Morning Jolt: Why Hydroxychloroquine Didn’t Turn Out to Be a Miracle Pill

A lot to chew over today: why the drug hydroxychloroquine will prove to be a life-saver for some coronavirus patients and useless or even a life-ender for others; why the country needs to "embrace the suck" and be able to accept, process, and respond to bad news; why we are likely to be forced into a reopening plan that lots of Americans will vehemently dislike; and the 2020 campaign's forgotten man.

We Need to Stop Expecting a Miracle Pill

Part of the frustration in dealing with a really bad situation is a ravenous hunger for magic bullet solutions. One reader wrote in, contending that hydroxychloroquine is effective 100 percent of the time if it's administered early enough, so why not reopen society and give everyone a prescription for hydroxychloroquine at the first sign of the virus?

Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine actually slow down parts of a patient's immune system by "interfere with lysosomal activity and autophagy, interact with membrane stability and alter signalling pathways and transcriptional activity, which can result in inhibition of cytokine production and modulation of certain co-stimulatory molecules" — which is a jargon-heavy way of saying it makes your immune system's cells not work as well together. ...

WITH JIM GERAGHTY May 06 2020 WITH JIM GERAGHTY May 06 2020 Why Hydroxychloroquine Didn't Turn Out to Be a Miracle Pill A lot to chew over today: why the drug hydroxychloroquine will prove to be a life-saver for some coronavirus patients and useless or even a life-ender for others; why the country needs to "embrace the suck" and be able to accept, process, and respond to bad news; why we are likely to be forced into a reopening plan that lots of Americans will vehemently dislike; and the 2020 campaign's forgotten man. We Need to Stop Expecting a Miracle Pill Part of the frustration in dealing with a really bad situation is a ravenous hunger for magic bullet solutions. One reader wrote in, contending that hydroxychloroquine is effective 100 percent of the time if it's administered early enough, so why not reopen society and give everyone a prescription for hydroxychloroquine at the first sign of the virus? Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine actually slow down parts of a patient's immune system by "interfere with lysosomal activity and autophagy, interact with membrane stability and alter signalling pathways and transcriptional activity, which can result in inhibition of cytokine production and modulation of certain co-stimulatory molecules" — which is a jargon-heavy way of saying it makes your immune system's cells not work as well together. ...   READ MORE

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