MUST READ! COVID-19 Scandals: More Medical Experts Criticize Claim That Remdesivir Cuts Death Rates Or Hospitalization Stays

COVID-19 Scandals: Remdesivir is coming under more spotlight as more doctors questions its effectiveness not only in terms of its ability to cut death rates but also on its claims to shorten hospitalization stays. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2839


 
Many subsequent studies that emerged after the criticisms seems suspicious as some look as if the  researchers or institutions were paid to come out to support remdesivir. One such institution is the Vanderbilt University which has a very bad reputation and research studies emerging from that institution should always be scrutinized carefully considering the institutions’ record for fraud and misdeeds. https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/covid-19-controversies-researchers-from-establishment-famed-for-fraud-and-deceit-publishes-study-showing-that-remdesivir-has-efficacy-against-sars-c
 
The drug was approved by the US FDA under the Trump administration to treat COVID-19 and later the same administration purchased more than half a million doses at inflated prices using tax payers monies. (Anyone with a bit of brains can assume what is going on and some of Trumps cronies and relatives must have made tons of money while many economically depressed Americans will still have to pay for these drugs if ever they contracted COVID-19 and was hospitalized…maybe that is Trumps business strategy as to why he does not make wearing a mask mandatory!) https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/generic-remdesivir-while-americans-have-to-pay-up-to-us$3120-for-gilead%E2%80%99s-remdesivir,-price-war-in-india-has-led-prices-dropping-to-below-us$50 and  https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-remdesivir-gilead-sets-price-at-us$2,340-to-us$3,120-for-drug-that-has-no-safety-studies-or-true-efficacy-except-that-it-shortens-hospitaliza
 
It must be noted that it was the same US FDA and the Trump administration that had earlier approved lethal chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. The drug was later stopped from being used to treat COVID-19 due to numerous studies showing the dangers associated plus it had no efficacy coupled with the numerous COVID-19 deaths that was attributed to its use.
 
Numerous medical experts have initially criticized pharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences after it released data suggesting that its antiviral drug remdesivir can reduce death rates for patients with covid-19. They say the research is intrinsically flawed and that the claimed benefits are overhyped and inappropriately promoted in press releases.
 
The Pharma company based in California had said intravenous remdesivir reduced mor tality by 62% compared with standard treatment in the SIMPLE trial of 1132 mainly US patients. Its data showed that 7.6% of covid-19 patients treated with the drug died compared with 12.5% of control patients.
 
Importantly, however, the study compared treatment and non-treatment groups in different cohorts treated in different conditions. The remdesivir patients were compared with a historical group of more than 800 patients on the “standard of care” of other drugs and oxygen.
 
Medical and science experts were quick to dismiss the significance of the results.
 
Dr Martin Landray, Professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Oxford and the lead research of the RECOVERY trial comparing treatments for covid-19, said, “What has been reported is an association, the results of comparing two rather different groups of patients. It’s impossible to draw any conclusions about the true effects of remdesivir on survival. For that we need robust evidence from large randomized controlled trials and we simply don’t have that yet.”
 
Gilead’s chief medical officer, Merdad Parsey, said in a statement, “We are working to broaden our understanding of the full utility of remdesivir. We are sharing data with the research community as quickly as possible with the goal of providing transparent and timely updates on new developments with remdesivir.”
 
Numerous media were quick to report that the drug had been linked to a significant reduction in death rates. Within hours of the announcement on 10 July, Gilead’s share price rose 3%. The company has said that it will charge health systems in developed countries around £1900 (€2090; $2400) for a five day course of remdesivir.
 
The British Medical Journal reported that some NHS patients in hospital with COVID-19 would be able to receive Remdesivir, supplied at no cost by Gilead, under the Emergency Access to Medicines Scheme. A spokeswoman from the Department of Health and Social Care told The BMJ this week that it was unable to say how many NHS patients have received the drug because the data were commercially sensitive.
 
The sudden decision to make it available to NHS patients was prompted by a report in the New England Journal of Medicine suggesting that remdesivir shortened the time to recovery by about four days. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007764
 
Interestingly however, that data also proved controversial because the trial was stopped early and provided only preliminary results. In addition, it emerged that the primary clinical outcome had been changed after patients were randomized.
 
The day the NEJM study was published, the Lancet reported randomized, double blind, placebo controlled data from Chinese medics that suggested remdesivir showed no n significant benefits in speeding recovery from covid-19 or reducing mortality. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673620310229
 
It was reported that many huge PR Firms were paid to ensure that stories on that study never made it to the mainstream and medical media. And true enough none of the major media or ‘credible’ medical news sites carried the story.
 
Dr Stephen Evans, Professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the hype over the SIMPLE data once again raised ethical questions over Gilead’s promotion of remdesivir as a covid-19 treatment. He said the firm’s “approach to obtaining proper randomized trial evidence for the efficacy, especially in terms of mortality, of remdesivir has been below the standards I would expect of a large ethical pharmaceutical company.”
 
Dr Evans added, “Their first approach was only to sponsor trials where both arms received remdesivir and they have relied on other sponsors to carry out the higher standard of trial to evaluate remdesivir. They have consistently released information through press releases rather than waiting for at least a preprint of the trial report. The strong randomized evidence does suggest that remdesivir will reduce mortality, but there is a danger of this being exaggerated, especially when the only information is in a press release.”
 
It must also be noted that no long term safety studies of remdesivir had ever been done despite the US FDA approving its use.
 
As one seasoned pharmaceutical researcher speaking on conditions of anonymity said, “It is only a matter of time before the public and medical community will know that this is another major scam that was aided by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
 
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