#Covid19 Clinical Report & Does Convalescent Plasma Work? (Remember the time recovered Tom Hanks & Wife Rita donating plasma?)

You might have heard of people recovered from #Covid19, like Tom Hanks and his wife Rita, donating their plasma in May for treatment research. OK, we are now in August with three more months of Convalescent Plasma experiences, do we have better scientific understanding whether these Convalescent Plasma actually works???

On TWiV (This Week in Virology) episode 654, experts (Virologist Vincent, and Medical Doctors Daniel Griffin and Chuck Knirsch) talk about the new medRxiv preprint paper (i.e. paper has NOT gone through proper peer review yet), “Effect of Convalescent Plasma on Mortality among Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: Initial Three-Month Experience”

I’m NOT a virologist NOR any expert, so watch/listen to the podcast yourself and learn from the pros DIRECTLY so you can evaluate the finer details yourself. Bottomline from Daniel (roughly) whose hospital system is part of this trial: “I actually find this publication offensive in their discussion. They [the paper’s authors] are a little too happy in patting themselves in the back. I think some shoulders got dislocated. […] A lot of doctors would rather give what they think works [K’s note: “think works” is NOT the same as actually/properly/scientifically “double-blind randomized controlled trial” proven to work”]  than enrol their patients in a trial and we [K’s note: sadly] gave them that option.”

TWiV 654: TWiVering with excitement (timecode 26m10s) re Convalescent Plasma Trial