We've been over this in the other thread. The data on zinc + ionophore is so thin that it amounts to nothing at all. What is particularly relevant to this is also that virtually nobody in the field thinks the relevant mechanism of action of HCQ for covid-19 is as an ionophore anyway. e.g.
The rapid spread of virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has turned out to be a global emergency. Symptoms of this viral infection, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), include mild infections of the upper respiratory ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
There are lots and lots of studies on HCQ. Some of them show an effect and some of them do not: this is normal. It just so happens all the best ones suggest not; or at least, not enough benefit to outweight the downsides and make it worth the bother. Consequently, the consensus has only grown stronger that HCQ is not useful. e.g.
Statement from the Chief Investigators of the Randomised Evaluation of COVid-19 thERapY (RECOVERY) Trial on hydroxychloroquine, 5 June 2020
www.recoverytrial.net
This randomized trial compares the effects of hydroxychloroquine vs placebo on clinical status at 14 days (home, requiring noninvasive or invasive ventilation or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, hospitalized, died) among adults hospitalized with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
jamanetwork.com
etc.
The advantage of remdesevir reducing hospital time is that if part of the problem is the stress on the health service from people occupying hospital beds, cutting the average stay from 15 to 11 is a plus even if it makes no difference to mortality. One way or another, there is no "competition" between HCQ and remdesevir. There was urgent need for covid-19 medications, and it was deemed worth giving remdesevir a go despite the shaky evidence. It will all shake out in the long run.
Er, no. That's very mid-2020. The case for masks has gone up as the case for HCQ has gone down.
I gave you studies showing different results in HCQ (or other ionophore only) and with combination of zinc and both studies showed improvement with combination of both.
2 of your trials there are for very late-stage treatment that I was never saying HCQ will work for, we almost certainly know it doesn't and we know that's where you can get the bad cardiac side effects of the drug. Do you not recall when I said we aren't treating people for early covid and just wait until it gets bad? When is that ever a good way to treat anything? Taking something early on 1st symptoms or high risk exposure to reduce hospitalizations also reduces the strain on health care workers. Also, I've explained it's not really too high in the vast vast vast majority of areas. And a lot of the strain has been pushed higher than normal because asinine policies by the hospitals. Any medical facility that isn't a main hospital is basically a ghost town because if you just have a headache, you get shipped to the main hospital.
One of the other trials linked is for prophylaxis use, which I never claimed HCQ was something that will stop infections from happening. It's rather tall ask to ask any drug or treatment to STOP an infection from actually happening.
The last linked study has paragraphs of why the methods weren't the best, plus it was a study on people that were rather young and would be most likely fine if they did nothing.
What are the downsides? There's like no downsides to taking HCQ unless you're already in really bad shape. They hand out HCQ like candy in Africa and India (prior to the pandemic) and probably a few other areas if I were to look it up further. It doesn't have any major side effects. In Brazil, it's prescribed to pregnant women too.
There isn't really any hard/definitive data on masks (especially the kind of mask the public wears) because setting up trials is hard to do. You can't really put a mask on people and spray them or the room with covid and do the same with a group that's not wearing a mask. That would be an ideal way to test it but giving people covid purposefully isn't ethical. There's so many other variables that contribute to whether you get infected or not, it's hard to single out masks as the sole reason for the difference in results.
This Danish study of 6,000 showed a 16% lower infection rate with people but it also wasn't statistically significant either.
COVID-19 is a new type of coronavirus that causes mild to severe cases. Here’s a quick guide on how to spot symptoms, risk factors, prevent spread of the disease, and find out what to do if you think you have it.
www.webmd.com
Also, lowering infection rates (if masks even do that) isn't even the most potentially important aspect of wearing a mask, it's the lower viral load potential. Again, it's nothing you can really ethically test, but it follows basic logical reasoning; masks do block X amount of droplets, equals less covid in the air, means you'll breathe in less of it. We know lower viral loads do lead to less severe disease in other viruses via animal testing. Do we have to do the same test on animals to see if more initial covid causes more severe outcomes? We can just assume if follows the same as those other viruses and it's a general viral property. You don't need a 100% certain study or groups of studies to follow basic logic to tell you such and such is most likely good so let's do it. If we don't do it and we find out that it would've saved 1,000 lives or 100,000 lives or whatever, it's pretty dumb to not have done it because we didn't have complete certainty that it did work.
Just look at all this correlational data on vitamin d. Yes, none of it states that it does work with 100% certainty against covid. But we do know it helps your immune system and most people have lower levels of vitamin d than they should. There's no reason not to tell the public to take vitamin d and it's the exact same logic we have used with telling people to mask. Taking say 2500 or 5000 IUs of vitamin d does no harm and you need it anyway.
