[hhw]

My claim was that the site pushes a blatantly false narrative, not that science is a popularity contest.

This paper you've cited supposedly showing positive results is a preprint and has not been published yet, which suggests it hasn't satisfied the peer review process in whichever journal it is intended to be published in. The study was also suspended partway through so it's unlikely it'll ever be completed. I don't entirely disagree that science is a pure numbers game (only papers that stand up to peer review, not only from the journal but from the wider scientific community are worth consideration), but you're undermining your own argument with this poor selection of a paper. If it does eventually end up published, and doesn't have too many glaring issues with its methodology pointed out (some of which are already indicated in the comments on medrxiv), it may be worth mentioning in the future but it certainly isn't right now. And the existence of this paper doesn't make the site's analysis any less dishonest. Suggesting 100% of papers of some particularly category when only one (in actuality none) exist is clearly wrong, and intentionally misleading if not dishonest.

I also don't entirely agree that numbers don't matter. Given a set of papers that are published, properly peer reviewed, and don't have any glaring issues with their methodology, it certainly matters if the vast majority demonstrate something while a tiny number suggest something else. This would indicate that tiny number are outliers, and may have had some problems that weren't immediately obvious. Otherwise, their results would have been reproducable which is a key indication of the validity of their empirical data.

There are also other, better studies that show negative results or no benefit. Why did you pick this particular one?

[chrisco255]

I don't agree with the site's slant. I use the site as a collection of studies to click through and read directly. They also have studies on Vitamin D, Remdesivir, etc (along the top).

The studies that show no benefit aren't complete in and of themselves. I have yet to see some perfectly conducted RCT on HCQ. The treatment that was prescribed originally by Didier Raoult was HCQ + AZ + Zinc. I have a hard time finding a good RCT on those 3 drugs provided immediately after diagnosis. The retrospective analysis seems to indicate a benefit. Either way, I think the entire politicization of the drug early on in the pandemic, where it was cast as "dangerous" even though it has been approved as a phrophylactic in pregnant women and used as an antiviral for 60 years, was completely hysterical.

[hhw]

The side effects have also been known for a long time, which is why dosage is carefully monitored in Lupus patients and blindness is an anticipated side effect.

My understanding is that another side effect of HCQ is that it extends the QT cycle, and given the duress COVID-19 puts on the heart, there is not an insignificant risk of cardiak arrest. There may not be as much data to show this as conclusively or prevalently as some might like, but the underlying mechanisms are well enough understood that it would be reckless to continue prescribing HCQ until it had been sufficiently demonstrated that the benefits outweighed this risk.

There really wasn't sufficient reason to think that HCQ would work in the first place, based on any understanding of how the drugs works. It was just the original, now discredited paper from China that opened up the floodgates in the first place. The antiviral properties are far too weak and would require far too high (dangerous) concentrations in vivo, far in excess of what's commonly prescribed for other purposes, to match the earlier in vitro results. If there's any benefit to HCQ, it would be from immunosupression. But dexamethasone serves that purpose much more effectively, and has shown much better results so it doesn't make much sense to continue exploring HCQ.