[learc83]

>"ineffective and may cause dangerous side effects"

Dangerous on an individual level, not really. But at a population level if hundreds of millions of people start taking it, you're going to have high absolute numbers of bad side effects.

> is a purely political attack on the US president.

As for ineffective, there isn't one single national health agency that recommends taking it for covid. Surely the entire globe isn't killing scores of their citizens by preventing the use of an effective treatment just to make the US President look bad.

Since it's ineffective in this case, there's no benefit to outweigh the downsides of "dangerous side effects" like their is with aspirin or Tylenol.

[gridlockd]

> As for ineffective, there isn't one single national health agency that recommends taking it for covid. Surely the entire globe isn't killing scores of their citizens by preventing the use of an effective treatment just to make the US President look bad.

Not true:

https://www.mohfw.gov.in/pdf/AdvisoryontheuseofHydroxychloro...

Of course, it's controversial because the WHO recommended against it and most health agencies just follow suit.

Also, American politics don't end at the border. There are countries that favor Trump, India being one of them.

[rsynnott]

> There are countries that favor Trump, India being one of them.

Most countries' health authorities don't take into account public opinion about Important Orange Personages when setting policy, astonishingly.

[gridlockd]

You'd be surprised.

[rsynnott]

I’d suspect that where you see other national leaders pushing HCQ, it’s largely not because Trump is doing it, but for similar reasons to why Trump is doing it. HCQ was the most ‘miracle cure’-y of the early proposed treatments. Most treatments being investigated promised modest reductions in the death rate, whereas some of the claims for HCQ were very extravagant (some people were even pushing it as a _prophylactic_). That’s a much more attractive public message than ‘this might reduce your chance of dying by 20%, if you’re on a ventilator’, so if you weren’t overly concerned with whether it was true or not, it might work politically.

[gridlockd]

I don't see national leaders pushing HCQ because Trump is doing it, I see them pushing against it because Trump is doing it and because they positioned themselves against him.

Trump has poisoned the well. If you bring up HCQ, you are immediately under suspicion of being an anti-science Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist. Guilt by association, reductio ad hitlerum, etc.

As for using HCQ as a prophylactic: That was the whole point right from the beginning. Didier Raoult can be credited with starting the HCQ hype, he has been prescribing HCQ+zinc as a prophylactic for at-risk groups. That's not as outlandish as you make it sound, HCQ has been used as prophylactic for malaria for the longest time and that is considered safe.

The studies that tested HCQ at a late stage (ICU) or without zinc are missing the point. HCQ without zinc doesn't work, zinc without HCQ is at least less effective, because the HCQ works as an ionophore, but if you already have a severe case of COVID, none of it is going to work. It's too late.

There are several studies that suggest that this prophylactic treatment works. There are no big RCTs that show it works, but neither are there big RCTs that disprove that it works.

See also this protocol for prophylaxis of COVID-19:

https://www.evms.edu/media/evms_public/departments/internal_...

It includes zinc and quercetin as an ionophore and is thus politically uncontroversial. However, it's unknown to what extent quercetin really works as an ionophore in vivo.