>>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.”
Of course that is called a “study”. You would need to make only differences in groups to be hospitalizations...pneumonia..ventilator dependent...but you would need composition of groups to have same ages..biol sex...etc...that takes time to enroll all of those people. But we want answers NOW. Right now some preliminary studies are being done...we should know in a few days if the therapy makes a significant difference in large numbers of patients.(to avoid the possibility of having a group of patients who would have gotten better without hcq)
It would allow those who have mild or nonexistent symptoms to feel confident that there would be help if the course of their infection got worse. I sure hope they can show that there is a beneficial effect. Freegards.
And if the difference was dramatic, then maybe, just maybe, you have a “game changer.”
Never happen; that is definitely too smart.You could even experiment with various lengths of HCQ treatment, if the pills are in such short supply.
Maybe just one or two treatments would make a statistically significant improvement in hospitalization rate, and it would pay to spread the distribution over more of the most vulnerable population.