Who’s Lying?
We don’t want to ramble with arguments from conspiracy theories stories, but seriously now!
In the Covid craze during the past months, many weird things have been startled and oozed in media.
The January 2020 babbling of the WHO monitoring the contagion in China, over declaring an epidemic or not.
The WHO declaring a pandemic on March 13, then through repeated public appearances, stating that governments aren’t doing enough to contain the spread of the virus.
The President of the United States accusing the WHO of being a corrupt organization and cutting the contribution of US funds.
Medicines being tested, with moderate and moderately exciting results. Standing out in the news is the famous remdesivir, produced by Gilead, priced at $2340 to $3120, whose merits are shortening the number of hospital days from an average of 14, to 11.
On Oct 22, the FDA (US regulatory body), approved Veklury (remdesivir) for use in treatment of COVID-10 patients, over the age of 12. They cited results from three clinical studies, over a total of 7,086 patients:
- one “randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial (ACTT-1), conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases”, with 1,062 patients, with symptoms ranging from mild to severe.
- a “second randomized, open-label multi-center clinical trial of hospitalized adult subjects with moderate COVID-19”, with 1133 patients
- a “third separate, randomized, open-label multi-center clinical trial of hospitalized adult subjects with severe COVID-19”, with 4,891 patients
But, surprise! on Nov 20th, on the WHO website, there’s their newest turn of advice:
“WHO has issued a conditional recommendation against the use of remdesivir in hospitalized patients, regardless of disease severity, as there is currently no evidence that remdesivir improves survival and other outcomes in these patients.”
This comes as a conclusion upon analysis of data “from over 7000 patients across 4 trials”, and summarizes for us all that “the evidence suggested no important effect on mortality, need for mechanical ventilation, time to clinical improvement, and other patient-important outcomes”
So, for us people over here, trying to live our lives, what does this mean? Us people, going to work, riding (yet) crowded busses and trams, watching news on TV or reading headlines on our queue at cashier in the supermarket.
Who’s lying? And what’s accurate?
We don’t want to ramble with arguments from conspiracy theories stories, but seriously now!
The FDA and WHO aren’t two popular girls fighting in high school lunchbreak, yet this swing of “Take that!” / “oh, yeah? watch this!” reminds me of exactly this kind of show.
What are we supposed to take from that?
I think that taking as much care of ourselves and our families when going out of home is the one thing we can control, along with taking care of our mental health.
In the meantime, the “show” goes on.
It would be fun, if it wasn’t tragic.
Stay safe.
