They have no choice but to say that. Just like in criminal justice one is assumed innocent until proven guilty (beyond any reasonable doubt), in the medical field a drug is assumed harmful until proven beneficial (beyond a certain p-value). As long as the proof of the benefit is not out there (and peer-reviewed), a medical professional needs to give more weight to the known risks vs the unproven potential benefits. They might lose their license if they do otherwise.
But while they may need to think about their license, I need to think about my survival. And here I'm talking about my own survival. I'm not advising anyone else to do the same. I'm not a doctor, and even if I claimed I were one, nobody should just take a random guy's advice over the internet.
That said, my thought process is this: it is aspirin we are talking about, not cyanide. I have taken aspirin many times in my life, including several times recently. The benefit is not proven because doing medical trials is expensive. But the benefit is plausible enough that someone started just such a trial [1]. Separately, the benefits of other blood thinners are considered so great that they are part of the standard of care for Covid19 patients in some hospitals, such as MassGeneral [2]. So, my own assessment of that taking aspirin has for me a higher potential benefit than the potential risk.
But again, this is just for me, not offering advice to other people.
How is your argument different from the people claiming that Chinese medicine cures covid-19? We don't have any proof that it doesn't, but 96% of covid-19 patients in Wuhan received it and they were cured! Yay!
I don't know much about Chinese medicine or about the claim that it may cure Covid19, so I can't comment on this.
If you are alluding however that I'm committing the base rate fallacy, then I'm not. My argument is not statistical in nature.
My argument is this: I know more about my body than the FDA. The FDA makes decisions that affects hundreds of millions of people and cannot know how each will respond to a drug (like aspirin). I however know how my body responds to aspirin because I have taken it and I know I tolerate it well.
So, although both the FDA and I are making a risk-reward analysis, my problem is much more narrow and I have a lot more information about it. I do not need to employ double-blind clinical trials or know anything about t-statistics and p-values.
If I were to start recommending aspirin to HN readers, then I'd start becoming a bit like the FDA, and I would need to resort to statistical arguments. But I'm not recommending aspirin to anyone. I'm just showing people the way I'm carrying my personal risk-reward analysis. This could be useful.
I apologize for not finding a way to frame that more neutrally. I did not reply to your comment because I think you are free to do as you see fit for yourself. Me providing the link to someone else was not intended to be some passive-aggressive dismissal of your choice.
The Cleveland Clinic is a fairly big name, respected clinic. I think of it as a reliable source. I was just trying to sum up a lengthy piece briefly, which is always fraught with potential problems.
I do a lot of making my own health decisions of that sort. I'm routinely attacked for saying anything at all about my thinking about my own health. I wish it were easier to have meaningful discourse of that sort in a responsible fashion without people acting like "You are evil incarnate and practicing medicine without a license for leaving comments on the internet." I have no idea how we get there from here.
I agree with your reasoning. Also the link the parent provided was referring to taking it as a preventative measure, before you know you have Covid-19, not once you know you have it.
But while they may need to think about their license, I need to think about my survival. And here I'm talking about my own survival. I'm not advising anyone else to do the same. I'm not a doctor, and even if I claimed I were one, nobody should just take a random guy's advice over the internet.
That said, my thought process is this: it is aspirin we are talking about, not cyanide. I have taken aspirin many times in my life, including several times recently. The benefit is not proven because doing medical trials is expensive. But the benefit is plausible enough that someone started just such a trial [1]. Separately, the benefits of other blood thinners are considered so great that they are part of the standard of care for Covid19 patients in some hospitals, such as MassGeneral [2]. So, my own assessment of that taking aspirin has for me a higher potential benefit than the potential risk.
But again, this is just for me, not offering advice to other people.
[1] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04365309
[2] https://www.massgeneral.org/assets/MGH/pdf/news/coronavirus/...