this might be the origin of the "kung flu" joke that upset a couple of PC journalists in the US: a video about getting flu shots.
headsup EvilBloggerLady
related item:
here is an example of press bias: Not the facts, which is to be cautious about unproven cures, but the way it is written to demonize Trumpieboy.
I italicized the biased part of the report: and added my suggested rewrite.
NYTimes:rewrite: Trump hopes experimental treatments will cure corona virus.
Trump’s Embrace of Unproven Drugs to Treat Coronavirus Defies Science
At a long-winded White House briefing on Friday, President Trump enthusiastically and repeatedly promoted the promise of two long-used malaria drugs that are still unproven against the coronavirus, but being tested in clinical trials.rewrite: At the White House Briefing on Friday, President Trump noted early studies suggested anti malaria drugs might cure corona virus.
“I’m a smart guy,” he said, while acknowledging he couldn’t predict the drugs would work. “I feel good about it. And we’re going to see. You’re going to see soon enough.” 'So that is accurate.
But the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, delicately — yet forcefully — pushed back from the same stage, explaining that there was only anecdotal evidence that the drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, may be effective.rewrite: leave out the implication that Dr. Fauci was criticizing the president instead of cautioning people that it might not work because studies haven't been done.
the rest of the article isn't much better.
Historical note:
a lot of people die in the USA because drugs available overseas haven't passed the long complicated studies for approval.
the pressure to "fast track" medicines in cancer or HIV, or to use already approved medicines for "off label" situations is common.
on the other hand, it was this "safety first" idea that prevented a thalidomide disaster.
Of course, thalidomide was pushed as an anti nausea pill (by the way, we still use it for leprosy and multiple myeloma, with strict controls to keep it from pregnant ladies).
Medicine has a long history of using "unproven therapies": some of them work, some don't work, and sometimes the problem is that they are used when the cause of the symptoms might be different, so work sometimes (bloodletting for shortness of breath doesn't work for pneumonia but does work for congestive heart failure complicating a fever, which has similar symptoms).
Remember the story of the 1925 dog sled delivery run from Anchorage to Nome, commemorating the heroic dog sled delivery of diphtheria anti toxin there? The Diphtheria anti serum was first used in the 1890s
LINK
After Roux’s signal paper, the use of diphtheria antitoxin spread throughout the developed world. Wherever it was used there occurred a reduction in case mortality. Although there was nothing akin to a double-blind clinical trial (case mortalities were compared to those prior to the adoption of the antitoxin) the circumstantial evidence was compelling.
the dirty little secret is that diphtheria anti serum was medical breakthrough never had a "double blind" study until the 1920s and a second one later in the 1940s:
Because the doctors, seeing children dying in front of them, just were not able to watch children die when there was a possible treatment that might save them.
one additional note: anecdotal reports say that China is using serum from recovered Coronavirus patients. If this works, presumably the next step might be "manufacturing" the serum, either via horses/animals which are still used to make anti rabies serum, or by more modern methods.
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