Interesting news today: A paper just came out that studied remdesivir given early, in the viral replication phase of Covid. This is after exposure and before any severe symptoms, like in the first week. The test arm got three infusions of remdesivir and the control arm got placebo. Remdesivir was 87% effective in reducing hospitalizations! So it actually DOES work, but only when there is replicating virus for it to stop.

If you give it later, it's not very effective at all, only shortening virus clearance time by a couple of days. Not preventing hospitalizations or death. This phenomenon is very familiar: Researchers assumed Covid was one "disease" and death was caused by the virus "winning". So a lot of their trials and treatments used drugs under test on the most ill patients. (And FDA Emergency Use approval enforced this!) The only drug found back then to help was dexamethasone, a steroid known to make viral infections worse. Doctors started looking at various clues that Covid was actually two different diseases: Viral infection, followed by immune system over-reaction. So all antiviral drug trials that started after most of the virus was inactivated were useless.

Monoclonal antibodies work the same way: They are quite effective, but only in the first week after exposure. So maybe some other "antiviral" drugs are actually effective in that first "golden hour". It would be ironic if studies found that HCQ+zinc, and ivermectin worked during this same phase. This was Dr. Marik's criticism of groups that failed to replicate his IV Vitamin C for septic shock treatment: He said they started that therapy days late, when it was an ER "first hour" treatment.