['Hamas' Jenkins]

Now, back to the adult discussion:

When weighing evidence you'd like to have several high-quality RCTs or even better, meta-analyses of RCTs (think of them as compiling information from several randomized trial and weighing the data cumulatively to make a more informed decision with less potential for statistical error). However, you can eventually come to reasonably well-informed decisions in the absence of RCTs if you have a lot of observational data...and it takes a lot.

The Lancet study was one example, the VA study another, as well as the studies in JAMA and NEJM. Weighing all of that together is what allowed Fauci to state this with confidence.

Most places that I am aware of have already removed hydroxychloroquine from their treatment protocols. I imagine it will accelerate greatly after this announcement, the French decision, and the WHO's decision to pause the hydroxychloroquine arm in the SOLIDARITY trial.

----


May 27 (UPI) -- Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday hydroxychloroquine, a drug President Donald Trump said he has taken to ward off the coronavirus, is not an effective treatment based on the latest scientific data.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made his most definitive statement yet against the drug once touted by Trump as a possible treatment.

"The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy," Fauci, the White House's top infectious disease expert, said.

His statement comes on the heels of France banning the drug altogether Wednesday and the internationally respected science journal The Lancet publishing a 96,000-patient study that concluded hydroxychloroquine had no effect on COVID-19.

RELATED WHO suspends trials of hydroxychloroquine, citing safety
France's decision was published in the country's official legal journal, ending the drug's use as a weapon in the pandemic just weeks after French epidemiologist Dr. Didier Raoult recommended it as a key tool against the coronavirus disease.

Tuesday, the French High Council of Public Health and National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products said hydroxychloroquine has shown higher rates of death and cardiac arrhythmia in COVID-19 patients.

French health minister Olivier Veran ordered the assessments last weekend after the study in The Lancet. The study also reported increased death rates and irregular heartbeat among COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine.

Hydroxychloroquine and related drug chloroquine have been used as anti-malarial drugs for decades and are sometimes used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Trump and others have said hydroxychloroquine could be a potential treatment for COVID-19 or to prevent infection. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and American Heart Association, however, have warned that using it without medical supervision can lead to a greater risk of cardiac arrest.