I've seen azithromycin counter-indicated as a treatment to be used at the same time as Hydroxychloroquine, on the medscape site, among a couple others, so this is surprising to read..
I'm sure this is good work, but what's actually being tested? Weren't these the medicines the Chinese used in Hubei, what's the question left to ask after that?
One of the least talked about things in science is the number of studies with results that aren't reproduced in subsequent attempts. More evidence is great.
A physician friend of mine explained it: If you're desperate by overwhelming numbers of patients, and there's a drug that may work, you do a "study", which means you give it to some of the patients and afterwards publish a paper with numbers based on the data you collect.
Ie. some studies are motivated by battlefield desperation, not by scientific curiosity or someone's need for a publication.
As recently as Jan 14, 2020, the World Health Organization stated that there was no evidence of human to human transmission for nCoV. [1]
The USA, and the world as a whole, has done an amazing job mobilizing itself to change borders, adjust social mores, limit large groups of people, and relax regulation around testing in order to get a treatment out.
And it's been working! We've already begun testing new vaccines, and cheap and already-approved treatments of Hydroxylchloroquine and chloroquine are showing extreme promise in both prevention and treatment of the disease. [2] [3]
It's easy to complain and blame America for problems, but look at how fast things have changed. Humanity as a whole is amazing -- in times of peril, we have the ability to adapt so rapidly that we can fundamentally change the world.
I'll preface this with the statement that I am as far away as you can be from an antivaxxer. I do believe vaccines work, and that everyone should get their vaccines. Vaccines save lives and are safe.
However, I am a bit worried about a vaccine that is rushed to approval and use.
If the regular process to approve a vaccine takes years, I'm pretty confident that the vaccine is safe for 99.99% of the population. This is further verified by the sheer number of people getting the vaccine for years without adverse reactions (very rare cases excluded, like 1 in 100,000 or 1,000,000 rare.)
But what about a rushed nCoV vaccine? Wouldn't it be potentially more dangerous if it underwent weeks/a couple of months of testing for approval instead of the usual years? And if it wouldn't, then why do we require any other vaccine to undertake years of clinical trials before approving it then?
An other hypothesis I have (but can't verify, I don't know enough about how vaccines are made) is that the nCoV vaccine is basically another flu vaccine. We know how to make safe flu vaccines since most of the potential harm comes from the additives/preservatives in the vaccine (I might be wrong on that, please correct if that's not right.)
So, making a nCoV vaccine is basically the same additives/preservatives as the flu vaccine but with nCoV strains in it rather than the ordinary flu. And this way, the absence of danger is pretty well established already because the flu vaccine has been proved safe, the only question is whether the nCoV serum works or not. And thus, the only risk from a rushed vaccine is not that it is harmful but that it might not be reliably giving immunity.
Again, this is a guess from my rough understanding of how it all works. I'm posting this here hoping that someone much more knowledgeable than I am can chime in and clarify.
People with inflamed lungs caused by viral infection are at increased risk of bacterial pneumonia, so we need to know whether antibiotics are an effective prophylactic measure.
