Hydroxychloroquine as Prophylaxis
I am very concerned about healthy people taking hydroxychloroquine as prophylaxis / a preventive for COVID-19.
What is your experience with a “-quine” based anti-malarial?
When I was researching antimalarial drugs for a trip overseas in 2010, I found that all of the quinine-based antimalarial drugs I found caused people to have significant negative psychotic effects, from vivid bad dreams to scary hallucinations and psychotic breaks. The literature says “up to 25%” of people have these symptoms but when I put it to my friends, 6 out of 6 people that had taken quinine-based antimalarials like Mefloquine had extremely bad psychotic effects and had to stop taking it for life-threateningly-bad psychosis based reasons. I opted to take doxycycline instead :-).
Yes, hydroxychloroquine has these side-effects (via)
Even if the side effects weren’t bonkers, the only reliable evidence we have says at best hydroxychloroquine does zero good. At worst, IT KILLS PEOPLE.
So there’s no reason to use it for covid, and plenty of reasons to not take it.
Followup: May 26th WHO Halts Hydroxychloroquine Trial Over Safety Concerns