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Comment by strken | Hacker News Reader

That article mentions "the senseless attacks on hydroxycloroquine" as an example of scientific failure. I disagree. Small initial studies with low sample sizes often find effects that fail to replicate in larger studies, and to the best of my knowledge, that's what happened here.

Can you elaborate on why you think it's an effective treatment?

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HCQ can be effective when used early and in correct dosages, as shown in hundreds of peer-reviewed studies. One widely-publicised, large Lancet study claiming it was "unsafe" was later retracted as it turned out to be made up BS. [0]

Living meta-study of 300+ likely non-pretend control studies on 400k+ patients:

https://c19hcq.com/

(Edit to add: And this was apparent early-on. Nothing much has changed with HCQ's profile since it was first identified as an effective, safe therapeutic in early 2020.)

[0] https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/08/lancetgate-why-was-this-m...

Don't really have the time to go through these right now, but I'll look through them later. Thanks!

Initial impression is that taking the average of every published paper across different metrics makes you vulnerable to publication bias (and probably other stuff), but I'd need to make a funnel plot and check out the opinions of actual trained scientists to know whether that's true here. I'm guessing that some studies on each side are probably going to have suspicious or outright false data, too (like the one you mention).

can you link to the retraction of that study?

https://tinyurl.com/55rext65

Not the article author, but until such time as the larger study is done, the attacks could be construed as senseless. There were lots of "attacks" on hcq in the beginning when at best the response should have been, "we're skeptical but looking into it".

I mean, that is effectively what happens. It's dangerous to give validity to a potential solution when the impacts and side effects of it are unknown.

Like the vaccine? (Joking here, but you get my point)

I don't know if you have selective memory, but the discourse was not at all like how I suggested it could have been.

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