I'm not a doctor or medical training, but have attempted to do limited meta-research of my own (generally just building on what others have already written for months now about it). I think there's good reason people are still skeptical that this is a useful treatment, and this is after many attempted trials. The latest "study" of that I saw (from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092485792...) seems to have compared patients who were very sick (high fever) and received normal treatment against patients who weren't very sick (no fever) and received zinc+hydroxychloroquine. When viewed in that way, it should be unsurprising then that the not-very-sick patient cohort fared better then the very sick. Additionally, the report notes that the not-treated people in that not-very-sick group also did much better than the treated people in that group. So, all told, that seems like too little evidence and too late, with the real conclusion being that if you want to avoid being sick, don't go get sick.
> Not a doctor or well read on the subject but I have seen some studies claiming it does.
Your source is quite old and only provides baseless speculation about an hypothesis where hydroxychloroquine might play a role in treating covid-19 effectively.
If you invest some time searching for the topic you'll find a multitude of studies which failed to find any evidence that hydroxychloroquine has any effect at all.
This paper might not have been accepted by the Wall Street Journal but in it the author's point out tjat multiple high-quality studies subsequently showed no benefit of hydroxychloroquine use as post-exposure prophylaxis3
or as a COVID-19 treatment.
The author's proceed to address the hypothesis that prior long term treatment with hydroxychloroquine by autoimmune disease patients was a factor, and cite a study that "found no significant difference in standardised cumulative COVID-19 mortality associated with hydroxychloroquine use".
The author's then state quite unambiguously the following:
>These findings are not surprising given the mounting body of literature suggesting no clinical benefit for hydroxychloroquine use against COVID-19. However, this study is important in addressing the potential role, or lack thereof, for hydroxychloroquine as a preventive medication for this novel infectious disease.
I would upvote you for rightly pointing out that it seems political, which is worth calling out, but I disagree with your sarcastic tone.
But largely, yes, somehow, in some people's heads I think people have made an emotion association that endorsement of a drug is somehow a validation of an ex-political-figure. Hopefully that can all be put behind us now.
I looked on wikipedia and found "Hydroxychloroquine is being studied to prevent and treat coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‑19), but all clinical trials conducted during 2020 found it is ineffective and may cause dangerous side effects.[3][4][5][6]"
But interestingly, the systematic review it referenced concluded "There is sufficient pre-clinical rationale and evidence regarding the effectiveness of chloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 as well as evidence of safety from long-time use in clinical practice for other indications [3] to justify clinical research on the topic." The rest of the citations were prior to June.
I'm not specifically saying it does or doesn't work, I couldn't care less. I do care about citations matching.
Hydroxychloroquine was never anything other than pure political propaganda.
It was the promise of a magical politically endorsed silver bullet designed to mitigate the political fallout of having to manage a pandemic with little to no success. Pure believers were not only kept in line because of the empty promises of a solution to their personal problem but also mobilized to persecute any contrasting opinion.
This is not correct. Chloroquine was first suggested as a possible treatment by Chinese researchers in early February - well before there was even any attempt to manage a pandemic in the west. Those of us who were paying attention at the time were watching it carefully (and in some cases even buying supplies of it in case it proved effective). When Trump jumped on it (trailing a social media storm by several days) we all collectively groaned at the inevitable politicization.
You surely didn't think that Trump picked a drug at random?
Did you read the article? It specifically discusses a mechanism by which hydroxychloroquine might be effective in combination with other medication. So if you want to just insist that HCQ by itself is not very useful, I'd say that's true but largely irrelevant.
Meanwhile ivermectin is being shown to be effective as both prophylaxis and treatment in numerous studies but it's become anathema to consider the possibility of generics, it's "vaccines or bust."
Did you read the article? It is literally investigating a possible mitigation using a generic drug that is not a vaccine. I strongly suspect doctors are even treating sick patients currently, and not just telling them to wait for a vaccine.
Although, if you're instead trying to compare their effectiveness, yeah, vaccines kinda do appear to be that much starkly better. I'm blown away by how much the actual data curve looks like the dramatic XKCD cartoon version:
https://m.xkcd.com/2400/
"Vaccines or bust" was in reference to the parent comment, which seems to reflect a broader and widely held perception that any generic drugs must be a bad idea, and the only legitimate course of intervention is vaccines. It was not a (flatly absurd) claim that there are zero studies going on into various generic treatments.
Ah, gotcha. Who actually holds that idea though? I don't think expressing concern that the hype over hydroxychloroquine is misguided and wasting resources equates to an assumption that all drug research is futile on their part.
Indeed, it seems like many drugs have received research attention (I did one quick search that turned up over 3000 trials registered this year for various treatments, though many might have been duplicates or meta analysis or not approved). I have limited time and interest in researching Ivermectin specifically, but, as I see oft quoted here, the plural of anecdote is not data. My understanding is that Remdesivir is currently the best treatment option, is approved by the FDA for use, and was a repurposed drug developed against other viruses.
Thanks for the link to BMJ. If that turns out to be true, it would be disappointing to me (relative to 90%). But also still seems to show a reduction in severity, which is good for all of us. Thus also an increased importance that everyone who can gets vaccinated, for their own health (if we learn that you can't depend on herd immunity to protect you) and continued exploration of improved treatments.
> We further show that SARS-CoV-2 is more reliant than SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) on the TMPRSS2 pathway, and that this difference is due to a furin cleavage site present in the SARS-CoV-2 S protein.
That's interesting, it's a furin cleavage site that the New York "Lab leak hypothesis" article pointed to as suspicious and possibly man-made, though I'm not sure if it's exactly the same.
Summary conclusion: "Finally, we show that combinations of hydroxychloroquine and a clinically tested TMPRSS2 inhibitor work together to effectively inhibit SARS-CoV-2 entry. Thus TMPRSS2 expression on physiologically relevant SARS-CoV-2 target cells may bypass the antiviral activities of hydroxychloroquine, and explain its lack of in vivo efficacy... "
But no mention of whether any of the trials included both Zinc and Azithromyzin, which are frequently cited as necessary co-medications.