They are a modern army fighting against a mod using sticks and rocks.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Remdesevir is possibly slightly useful. Or rather, it is perhaps useful in some very specific circumstances, although even then the evidence is not compelling.

I come to the conclusion HCQ is a bust because all the biggest, best-designed, best-run studies on it failed to show efficacy. So did health services see the data and come to the same conclusion, which is why they withdrew it as a recommendation. That's why - having only finite resources - most major research organisations gave up on it and moved their attention to more promising possibilities. That's just the way it is. I know studies out there have data that seems to show it works, but basically, they're probably wrong.

Sure, you can take all those. With the exception of Vit D for those who have a Vit D deficiency, I seriously doubt they'll do a damn bit of good, but people can choose for themselves.

There's no great reason for them to be on the news: the news is not there to flog unproven treatments.

The HCQ fiasco is a textbook example about what happens with unrealistically raised expectations - although that orange idiot needs to take much of the blame, too.

The only thing I've seen remdesivir is useful for is lowering a hospital stay, nothing shown to lower mortality rates. How are you gonna say there's more data showing the usefulness of remdesivir over HCQ? I linked to a 8,000+ patient study of HCQ. Also, an ionophore + zinc has been shown to hamper virus replication with SARS-COV-1, which is extremely similar to SARS-COV-2. Here's a study here and here that show zinc with an ionophore helps vs only taking an ionophore (like HCQ) or only taking zinc. HCQ helps because it lets the zinc into the cells to interfere with virus replication. HCQ also helps with the cytokine storm. Vitamin C with quercetin makes quercetin into an ionophore so you can substitute out HCQ out for those.

There's more evidence supporting these treatments than there is evidence supporting masks. Yet the news is glad to talk about wearing masks which are more of an unproven "treatment" than HCQ or zinc or vitamin d. Literally what is the difference between telling people to wear masks and taking vitamin d supplements (that most people need anyways, and the groups most adversely affected by covid are notoriously vitamin d deficient)? Why is one on the news and not the other? You can report on something and say it may help (+ you need it anyway), you don't have to say it's a cure to report on it. Have you not seen all the other bullshit misinformation articles on covid already?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

No, just being able to engineer something like covid is so beyond what our scientists can do, that if china can do it then it means they are lightyears ahead of us. They are a modern army fighting against a mod using sticks and rocks.

Science | AAAS

www.sciencemag.org

 

[Worgen]

Science | AAAS

www.sciencemag.org

Then they have won and will soon release a plague that will wipe out all the white people so our only options are do die or nuke them first.