It's not. I've posted the studies on plaquenil (name brand easier to type for me) throughout this thread.
It has the least evidence in the critically ill and almost assuredly does not work there as there is no evidence it works and at least one study and a lot of case observations that it didn't. So early data, but trend is no.
The primary evidence for the drug is only in very small non symptom based studies in medical surgical floor level patients. They note decreased viral load, but did not study improvement in symptoms. This is very important. Virus goes down by day 6? ok. Do 95% of your patients have resolved symptoms by day 6 anyways? Then the drug would be unlikely to help 95% of those patients even if viral load is lower in them. Simply we don't know because the studies don't show that. They weren't patient focused studies.
There is one Chinese study that did an ok job of trying to focus on symptoms and I summarized it earlier in the thread. Their patients got better about a day sooner but most importantly no patients went from mid level sickness to ICU level. 2 patients out of 30 or so did go to the ICU that were not treated. That's an incomplete study but in patients that you wont harm, the drug is reasonable to use in medical surgical floor patients.
With that said, Trump is absolutely 100% in the wrong to keep promoting this drug or any drug as a figurehead. If he wants to help promote it, authorize funding to build a bunch of the generic to fix the shortage he's created and so physicians can use the drug and run trials ASAP. Use the power of the federal government to centralize a reporting database for doctors to treat a patient with demographic info and outcomes. That's it. Shut up and just help us study the damn thing instead of impeding that by distorting its usage and supply chains.
Trump does not have the moral or technical high ground to sit here continue to call for an uproven drug's use without the extensive context that comes with a 12 year training career that is being a physician. There is a litany of things I can write about the insane harm this is causing, as well as the total distortion of highly limited data politicizing my and other doctors work in trying to save patient lives.
Just as you thought they were using this on ICU patients, or the stuff in the news conflating Trump's "right to try" law with the FDA's "limted emergency authorization of hydroxychloroquine" patients believe something has changed. Some think Trump authorized me and others to use this drug (he didn't, I always could) for COVID19. That's directly due to this politicking. What has happened is that he has not enabled studies to move any faster. He has created a shortage. States are forced to limit outpatient usage of this drug for COVID19 to preserve supply chains for inpatient usage, etc. I am now less flexible in the use of this drug due to these factors and my patients that need these drugs to stay out of the hospital in the first place are running out of them due to shortages.
