Special issue: Deconstructing the News
What’s the risk-benefit ratio of using of an unproven drug to help prevent deaths from COVID-19?
A dispassionate interview between a world renown expert on hydroxychloroquine and a healthcare and clinical medicine reporter, not one whose beat is White House politics.
Photo of Remington Nevin, MD, MPH, DrPH, courtesy of Dr. Nevin.
Greetings,
As a former full-time healthcare and clinical medicine reporter, I have been annoyed at the frequency by which this public health emergency starring the novel coronavirus has been reported through a political lens and not much else.
Of course, we all want to know what the economic fallout will be. We all want to know when we can visit with our kids and grandkids or other family members again. We all want to know when we can go out for a cup of coffee!
But, really, what we need first is an understanding of the actual risks, benefits, costs, and procedures for evaluating what public health measures to take before we take them. I am finding such information hard to come by, and especially where concerns the use of high-risk treatments such as hydroxychloroquine.
Here is that information in this special podcast and transcript.
To cut through the politics, and to get a clear idea of what the actual risk-benefit ratio is, here is a special edition podcast with Dr. Remington Nevin. As the executive director of The Quinism Foundation, Dr. Nevin is the world’s leading authority on the harms of quinolines, the class of drugs to which hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine belong. Dr. Nevin is also a leading consultant on their use to governments and militaries internationally, and an in-demand expert witness for plaintiffs harmed by their use.
Background:
The president speaks frequently about using hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in our nation’s strategy for preventing and treating COVID19, the potentially lethal illness resulting from the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Some suggest it is because he stands to gain from promoting the drug. Others suggest it is because he stands to gain from the economy firing up again (wouldn’t we all?).
Still others say let’s try it!
While urging the FDA to issue an emergency use authorization of the drugs, the president has asked the nation, “What have you got to lose?”
Well, as it turns out, a lot. And yet, if you’re at high risk for contracting COVID19 – and little by little we are starting to form datasets that indicated who is most at risk beyond just the older among us – or you already have it and need acute intervention, then the risk-benefit analysis is probably going to tilt toward living, even if it means doing so in an impaired fashion.
