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The Pandemic Claims New Victims: Prestigious Medical Journals (archive)
One study promised that popular blood-pressure drugs were safe for people infected with the coronavirus. Another paper warned that anti-malaria drugs endorsed by President Trump actually were dangerous to these patients.
The studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, were retracted shortly after publication, following an outcry from researchers who saw obvious flaws.
The hasty retractions, on the same day this month, have alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process and opened the door to fraud, threatening the credibility of respected medical journals just when they are needed most.
[...] "The problem with trust is that it's too easy to lose and too hard to get back," said Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, which published one of the retracted papers in early May. "These are big blunders."
If outside scientists detected problems that weren't identified by the peer reviewers, then the journals failed, he said. Like hundreds of other researchers, Dr. Kassirer called on the editors to publish full explanations of what happened.
See also: US FDA pulls its emergency approval of chloroquine use for COVID-19
[NB: This follows up on "Doubt Looms Over Hydroxychloroquine Study That Halted Global Trials" which was part of 2020-06-15 Roundup of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2, Coronavirus) Stories --martyb]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:53AM (2 children)
Question for you. Imagine we found whoever the world's most foremost experts on the virus happened to be, and we gave them complete authority to rule the US, and also gave them 'reasonably' infinite funding. Would you have expected a significantly different outcome? What do you think they would have done differently? Nobody has any magical power when it comes to a plague. A significant chunk of the US has disregarded all concerns about the virus from day 1. Would you propose the government simply have arrested everybody going to the beaches early on during the spread? Presumably you'd then now also propose the government simply arrest everybody protesting and spreading the virus? No, of course not. That'd be absurd. Even if for some god awful reason you want to go full dystopic authoritarian like that there's not even enough prison cells in the US to hold them.
The news media, as usual, presents a broken picture of reality. Do you know the country that had one of the worst outcomes, by far, in this world? They currently have well over 200% the death rate of the US with no end in sight? It's Belgium - the defacto capital of the EU and the global nanny state. And outside of the micronation of San Marino, they have had by far the worst results in the world. This [worldometers.info] page provides a constantly updated view on what's happening on this topic. France was a country that reacted somewhat strongly and had some extremely brutal lockdowns. And they also have about 33% more deaths than the US. UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden - all worse than the US. And the Netherlands and Ireland are just the slightest bit behind us.
I think in a case like this the main goal of the government should be (1) to avoid a panic and (2) to avoid a reaction that's going to end up destroying your economy. And I think we probably failed on both those accounts, like most of the world. But blaming Trump, or anybody besides ourselves, for deaths is just plain dumb. There's just nothing and nobody to blame besides ourselves. We're already seeking a skyrocketing number of cases due to people deciding to get out in massive numbers. And that's going to result in a proportionally sharp increase in deaths. If you want to blame the government for this you now then need to ask yourself how they could have stopped it. And the answer is that there is no acceptable answer. So end up in a logical contradiction by seeking to blame them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KritonK on Wednesday June 17 2020, @10:52AM
This is more or less what we did in Greece, apart from the infinite funding bit. The government's policy on COVID-19 is dictated by a committee of epidemiologists, and we've had great success in limiting the spread of the disease. The government acted on their advice from the beginning; they started gradually implementing a lockdown even before the first COVID-19 case in the country, and implemented a full lockdown before the first death. Now that the lockdown is over, there are safety rules in place, dictated by the committee, for just about every activity. There are even rules for how brothels should operate [kathimerini.gr][article in Greek]! Some of these rules may be unenforceable, but the more that are followed, the better. Again, according to the epidemiologists, even if part of the people do not follow these rules, we should still be OK, with OK being defined as the transmission factor R0 remaining less than 1.
Would politicians, who thought they knew better and/or weighed in other factors, such as the effect on the economy or their political careers, have acted as effectively? I doubt it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:58PM
The US is a democracy. We elect politicians to rule us, not unelected purported experts. The population has many valid interests, not just one hyped up in the media, that the purported experts have an educated opinion on.