The corruption of science should be aggressively confronted.
If you dig into Surgisphere, you will see they have significant consulting engagements with Johnson and Johnson. Not saying that's necessarily bad, but so much bad science about Covid and HCQ seems geared towards promoting high-priced treatments like Remdesivir, and not low-cost preventative measures like making sure you're not D deficient. All these studies need to be evaluated based on who's funding them or the political agenda behind them.
HCQ seems like it's been targeted for destruction. Every study I've read on it shows you shouldn't use it in late stages of disease. Fair enough, but the theory of its effectiveness (as a Zinc ionophore) hasn't been fully studied, although there is a good amount of anecdotal and country-level evidence it works well if taken early (with Zinc).
These garbage studies are dangerous and should be called out loudly.
This is a pretty simplistic view, the article talks about a different Surgisphere study where the conclusion is that a cheap and widely available drug is effective against covid-19 (the study also has its problems though):
"A third COVID-19 study using Surgisphere data has also drawn fire. In a preprint first posted in early April, Surgisphere founder and CEO Sapan Desai and co-authors conclude that ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug, dramatically reduced mortality in COVID-19 patients. In Latin America, where ivermectin is widely available, that study has led government officials to authorize the drug—although with precautions—creating a surge in demand in several countries."
I pointed out the Johnson and Johnson relationship only to say motives should be examined.
Surgisphere is producing studies based on data they don't actually have, according to researchers, Australian hospitals, etc. It could be for self-aggrandizement, or pay-for-publish or something else. I don't know, but it should not be tolerated for any reason.
I have been wondering why so many HCQ studies do not include Zinc. A couple months ago I watched a video that detailed how Zinc once inside a cell could block replication of coronaviruses. And that HCQ being a Zinc ionophore gets the Zinc into the cell. The relevant study was published approximately 10 years ago.
Zinc has been pushed as a cure/treatment for common cold for decades.
The actual track record of whether the OTC zinc tablets you can buy in a store work is quite uncertain though. Lots of studies coming down one way or another, and uncertain levels of statistical rigor. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/common-cold/e...
It is easy enough to make a video with what seems convincing but many of these neat explanations don’t actually work once you get into the human body.
It could be that there are multiple proposed mechanisms, and that HCQ being a zinc ionophore is only one of them. I looked up some of the studies of HCQ in different animal models, and some of them showed positive results with CQ or HCQ alone.
If you dig into Surgisphere, you will see they have significant consulting engagements with Johnson and Johnson. Not saying that's necessarily bad, but so much bad science about Covid and HCQ seems geared towards promoting high-priced treatments like Remdesivir, and not low-cost preventative measures like making sure you're not D deficient. All these studies need to be evaluated based on who's funding them or the political agenda behind them.
HCQ seems like it's been targeted for destruction. Every study I've read on it shows you shouldn't use it in late stages of disease. Fair enough, but the theory of its effectiveness (as a Zinc ionophore) hasn't been studied properly, although there is a good amount of anecdotal evidence it works well if taken very early (with Zinc).
These garbage studies are dangerous and should be called out loudly.
This is a garbage analysis that ends up with a plug for vitamins and t-shirts. You don't write off a journal for making mistakes. Retraction is part of the scientific process.
What this YouTuber failed to mention is that there were already a couple of other studies before this one that reached the same conclusion - that there was no evidence of it working for COVID-19, or that it potentially made things worse in the most sick patients. The retraction of a single paper doesn't invalidate the body of evidence (albeit small) provided by other papers prior to it.
Don't get hung up on the how the channel survives. The channel, whose host has a Phd in pathology, has been focused on Covid issues for months, after being demonitized by YouTube.
> "In this analysis involving a large sample of consecutive patients who had been hospitalized with Covid-19, the risk of intubation or death was not significantly higher or lower among patients who received hydroxychloroquine than among those who did not..."
Note that this study did not use any of the data from Mehra et. al. You see all the other studies that found similar results by reading the references.
Essentially, Apple changed the iPad's user-agent to mimic macOS with the iPadOS 13 release. This makes detecting iPads impossible from the user-agent and requires DOM inspection.
I've always been amazed that very few organizations question why Google Analytics is free. Sites are literally handing Google a list of targeted visitors their competitors can advertise to.
Just to be super clear: Google Analytics is not free, the entry version with a limited a visitors/visits it can logs per day is free, then you have to pay to get the full version.
Delivering a quality free product to get companies to sign for the expansive one when their needs increase is a very common marketing system, and allows to keep control of the market despite being vastly out of price. Works for desktop app, mobile app, web services, ... I say this as someone who once had to sign for the full version for a web property I was working at.
This is a matter where people are quick to over react so let's be super clear: I am NOT saying the limit is placed at a reasonable level, nor that companies absolutely need to have the paid version and can't extrapolate enough from the free version data (they absolutely can), nor that Google isn't majorly benefitting in other way than full version sales (they do).
What I'm saying is that "the base version is free and the full version is paid" is a very common thing that doesn't by itself mean anything nefarious is taking place.
"that doesn't by itself mean anything nefarious is taking place"
I don't believe that Google is intentionally doing nefarious things either, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't subject them to close scrutiny over their date collection practices. Whether Google Analytics (GA) is free or not is beside the point. The free version of GA may limit what GA users see, but that doesn't stop Google from capturing far more data than they expose.
This is a company that tracks users on an industrial-size scale that no other online company can match. And yet despite that, most developers are more likely to rush to Google's defence rather than question those data collection practices. (Does a multi-billion company with an army of lawyers need developers to defend it?)
I've said this many times: the hypocrisy that runs through the programming profession when it comes to online tracking really knows no end.
> this is a company that tracks users on an industrial-size scale that no other online company can match. And yet despite that, most developers are more likely to rush to Google's defence rather than question those data collection practices.
If that is what you read in my message, then you are projecting what you want to see on what I actually said. Nothing I said defends Google on that front.
EVERYTHING in your post is completly out of scope of what I said in answer of parent's post. What I said, is that just because some company does something wrong doesn't mean everything that company does is wrong. Or in this case, that while Google is obviously massively syphoning data on a gigantic scale, NO analytics basic tier being free, by itself, isn't an element of wrongdoing.
If anything, your post proves my point, that when they believe they know the end results people are quick to make up the narrative in between to reach it, even if they need to throw the baby with the water too.
I suppose that would be up to the phrasing of the paid version contract. I'm betting even if it says no there is wriggle room, especially for that important 3 months fresh data.
