Second French Study by Dr. Raoult finds Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin Helped EVERY PATIENT in Study Group of 80 Minus One
https://tinyurl.com/w75v7hr
Cool. They should keep following up with more studies. They should also stop trying to oversell results.
In the initial study of 26 people initially treated with HCQ, 6 weren't included because they had to stop. 3 of those 6 stopped because they ended up in the ICU, 1 stopped because the patient died. Those numbers weren't reported on nearly as much.
In this study of 80, the 1 patient they list as "not being helped" was the 1/80 (1.25%) who died. Of those they treated that lived, only 65 were discharged from the hospital within the 10 days (and that's WITH the fact that they said they discharged more than they would have in other situations, but they had to make room for new patients). Of those 65, the average length of stay was 4.6 days. 3 of the others went to the ICU. One of the three was still there. And no random control group. STILL no randomized study of this.
Their outcome was that within 10 days there was SOME improvement in those they studied that didn't die. How many of those would have been expected to improve otherwise? Of those that leave, what's the average length of stay given the loosened discharge restrictions? The study doesn't really say that, so it's hard to know. This could be a miracle result. Or it could be that this treatment barely improves over not doing this, when patients are treated at the level that this/these particular hospital(s) treats them.
In the end, this tells us only that this should be looked at more (there's a real randomized study that should be finished up in April, last I heard). And perhaps the manufacturers of these drugs should ramp up production in case this is found to be really effective they can distribute more quickly. Not that we should be prescribing these two drugs to everyone with a cough in the hopes that they work, to the detriment of those who use these drugs normally (people still have health problems that aren't COVID-19). And it certainly doesn't mean other treatments should not continue to be explored. I'm sure people who know a lot more than me will take a look at this study and see if it indicates any more than I've gleaned from it, but for now, we still don't really know anything from either this doctor's studies or the one study on this done in Shanghai (that one was better designed, showed less promising results, but was still inconclusive).
Not that I expect you'll read this, just trying to get info out there to people whose minds aren't already made up.