International Skeptics Forum - View Single Post - The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread pt. 3

Delphic Oracle · 11th December 2020, 02:47 PM

Originally Posted by Roger Ramjets

Shouldn't be a problem right now - just need to give some patients the drug and some a placebo and then we have hard data.

I would have been quite happy to see Rudy Giuliani be part of a trial and get the placebo, then his experience would (hopefully) have been strong evidence for the efficacy of the treatment. But without such evidence we don't know whether the drugs saved him or not.

These drugs are expensive so there might be a tendency to only use them on 'deserving' cases like Giuliani, while others not considered 'valuable' enough miss out. If the drugs don't work it doesn't matter, but if they do then it could be a moral dilemma. I would hate to think that Giuliani got preferential treatment that resulted in another person dying.

The number of people who receive frequent testing enough to even know where in the progression they are and get treatment to quickly is so narrow. That also happens to be a group we might not want to be doing testing on.

11th December 2020, 02:47 PM	#5
Delphic Oracle Philosopher Join Date: Sep 2016 Posts: 5,369	Originally Posted by Roger Ramjets Shouldn't be a problem right now - just need to give some patients the drug and some a placebo and then we have hard data. I would have been quite happy to see Rudy Giuliani be part of a trial and get the placebo, then his experience would (hopefully) have been strong evidence for the efficacy of the treatment. But without such evidence we don't know whether the drugs saved him or not. These drugs are expensive so there might be a tendency to only use them on 'deserving' cases like Giuliani, while others not considered 'valuable' enough miss out. If the drugs don't work it doesn't matter, but if they do then it could be a moral dilemma. I would hate to think that Giuliani got preferential treatment that resulted in another person dying. The number of people who receive frequent testing enough to even know where in the progression they are and get treatment to quickly is so narrow. That also happens to be a group we might not want to be doing testing on.