It's ridiculous how a drug that's been used for over 60 years and is on the UN's essential drug list can cause so much doom and gloom reactions. I've read a lot of medical research papers, and checked out the reviews of peer doctors analyzing and critiquing the studies, and the general thinking is that
hydroxychloroquine with zinc is effective in stopping the replication of virus, especially if they are administered early in the onset of symptoms.
There have been a lot of critiques about the trials that showed hydroxycholoroquine had no effects or even detrimental effects. T
he recent study out of NY that have been cited by mainstream media suffered from design flaws. The treated patients were much sicker than the non-treated control group, and more of the studied group came from demographics more prone to the symptoms of COVID-19 (see comments from publication).
The retrospective VA study used subjects very late in the COVID-19 infection stage,
and the HCQ group had twice the incidence of lympopenia. As with the the study by the Lancet,
it's more the antibiotics used (macrolides/azithromycin) that contribute to the heart problems (QT prolongation), especially on
older patients. Furthermore
the deceased patients have a much higher obesity rate than the survivors (61% vs. 27%), and had a higher ventilator usage. As with retrospective studies, there could be many confounding variables such as miscoding of patient symptoms and unreported underlying conditions. I don't believe we have seen a large scale randomized clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine plus zinc effects with properly controlled placebo group. As with most drugs, the earlier the administration (at the onset of symptoms) the more effective they will be at inhibiting the virus replication.
In a crisis like this it is very unproductive to politicize treatment drugs. As with science, there is a fair degree of uncertainty with most things, but the media should not be so irresponsible to print click-bait headlines without having read the study and peer reviews. The more drugs we have in our arsenal the better, and we can review the effects and the political ramifications (hydroxychloroquine vs. Remedsivir) after we have overcome the pandemic.