i'm not interested in defending the use of hydroxycholoroquine as a prophylactic (i've been pretty critical of that.), and i don't imagine that the associated antibiotic would be useful at all, except perhaps to fight off infections picked up in the hospital, but i do have to comment on the results of some tests, which are being rather badly reported. the focus of this space is to act as a fact-checker and ensure honesty in media, so i need to be consistent on the point, even if i backtrack or contradict myself.

i'm not going to embarrass anybody directly on this, because the misreporting is total, and this is a subject that is beyond the (limited) intellectual capabilities of most journalists, let alone most readers.

as mentioned previously, this drug is an immunosuppressant, which means it should only be prescribed to patients that are going through the complication of sepsis. as sepsis is pretty much game over when it clicks in, it should also only be being prescribed as an absolute last resort. two things follow from this:

1) if the drug is being prescribed properly (and, despite unreliable media reports to the contrary, i'd have to assume that it actually is.), you would expect higher than average mortality rates to be associated with it's use, because it's essentially a last resort.
2) the end result of sepsis is organ failure, including heart failure. as most cases of the disease do not lead to organ failure, you would also expect use of the drug to be highly correlated with organ failure in a way that separates from non-use rather clearly.

stated simply, you wouldn't prescribe this drug unless you were concerned that the patient was going to die of heart failure in the first place. as such, even a very low success rate would be better than nothing.

so, a statement like "trials of the drug were correlated with higher levels of organ failure" is starkly misleading. the old cliche here is exceedingly relevant - correlation and causation are not the same thing.

it would be sort of like saying "80% of patients treated with ventilators end up dying". while a true statement, if used to imply that ventilators were the cause of these deaths, that would be deeply unfortunate, as 100% of the patients put on ventilators were in extremely bad shape. the ventilators were their last chance. such is also true of hydroxycholoroquine.

i don't fully understand why trump did what he did. was it some kind of performance art? was he trying to justify buying up so much for use in patients that are experiencing sepsis, as a last stage of the disease? or was he just trying to one-up boris johnson?

but, the gotcha journalists should pick a different target, because they sound absurdly ignorant in keying on this one.

you shouldn't take the drug unless you're exceedingly sick, and a doctor gives it to you as an absolute last resort. but, if a doctor does give it to you, you should realize what it's being used for, which is to stop your immune system from attacking itself.