Thread by @markfmccarty

#LancetGate @jpkiekens @niro60487270

The NIH has just shut down its multicenter RCT of HCQ/AZM in early stage COVID-19 outpatients, due to anemic enrollment. After over a month, only 20 subjects had enrolled, whereas the target enrollment was 2,000.

niaid.nih.gov/news-events/bu…

2/A poor effort at patient outreach may have contributed to this outcome, as well as US incompetence with respect to rapid testing of symptomatic subjects. But the likely main factor: Our media and "medical experts" have convinced most Americans that HCQ is toxic and useless.

3/Case series in Marseilles, New York, and Sao Paolo reported only 29 deaths in 3,871 patients given this regimen - a case-fatality rate of only 0.7%. (Zelenko in NY, who added zinc, had a CFR under 0.2%.) By comparison, CFR is 4% in Germany, which tests extensively.

4/While I might entertain the possibility that ONE of these studies was incompetent or fraudulent, what is the chance that ALL THREE, on 3 different continents, testing a regimen that can't make real money for anyone, would reach the same striking conclusion - if it weren't true?

5/But the WHOLE US could manage to enroll only 20 subjects in over a month to test this regimen. This is a monstrous crime - abetted by all the media and medical poohbahs who declared HCQ to be not only useless, but toxic - despite decades of safe use for other indications.

6/Meanwhile, Raoult in Marseilles - where he is considered a hero - has already treated over 3,000 early-stage patients with this regimen in one clinic. But the US could only manage to enroll 20 patients in multiple clinics nationwide in over a month.

7/I strongly suspect that this regimen DOES WORK - not just because of clinical reports, but because the technical rationale for its efficacy is highly credible.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32533263/

Hence, failure to adopt this may lead to tens of thousands of deaths in the US alone.

@threadreaderapp Unroll