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