
Two-thirds of severe Covid-19 cases improved on Gilead drug remdesivir - lawrenceyan
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-10/two-thirds-of-severe-covid-19-improved-on-gilead-s-remdesivir
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et2o
It’s really hard to know what to make of this data without a control arm. The
patient selection becomes key to estimating the effect of on the outcomes, but
the patients were not all extremely sick to start, and the patient inclusion
criteria is super unclear.

[https://emcrit.org/pulmcrit/pulmcrit-eleven-reasons-the-
nejm...](https://emcrit.org/pulmcrit/pulmcrit-eleven-reasons-the-nejm-paper-
on-remdesivir-reveals-nothing/)

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hedora
Why didn’t they just do a double blind trial?!? This is stats 101 stuff.

How did the people that designed this study get promoted to a position where
they could do so much damage?

Sometimes I wonder if the entire coronavirus response this embarrassingly
incompetent, or if the news somehow picks the worst of the worst.

~~~
MurMan
This is a report of the results of using the drug on a compassionate-use
basis. The intent of the doctors was to save lives, not provide your "stats
101 stuff".

I think it's shameful to broad-brush the entire coronavirus response as
incompetent.

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hcknwscommenter
As my advisor always used to say. If you didn't include a control, you didn't
do an experiment. It's that simple. THe results are promising, but you have to
keep in mind what that really means. It means, we haven't proven that it
doesn't work. SO there is a chance that it works and we don't know how big
that chance is. It also means that we haven't proven that it causes more harm
than good. So there is a chance that it does indeed do more harm than good.

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nscalf
Just like every treatment protocol, this will have to be tested properly to
see: if it is actually effective, what are the risks, who would this work for,
etc.

I view what we’re doing right now as buying time for treatment protocol
testing, since right now our treatment is to help the symptoms. Only once we
have something, maybe this, that has been testing and shows to decrease the
length of time being sick and severity of illness can we go back to our normal
lives.

~~~
_bxg1
Exactly. A vaccine will take too long, but we could maybe afford to quarantine
long enough for a _treatment_ to surface.

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kian
aren't 50% of severe covid-19 cases improving from normal treatment? Would
this imply about a 33% improvement over standard care (modulo concerns about
patient selection criteria?)

