I agree: Most of these "studies" with N = 26 or some ridiculously low number are not really studies at all. They are just anecdotes. They might suggest something useful to study, but that's it. Most doctors are not scientists.
Agreed
But that was probably because doctors used it just for their sickest patients which is useless.
No, there's been studies with less severe patients too, that equally failed to show benefits for HCQ. And the VA study continued to show disadvantage of the HCQ arm even after the results were adjusted for severity of illness.
It's not just the VA study that soured people on HCQ. Other than the crazy Professor Raoult's extremely flawed "studies" which don't even deserve this name, nobody else except one small Chinese study, found an advantage for HCQ. While one Chinese study did, two others, bigger and better, did not.
I'm really not very optimistic about HCQ. But we'll see what the Columbia prophylactics study shows. The problem with that one is that it will take months... probably results will come way past the first wave of the pandemic.
