> • The outcomes of some current clinical trials of chloroquine in China have been announced, without access to the data.
Shameless tangent, China has just booted its most competent respiratory disease epidemiologist from heading epidemic control committee for not backing Xi Jinping's "herbal remedies"
The RFA source in the taiwan news mentioned the replacement took place in Feburary, and you can see that Zhong Nanshan remains in a leadership role up to yesterday [1].
A similar source [2] to the RFA one mentioned that Zhong was replaced on a post called "新冠病毒专家组组长" (leader of the COVID expert group); he's more commonly known as "国家卫健委高级别专家组组长" (leader of the senior expert group in national health commission; see [1]). Judging from the titles it's likely normal personnel changes.
Not to downplay the issue here: there have been reports of doctors being forced to include herbal medicines in the treatment from higher up, despite having little evidence supporting their efficacy. Just a random fact check.
Sources (all in Chinese; note epochtimes doesn't have a particularly good reputation):
I am Chinese, when has zhong nanshan ever being removed from heading the epidemic control committee. Just a few days ago he was making statements and directives as a member of that committee. This news is so fake it just smells like another Taiwan news piece smearing the Chinese government. (I have seen a number Taiwan news article that are just straight out lies. They often spin whatever happens in China has negative on the government, and push the government is evil narrative. Mainland also has it's share of fake news and propaganda. Both side is just equally guilty in brewing hostility against each other's government) And the government's treatment plan has never stated only to use TCMs instead of regular medicine. We don't have any effective drugs against the virus yet. All the treatment treats the symptoms. Say if the patient can't breathe so we give him oxygen. TCMs has a whole theory about regulating body as a system, it's supposed to reduce stress and improve immunity. I personally used TCMs and I have gotten better after using them. But the TCMs could very well be placebo. But when there is no drugs to use, why not try TCMs? Maybe it's just comforting thing. The patient is scared and super stressed. You give him this thing that claims to help, they gets to calm down, they are not stressed anymore, they sleep better at night, they are more hopeful. This is scientifically proven to help recovery. Also TCMs is cheap and you can get massive qualities in a short time. Whereas for Western medicine we gotta pay the drug companies expansive prices.
Feels like North Korea's magic ability to resurrect military commanders after they're allegedly executed by artillery cannon, etc., lies running laps before the truth puts on its shoes.
Taiwan isn’t Mainland China. The first source is from Taiwan, the 2nd from China.
It’s up to you to choose which news source to believe, knowing that the former can print anything (including wild speculation) and the later will only print government approved information (including blatant obvious propaganda).
> TCM has never missed a single fight against epidemics throughout Chinese history. TCM classics have provided sufficient evidence of how TCM cured epidemic diseases such as smallpox over the past several thousand years.
I don't have any reason to trust an article from a Taiwanese publication over one from the PRC but the above quote leaves me highly sceptical about the rest of the article.
It's quite tortuously contorted. He said he was proposing to launch proper clinical trials for "herbal remedies," dodging a request to give his blessing.
So the real story is he proposed doing scientifically valid testing, which could easily disprove their efficacy - and that somehow turned into "the experiments give some hope for the treatment of the novel coronavirus" ... due to a bad English translation?
Not simply bad, but like a 180⁰ of the original meaning.
Well, there is rich context to this. Chinese mainland media has been for weeks escalating the "herbal remedies" craze, and Xi somehow managed to insert himself even there.
Now the media (propaganda ministry) can't back off, because Xi will look like an idiot if they are to back off and acknowledge how foolish it is.
For Zhong, a man with a known anti-quackery sentiment, not speaking in single voice with CPC's herbal remedy peddlers, was enough to be seen as somebody not standing in line.
Imagine if homeopathy became a point of something the government says we have to see as cultural/national pride. And is prescribed by doctors/hospitals because of that, and scientific analysis has to show the results that also reflect that...
Sorry - I am having trouble following this. You're saying Xi Jinping wanted yes-men in order to push the herbal remedies, and Zhong Nanshan wanted real science?
Shameless tangent, China has just booted its most competent respiratory disease epidemiologist from heading epidemic control committee for not backing Xi Jinping's "herbal remedies"
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3895540