Coronavirus - the new pandemic

[GreyICE]

Here's the results:

Conclusions Hydroxychloroquine has received worldwide attention as a potential treatment for covid-19 because of positive results from small studies. However, the results of this study do not support its use in patients admitted to hospital with covid-19 who require oxygen.

It gets even better:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext

[...]

We were unable to confirm a benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, when used alone or with a macrolide, on in-hospital outcomes for COVID-19. Each of these drug regimens was associated with decreased in-hospital survival and an increased frequency of ventricular arrhythmias when used for treatment of COVID-19.

[...]

I'll take the liberty and shorten it a bit:

[...] unable to confirm a benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine [...] for COVID-19. [...] drug regimens associated with decreased in-hospital survival [...] increased frequency of ventricular arrhythmias [...]

The twat is essentially poisoning himself.

I find it hilarious you point this out with a study in the Lancet, and Darth posts some link to refute this pointing to some shady ass study with 26 participants (and apparently 6 dropped out, and some of the dropouts died - that study is painfully fucked on even a cursory glance) published in a journal with an impact factor of 4. He didn't even post the fulltext version (here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7102549/) indicating that he didn't even read the fulltext version.

There's two approaches to science. You can use science as a tool to find out information about the world we live in, or you can use science to find out that what you know to be true is true.

Getting mighty tired of the latter.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

[J!!]

Meh, the world is still full of people who believe in talking snakes, zombie carpenters, and genocidal sky-wizards. People tend to believe in whatever narrative is most convenient. This only seems different for the novelty.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

There's a big difference between believing in something you have no evidence of and disbelieving something as it kills you.

[J!!]

ok.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism#Death_of_HIV-positive_denialists

Death of HIV-positive denialists

In 2007, aidstruth.org, a website run by HIV researchers to counter denialist claims,[91] published a partial list of HIV/AIDS denialists who had died of AIDS-related causes. For example, the editors of the magazine Continuum consistently denied the existence of HIV/AIDS. The magazine shut down after both editors died of AIDS-related causes.[92] In each case, the HIV/AIDS denialist community attributed the deaths to unknown causes, secret drug use, or stress rather than HIV/AIDS.[21][68] Similarly, several HIV-positive former dissidents have reported being ostracized by the AIDS-denialist community after they developed AIDS and decided to pursue effective antiretroviral treatment.[93]

In 2008, activist Christine Maggiore died at the age of 52 while under a doctor's care for pneumonia. Maggiore, mother of two children, had founded an organisation to help other HIV-positive mothers avoid taking antiretroviral drugs that reduce the risk of HIV transmission from mother to child.[94] After her three-year-old daughter died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 2005, Maggiore continued to believe that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, and she and her husband Robin Scovill sued Los Angeles County and others on behalf of their daughter's estate, for allegedly violating Eliza Scovill's civil rights by releasing an autopsy report that listed her cause of death as AIDS-related pneumonia.[76] The litigants settled out of court, with the county paying Scovill $15,000 in March 2009, with no admission of wrongdoing. The L.A. coroner's ruling that Eliza Jane Scovill died of AIDS remains standing as the official verdict.[95]

The more a person has invested into an ideological narrative, the harder it becomes to change. It is often easier to rationalise away counter-evidence than to change one's existing cognitive habits. Add a sunk cost fallacy into the mix, and bullshit becomes lethal.

This is not new.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I stand corrected.
In the words of John Mulaney "Tell me that doesn't make you want to walk into the ocean."

[J!!]

Yeah, shit be dark, yo.

Buuut here's the thing: I find it helps a lot to look at these things as learning opportunities; magnifying-mirrors to help us recognize our own flaws, so that we can overcome them. If we can recognize this sort of thing as merely an extreme example of the sort of cognitive behavior we all engage in every day, then we've got a fighting chance at meaningful self-improvement. By understanding the inherent flaws in our own cognition, we can learn to correct for them.

The convenient narrative that we are somehow better than others may feel good, but ultimately it just prevents us from becoming better versions of ourselves.

There's an odd sense of peace and strength that I've found in witnessing people being stupid, or crazy, or evil, and thinking 'there but for the grace of god go I'.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I stand corrected.
In the words of John Mulaney "Tell me that doesn't make you want to walk into the ocean."

Well what do you expect??

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, I expect we're going to have to shelter in place for a very long time because some people act like they're being sent to the Soviet Gulags if they are asked to wear a mask when grocery shopping, and even more people think it's a perfectly fine idea to pull down their masks to talk or wear it around their chin or something.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

That's true.