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Comment by rscho | Hacker News Reader

What I can personally comment on is that if people go on with hoarding on quinine derivatives, we're gonna have a massive problem whether it's found effective or not.

The hoarding is even happening among my lesser scientifically-reasonable md colleagues. This has to stop. Now.

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Hoarding is only a part of the problem. A company in The Netherlands producing chloroquine has got 24/7 police protection as of this weekend because some people came to them and were very insistent that they would like to have some product.

Link in dutch: https://eenvandaag.avrotros.nl/item/fabrikant-van-coronamedi...

Norwegian doctors have also been hoarding this for themselves lately. Enough that the Norwegian government had to step in and put it on a list so those that actually need it day-to-day can get hold of it.

I hope when this is over, someone will look into this behaviour from the MDs. It's eroding trust in the system when they claim potentially vital resources for themselves.

Not to mention have a government enforced monopoly on it.

Note that given the dismissive behaviour of Occidental medical leaders regarding covid, I wonder what's left of trust in the system.

Our bosses were still laughing at us for worrying on Monday evening, and now they're pissing their pants. Idiots.

I don't know what the situation is like in Norway, but I 100% don't blame MDs in the US for trying to find their own treatments, because they're generally being left high and dry by the extreme rationing of the PPE. Doctors themselves have taken to personally reaching out to the communities near me so that they can find masks.

Obviously I don't want anyone with lupus / malaria / etc to be adversely affected, but I think the people being forced to work the front lines do deserve to be somehow prioritized just from a "how do we keep the system operating efficiently" standpoint, and it doesn't really seem like the people who could manage supplies to make sure both parties needs are balanced, e.g. hospital administrations and regional governments, are going to take much responsibility for that.

When this is over, what we absolutely have to look into is the generational conflict.

<50yo: all MDs understand and have been vocal about it for weeks.

>50yo: nah, this can't happen to us great minds. Let's start preparing when the first patients are already in the ICU.

Would drinking tonic water help?

Modern tonic water contains substantially less quinine than the tonic waters that were used to fight, say, cholera in the historical period.

So, yes, if we lived in India in the mid-to-late 1800s, drinking tonic water might help, at least for the things that quinine helps.

But modern tonic water isn't really anything like that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_water

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