Vitamin C and Covid-19

Usually it's another one of those things that don't survive a fact-check.
This is from one of Australia's reputable teaching hospitals:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-03/mega-dose-of-vitamin-c-treats-sepsis-florey-institute-austin/12939202

"Doctors at Melbourne's Austin Health have now begun a randomised controlled trial, giving some patients with septic shock a megadose of vitamin C and some a placebo."

This trial may be useful for septic shock, but to assess its effect on Covid-19 ICU patients it will have to be done outside Australia. We don't have any of them.

@Kewpie
No honest trials using any treatment that is cheap and cannot be patented will ever take place in the US. The FDA and their friends at big-pharma will make sure of that.

@bunnyknight

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04264533
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04530539

@wildgrass
Let me rephrase that better: An honest study showing that a cheap, safe and non-patentable treatment works will be ignored, discredited or ridiculed, and will never see the light of day. What will be approved instead, will be some very expensive drug with nasty side effects and legal disclaimers. This sort of tactic has been going on for decades because profit and greed is what it's all about. And Vitamin C, which has been shown to greatly help healing many decades ago, is a perfect example of this.

@bunnyknight
Clinical trials cost a lot of money so that makes some sense. You are seeing more and more government funded trials but that is fraught with it's own set of conflicts.

Also, there is no more rigorous replacement for randomized controlled trials, but they are tedious and difficult and often involve a handful of willing participants. More robust data is emerging from broader analyses of clinical practices. With consent, you can aggregate data from many centers regarding the use of non-pharmacological interventions. This is encouraging.