COVID-19 therapy flim-flam

FWIW, if I had COVID-19, I would refuse to take hydroxychloroquine. At this point, I would accept Remdesivir, although the evidence for benefit is thin to nonexistent. Here's a long but well colored out analysis of the current hype, film-flam and general intellectual sloppiness surrounding the quest for COVID-19 therapy.

"Although we have not seen a pandemic like this in over 100 years, some things never change. Human nature, for instance, doesn’t change, and, now as then, physicians hate feeling powerless against a disease for which they have no disease-specific therapy, leaving them supportive care alone while hoping the patient can ride out the disease and recover. The culture of medicine is very much biased to “do something, anything” with an attitude of, “What’s the harm?” when a patient is facing imminent death. As Lenzer and Brownlee argue, though, yes, some people will die waiting for properly designed and conducted randomized clinical trials, but in the end that toll is likely to be far less than if early treatment attempts are based on bad science without proper controls. Thus far, thanks to politics, social media, old media, and opportunistic snake oil salesmen, we are failing COVID-19 patients when it comes to assuring that new treatments are based on rigorous science. Sadly, it turns out that most physicians are not nearly as dedicated to science-based medicine as they would like to believe."

Longtime readers (and I do mean longtime readers) might remember that I (as well as some of our other regular bloggers) have had our differences with Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer. The most drama