"As far as I’m concerned, administering it to infected patients now constitutes medical malpractice. I have no interest in goalpost-moving efforts to say that they didn’t administer zinc or azithromycin, or they picked the wrong patients or the wrong loading dose or whatever. No."
The original treatment protocol included zinc, so it's nonsense to say that adding in zinc is "moving the goalpost". Not testing in combination with zinc is moving the goalpost. The interaction between zinc and HCQ is key. Azithromycin is just to prevent potential secondary bacterial infection, which isn't necessarily a big factor in COVID mortality.
"This is special pleading, and it is not backed up by any hard data."
Here's a study that showed adding zinc to HCQ reduced mortality by 50%:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32930657/
Unfortunately, that study didn't test zinc without HCQ, but the hypothesis is that HCQ acts as an ionophore and is therefore beneficial.