So, here’s the interesting question that arises after Trump said he is taking HCQ as a prophylaxis — DOES IT REALLY PROTECT AGAINST COVID-19 THE WAY IT DOES FOR MALARIA?
There are a ton of Americans taking HCQ right now for valid reasons, because they have lupus or a rheumatological condition. How many of them have gotten sick from Coronavirus? That’ll give us some basic sense of whether the drug works as a prophylaxis against the disease.
We might not even need a scientific test to find out.
Just hire a pollster to call people randomly and ask them:
(a) are you on hydroxychloroquine and
(b) have you been diagnosed with COVID-19?
It’d be interesting to see how many answer yes to both questions and how the share that got infected while using HCQ compares to the share of the overall population that got infected.
How could she get it? Because it isn’t a hundred percent effective or a cure.
People take all kinds of medicine proven to help certain conditions, but people still get sick and die from those conditions.
Sometimes the drug itself kills them. It happens.
As another poster obliquely opined, this was simply a cherry picked hit piece using a woman who simply drew a short straw with respect to the drug.
That’s all.
I saw a story just the other day about a study along these lines. It think it was done in Italy. They looked at the rate of COVID-19 cases among lupus patients who had been taking HCL. IIRC the rate was extremely low which seemed to point pretty clearly to a protective effect. Seems like the story was at Gateway Pundit.
Maybe she was “positive” for Covid but had something ELSE. like a normal old flu.
I can answer her question very quickly. According to studies, nearly 15% of all Americans and 40% of elderly adults are zinc deficient.
If she wasn’t taking a zinc supplement then she probably didn’t have enough bioavailable zinc for hydroxychloroquine to transport through cell membranes into the cytosol to prevent the RNA dependent RNA polymerase from passing on the viruses genetic sequence and replicating itself.
My oldest son has taken Plaquenil twice a day for many years for his RA. He's been working from home since sometime in March, lives alone with his cat, and only goes to the grocery store about once a week. He's 53. He's been wearing. a mask Hasn't gotten sick. Either have I, and I'm 72, have underlying health issues, but none related to the respiratory system. I live alone, no pets, and hit the post office once a week, and the grocery store once or twice a week, and don't wear a mask. I haven't been sick.
I worked for 25 years behind bars with all sorts of people...inmates, and staff. Got exposed to a whole bunch of germs and bacteria working in the prison, and never got sick once. No colds, no flu, and never had a flu shot until years after I'd retired. Back when I started in 1980, AIDS was just showing up, as well as drug-resistant TB. I probably used more sick time when my kids were sick, than I ever did for myself. And basically, if I took a sick day for myself, it was because I didn't feel like going to work that day.
“The biggest question regarding chloroquine he said, is at how many days into an infection it can be effectively administered to someone sick with the new coronavirus.
“As an analogy, Tamiflu works very well against susceptible influenza A virus strains as long as you take it early enough,” he said. “And that’s what we have to determine with chloroquine, whether it can be used when somebody has been sick for more than a few days.
https://www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/science/020620/could-an-old-malaria-drug-help-fight-the-new-coron
The reports I have read suggest that hydroxy significantly decreases your chances of getting COVID, but doesn’t eliminate the chance.
Was she also on zinc?
Hydroxychloroquine without zinc is like a gun without bullets - teats on a boar.