We are full throttle now. In recent days, the Donald announced that quinine was able to combat Covid-19. Seems fair enough to me given that both China and South Korea have had positive results. Also, being an anti-viral, it makes perfect sense that it is an effective drug.
The drug touted by the U.S. President Donald Trump as a possible line of treatment against the coronavirus comes with severe warnings in China and can kill in dosages as little as two grams.
This is why I utterly despise the media. If you overdose on any drug it will have side effects leading to possible death. Even their own report puts this absurd statement into context.
This came after local media reported that a Wuhan Institute of Virology study found that the drug can kill an adult just dosed at twice the daily amount recommended for treatment, which is one gram.
So why would you give someone twice the recommended dose? The scary headline then can be reworded to this:
Virus Drug Touted by Trump, Musk Can Kill With Just Two Gram Dose If You are Stupid Enough to Overdose – Just Like Any Other Drug, You Fuckwit
Can we hang the journalists yet?
Maybe I should apply for a job at Bloomberg as a headline writer.
I agree with you, although it may be a useful warning to those who obtain it for self medication.
I’m not aware that you can just buy it without a prescription. However, these things come with instructions regarding the dose and the side effects. If people overdose and die, that’s Darwin in action, frankly.
Chloroquin (the drug in the linked article) is a prescription drug, but quinine can be found in bitter lemon and indian tonic water.
David Thompson over at Psychodrama says you’d have to drink about 50l of tonic water per day for the quinine to have an effect. That’s a lot of gin!
If you do get it, you probably won’t care…
Darwin often makes his appearance in self-medication stories. It was Mansfield, as I remember, where an action hero bought a supply of caffeine powder properly labelled “do not exceed a quarter of a teaspoonful” or somesuch. He duly ate five dessertspoonsful washed down with a tin of energy drink. Only did it once, mind . . .
Don’t you just love it when journalists use scary numbers without context? Do you think they do it on purpose or are they just ignorant?
“The drug … can kill in dosages as little as two grams.”
Two grams is a huge amount. I’ve just looked at the medicines I take and the pills are mostly between 5 milligrams and 75 milligrams. One of them is 0.5 micrograms. I don’t suppose 2 grams of any of them would do me a lot of good.
“All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison.” Paracelsus (16th century)
It’s why I despise them so much. They avoid outright lying by presenting figures without context. The end result is the same.
@LR
Max safe Chloroquine dose is determined by body weight – the China 1g dose is first day only in two doses (non-falciparum malaria). Vitamin A will kill if 1oz of Polar Bear liver eaten. Water will kill if too much drunk
Chloroquine in UK is an over the counter drug when labelled “anti-malaria”:
“Exceptions to legal category
Can be sold to the public provided it is licensed and labelled for the prophylaxis of malaria”
https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/chloroquine.html
As for GPs: Doc can prescribe if patient says “I’m going to a malaria country”
Pharmacists and GPs are being obstructive unlike the pragmatism Gov displaying
A dose of – Chloroquine – reality (sack Dr Bureaucratic FooDeath)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-KsSet1ZN4
Facts without fear amid coronavirus pandemic
“Pandemic could have been stopped if China hadn’t lied
…is German measles now racist too?”
youtube.com/watch?v=0sDAuWZPR-4
Pedant alert!
As an anti-malarial, chloroquine is not technically an anti-viral drug. The malaria-causing plasmodium is neither virus nor bacterium, but is a single-celled organism closer to an amoeba.
DK