"- 360,304 patients with suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection
- Of these 360,304
cases, 26,815 were confirmed by a positive PCR test. The rest had negative
PCR tests.
- In the set of patients with case definition, 1,292 received HCQ (at least 2 grams
per month)
- The proportion of HCQ chronic treatment was higher in negative patients
(0.36% vs. 0.29%, P = 0.04)
- We were able to show that patients taking HCQ have had reduced odds of
SARS-CoV-2 infection"
No joke, that is the basis for their claim. Just like "compared to those that we suspected could have tested positive, it turned out that among those that weren't positive there were more people proportionally receiving HCQ." I don't understand how that can actually prove something. One can surely find a lot of things that are proportionally more present in those tested negative, but without any meaning.
That's how screening for drug treatments often works. You look for those kinds of correlations. You move on from there. With many drugs, we don't even know how or why they work for certain things, but we prescribe them anyway.
There's nothing wrong with the claim, it seems to be factually accurate. The authors are not claiming that HCQ is an effective treatment, they say the data suggests that HCQ is protective.
> they say the data suggests that HCQ is protective.
Only, I fail to see that the data does that. And their explicit claim is, which I specifically quoted directly from the paper:
"We were able to show that patients taking HCQ have had reduced odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection"
It's not different than "there were more people believing in Santa Claus proportionally in those negatively tested, so that means that Santa Claus belief reduced odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection."
It just doesn't.
Even if A is true, in such a construct B doesn't follow. Like it was already noted, those treated could have been also less willing to do risky things. Or it could have been a mere coincidence, like in the Santa Claus example.
> It's not different than "there were more people believing in Santa Claus proportionally in those negatively tested, so that means that Santa Claus belief reduced odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection."
If people who believe in Santa Claus have a 0.5 hazard ratio of contracting HIV, that suggests that belief in Santa Claus is protective against HIV. If we flip "belief Santa Claus" for some random drug, it would be the same, you just couldn't obviously tell that it is implausible.
Just because data suggests one thing or another doesn't mean that whatever the data suggests is true. It's still just a correlation, but you always start with a correlation.
You're simply not used to the jargon but feel entitled to criticize the authors for just doing their work. Please don't do that.
"We were able to show that patients taking HCQ have had reduced odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection"
is not true. It's not jargon. It's a false statement given the data that they presented. To "show" that the "odds" are reduced compared to something they have to show the reasonable odds of that something. I don't see them showing that at all, or that their paper actually demonstrated "odds."
"- 360,304 patients with suspected SARS-CoV-2 infection
- Of these 360,304 cases, 26,815 were confirmed by a positive PCR test. The rest had negative PCR tests.
- In the set of patients with case definition, 1,292 received HCQ (at least 2 grams per month)
- The proportion of HCQ chronic treatment was higher in negative patients (0.36% vs. 0.29%, P = 0.04)
- We were able to show that patients taking HCQ have had reduced odds of SARS-CoV-2 infection"
No joke, that is the basis for their claim. Just like "compared to those that we suspected could have tested positive, it turned out that among those that weren't positive there were more people proportionally receiving HCQ." I don't understand how that can actually prove something. One can surely find a lot of things that are proportionally more present in those tested negative, but without any meaning.
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