Where did these scare stories go? Turn out to be wholly inaccurate? Humza must not go?

Oooh! Excitingg!! The Herald exposes incompetence and abuse of patients, Humza must go!”

But, wait, click on the story and:

I tried searching above and scoured the online pages but no sign:

Wait, here it is?

Click! Nope that one has gone too.

I wonder, what research are they using?

Anyhow, as very very sick patients flooded into hospitals with a new deadly virus for which there were no established methods of treatment, medics used intelligent guesses to try what they thought might help before it was too late? In the process they saved many lives but some things didn’t work?

That IS of interest to medics but it should not be used for cheap thrills.

Nauseating.

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16 thoughts on “Where did these scare stories go? Turn out to be wholly inaccurate? Humza must not go?”

  1. How odd! The term ‘unnecessary’ is doing a lot of work in The Herald’s headline. For perspective, see below, just one of a number of references that could have been selected by my inexpert eye from the quickest of online searches!

    Source: Gyselinck et al (2021) Rationale for azithromycin in COVID-19: an overview of existing evidence. BMJ Open Respiratory Research 8.1.

    “A repurposing drug candidate of special interest is azithromycin. Azithromycin is a macrolide ANTIBIOTIC (my emphasis) with a broad gram-positive and gram-negative spectrum. Moreover, it has well-documented anti-inflammatory and immunoregulatory effects, through modulation of both the innate and adaptive immune response. These are effective to treat chronic inflammatory disorders such as diffuse bronchiolitis, post-transplant bronchiolitis, non-eosinophilic asthma or rosacea. Azithromycin has also been associated with improved outcome in other viral pneumonias, such as influenza or rhinovirus, and in patients with acute lung injury admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

    ‘This has in some centres led to the early adoption of azithromycin in routine COVID-19 care, …..’

    In essence, it seems that Azithromycin is regarded as having anti-inflammatory effects which may help reduce an overactive immune response to COVID-19.

    By all means let’s have The Herald do some ‘proper’ journalism to inform the public on the development and evolution of therapies to tackle Covid. It would be interesting to learn how the medical profession came to establish a toolkit of therapies in the early months of the pandemic. But this is hardly an appropriate subject for any responsible newspaper to address trivially in a pejorative headline.

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      1. The Herald story was based on research carried out by the Universities of Glasgow, Liverpool, Edinburgh(?) and one of the London Universities. As usual the Herald rehashed it for their own ends but left the cautionary part of the report to the end by which point most people have stopped reading.

        At one point in the article they seemed to be pointing the finger at this use of antibiotics as a factor in the growing bacterial resistance to antibiotics.

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        1. The ‘growing bacterial resistance to antibiotics’ has been a long process, it’s also atributed to animal husbandry, poor cows and sheep and pigs are kept in huge dark windowless barns where infections are common so they are given antibiotics routinely, which is then passed into the water system and to humans.
          That’s the crux of the matter, it’s not so much about individuals but the whole system, antibiotics are in the water systems, and probs even in the milk people drink, humans have created a huge problem, once again.

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      2. There are recent peer reviewed academic papers that explain and support the use of antibiotic prescribing for those with Covid (see the reference in my prior btl post).

        However, there are indeed papers expressing concerns about over- or unnecessary use linked to wider concerns about antibiotic resistance (and not just the The Herald’s reference).

        There are also papers investigating how to optimise the benefits and minimise the downside of increased antibiotic use with Covid patients (see Sieswerda et al (2020) Recommendations for antibacterial therapy in adults with COVID-19 – an evidence based guideline. Clin Microbiol Infect. 27(1):61-66.)

        Looking more generally, there are contributions by journalists (and others, including those writing btl on blogs) that have a tendency to pluck out just one academic paper on serious and complex issues. The selection is of course made in support of a particular point of view.

        However, contributions based on hyper selectivity of academic sources should be treated with healthy scepticism and caution because the selection will typically have been made from a body of peer reviewed research literature which displays multiple, diverse and nuanced views!

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  4. John
    May i suggest that you give up on The Herod,s sources
    And divert your valuable time which without doubt shall yield more success
    And what would prove to be such a rewarding and fruitful activity be
    Well then try
    Herding Cats

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  5. Aw, naw! DRossy to isolate with Covid-19.

    Two puppeteers, six scriptwriters and nine members of staff from the Hootsmon, Herod, and BEEB are also to isolate.

    Anyone with a spare COO-fancier video is asked to contact the Tory Bunker at “Farmer” Jack’s hideout in Bonnie Ed’nbra.

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    2. On your “COO-fancier”, are your referring to a possible rerun of HMS Sarah Smith’s incontinent pigeons story recrafted as cause ?
      I can just imagine footage of Ian Blackford’s farm with an overdub by Glenn (the lieman for the country) Campbell overdubbing with “The incident was witnessed by a member of the public, who saw, what can only be described as the militarised departure of heavily laden pigeons from a croft on Skye… Serious questions have been raised, and must be answered by the Scottish Government” ?

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