Update

A while back I discussed a study published in The Lancet that found that Covid-19 patients given hydroxychloroquine had an elevated death rate. The Lancet has retracted the study because of doubts about the underlying data. This could be a major scandal because there are suspicions that the company that provided the data perpetrated a fraud. We'll keep you posted.

That said, many other studies have found no benefit and substantial risks from the drug. Our basic evaluation of it should not change. Here are two new studies in BMJ, Second one here, and an accompanying editorial, that find it is useless and likely harmful. As the editorial says,

[P]oliticians with no expertise in science, medicine, or public health, supported by certain media, have picked up on the use of antimalarials as magic pills for the covid-19 pandemic. Rick Bright, former director of the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, was moved from his post after resisting calls for widespread immediate dissemination of such drugs. . . .

Physicians and patients alike are desperate to use any possible drug for otherwise untreatable covid-19, and there is considerable political pressure as well. Hundreds of clinical trials of potential treatments for covid-19 are now registered on clinicaltrials.gov. While inpatient treatments such as remdesivir, convalescent plasma, and immunomodulators are undergoing formal clinical trials, testing of outpatient treatments lags. The few currently registered trials for outpatients are of interventions including pegylated interferon λ (by single subcutaneous injection), oral favipiravir, and oral camostat mesylate, with clinical and virological outcomes. And, of course, there is hydroxychloroquine, the unproven and probably harmful drug that the US president is currently taking for post-exposure prophylaxis.

So let's be patient and let the researchers do their work, which unfortunately takes time. Don't listen to the fantasies of ignorant idiots.