CV and mad panic behaviour

[Thryleon]

The reason HCQ isn't proven to work is that the retrospective studies ignore why people are on HCQ in the first place.

It is the retrospective nature of the study that is the problem, most of the people in the study are identified from a list of survivors after the fact. They are generally already on HCQ because they are being treated for arthritis or rheumatic diseases, and they are also on a bunch of other drugs at the same time. You could easily look for a coincident illness that cures COVID and find arthritis is the miracle cure, or it could mean people who are already on HCQ are more attentive to their own health and as such act sooner when infected by COVID.

Picking HCQ out of that mix is as a retrospective data analysis is a study analysis flaw known as "The Theory Dependence of Observations". That is if a study is started and designed with a specific theory, idea or hypothesis in mind, in other words an assumption, that is exactly what you find.

Worse still, in some cases the incentive to publish such a finding can be lucrative, so you find some of the people publishing these retrospective theories are not even experts but paid commentators in unaligned or loosely aligned disciplines. The tell for the experienced is that when you delve into the papers, if they are genuine papers, you find it's a repeat of the same discredited data, given a new wrapper and re-gifted!

To do a genuine study of HCQ, you have to take a large number of people like the vaccine trial, thousands of people some infected, some who were infected and some who have never been infected, all of them with an unknown current state of health or infection, give them HCQ then study the outcome as some of that population get COVID infections / reinfections naturally. It's a study that takes many many months or even years to complete, just like the vaccine trials. It is happening as I type, but the results are months and months away, and any claims to knowing a specific outcome are just dice throws by the willingly uninformed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine

Reading through that tells me a lot about its viability.  Its neither a long term solution, nor a preventative, but something that will assist with healing once you are infected.  Thats fine but its not a reason of itself to disregard what we think is a bit more dangerous than the flu.

The whole point of the exercise we are currently undertaking is prevention is better than cure.  Ironically, the people most in the for HCQ are in the camp of cure is better than prevention because the data they quote come from an anti vax stand point.  Admittedly, I am in no hurry for any CV19 vaccine, but what I can understand is the following arguments:

1.  Its fundamentally a philosophical difference, with flaky data to support the opinion that it will be a magic bullet to explain why COVID isnt that big a deal.

2.  IF we let COVID out to do its thing, the people who support HCQ might find that its viability reduces the more we have to go down that road, and like you state, no real clinical study points to it being useful.

3. Based on Wiki (note, source is not biased, it simply tells you about things) states that the side effects and long term effects of using HCQ might yield worse results than getting CV19 anyway.

Attempting to put the breaks on an infectious disease spreading makes a lot of sense.  The way I see this at the moment, is that we have a bit of a seasaw going on.  The lockdowns are fine, but we cant stay in them forever and hide from the virus.  Once we get things down to a level where our health systems can cope with minute rises in infection and obtain the best outcomes possible for all those being treated without coming under undue strain, and still being able to deal with the regular flow of patients, we need to find a way to achieve a semblance of normality without all the lock downs IMHO. 

Its just not sustainable economically or socially.  Look at the impact its having on food supplies with a shortage of rice come christmas.  Thats not alarming in itself, but a lot of the systems that produce the things that keep our society going are able to be put on hold temporarily, but not indefinately.  To a degree that means "re-imagining" things to prevent the infection risks in these industries to enable a new normal to be found.

People need to get used to the idea that things are never going back to the way they were.

When it comes down to it, COVID is looking like a fairly mundane pandemic and I for one am thankful for that, but that doesnt mean we wont face another one, and with each new one that occurs we are one step closer to a new "black death" that will cause a lot of issues, and we really need to understand how bad this is quickly because the biggest issue with the current approach is that people are losing faith in the ability of those running the show to make good decisions and thats when things start becoming very dangerous particularly if the next pandemic is a doozy and happens quickly.  That also means, we need to start planning for a future state where a pandemic doesnt mean lock downs and a massive change to how we do things which will cause social and economic chaos.  The death of the big city is just the beginning of this.