A hydroxychloroquine paradigm for treating Covid19?

A Houston-based female doctor has earned her 15 minutes of fame addressing a press conference where she claimed to have treated 350 Covid19 patients using a combo of hydroxychloroquine, zinc and Azithromycin, an antibiotic. Those three minutes she spent could fetch her fame or condemn her to infamy.

As I watched the video, my mind went back to our Dr Jeremiah Abalaka, who similarly trended in the era of HIV-AIDS.

Social media platforms of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, have shut down Dr Stella Immanuel's video. It is akin to how the British regulator shut down videos that Pastor Chris Oyakhilome trended claiming a causative link between 5G and Coronavirus.

There are those angered that in identifying herself, she made it seem as if she were a Nigerian. She is an African and she has made the kind of claims Africans have made on this matter.

Dr Stella Immanuel asserts that no one should die from Coronavirus as she claims there is a cure. Her touted remedy is the same as President Donald Trump had advertised earlier but which the medical establishment shut down.

Medicine rests on a foundation of science and the deployment of the scientific method. Data is integral to the scientific method. It is strange to hear a doctor denounce data when even social scientists and humanities professionals are emphasising data in this Information Age.

With 350 cases, there is the assumption of replicability, a core value of the scientific method. There should be documentation, though Dr Immanuel claimed at her press briefing not to have such documentation. Strange.

She then dismisses the tenets of science and medicine such as the various studies, peer review and data.

The matter goes beyond Stella Immanuel, however. A cocktail of rivalry, suspicion and conspiracy trails the issue of a possible cure for Covid19. America has politicised the disease and everything around it. When they are not fighting China or the World Health Organisation, they are engaged in their internal wars over which worldview would prevail. That translates to which facts would come out or which they would shut down.

What is playing out is the disputation between the right and the left in American politics.

Donald Trump is in the mix. With Donald Trump comes a noxious brew. There is the political religion of the White Pentecostal movement chanting terms like "globalists" and visions of chip implants. Everything now must go through that analytical lens.

The satellites of American religious ideology in Nigeria have also lined up. At least three of such persons have shared Stella Immanuel's video with me claiming "God has provided a cure" despite the efforts of the "globalists" and their vaccine. That vaccine will, in their view, commit the sacrilege of forcing a reduction in Africa's admittedly bloated population.

The world is searching for a cure for Covid19. I would like to believe that Africa is also involved in that search. Our Presidential Task Force on Covid19, flush with funds, promised to prioritise scientific investigations into Covid19 and other infectious diseases. After the opening day declaration, we have not heard anything else from them.

Meanwhile, Africa has been throwing up "cures". The tiny island of Madagascar made a giant claim earlier only to leave itself and believers across Africa with eggs on our faces.

Is hydroxychloroquine the cure? Maybe. India produces more than half the global stock. Deaths from covid19 are soaring in India. You would expect India to deploy its inventory to treating their Covid19 cases if it is the cure. 

Brazil similarly suffers as much as India and America from Covid19 deaths. They would probably need to visit Dr Immanuel to learn how to use hydroxychloroquine and the combo.

Science deals with paradigms. Paradigms are established patterns or thoughts on a matter. Thomas Kuhn, who made the term famous, said it is "the set of concepts and practices that define a scientific discipline at any particular period". 

Wikipedia reports that Kuhn defines a scientific paradigm as: "universally recognised scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners, i.e.,

·       what to observe and scrutinise

·       the kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers concerning this subject

·       how to structure these questions

·       what predictions made by the primary theory within the discipline

·       how to interpret the results of scientific investigations

·       how to experiment, and what equipment is available to conduct it.

Dr Stella Immanuel has thrown down the gauntlet. She would now have to show the workings of her paradigm. Then and only then can those who want to celebrate her cure cite an African medical scientist, not one who makes fanciful claims.

For now, citizens should follow the established paradigm. Stay safe, wear your masks, observe social distancing, wash your hands with soap and water, and note that the medical community has not agreed on a cure. These matters are usually collegial and not determined by the say-so of one person. Do not experiment with medications.