Could be as simple as they aren't testing. You'd be amazed at how many people in your population can not die of a disease if you never verify they had it.
victor809 wrote:
Of course there are other factors aplenty:
6. probable severe lack of testing in many areas
Pudding Mittens wrote:
Or it could be there’s more heat there in Africa right now making it more difficult for the virus to survive outside a host
ZRX1200 wrote:
Excellent point, very well could be a big factor. If so, summer has to get here fast!
At today's press conference, they said they're going to do two things in parallel starting now:
1. Doctors able to prescribe the two drugs off-label for COVID-19
2. A larger-scale formal well-controlled study of the two drugs against COVID-19.
#2 will provide high-quality, high-reliability results on effectiveness within months.
#1, though, should provide a large number of anecdotal results within a week.
The quality of #2 is better than #1, but #1 is going to be much faster and very persuasive if hundreds or thousands of
"holy schitt it cured all / almost all my patients in only 6 days!" results start to emerge from doctors in the field.
Prediction: I am a medical layman, but my job and hobbies all involve pattern recognition and interpreting multiple partial data-points to infer conclusions. Data points:
1. French study showing, at 6 days, control (nothing but conventional care) 12.5% cure, anti-malarial only 57% cure, combination 100% cure (but only a 6-patient group got both).
2. Chinese data indicating the anti-malarial is very effective. Grain of salt, it's China, they lie a lot.
3. Australian data indicating the anti-malarial is very effective. Has more weight than China's reports.
4. Almost no COVID-19 in Africa where the anti-malarial is widely used. Many other variables though, likely little testing, need comparision of COVID-19 rates vs. anti-malarial use per-region across Africa to see if there's good correlation, which I don't think anyone's done yet.
5. The anti-malarial drug was seemingly effective against the similar coronavirus SARS, although the data wasn't high-quality and highly-controlled.
6. Azithromycin kills other virii (Zika, Ebola) in vitro, currently unknown if in vivo, and it's also well-known to seemingly help with viral infections in vivo somehow despite being an antibiotic that's only supposed to help bacterial infections. The mechanisms of help against viral infections are not well-understood, but have been widely noted for years, and may be, in whole or in part, related to the in vitro virus-killing action that's been observed.
7. A mechanism of action for the anti-malarial to interfere with viral replication is known.
IMO while each point separately is merely mildly-to-moderately suggestive, considered
together, data points #1-7 are
collectively persuasive, therefore I predict this two-drug combination will be highly effective and a cure or a mostly/usually-cure.
Dr. Fauci seems to not be a fan of doing what I just did (inferring things from the weight of multiple partial data points) and instead he seems to only want to talk about high-quality conclusive studies, but in this situation, assembling partial data points and making inferences is useful. So don't get too upset when he downplays this.
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Edited by user
6 years ago |
Reason: Not specified
