How would one know if hcq had any effect on someone with mild symptoms? They can get better without any antibiotic or antiviral.
Test on anyone who is confirmed positive, asymptomatic or not.
>>How would one know if hcq had any effect on someone with mild symptoms? They can get better without any antibiotic or antiviral.<<
You don’t know. But if you give it to 500 people who test positive and compare that 500 to 500 others who don’t get it, you can see whether the HCQ group ends up with as many hospitalizations, intubations, and deaths as the non-HCQ group.
If there’s a significant difference in favor of the HCQ group, why wouldn’t you treat everyone with it (except for those with conditions that are known to be exacerbated by it, like some heart conditions)?
And if the difference was dramatic, then maybe, just maybe, you have a “game changer.”
Other measures than just dead or alive. For example: viral load. If a person’s viral load drops by 90%, that’s a positive result, and will likely result in the patient feeling better as well. That would also make medical workers less likely to get infected when their protective gear or behavior is less than perfect.
And statistics. If 12% get put in an ICU without medication, while medicated patients get sent to ICU 3% of the time (real numbers are actually more obvious than that), then by the time you treat 200 patients, instead of 24 in the ICU - which may be full before 24 patients - you have 6 - it gets obvious the treatment is working.