What did the retracted study say about hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine? Did it claim they were efficacious versus COVID-19, or that they weren't? Or was it something else?
They claimed that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine both caused more deaths. The study claimed a huge effect size (~20% increase in death rate) and a giant sample (14888 treated, 81144 control across 671 hospitals). Despite not being a proper blinded trial, this still appeared to be strong evidence and sufficient to stop any reasonable doctor who heard of this study from giving these drugs to patients. If the evidence was fabricated, that’s a big deal.
https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aje...
The real argument there is "It appears that the FDA, NIH and cardiology society positions have been based upon theoretical calculations about potential adverse events and from measured physiologic changes rather than from current real-world mortality experience with these medications and that their positions should be revised." The author is arguing that while this drug combination does cause measurable heart damage, it's worth it because the overall near-term mortality decreases. That may or may not be justified, but it's a much weaker statement than the paper title would suggest.
Some of the citations are a bit strange. One is to a letter on Google Drive.[1]
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pjgHlqI-ZuKOziN3txQsN5zz...
[1] https://retractionwatch.com/2020/04/06/hydroxychlorine-covid...