How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19?

How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - Printable Version

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RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - fanofourforebears - 11-27-2020

Hi BC and anyone else who cares to take a look,

By way of background, I share the following:

1. The laws that were made creating so much power and authority in and by Public Health officials, Governor's, the WHO, CDC, HHS and so on were made stronger toward what we see today especially beginning after 911. There were concerns raised way back then, some of which I was aware of and some I was not and I am sure many I still don't know about (shrug).

2. There were concerns raised by many about these laws, including by the ACLU regarding the powers over so much of our lives, livelihoods, businesses and churches and yes even being able to gather to watch Stanford football raised together with concerns for our essential liberties, with strangely even one concern raised about our right to breathe.. (which I cannot locate, as well as much of the other things I saw and read way back then, so just as way of background we were pretty much told by those behind the laws and those who would be empowered by the laws tha there was nothing to see here, they would certainly not violate the highest law of the land, or even the watered down highest law of the land based upon how it is limited and changed by rulings of the United States Supreme Court.

3. Eventually model state emergency public health emergency powers acts originally authored by the higher ups in Public Health including the CDC and the non profits concerned with public health were passed in over 40 states by around 2012 in the case of bio terror attack of a new illness that led to an epidemic and then a pandemic. The definition of these terms was later changed so it need not be quite so widespread or involve such a high percentage of people.

4. Studies in support of the shelter in place, wearing face mask, physical distancing and closing businesses, churches and other large gatherings of people were made funded by those who helped to bring us the public health emergency powers laws. Meanwhile it became harder to find studies on the Spanish flu and interventions introduced at that time. If you are interested in finding them they still exist in the archives at the University of Michigan for download one page at a time as pdfs. The new studies contradicted the old ones showing some slight benefit, but not a large one if all used together in the area of 10-30 percent.

Fast forward to the media and public authority coverage of today in 2020, Here is a brief narrative that could be better supported, but for which support was once more easily obtained:

A. Pharmacists were instructed, maybe even ordered to track and also discourage the use of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin prior to the announcement by the WHO of the new pandemic. Wouldn't this merit more investigation by a free and independent media, especially since studies showed this was used with success to treat SARS?

B. The pandemic was declared, State and National emergencies were declared and much of the world including America was shut down and we were told to stay home as the correct response to the pandemic. Where was the independent investigation by the press as to the need for this?

C. More and more cases were reported with a case not necessarily still meaning a true infection. The PCR method of gathering material was chosen and has since used to test and diagnose before the new illness was even properly isolated. Where is the independent investigation into this?

D. And then there was the media blitz, including all those ready to be aired advertisements that included encouragement to stay or "shelter" at home together. Where was the media in investigating the need for this or reason(s) why this was being done? What about the One World concert staying at home together or what we were told we should imagine? and the One World concert made to support the new Public health measures and actions and yes mandates? Why was staying at home together important and why was this media blitz and the efficacy of doing so compared to the cost not investigated much if at all independently by the press?

How about this message, where is the investigative reporting as to why this message and so many to stay at home together were given?

E. Raoult Didier, a well known respected Medical Doctor in France found HCQ worked to a surprisingly well degree to treat SARS2 especially compared to putting patients on ventilators, drugging them and letting the die like they did in New York early on. Was this a surprise to whatever those behind the scenes wanted for our world? Well consider what happened next, from the politicizing of this treatment to the possible hack job studies that came out against it. Where was the investigative journalism from a independent media or press?

F. Studies were made that appear to discredit the use of HCQ (many of which are in the link provided to discussion here last Spring and early summer). Many of these studies are suspect, including using the wrong and too high amounts of HCQ, and using it with and not independent of what are called standard of care, which in some cases continued to use Remdesivir and other drugs and treatments that have been shown to not work well and maybe not so well in combination with HCQ. This would tend to take away or hide any benefit of using HCQ.

G. Public Health authorities and the media began campaign to discredit not just HCQ, but also those Medical Doctors and researchers who thought HCQ was a legitimate treatment.

H. Raoult Didier keeps up the fight to allow Doctor's to treat with HCQ

I. Public Health "authorities" and the main stream media press "reporting" are going after Raoult Didier. Why?

Sometimes we benefit from other opinions on matters. Why the efforts to silence a qualified Doctor and others who see the "studies to discredit HCQ" in a different light than what is being presented to most of us by the main stream press?

What if? What if the media is not free and independent? What will this mean for our future? What will it mean to patients that might benefit from even HCQ and Azithtromycin? Think of the immediate studies used to justify the ban. Were they hack jobs or real studies? Raoult Didier is a highly respected by the vast majority of his peers French doctor. If we allow him to be discredited and silenced, what impact might this have both now and in the future on treatments and patient care? So, keeping the above in mind, just how free and independent is the mainstream press in relation to our leaders, entertainers, corporations, large foundations, and our "public" health authorities? Since when has or should what is called Public Health be given so much power over so many, including our very essential liberties, medical treatments, religious freedom, and in regards to who is essential?" Is the main stream media press independent of or part of the elite gang which appears to control so much of the world today? How can and will this impact the present and future?

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - BostonCard - 11-27-2020

Didier Raoult had a reasonable scientific hypothesis and found some promising initial data. Here is his initial paper:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32205204/

The scientific literature is littered with promising therapies that don't work. The generic PTS (probability of technical success) for a drug entering clinic making it all the way to approval is about 15%. A substantial majority of drugs don't make it, despite drug companies hiring very smart people and investing a lot of time and effort to try to focus on the ones with a strong scientific hypothesis and promising initial data.

Alas, the gold standard for whether a drug works or not is a randomized, blinded, placebo controlled clinical study where patients come into the study and have the same chance to get the active drug as the placebo, and nobody knows what the patient got until the very end. This way, you can ensure that the patients who got the active drug weren't treated differently from those who didn't, and you can compare a relevant endpoint (like mortality) between those patients who got the active drug to those who got placebo.

And, it turns out that when hydroxychloroquine was looked at under those circumstances, time and again patients who got hydroxychloroquine did no better than those who got placebo. That's not an attempt to suppress the truth; it's just the way science works. Hydroxychloroquine doesn't work as Raoult thought it would and many of us hoped it would. It's not an indictment of Raoult; there's no shame in advancing a hypothesis that doesn't pan out, and it is not evidence that the press is under undue influence from mysterious forces that harbor an unexplained antipathy towards hydroxychloroquine (but not, apparently, to dexamethasone). In fact, to the extent there is a complaint out there it is that hydroxychloroquine has been given too much coverage, and dexamethasone, which has been shown to reduce mortality in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, hasn't been given enough.

BC

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - oldalum - 11-27-2020

To underscore BC's point, the reason why therapies of all kinds can seem great in observational studies and then turn out not to be effective in a randomized, blinded, controlled clinical trial is that observational studies generate all sorts of spurious correlations that seem promising, but observational studies cannot establish causality. So those early observational studies of HCQ looked great but the positive findings turned out to be spurious (i.e., wrong). In general, observational studies can be useful in generating hypotheses that can be studied in randomized controlled trials, but they are not evidence of effectiveness. A point lost on the HCQ promoters, including our departing leader. And as a consequence, many people were exposed to the potential harms of the drug in exchange for no benefit, and supplies grew short for those who needed the drug to treat certain autoimmune diseases for which it has been proven effective.

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - chrisk - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 04:45 AM)fanofourforebears Wrote: Hi BC and anyone else who cares to take a look,

By way of background, I share the following:

1. The laws that were made creating so much power and authority in and by Public Health officials, Governor's, the WHO, CDC, HHS and so on were made stronger toward what we see today especially beginning after 911. There were concerns raised way back then, some of which I was aware of and some I was not and I am sure many I still don't know about (shrug).

2. There were concerns raised by many about these laws, including by the ACLU regarding the powers over so much of our lives, livelihoods, businesses and churches and yes even being able to gather to watch Stanford football raised together with concerns for our essential liberties, with strangely even one concern raised about our right to breathe.. (which I cannot locate, as well as much of the other things I saw and read way back then, so just as way of background we were pretty much told by those behind the laws and those who would be empowered by the laws tha there was nothing to see here, they would certainly not violate the highest law of the land, or even the watered down highest law of the land based upon how it is limited and changed by rulings of the United States Supreme Court.

3. Eventually model state emergency public health emergency powers acts originally authored by the higher ups in Public Health including the CDC and the non profits concerned with public health were passed in over 40 states by around 2012 in the case of bio terror attack of a new illness that led to an epidemic and then a pandemic. The definition of these terms was later changed so it need not be quite so widespread or involve such a high percentage of people.

4. Studies in support of the shelter in place, wearing face mask, physical distancing and closing businesses, churches and other large gatherings of people were made funded by those who helped to bring us the public health emergency powers laws. Meanwhile it became harder to find studies on the Spanish flu and interventions introduced at that time. If you are interested in finding them they still exist in the archives at the University of Michigan for download one page at a time as pdfs. The new studies contradicted the old ones showing some slight benefit, but not a large one if all used together in the area of 10-30 percent.

Fast forward to the media and public authority coverage of today in 2020, Here is a brief narrative that could be better supported, but for which support was once more easily obtained:

A. Pharmacists were instructed, maybe even ordered to track and also discourage the use of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin prior to the announcement by the WHO of the new pandemic. Wouldn't this merit more investigation by a free and independent media, especially since studies showed this was used with success to treat SARS?

B. The pandemic was declared, State and National emergencies were declared and much of the world including America was shut down and we were told to stay home as the correct response to the pandemic. Where was the independent investigation by the press as to the need for this?

C. More and more cases were reported with a case not necessarily still meaning a true infection. The PCR method of gathering material was chosen and has since used to test and diagnose before the new illness was even properly isolated. Where is the independent investigation into this?

D. And then there was the media blitz, including all those ready to be aired advertisements that included encouragement to stay or "shelter" at home together. Where was the media in investigating the need for this or reason(s) why this was being done? What about the One World concert staying at home together or what we were told we should imagine? and the One World concert made to support the new Public health measures and actions and yes mandates? Why was staying at home together important and why was this media blitz and the efficacy of doing so compared to the cost not investigated much if at all independently by the press?

How about this message, where is the investigative reporting as to why this message and so many to stay at home together were given?

E. Raoult Didier, a well known respected Medical Doctor in France found HCQ worked to a surprisingly well degree to treat SARS2 especially compared to putting patients on ventilators, drugging them and letting the die like they did in New York early on. Was this a surprise to whatever those behind the scenes wanted for our world? Well consider what happened next, from the politicizing of this treatment to the possible hack job studies that came out against it. Where was the investigative journalism from a independent media or press?

F. Studies were made that appear to discredit the use of HCQ (many of which are in the link provided to discussion here last Spring and early summer). Many of these studies are suspect, including using the wrong and too high amounts of HCQ, and using it with and not independent of what are called standard of care, which in some cases continued to use Remdesivir and other drugs and treatments that have been shown to not work well and maybe not so well in combination with HCQ. This would tend to take away or hide any benefit of using HCQ.

G. Public Health authorities and the media began campaign to discredit not just HCQ, but also those Medical Doctors and researchers who thought HCQ was a legitimate treatment.

H. Raoult Didier keeps up the fight to allow Doctor's to treat with HCQ

What if? What if the media is not free and independent? What will this mean for our future? What will it mean to patients that might benefit from even HCQ and Azithtromycin? Think of the immediate studies used to justify the ban. Were they hack jobs or real studies? Raoult Didier is a highly respected by the vast majority of his peers French doctor. If we allow him to be discredited and silenced, what impact might this have both now and in the future on treatments and patient care? So, keeping the above in mind, just how free and independent is the mainstream press in relation to our leaders, entertainers, corporations, large foundations, and our "public" health authorities? Since when has or should what is called Public Health be given so much power over so many, including our very essential liberties, medical treatments, religious freedom, and in regards to who is essential?" Is the main stream media press independent of or part of the elite gang which appears to control so much of the world today? How can and will this impact the present and future?

Countries that don’t have free media (e.g. China) or have strong CDC(0 (e.g. Taiwan) have done very well in managing the virus.

Why would you try to claim that there is too little freedom of the press or too much power in Public Health in the US and that those are the reasons for the American failure?

The much simpler explanations (Occam’s Razor) are that Americans did not test, isolate, mask, and social distance sufficiently. You could more easily argue from that that the US had too much freedom of expression and too little public health if your objective were to limit death.

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - Goose - 11-27-2020

(11-27-2020, 08:50 PM)chrisk Wrote: The much simpler explanations (Occam’s Razor) are that Americans did not test, isolate, mask, and social distance sufficiently. You could more easily argue from that that the US had too much freedom of expression and too little public health if your objective were to limit death.

I would limit it to too little public health. The public health agencies have the legal authority to compel compliance with necessary measures. In general, they have been totally unwilling to even attempt to do so. The freedoms of expression that we do have are not unlimited. Unfortunately, our public agencies have not forcefully reminded us of that fact enough in the past 50 years or so and are unwilling to start now.

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - fanofourforebears - 11-28-2020

(11-27-2020, 08:50 PM)chrisk Wrote: Countries that don’t have free media (e.g. China) or have strong CDC(0 (e.g. Taiwan) have done very well in managing the virus.

What countries have a free media for comparison with those that do not in your opinion?

(11-27-2020, 08:50 PM)chrisk Wrote: Why would you try to claim that there is too little freedom of the press or too much power in Public Health in the US and that those are the reasons for the American failure?

Well... why would you claim the opposite?

(11-27-2020, 08:50 PM)chrisk Wrote: The much simpler explanations (Occam’s Razor) are that Americans did not test, isolate, mask, and social distance sufficiently. You could more easily argue from that that the US had too much freedom of expression and too little public health if your objective were to limit death.

According to who? What is the "science" supporting what you have just stated?

(11-27-2020, 07:56 PM)oldalum Wrote: To underscore BC's point, the reason why therapies of all kinds can seem great in observational studies and then turn out not to be effective in a randomized, blinded, controlled clinical trial is that observational studies generate all sorts of spurious correlations that seem promising, but observational studies cannot establish causality. So those early observational studies of HCQ looked great but the positive findings turned out to be spurious (i.e., wrong). In general, observational studies can be useful in generating hypotheses that can be studied in randomized controlled trials, but they are not evidence of effectiveness. A point lost on the HCQ promoters, including our departing leader. And as a consequence, many people were exposed to the potential harms of the drug in exchange for no benefit, and supplies grew short for those who needed the drug to treat certain autoimmune diseases for which it has been proven effective.

Disagree. And I am not a this or that treatment promoter or defender. Consider whatever study you think was compelling to stop the use of HCQ or whatever study that made Remdesivir the standard of care and think... how come? Was there really a control group, was the placebo really a placebo and just how much or little HCQ was used, knowing that too much of many drugs can be fatal. Studies just are not that well done today and many involving the "new" virus lack the foundations needed to even begin a study, namely Why were the basics skipped?

(11-27-2020, 05:14 PM)BostonCard Wrote: Didier Raoult had a reasonable scientific hypothesis and found some promising initial data. Here is his initial paper:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32205204/

The scientific literature is littered with promising therapies that don't work. The generic PTS (probability of technical success) for a drug entering clinic making it all the way to approval is about 15%. A substantial majority of drugs don't make it, despite drug companies hiring very smart people and investing a lot of time and effort to try to focus on the ones with a strong scientific hypothesis and promising initial data.

Alas, the gold standard for whether a drug works or not is a randomized, blinded, placebo controlled clinical study where patients come into the study and have the same chance to get the active drug as the placebo, and nobody knows what the patient got until the very end. This way, you can ensure that the patients who got the active drug weren't treated differently from those who didn't, and you can compare a relevant endpoint (like mortality) between those patients who got the active drug to those who got placebo.

And, it turns out that when hydroxychloroquine was looked at under those circumstances, time and again patients who got hydroxychloroquine did no better than those who got placebo. That's not an attempt to suppress the truth; it's just the way science works. Hydroxychloroquine doesn't work as Raoult thought it would and many of us hoped it would. It's not an indictment of Raoult; there's no shame in advancing a hypothesis that doesn't pan out, and it is not evidence that the press is under undue influence from mysterious forces that harbor an unexplained antipathy towards hydroxychloroquine (but not, apparently, to dexamethasone). In fact, to the extent there is a complaint out there it is that hydroxychloroquine has been given too much coverage, and dexamethasone, which has been shown to reduce mortality in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, hasn't been given enough.

BC

I think if you look a little more critically at the "disqualifying" studies you will see some problems in substantially all of them. Show me the dose and show me what was used as the "placebo". In other news, at least the good guys won the big game today!!

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - oldalum - 11-28-2020

all studies have flaws and can be nitpicked to death. You can always suggest some minor change that wasn't done--the drug should have been given 3 times a day instead of 2; the dose was 10% too low or high; the drug was sourced from an inferior producer; the age range should have been different, etc. The search for the perfect study is a denial tactic. We now have multiple randomized controlled trials showing no effect; the onus is now on proponents of HCQ to produce even better solid evidence (not theory, not nitpicks, not observational studies) with randomized controlled trials. But it would be unethical to conduct such a study now. So the medical debate about HCA is over, time to move on. Sorry but that's the breaks. We all wish it had turned out otherwise, but it didn't. It's not a conspiracy, it's medical science.

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - BostonCard - 11-28-2020

There are generally fewer flaws in the studies that showed no benefit to hydroxychloroquine, than the ones which showed a benefit, most notably the lack of randomization or placebo control.

No study is perfect, but the studies that failed to show benefit were generally much higher quality.

On remdisivir, I think there is still some uncertainty on how much it helps, which is acknowledged by the medical community. Notably, none of the studies have yet shown that remdisivir improves survival, though it does seem to reduce the length of hospitalization, which is not nothing when hospital stays can cost thousands per day.

BC

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - fanofourforebears - 11-29-2020

(11-28-2020, 05:23 PM)oldalum Wrote: all studies have flaws and can be nitpicked to death. You can always suggest some minor change that wasn't done--the drug should have been given 3 times a day instead of 2; the dose was 10% too low or high; the drug was sourced from an inferior producer; the age range should have been different, etc. The search for the perfect study is a denial tactic. We now have multiple randomized controlled trials showing no effect; the onus is now on proponents of HCQ to produce even better solid evidence (not theory, not nitpicks, not observational studies) with randomized controlled trials. But it would be unethical to conduct such a study now. So the medical debate about HCA is over, time to move on. Sorry but that's the breaks. We all wish it had turned out otherwise, but it didn't. It's not a conspiracy, it's medical science.

Not nitpicking and not even an advocate of HCQ, this is about more than that.

I encouraged you to take take a look at the doses used in many of the studies. I did so because of the danger from too high of a dose they presented to the patients and the major impact this had or could have had on the results of the studies.

In regards to the current mandates and restrictions, were you aware of the work done nearly 100 years ago? link was hard to find but I found this one.

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - fanofourforebears - 11-29-2020

(11-28-2020, 07:35 PM)BostonCard Wrote: There are generally fewer flaws in the studies that showed no benefit to hydroxychloroquine, than the ones which showed a benefit, most notably the lack of randomization or placebo control.

No study is perfect, but the studies that failed to show benefit were generally much higher quality.

Hi BC, what if there is a bigger problem than all and with all of the studies? What if Medical research is and has been hamstrung when it comes to being able to isolate and identify viruses? What if it is then hamstrung in being able to study how it spreads and ways to stop it from spreading? What if it is then hamstrung in researching effective treatments and therapies to treat it today and treat and maybe even prevent it in the future?

What if most if not all of the research being done is without the benefit of high powered microscopes? What if the need for these high powered and expensive machines is more profound than the need for other medical equipment such as ventilators is or ever was in the longer term of months or years, rather than the immediate days and weeks? No doubt you have heard of Koch's or River's postulates, but maybe the reason more association based research is being done is because it almost impossible follow and apply these isolation of the virus postulates without the high powered and expensive equipment. This might be why there is the push to gather "associated' genomes, and so forth, but there is a better way, isn't there? We just need to get the high powered equipment into the hands of researchers. Yes, these are in short supply. So don't forget the basics. These need to be the goal I think, what do you think?
Think about, educational link to make the point

In regards to the studies, they too have their limitations. How do you test for something by association and not by true causation, which requires isolation and identification? Yes, I would say that some of the HCQ studies "overdosed" the patients in them, and that this is bad, and the results from such are not that reliable, but if we want to find the best treatment, find a cure, find a way to prevent and put an end to the pandemic once and for all, might it not be wise to raise the research bar and enable researchers to do the needed isolation and identification work, followed by the biopsies, autopsies and so on to find out all we can? Where is the cry and call for the needed high powered microscopes by the press, media and our public health authorities? Yes, scanning electron microscopes (SEMs), can cost well over a million dollars for the higher-end ones, while transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) can easily go up for tens of millions of dollars, and they cost a bundle to operate, but it these kinds of high powered microscopes that are so much needed early on during any pandemic. It could be argued they are more important than ventilators.

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - dabigv13 - 11-29-2020

Someone is finally, bravely, talking about the real issues, the lack of high powered microscopes.

[Image: 2124654319_003f18619b.jpg]

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - fanofourforebears - 11-29-2020

(11-29-2020, 09:11 AM)dabigv13 Wrote: Someone is finally, bravely, talking about the real issues, the lack of high powered microscopes.

I take it you have no idea about the need for the expensive to buy, operate and utilize electron microscopes when it comes to isolating and identifying a virus. As a result of the shortage, it has been common practice to not even seek to truly isolate a virus using Koch's or River's postulates, but rather to engage in standard of research which is more or less theoretical guesswork based upon association that actually takes longer and leads to worse results than using the more advanced and needed equipment. Considering the billions and maybe even trillions of dollars spent already in regards to Sars2 and Covid-19, and the cost of the measures put into place to flatten the curve, slow the spread and so on and the loss of so many freedoms and liberties and essential well-being at least temporarily and if the historical rules as they apply to tyranny kick in possible longer... well wouldn't spending a billion or so to get the truly needed high powered electron microscopes into the hands of those doing the research and getting the needed isolation and identification research done make sense?

lex24 - lex24 - 11-29-2020

(11-29-2020, 09:11 AM)dabigv13 Wrote: Someone is finally, bravely, talking about the real issues, the lack of high powered microscopes.

Ah yes, the commies tainting our precious bodily fluids through fluoridation. . I half expected Sydney Powell to go there in that press conference.... She did almost go full Ripper......

RE: How "free" is and has been the press in how it has investigated and covered Covid-19? - BostonCard - 11-29-2020

Actually the real problem is that scientists no longer have the visual acuity that they used to. Back in the day, Edward Jenner found a vaccine to smallpox even before anyone knew what viruses were, so he must have had amazing vision...

Or maybe, one can deduce that a cowpox inoculation can protect against smallpox without even seeing the virus, because milkmaids were protected from smallpox.

BC