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Move over Dr. Fauci. Smile

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stella-imm...hloroquine

"A Houston doctor who praises hydroxychloroquine and says that face masks aren’t necessary to stop transmission of the highly contagious coronavirus has become a star on the right-wing internet, garnering tens of millions of views on Facebook on Monday alone. Donald Trump Jr. declared the video of Stella Immanuel a “must watch,” while Donald Trump himself retweeted the video.

Before Trump and his supporters embrace Immanuel’s medical expertise, though, they should consider other medical claims Immanuel has made—including those about alien DNA and the physical effects of having sex with witches and demons in your dreams.

Immanuel, a pediatrician and a religious minister, has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and other issues. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches.

She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by “reptilians” and other aliens.

Immanuel gave her viral speech on the steps of the Supreme Court at the “White Coat Summit,” a gathering of a handful of doctors who call themselves America’s Frontline Doctors and dispute the medical consensus on the novel coronavirus. The event was organized by the right-wing group Tea Party Patriots, which is backed by wealthy Republican donors.

In her speech, Immanuel alleges that she has successfully treated hundreds of patients with hydroxychloroquine, a controversial treatment Trump has promoted and says he has taken himself. Studies have failed to find proof that the drug has any benefit in treating COVID-19, and the Food and Drug Administration in June revoked its emergency authorization to use it to treat the deadly virus, saying it hadn’t demonstrated any effect on patients’ mortality prospects.

“Nobody needs to get sick,” Immanuel said. “This virus has a cure.”

Immanuel said in her speech that the supposed potency of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment means that protective face masks aren’t necessary, claiming that she and her staff had avoided contracting COVID-19 despite wearing medical masks instead of the more secure N95 masks.

“Hello, you don’t need a mask. There is a cure,” Immanuel said. 

Toward the end of Immanuel’s speech, the event’s organizer and other participants can be seen trying to get her away from the microphone. But footage of the speech captured by Breitbart was a hit online, becoming a top video on Facebook and amassing roughly 13 million views—significantly more than “Plandemic,” another coronavirus disinformation video that became a viral hit online in May, when it amassed roughly 8 million Facebook views.

“Hydroxychloroquine” trended on Twitter, as Immanuel’s video was embraced by the Trumps, conservative student group Turning Point USA, and pro-Trump personalities like Diamond & Silk. But both Facebook and Twitter eventually deleted videos of Immanuel’s speech from their sites, citing rules against COVID-19 disinformation. The deletions set off yet another round of complaints by conservatives of bias at the social-media platforms.

Immanuel responded in her own way, declaring that Jesus Christ would destroy Facebook’s servers if her videos weren’t restored to the platform."
Retweeting someone doesn't make them your spokesman. Nor is this doctor the only one touting hydroxychloroquine.
The studies against hydroxychloroquine had to be retracted due to bad science. That doesn't mean it's a cure, nor that it speaks to masks at all. Just that many front-line doctors have seen positive enough outcomes to prescribe it. If people want to ignore that simply because Trump touted it, well, that's like not bathing because the Romans did it.
(Jul 31, 2020 08:50 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [ -> ]Move over Dr. Fauci. Smile

https://www.thedailybeast.com/stella-imm...hloroquine

... Before Trump and his supporters embrace [Stella] Immanuel’s medical expertise, though, they should consider other medical claims Immanuel has made—including those about alien DNA and the physical effects of having sex with witches and demons in your dreams.

Immanuel, a pediatrician and a religious minister, has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and other issues. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches.

She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by “reptilians” and other aliens. ...


Fifty-five years old. If instead 26, one might wonder if her father had played Stella Inquisitorus as a source of inspiration for her name.
From The Lancet - the study (showing no clinical benefit for Hydroxychloroquine) must have originally passed peer review - and subsequently did not. Politics, alien intervention or something else?

RETRACTED: Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lance...6/fulltext

It is becoming increasingly difficult or perhaps (intentionally) impossible to distinguish woo from true.

Syne Wrote:Just that many front-line doctors have seen positive enough outcomes to prescribe it.
Probably quite a few front-line doctors are worried about the claims made against them if they don't prescribe it.
Syne Wrote:If people want to ignore that simply because Trump touted it, well, that's like not bathing because the Romans did it.
Not like that at all.
It's like not automatically accepting a thing is true simply because the POTUS claims it is true.
(Aug 1, 2020 11:44 AM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]
Syne Wrote:Just that many front-line doctors have seen positive enough outcomes to prescribe it.
Probably quite a few front-line doctors are worried about the claims made against them if they don't prescribe it.
No, the mainstream and social media are pushing hard against hydroxychloroquine, so even if people say something against a doctor for not prescribing it, it won't get much notice or traction. YouTube and social media sites are banning any videos/posts showing it efficacious.

(Aug 1, 2020 01:01 PM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]
Syne Wrote:If people want to ignore that simply because Trump touted it, well, that's like not bathing because the Romans did it.
Not like that at all.
It's like not automatically accepting a thing is true simply because the POTUS claims it is true.
No, the "disagree just because Trump said it" is many orders of magnitude stronger in the US. Trump's conservative base doesn't generally accept everything he says as gospel truth.
She’s no more whackier than any other religious freak. She’s a shining example of what religion can do to a person. If you believe or have to believe the following then denying or denouncing what she says makes you a hypocrite. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_of_Revelation

Is she any nuttier?
(Aug 1, 2020 11:44 AM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]From The Lancet - the study (showing no clinical benefit for Hydroxychloroquine) must have originally passed peer review - and subsequently did not. Politics, alien intervention or something else?

RETRACTED: Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lance...6/fulltext


It is becoming increasingly difficult or perhaps (intentionally) impossible to distinguish woo from true.



The growing politicization of science is a big part of why science (along with scholarship in general) is rapidly losing credibility among the general public. There's a growing sense that a certain kind of scholar approaches their research with their conclusions already in mind, and their research consists of trying to concoct arguments for things that they already believe.

Then all the little people in the general public are expected to just believe simply on faith everything that the supposed authorities tell them. (We really haven't progressed that far from the middle ages.)

Syne Wrote:Just that many front-line doctors have seen positive enough outcomes to prescribe it.

True. Frankly, I don't personally know whether hydroxychlorquine has any positive effect on the Wuhan coronavirus. I do know that one's opinion on that matter has become a proxy for whether or not one supports the President. So the doctors who oppose Trump seem to oppose the drug largely for that reason, while those who support him are more apt to support it. Which suggests that from the perspective of the street, medical opinion on the drug might not be very reliable. Medical opinion might be a better indicator of where a particular physician stands on Trump than on whether the drug is really effective.

This drug has been on the market and widely prescribed for decades for things like malaria and lupus. Its side effects and potential dangers are widely known. It's also true that there is lots of anecdotal evidence for its effectiveness, much of it from overseas and from people who obviously weren't thinking of Trump before they made their reports. To be fair, there's also evidence that it might not be effective. Unfortunately we will never know without some objective research, and dispassionate objectivity is hard to find in the current intellectual climate.

So my own view is that physicians should be allowed to prescribe it to Wuhan coronavirus patients based simply on the possibility that it might possibly help, especially when those patients are in extremis and nothing else seems to be working.

But that being said, it shouldn't be oversold either.


The democrats' "quack spokeswoman" - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defending cannabis as an effective coronavirus treatment, "This is a therapy that has proven successful!"

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/51003...-a-therapy

Actually, much like hydroxychloroquine, it may or may not be true that cannabis has some positive effects in coronavirus cases. I kind of doubt it, especially if it's inhaled by people with viral pneumonia. But we'll never know in real life without some objective research, something that I'm not convinced that today's academia is capable of providing.
(Aug 1, 2020 10:46 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]
Syne Wrote:Just that many front-line doctors have seen positive enough outcomes to prescribe it.

True. Frankly, I don't personally know whether hydroxychlorquine has any positive effect on the Wuhan coronavirus. I do know that one's opinion on that matter has become a proxy for whether or not one supports the President. So the doctors who oppose Trump seem to oppose the drug largely for that reason, while those who support him are more apt to support it. Which suggests that from the perspective of the street, medical opinion on the drug might not be very reliable. Medical opinion might be a better indicator of where a particular physician stands on Trump than on whether the drug is really effective.

This drug has been on the market and widely prescribed for decades for things like malaria and lupus. Its side effects and potential dangers are widely known. It's also true that there is lots of anecdotal evidence for its effectiveness, much of it from overseas and from people who obviously weren't thinking of Trump before they made their reports. To be fair, there's also evidence that it might not be effective. Unfortunately we will never know without some objective research, and dispassionate objectivity is hard to find in the current intellectual climate.

So my own view is that physicians should be allowed to prescribe it to Wuhan coronavirus patients based simply on the possibility that it might possibly help, especially when those patients are in extremis and nothing else seems to be working.

But that being said, it shouldn't be oversold either.
Sadly, it has largely become more political than medical. The one study claiming hydroxychloroquine did harm was retracted, and as you say, it has been in use for decades, even for rheumatoid arthritis. I haven't seen any solid science of it being ineffective, other than anecdote. So yeah, it's a coin toss without a any real scientific studies. It's use has been largely borne of desperation.

Quote:The democrats' quack spokeswoman - Nancy Pelosi defending cannabis as an effective coronavirus treatment, "This is a therapy that has proven successful!"

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/51003...-a-therapy
Holy crap on a cracker! That's the highest office held by any Democrat right now. That's not only a spokeswoman, that's the actual leader of the party.
And I've seen zero science or doctors touting cannabis as a Wuhan virus treatment.
Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
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