The French hydroxychloroquine study is bad

I was scratching my head as I read this. By this description, these patients mostly had mild disease. Only 15% had fever? Fever is a prominent feature of symptomatic adults with COVID-19. Only 53% had lower respiratory tract infection symptoms? Four of the patients (5%) were asymptomatic? 92% had low COVID-19 severity scores as measured by the National Early Warning Score (NEWS)? Why were they even admitted in the first place, rather than instructed to isolate themselves in their homes? That’s what’s generally done; asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2-positive patients and patients with mild COVID-19 symptoms are generally just told to stay home for at least two weeks and call if their symptoms worsen. Later in the paper, we learn that only 15% of these patients required oxygen, while only three required ICU admission, with one death…

Basically, this is a nothingburger of a paper. It studied patients with low severity or even asymptomatic COVID-19 disease, the vast majority of whom would likely have cleared the virus just as fast without the medications. Again, this is such a useless paper, even as an observational paper, that it tells us, in essence, nothing new.

Meanwhile, Raoult was on Twitter yesterday bragging about “curing” COVID-19…