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Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 24, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria. It is also used to prevent malaria infection in areas or regions where it is known that other medicines (eg, chloroquine) may not work. Hydroxychloroquine may also be used to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) in certain hospitalized patients.

Using this medicine alone or with other medicines (eg, azithromycin) may increase your risk of heart rhythm problems (eg, QT prolongation, ventricular fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia). Hydroxychloroquine should only be used for COVID-19 in a hospital or during clinical trials. Do not take any medicine that contains hydroxychloroquine unless prescribed by your doctor.

What's going on here? A hat tip to the crazies who really want to use it despite lack of evidence, or has The Science changed, and I should pray they do not alter it any further?

HCQ, when taken with zinc, has always been the silver bullet. It worked wherever it was tried. People were sneaking it into the hospitals to give to their relatives. I guess the Mayo Clinic finally had to bow to actual science.

Anecdote:

Since I couldn’t get any HCQ, I took tonic water (quinine water) with lots of zinc, plus horse paste (ivermectin), vitamin D, and vitamin C during my first bout (probably Delta, Nov. 2021). I remember the final night of the fight, when I felt the characteristic flu-like aches, and took aspirin. The next morning, I felt far better than the previous week, and I was on the mend; I lost my sense of smell for a year, but didn’t have brain fog or long COVID. My dad and mom, squarely in the risk zone of their 70’s, took a similar medicine regimen and also both survived without long COVID.

On my second bout (summer 2022, Omicron), I got a week’s groceries and prepared for another long haul. Vitamin D and zinc, plus tonic water and walking outdoors in direct sunlight, but to my surprise it was over in three days. Not only that, I felt great afterward! I felt better than I had before the illness, oddly.

Can you provide any clinical data to support this “silver bullet”?

This pre-print, as reported by Yahoo News in 2021.

This study in Nature is about HCQ alone, and suggests it would have been even better during Omicron than previous waves due to the different pathways Omicron takes.

This study in Clinical Infectious Diseases of a "prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled multicenter trial" on zinc alone, with positive results.

This extensive examination of Zinc's use with HCQ for COVID by Alberto Boretti in Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology Volume 71, May 2022.

This ScienceDirect study on the so-called "Zelenko Protocol" of zinc, HCQ, and azithromycin (AZM), with astounding results.

Disclaimer: I used dogpile.com to find this clinical data, which doesn't have the restrictions on misinformation (and "misinformation") of Google. I don't have a list of citations at hand, so I did this search in approx. 1 hr.

Disclaimer: I used dogpile.com to find this clinical data, which doesn't have the restrictions on misinformation (and "misinformation") of Google. I don't have a list of citations at hand, so I did this search in approx. 1 hr.

Thanks for the recommendation!