The way the discussion about hydroxychloroquine gets framed during WH briefings is often either-or: we can either give lots of patients the drug or do clinical trials.

It's a false choice.

It is entirely possible to run a clinical trial during an outbreak and get actionable results.

With the DRC Ebola outbreak we did it in a war zone where *scientists and doctors were being assassinated*. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01957-2

Ebola is such a horrible disease that scientists felt they couldn't ethically run a trial with a control group that didn't get any experimental treatment. So they designed a trial that was scientifically rigorous and compared four potential therapies.

Again: IN A WAR ZONE.

When that trial revealed that two drugs gave patients a 90% chance of survival if they took the drugs early in their sickness, the trial switched tactics.

From that point on, every sick person got one of those two amazing drugs -- and scientists kept collecting data.

Background reading: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02442-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02258-4

Coda: There is still no good evidence that hydroxychloroquine helps covid-19 patients.

And frankly from a numbers standpoint, it seems smarter to test a lot of stuff now and hope that at least one potential treatment works.