I'm not an epidemiologist, nor do I have any medical training whatsoever. So I'm stumbling around in the dark, almost entirely at the mercy of medical reporting when it comes to understanding this pandemic.
Earlier this year I was perplexed by the debate around, and politicization of, HCQ. Trump's bizarre promotion of it as a treatment seemed entirely inappropriate and alarming. And subsequent studies all seemed to indicate that HCQ was a dead end. I was happy to leave it at that.
But then I came across this today:
https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exists-we-need-start-using-it-opinion-1519535 This is from Harvey A. Risch, a respected epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. I did some searching around on-line and he appears to be the real deal, not a quack, and not a hack.
I read his full paper and found it compelling, but of course I'm out of my depth. His premise seems to be that COVID-19 is really two diseases: early infection (when anti-virals are effective) vs. later stages (e.g. hospitalization) due to immune-system overreaction. As such, studies to evaluate HCQ+AZ (azithromycin) in critically ill patients (such as in compassionate use cases) are likely irrelevant. Instead, HCQ+AZ should be evaluated in the early stages of infection as an outpatient treatment for high-risk individuals, and there appears to be quite a bit of evidence (albeit imperfect) to support this.
Thoughts from anyone that knows more about this stuff? If he's made a fatal error in his analysis I'm willing to accept that. But part of me worries that perhaps, just maybe, we've collectively written off HCQ too early because of Trump's off-putting hype.