It's remarkable how a non-randomized study of Hydroxychloroquine is anathema, yet a non-randomized study of Remdesivir that's paid for by its manufacturer and written up by that manufacturer's employee is not. Hmm, I wonder why that is. To top it off, it might actually have the same QT prolongation issues, because some other antivirals have them.
That said, politics aside, I hope it works far beyond our wildest expectations so fewer people die.
I'd like to know if there was any evidence or indication of the value of HQNN before a certain president started spouting it. AFAIK the only reason we're talking about it is because he did. If that's so then there's no reason to pick HQNN as being special over any other drug. I suppose there's that very dodgy french study, perhaps that's what started it all off.
Basically exactly the same kind of "evidence" as what we have now for remdesivir. Some patients got better while on it, but because there was no control arm we don't know whether they'd do worse (or better) without the drug.
Virologists generally agree that it is a plausible drug to treat COVID-19, but will quickly point out that efficacy is unproven and we need to wait for better studies.
Also, a couple of doctors who are regarded as "cranks" started applying it early in the disease and presumably had success with. Trump picked up on that, so now a lot of people have reason to hate on it. Trump poisoned the well.
No "proper" doctor is going to administer a dangerous drug to a non-critical patient to prevent what might turn out to be a harmless course of the diseases. However, that also means if these drugs work, but only in the early stages, then we won't find out any time soon.
> No "proper" doctor is going to administer a dangerous drug to a non-critical patient to prevent what might turn out to be a harmless course of the diseases.
This "dangerous" drug has been used in medicine for 60 years for probably more than a billion or two people. I'm sure that a "proper" doctor faced with a dying patient that is unresponsive to everything else is going to offer this drug. Its a good thing that congress approved the Right To Try law.
> This "dangerous" drug has been used in medicine for 60 years
Note that the doses required here are MUCH higher (one European hospital tried 1000mg doses) which is toxic. It can result in blindness, heart failure and other issues.
Retinal damage is not an issue unless you take it for years. Heart failure is not an issue in a hospital because it's not sudden, so all treatment protocols specify that patients are monitored for QT prolongation. Moreover if you don't get it right away, you're unlikely to get it at all. "Other issues" in this case are mostly nausea and diarrhea. I don't know about you, but I'd rather shit myself than die.
That's why I wrote non-critical patients. There are doctors administering it in a prophylactic fashion, supposedly with success. That's highly controversial.
Are there countries in which a significant fraction of the population takes it on a regular basis? Presumably these are the same places in which an actually large fraction of the population has had malaria and in which there is some naturally evolved resistance to it, so you'd have to control for that...
There aren't any. Most regions with high risk of malaria (like India) have malarias that have chloroquine resistance, and the only places without chloroquine resistant malaria are in Central America and the Caribbean. Hydroxychloroquine is even less effective than chloroquine on those chloroquine resistant malarias. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12837731/
Most Indians, for example, don't take any antimalarials until they actually have malaria.
One drug has turned out to be mostly ineffective and in some cases dangerous, people have died. Another one seems to work okay-ish in a huge coordinated experiment.
That said, politics aside, I hope it works far beyond our wildest expectations so fewer people die.