https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/27/why-are-medical-authorities-playing-games-with-covid-treatments/"Failures of Remdesivir
Contrast that to the receptiveness to Remdesivir. Following the journal’s publication of preliminary findings, the experimental drug was declared a “game changer.” The trial, however, showed only modest results.
When the main outcome measure, a reduction in deaths, failed to reach statistical significance, a secondary outcome, time to hospital discharge, was elevated as a measure of recovery. Hospital stays were shortened from 15 to 11 days on average.
A companion study of patients treated with Remdesivir for either five or 10 days, however, should give pause. A four-fold higher rate of acute kidney injury occurred with the longer treatment, an outcome not readily discerned when major and minor adverse events are reported in aggregate.
Did the journal editors or peer reviewers express any concern? One hears nothing of this finding from the medical establishment, the regulatory agencies, nor the news media.
By contrast, an observational study of severely ill hospitalized patients, in which hydroxychloroquine statistically halved the death rate even after correcting for factors such as steroid use, was pronounced “flawed.”Thus Remdesivir, a failed Ebola drug repurposed for COVID-19, is declared the standard of care by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) panel, the members of which have financial ties to the manufacturer, Gilead Sciences. The same panel duly notes the hydroxychloroquine study results yet “recommends against” using the drug except in clinical trials.
Sadly, this phenomenon is not new. Fifteen years ago, a survey of 200 expert panels that issued practice guidelines found that a third of the members had a financial interest in the drug under consideration."
