I read that paper over a month ago, and the word "zinc" was never used once in it. It also had some major defects in that everything was self-reported via the internet and VERY few of the participants ever had confirmed PCR tests. I also read their second paper in which they do use the word zinc, but they present no data about zinc usage and did not supply participants with any zinc supplements. They ended up with one death in the HCQ arm and two deaths in the placebo arm from non-Covid 19 causes. So the study was very weak statistically.

Dr. Marik (and others) have always claimed zinc is the thing that prevents virus replication. HCQ is just the vehicle that gets it into the cells, where the virus is replicating. We already have plenty of studies that showed HCQ late and HCQ early without zinc does nothing. We do have one retrospective study of cases where a significant number of patients did receive HCQ early with zinc, and they showed a 50% reduction in mortality over patients who received treatment late or without zinc.

So probably Trump was actually right. Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then!

But it also looks like viral replication is not the thing that kills people. It's the cytokine storm causing micro-clots to clog all the organ capillaries. The first visible symptom of this is hypoxia. The lung airways are open and functional, but the capillaries are getting clogged so less oxygen exchange can occur. But the clots are not limited to the lungs. Any venous clotting ends up in the lungs, so it predominates, but it can also occur in any artery and then clog up capillaries in the brain, kidneys, liver, toes, etc. Clogging leads to tissue death and that translates to organ failure or stroke. Not good things.

Blocking viral replication could be a good thing because it might reduce cytokine storm, but individual response to the virus antigens varies widely. Just like allergies. Probably the patient's Vitamin D level has more effect on cytokine storm than any antiviral drug.