An Ode to Hydroxychloroquine

December 8 2020: And, hopefully, a farewell.

I think I’m just about done writing about hydroxychloroquine.

Not because it doesn’t work, because it does: not just for Covid, but more generally as a health-boosting alkalising medicine, which I can now personally testify to. But because I don’t see what else I can write about it by this point.

I would much rather focus on drugs like Ivermectin, which have yet to be tainted with the endorsement of Orange Man: perhaps, thus, mercifully, having more of a chance of convincing people that there is a way out of this situation that isn’t through an untested vaccine with full legal indemnity, which may or may not leave people infertile (if you think it isn’t important whether we know the impacts of a vaccine on fertility before the jabbing commences, you are undoubtably now part of the problem).

The main article I have written on HCQ was a lament: a lament for the way a convergence of factors that have nothing to do with people’s health have lead to the false belief that this drug is ineffective and even dangerous as a treatment for Covid-19. You can read a blow by blow account of all the fine details of this debacle if you would like to here.

But I’m ultimately all about the bright side, so I don’t want to leave it on a downer. Rather, I would like to finish (hopefully, relapse notwithstanding) by putting forward an Ode to HCQ: to thank it for all the things it has taught me about science, about society, about medicine, about health.

The many things that I am thankful to HCQ for actually have nothing to do with why people should be most thankful to HCQ for — the potential to save the lives of people recently diagnosed with Covid-19 — but they are important nonetheless.

I am thankful to how much it opened my eyes to the way scientific research can be so easily corrupted and misused. That poorly designed, deceptive and even outright fraudulent studies can completely dictate the course of public debate, even well passed the stage where they have been thoroughly discredited (we might call them zombie studies, given they persist in the world with impressive tenacity past the point where they have ceased vital life functions).

I am thankful it proved to me the existence of the much maligned but incredibly important to understand phenomena of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS): how through the simple act of Donald Trump showing support for something, it causes in many people an emotional reaction against that thing.

I am thankful (?) that it exposed to me how many of our politicians appear to be genuine psychopaths.

I am thankful it exposed to me the dangers of assessing the validity of a piece of information based on the messenger and not the message. Many of the most ardent proclaimers of HCQ in the media have been those I would have, up until even a year ago, not trusted as far as I can throw them. Yet it is these people — mainly the self described deplorables of Fox News in America and Sky News in Australia — who have been quickest to wake up to this scam. And it has been those who, even a year ago, I would still have trusted to present me this type of news factually and without bias who have failed miserably — most notably, in something that gives me no pleasure at all to say, the ABC.

I am thankful it revealed to me the incredible value that comes with national and state sovereignty, even when it comes to something as drastic as a pandemic response. Because it is the real time data from different jurisdictions around the world and how they have differed in their use of HCQ that provide the best evidence that it works — just like how we will ultimately know how effective lockdowns have been. There is no better example of this than Switzerland — their spike in case fatality rates after banning HCQ and the subsequent drop again once the drug was reinstated. It is an example I am going to keep pointing back to to anyone who continues to dispute the effectiveness of what should be this completely uncontroversial medicine.

I am perhaps most thankful to HCQ for acting as a gateway drug for myself and many others to properly understand how Big Pharma and co undertake a full court press to de-legitimise cheap, easily available and natural medicines that threaten their business model. While HCQ is not as ‘natural’ as many other medicines that have been disregarded for much longer — think cannabis, Chinese herbs, even homeopathy — you can actually make its functional derivative quinine at home with little more than water and citrus rind.

On that note: my roommate actually just made some; while the visceral reaction to its taste is something I haven’t felt since being peer pressured into tequila shots in my teens, it absolutely leaves you feeling a million bucks. It also leaves you realising that pharmaceutical companies and the bureaucrats that enable them have far more say over our health than they should.

At the risk of going full hippy, everything we need to be healthy is ultimately given to us by nature. An awakening to this fact might be Covid-19’s most lasting legacy.