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Comment by zpeti | Hacker News Reader

It was extremely worrying to me that the same happened with Hydroxychloroquine. Now I know that the scientific community proved that it doesn’t work. Fine, good.

But the media dismissed it before that was proved. Because trump said it.

Now imagine a hypothetical scenario where it actually worked. Just because trump was using it, the media would have potentially killed people just because they can’t agree with a single thing trump says.

This is not journalism. It’s not objective reporting in the slightest. And it was by media outlets who claim to be doing real journalism and claim they are objective. At least fox doesn’t claim to be objective. It’s shameful propaganda.

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> Now I know that the scientific community proved that it doesn’t work.

Even that I'm not so sure about. This is a collection of all the HCQ studies: https://c19hcq.com/

Early treatment at lower dosages (lower compared to the "negative results" studies) seems to show positive results pretty consistently.

The same thing happened with Ivermectin as a prophylaxis. All of a sudden anything that was years old with a history of safe use in humans was off the table. They all also happen to be old enough that patent protection is gone. It's almost like people wanted this to be more dangerous and less treatable for some reason.

Fox very much claims to be objective.

“Fair and balanced” I believe the slogan is.

Nonetheless, you are correct.

Fox/Sky are shameless hard right propagandists.

Sadly, CNN/Nbc are hard left propagandists. I don’t know enough of the history to say that was always the case as it is for Fox/Sky, but it certainly is today.

It’s disheartening to think that even once respected papers like the Guardian have become so departed from objective journalism. I can’t help but think that journalistic freedom of speech is ultimately on borrowed time if the situation becomes much worse.

I’ve taken to following Reuters for news now, but even then I don’t know if what I’m watching is well sourced or it just happens to agree with my own biases more often than not.

Media reporting that dismisses the use of a potentially harmful drug to treat an illness without a full peer-reviewed study should be standard operating procedure.

Consider thalidomide:

https://helix.northwestern.edu/article/thalidomide-tragedy-l...

I recall several early articles in mainstream media reporting early research showing positive effects from Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID. Then when flaws were found in the early research, and newer research showed that it didn't help, they reported that. It had nothing to do with Trump.

> Now imagine a hypothetical scenario where it actually worked.

That would have been a coincidente. Are you willing to gamble your wellbeing on a lucky hunch?

I still don't understand this logic process. Asserting something with no evidence is arguably worse, than pointing out the absurdity of it.

No, wait for the scientific evidence. But both trump and the media took a stance without any evidence, pro and against.

Both are just as bad as each other.

> Both are just as bad as each other.

This couldn't be further from the truth.

An assertion without evidente is a lie. Pointing out that someone is making assertions without evidente is not a lie.

If Trump were to say that the sky is actually orange, and provided no evidence, would you take on the media for reporting that what he said had no foundation on reality?

That's nuts.

Look, taking advice from Trump on medical issues is dumb. Injecting bleach (or drinking it or whatever) is a bad idea, and it was hopefully a joke, but you can't tell what is a joke and what isn't.

But that means you have to ignore his advice, not take it as an indicator of something bad. From what I can tell, there was plenty of activity trying out anything that seemed plausible, including Hydroxychloroquine. And it went through the usual medical science news cycle of study showing it totally works, study showing it might work, study showing it actually doesn't do a whole lot, with a pretty quick progression.

About the only thing the negative media coverage may have done is discourage people from actively soliciting for a mostly untested experimental treatment. But then again, probably not by much; or maybe they asked for other malaria drugs instead.

Taking medical advice without evidence from “anti trump” is just as bad.

If you are making decisions not based on evidence but on personalities, you are going to make huge mistakes.

Oh, come on. Trump said all sorts of things that the media didn't oppose. And some of the battles that he fought actually made some sense. He also spouted some ridiculous BS pretty frequently.

The reason why the Hydroxychloroquine suggestions were dismissed is simple: science involves an empirical epistemology and that means undemonstrated hypotheses are not treated as true.

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