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Comment by asdajksah2123 | Hacker News Reader

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This is such a depressing comment to read.

Yes, there was political furor over it. The original people who were supporting the possibility that this drug MIGHT be useful against covid were legitimate doctors and researchers.

Some politicians got overly excited about that, some politicians got overly upset about that. All of the legitimate discussion happening around it got lost in the crossfire of annoying politicians.

This seems a bit revisionist. Nobody got upset at people getting excited, everyone was excited about its potential initially. The annoyance came specifically about certain politicians endorsing its use, without any disclaimers, without evidential support, and even after the evidence showed it didn't work.

None of the legitimacy ascribed to HCQ compares to the legitimacy of the vaccine. The only reason HCQ rose to prominence was because of COVID denialism, not because of actual scientific or therapeutic concerns as a reasonable alternative to the vaccine.

False. We didn’t have a vaccine available until early 2021. People were scrambling to find a therapeutic way to treat Covid and there was anecdotal evidence that hcq and ivermectin might work. They wanted large scale trials but they were unscientifically denied which made people very suspicious about the reasons why.

Yes, they turned out to be ineffective but the reaction against them was mindblowingly biased and filled with propaganda.

> They wanted large scale trials but they were unscientifically denied which made people very suspicious about the reasons why.

False. There was an large scale international trial and it showed that HCQ did little to nothing to treat covid.

https://www.who.int/news/item/04-07-2020-who-discontinues-hy...

It went like this:

1. Some legitimate research suggests that it might be useful against COVID.

2. Quacks announce that it definitely is the miracle drug against COVID that “THEY” don’t want you to know about.

3. Legitimate doctors counter the quacks and explain that its utility against COVID is not proven.

4. Trumpist Populists back the quacks because if the establishment is against it it must be good. It must be something “THEY” don’t want you to know about.

5. Democrats and other anti-Trumpists react hard in the other direction and conclude that it must be quack nonsense. There is no chance it could be legitimate because quacks and populists said it was legitimate.

6. Legitimate researchers from (1) are utterly forgotten because now it’s politicized and rational discourse is impossible. In the end all we have is evidence-free screaming and conspiracy theories.

Same exact sequence of events happened with Ivermectin, the debate over whether vaccine mandates were needed, debates over the utility of the vaccines themselves, the question of whether having had COVID is equivalent to having been vaccinated (or better?), and many other topics.

People need to learn that statements without evidence are like the “null” value. They mean precisely nothing, especially if they are from people without expertise.

Meaning “precisely nothing” means that they are neither a positive indicator nor a contrarian indicator. They are meaningless noise that should be completely ignored.

This should be higher, that's exactly how it went.

The FDA even said: "both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine phosphate “have shown activity in laboratory studies against coronaviruses,”", but they stressed it was not proven yet. i.e. your step 1 was based on current evidence.

Then everything went insane exactly as you describe.

2-6 could also be described as 'political furor'.

I'd argue only 4-6 is 'political furor'.

It didn't work. It was, in fact, COVID snake oil.

Meanwhile: exactly zero people campaigned that HCQ was an evil substance that should be taken off the market. Opponents of COVID snake oil weren't Lupus deniers.

This entire thread is completely off topic; it's the kind of thing we get ourselves mired in when we don't have the expertise to engage with the actual story, which is whether or not HCQ is protective against Alzheimers.

At least one of the snake oil salesman was a politician, which caused there to be as much of a political furor about HCQ as Ivermectin, the vaccines, the masks, the lockdowns, etc.

"for something for which there was no initially no evidence" - that's not true. There was evidence that it had antiviral properties against covid-19 in vitro. This is extremely weak evidence (most compounds which are effective in vitro are ineffective when administered to an actual human in safe doses, as HCQ proved to be), but it isn't "no evidence".

There was quite a lot of political furor, including treating it as much more dangerous than it really is to prevent people from using it off label as COVID prophylaxis.

> for something for which there was no initially no evidence

That's not true:

"The FDA has, however, issued an emergency use authorization for the drug.

In press releases, the FDA has stressed that “there are no currently approved treatments for COVID-19.” However, the agency says both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine phosphate “have shown activity in laboratory studies against coronaviruses,”"

This is back in 2020, so yes, there was some evidence. Later studies showed it didn't work - but that wasn't known in 2020.

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