Two weeks ago I asked my doctor about a prescription for hydroxycholoroquine, and his response was basically “forget it, doesn’t seem legit, no evidence that it actually works” and so on. It became a rightwing topic after Trump mentioned it. I had therefore written it off. The hype over the decades-old malaria drug seemed sketchy, dubious.

Now comes a 4.1 N.Y. Times story by Denise Grady saying that hydroxychloroquine “helped to speed the recovery of a small number of patients who were mildly ill from the coronavirus, doctors in China reported this week.

“Cough, fever and pneumonia went away faster, and the disease seemed less likely to turn severe in people who received hydroxychloroquine than in a comparison group not given the drug. The authors of the report said that the medication was promising, but that more research was needed to clarify how it might work in treating coronavirus disease and to determine the best way to use it.

“’It’s going to send a ripple of excitement out through the treating community,’ said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University.

“The study was small and limited to patients who were mildly or moderately ill, not severe cases. Like many reports about the coronavirus, it was posted at medRxiv, an online server for medical articles, before undergoing peer review by other researchers.

“But the findings strongly support earlier studies suggesting a role for the drug, Dr. Schaffner said.”

There was also a “small French study of 42 patients that seemed to show that hydroxychloroquine, particularly when combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, helped decrease patients’ levels of coronavirus.” — posted on 3.27.20.

Jordan Ruimy: “Hydroxychloroquine saved my friend’s father’s life. Just because Trump approves of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. We can’t play politics at a time like this. You should go to another doctor.”