[ageitgey]

I would love for HCQ to be shown to be effective, but this pre-print study is not super convincing.

First, this is not a randomized trial with a control group. It's a retrospective look at patients in Marseille where they gave HCQ+AZ by default to all patients who would take it and then compared those patients against the small number of people who either refused it or were too at risk of side effects to get it.

If you look at the breakdown of the groups, it's comically unbalanced. Of the 3,737 people they tracked, only 162 didn't receive HCQ or AZ. And the rate of heart disease in those 162 untreated people was 2.7x the rate in the group treated with HCQ+AZ (11.1% vs 4%)! Furthermore, only 28 of the 162 untreated people were in the high risk >= 65 age group. No deaths in any group were reported under the age of 60.

In other words, if you compare a couple tens of people with 2.7x the rate of chronic heart disease to a random assortment of other people, you get numbers that may or may not mean anything.

Meanwhile, there are other studies with proper control groups and balanced patient enrollment that show no benefit of HCQ and lots more studies still in progress that test it in different doses and times of administration. At the end of the day, you have to follow the best evidence.