/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12118799
This post essentially proved my point about experts vs amateurs. Modern society is often too complicated to function without some sort of a structure of expertise.

Who would you rather 'lap up' information from?
The person that dedicated their entire adult life to the study of a certain field, or the person that casually built their knowledge base from a string of websites, personal anecdotes, and screenshots? Don't feel bad though, because this isn't a personal dig at you as an intellect. Everyone can feel uncomfortable trusting strangers compared to groups they already identify with. Hell even Steve Jobs didn't trust his oncology experts when he had completely treatable cancer. It's an incredibly easy trap to fall into. Especially if the group you identify with reinforces the idea.

>https://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2020/06/how-false-hydroxychloroquine-narrative.html
>Anthrax Vaccine

It's kind of funny how the anthrax vaccine has become the new anti-vax meme. I guess the autism claim didn't get enough traction, so they jumped to something else. As someone that works on the pharmaceutical side of a major COVID hospital in the US, let me go over this HCQ shitshow.

HCQ is not a brand name drug. It's generic. Meaning that every major drug manufacturer can make this. In malaria stricken countries this drug has practically the same regulation and price as aspirin. When US hospitals buy drugs like HCQ from whole-sellers/manufacturers, we get a massively discounted price because of a program called 340B. I'm talking each pill costing fractions of a penny.

The major problem we had was that HCQ was on backorder. Drugs being on backorder is an unfortunate common occurrence of medicine. When this happens you just have to hope your stockpile/alternative treatments can get you through it. This was worse when China was going through their COVID peak, because a lot of the drugs we needed for crash carts were partly manufactured in China. And when those initial HCQ studies were released everyone was finding ways to stock up on it. Panicking doctors were writing so many HCQ prescriptions for their friends and family that regular Lupus patients had to go without. Regulators and politicians had to find a way to make sure at least the hospitals could keep it in stock.

By the time the manufacturers caught up to the HCQ demand, the treatment algorithm changed. HCQ + Azithromycin was over. Ironically the media and Facebook conspiracy types keep talking about it when we haven't been using it as a treatment method for months. Our hospital has around 800 beds and we probably spent around $100 total on this drug. This wasn't a cash cow. It was a meme drug that showed demonstrated how desperate and mismanaged the COVID response was. but y'know hindsight is 20/20