re: Politico: FDA Issues Emergency Authorization of Hydroxychloroquine

There are so many questions that need do be answered before it is used. People keep reporting it as a wonder drug for this, but I just don’t understand how it can work. The mechanism of action of the drug in no way relates to how the virus works (as far as I can figure, as well as Infectious disease and virologist where I work).

The French study is a case study, worthless. The New York study, I have yet to see a control group, inclusion/exclusion criteria, what stage the virus was in when drug given, severity of illness when given, comorbidities of patients, etc., and what of side affects.

And what is the dosing criteria, because it’s usually once a week. Given that these studies are saying virus free in 5 days, then 1 dose should be adequate. So 30 million doses should be plenty if they are expecting 2 million with at least mild symptoms.

I know the drug is an immunomodulator, and if that’s the aim they’re going for, why are people that get steroids doing worse?

We were discussing today, how is it that people in the same household, both healthy, can have such varying severities of illness, it’s possible that some people have been sensitized to it by something else in their past. And that’s why they have such a massive response resulted in severe ARDS.

I will say the disease progression is ugly. The 3 deaths we have had all had the same course: day 1 (presentation) with hypoxia and put on high flow. Day 2 intubated with severe ARDS and therefore advanced ventilator modes/paralytics/proning, day 3 dead