Just one study from the NIH
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have been found to be efficient on SARS-CoV-2, and reported to be efficient in Chinese COV-19 patients. We evaluate…
www.sciencedirect.com
There are others. Quite a few, actually.
People are not pulling this treatment out of their ***.
Now what we need is a randomized double-blind placebo controlled trial with a big enough N and a low enough P value to make us all feel comfortable, but there is plenty of data out there that this possibly works.
And yes there may be some unknown side effects, but in a critical situation, most people aren’t going to be worried about that. The only way to suss out the side effects is to have a trial with thousands and thousands of patients. In other words FDA approval type guidelines, and we don’t have time for that. The coronavirus situation is over next year - and that’s how long it’ll take to get a huge number of patients to figure out what tiny percentage of additional side effects might be significant.
I don’t know a single physician that would not put a patient on this if they thought it was progressing to a certain point.
The reason there’s a shortage, or at least a big part of the reason, is that physicians are prescribing this to have on hand for their own families, friends, and patients. Like by the thousands. And it’s not because dome politician said anything. Most of those guys don’t listen or care what politicians have to say. It’s because there is data. They look at the data. Not perfect data, but data that would make you want to use it if push comes to shove.