This week marks five years since March 13, 2020, the day President Donald Trump declared a national state of emergency over the novel coronavirus outbreak. The White House issued The President's Coronavirus Guidelines for America three days later. Among other things, the guidelines advised Americans to avoid bars, restaurants, shopping trips, and social visits. They also said that governors in states with evidence of community transmission should close schools, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues.
Sticking to recent peer-reviewed science, and setting aside the political question of what the government should do with the information, what do we know now about the ways people tried to protect themselves from the virus? This week, we're looking at several measures—face masking, the vaccines—as well as the matter of how many Americans died of COVID-19 infections. Yesterday, we tackled face coverings. Today, let's probe what researchers have learned about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in treating COVID-19.
Six days after declaring a national emergency in 2020, Trump on March 19 hailed using the antimalaria compounds chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as a potential "game changer" in the treatment of COVID-19. Trump's enthusiasm for the compounds was likely stoked, in part, by a guest earlier that week on Fox News claiming that hydroxychloroquine had a "100 percent cure rate against coronavirus." The guest was citing the unpublished results of a small nonrandomized study by a team led by French researcher Didier Raoult.
