The NIH just updated the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines. They don’t say why.
I sent the three co-chairs of the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel a request for corrections and comments on a story that was published yesterday in TrialSite News. Today, one of the co-chairs, Roy Gulick, responded by email through the Controlled Correspondence and Public Inquiries Section of the NIH:
“Please note that to be included in the Guidelines, a recommendation statement must be endorsed by a majority of Panel members; this applies to recommendations for treatments, recommendations against treatments, and cases where there are insufficient data to recommend either for or against treatments. The information on this voting process has been updated in the “Development of the Guidelines” section at https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/introduction/.”
The statement does not say why the Guidelines were updated. Was it because the Guidelines were unclear or was there a change in procedure? Shouldn’t the revision to the Guidelines make it clear whether the procedures have changed? If this is a change in procedure, the Guidelines now explicitly mislead the reader to believe that all prior recommendations were voted on. Also, for some reason they have introduced a new term in this update: “recommendation statement”.
Also, the Guidelines are now self contradictory. The Guidelines state:
“Updates to existing sections that do not affect the rated recommendations are approved by Panel co-chairs without a Panel vote.”
Since all recommendations are voted on, shouldn’t it read:
“Updates to existing sections that do not affect the rated and unrated recommendations are approved by Panel co-chairs without a Panel vote.”
The larger question is why is there even an interpretation issue with this document? Why isn’t this document crystal clear on the question of voting to begin with? Why is it even less clear after the revision?
The update to the Guidelines has not cleared up anything. On the contrary; it raises further doubts. Most importantly, the email from the NIH was a response to a request for corrections and/or comments on the TrialSite News Story. The response from the NIH did not ask for any corrections.
UPDATE: The question of how to interpret the update to the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines was sent by email to two of the Panel. The question asked again if the ivermectin recommendation had been voted on. The NIH responded on their behalf. The response by email was:
“Regarding your inquiry and recent article titled, “The Ivermectin Recommendation Part IV,” please note that there have been no procedural changes in the way recommendations are made. The recent update of the Guidelines provides public clarification of the process.”
The NIH continues to avoid answering a simple question: “Was a vote held to update the recommendation on ivermectin?”
(See Part V)
