Fujifilm's Avigan inconclusive in COVID-19 patients in Japan trial

Apology accepted from the poster(s) who said I was wrong in pointing out the government should not be pre-approving drugs just because other nations were. This is why. Didn't they also pour billions into it? Something else I said they shouldn't rush to do.

Didn't they also pour billions into it? Something else I said they shouldn't rush to do.

So they should not pour billions to develop something and see if it works?

how else do you suppose they find out then? they money invested in producing a drug is nothing compared with the money used to develop it in the first place and for testing it appropriately.

The government would love a Japanese drug to be the miracle cure, but studies have not shown it actually works. Approving a drug without proper testing is gambling with lives. Money above people, yet again.

Evidence on the ground from doctors has also shown that hydroxychloroquine taken together with vitamin C, D and zinc as a preventive measure or during the early stages has been very effective in preventing symptoms developing to the serious stage. But apparently it's useless once patients are seriously/criticially ill, like on a ventilator.

The media bashed it because of Trump, but partly because it's cheap and out of patent, so there's very little money to be made on it.

Yet there is some sanity among all the fear mongering and vaccine-pushing:

One of the lead researchers, Prof Sir Nicholas White from the University of Oxford, said: "Hydroxychloroquine could still prevent infections, and this needs to be determined in a randomised controlled trial."

Co-investigator Prof Martin Llewelyn, from the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, said: "Although rates of coronavirus are low just now in the UK, healthcare workers are still being affected across the NHS and a second wave of infection this winter is widely expected. 

"In terms of finding an intervention that could protect key workers by this winter, hydroxychloroquine is by far the most realistic prospect. The recent post-exposure prophylaxis study confirmed its safety and indicated that it could be protective if given as pre-exposure prophylaxis. This is what COPCOV will find out."

(From https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53233070)

wipeout

"The drugs [chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine] have been in the news a lot because they have been tested in small trials for the treatment of COVID-19. Some of these studies claimed success, others failure, but all these studies were too small to give a definite answer about their efficacy or safety. Larger trials are ongoing to determine whether these drugs are effective for the treatment of COVID-19. COPCOV is a very large study, enrolling 40,000 participants, and will give a definite answer whether the drugs are effective and safe. COPCOV studies chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of COVID-19, which is different from the treatment of patients that already have the disease COVID-19, who carry a much higher load of the virus."

And yet after all the (dubiously, as it is turning out) negative publicity, COPCOV is still proceeding with the study on this drug, indicating that they think they see some merit in it as a potential protective treatment. Otherwise they wouldn't waste their time and money, especially You can attempt to tar me with the usual leftist ad homs, but doing so doesn't address the issue. I don't see anyone saying this is a miracle drug, but it has been showing proactive results.

I'm genuinely curious - are you claiming that it's useless, or are you willing to keep an open mind on it?

This medicine showed positive effects in trials of China and Russia.

Russia has even begun using it as an official treatment