Example of the Partisan Media at work
Classic example of the Democrate partisan media at work. The Trump Administration publishes good news that a drug called remdesivir shows promise in treating the Coronavirsu. To pour cold water on this, the Washington Post published an article titled "Researchers changed metric to measure remdesivir during clinical trial."*1
I have to give the authors of the article a bit of credit for intellectual honesty and integrity. The headline suggests something really bad happened. The article tries to support the headline but the writers, and this is the credit I give them, posted views on both sides of the issue. Unfortunately for them, any reasonable reader would conclude the Trump Administration was right to do what it did.
The original goal of the trial was to see if remdesivir could reduce the rate of deaths. The new goal was to measure whether remdesivir helps people recover faster. Under the new criteria, it was shown that remdesivir reduces time to recovery "from 15 days to 11 days, a 31 percent improvement."
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health called this a "clear-cut, significant, positive effect..."
Now the second guessing starts. The article quotes Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist and expert clinical investigator as saying: "I think that they thought they weren't going to win, they wanted to change it to something they could win on. I prefer the original outcome." And Dr. Nissen also "expressed dismay that the placebo phase of the trial was declared over so quickly."
The article then quotes Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health as saying "ethical considerations drove the announcement: As soon as clear evidence of shorter hospitalization was available, trial investigators owed it to patients on placebo to stop" and give them the benefit of the drug.
So which of those two options do you choose:
I think there is a slam dunk winner there.
Contrasting comments continue throughout the article, with most of the naysayers making a negative comment followed by "we need to see the results." My response to that is why don't you hold your tongue and wait to see the results so you can offer an informed opinion. Because the article made clear that full results will be published and "death, ventilation, and other measures are included in the list of the trial's secondary outcome measures."
This is a story that didn't need to be printed. The Democrat media could not let the Trump Administration have a win so they went out of their way to find people who were willing to make negative comments without seeing the full results. The Washington Post should have waited for the full report and then written a story, but the problem with that is if the same people they quoted saw the full report they may not have offered negative comments.
*1 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/government-researchers-changed-metric-to-measure-coronavirus-drug-remdesivir-during-clinical-trial/ar-BB13ui2k
Quotes are drawn from the article.
I have to give the authors of the article a bit of credit for intellectual honesty and integrity. The headline suggests something really bad happened. The article tries to support the headline but the writers, and this is the credit I give them, posted views on both sides of the issue. Unfortunately for them, any reasonable reader would conclude the Trump Administration was right to do what it did.
The original goal of the trial was to see if remdesivir could reduce the rate of deaths. The new goal was to measure whether remdesivir helps people recover faster. Under the new criteria, it was shown that remdesivir reduces time to recovery "from 15 days to 11 days, a 31 percent improvement."
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health called this a "clear-cut, significant, positive effect..."
Now the second guessing starts. The article quotes Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist and expert clinical investigator as saying: "I think that they thought they weren't going to win, they wanted to change it to something they could win on. I prefer the original outcome." And Dr. Nissen also "expressed dismay that the placebo phase of the trial was declared over so quickly."
The article then quotes Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health as saying "ethical considerations drove the announcement: As soon as clear evidence of shorter hospitalization was available, trial investigators owed it to patients on placebo to stop" and give them the benefit of the drug.
So which of those two options do you choose:
- continue the trial and let people die just to maintain the original measurements or
- stop giving sick people placebos and instead give them a drug you now know, from evidence, should help them get better.
I think there is a slam dunk winner there.
Contrasting comments continue throughout the article, with most of the naysayers making a negative comment followed by "we need to see the results." My response to that is why don't you hold your tongue and wait to see the results so you can offer an informed opinion. Because the article made clear that full results will be published and "death, ventilation, and other measures are included in the list of the trial's secondary outcome measures."
This is a story that didn't need to be printed. The Democrat media could not let the Trump Administration have a win so they went out of their way to find people who were willing to make negative comments without seeing the full results. The Washington Post should have waited for the full report and then written a story, but the problem with that is if the same people they quoted saw the full report they may not have offered negative comments.
*1 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/government-researchers-changed-metric-to-measure-coronavirus-drug-remdesivir-during-clinical-trial/ar-BB13ui2k
Quotes are drawn from the article.
Comments