There are a couple really annoying things about the hydroxychloroquine thing.

1) Is it an effective therapy for COVID?

Possibly. We need more study to know for sure. There are other drugs that show potential promise for further study.

We need as many effective therapies as we can get. Every effective therapy will help reduce the cost of COVID. I hope everything works.

2) Is it a magic bullet?

No. It is not. We know this anecdotally because people have had it administered and they didn’t immediately get cured.

I see people saying “oh well if only X had taken HCQ and azithromycin” and LOOK, the studies out there AT BEST show that it has potential efficacy.

It’s not a magic bullet. It’s not what we would call a “cure.”

Oh, just on time.

Here’s the third thing that annoys me: people saying shit like this. This is also wrong.

https://twitter.com/jgkoomey/status/1246996335145828352?s=21 https://twitter.com/jgkoomey/status/1246996335145828352

“Nobody should be taking this drug for coronavirus” is also wrong.

There *are* people who are candidates for experimental treatment, and this should be done by doctors on an individual basis.

People who don’t have risk factors that HCQ would exacerbate, who are getting worse, and who are not responding to any other therapies? May be a candidate for HCQ.

There is a point where your choice is between a patient’s likely death and an unproven therapy.

This is particularly true for a novel virus where there *are* no proven therapies for treatment beyond treating the symptoms at this point.

My frustration here is because the question of how to treat an extremely virulent, absolutely new virus that attacks the body in a new way, by necessity will have a great degree of uncertainty.

And there IS NO NUANCE.

Fucking Trump drove the truck of NO NUANCE over the HCQ train and now for the rest of our lives, no matter what scientific studies show, people are going to hold extreme beliefs about the stupid drug.

I could not hate the HCQ discourse more because people are treating an inherently factual inquiry—one that needs time to resolve—as a political one.

WE DO NOT KNOW EITHER WAY GODDAMMIT

If it works, it will work no matter how much you hate Trump! If it doesn’t work, it will not work no matter how much you love him!

Maybe it will work but there will be some other drug that is more efficacious with fewer side effects!

Maybe it will work better on people who present with high fever but decent oxygen saturation or maybe it won’t.

Science doesn’t give a shit about your politics, and everything I hate about the lack of basic scientific literacy in political discourse is just on display with this stupid bullshit.

I just want the politicians to let the scientists science, and if they have to open their mouths, it should be to ask what they need to science faster and better.

Sorry. I am very annoyed right now.

Just remember: We could have had a president who announced to the nation that multiple drugs were undergoing clinical trials, and that the CDC was sending out updated fact sheets on a daily basis so that anyone in serious danger would get the best possible care known at the time.

Instead we have this fucker.

(This is not the only thing I’m mad about. It’s just the one that set me off.)