Attachment

Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria, lupus, and other diseases, and ivermectin--which had a moment in the spotlight in 2021--is a standard treatment for various parasitic diseases in people and other animals. Obviously, just because a drug treats one condition doesn't mean it will work on COVID, but it's not irrational to hope that it might. I can even see why people might be drawn even to purported cures that are closer to a folk remedy than to modern medicine. At a time when a frightening new disease is making its way around the world, and our phones are sending us the latest scary stories about it by the day or even by the hour, it's natural to look for immediate help anywhere you can find it. Especially when there's no scientifically proven cure to fill the need for a treatment, and when the alternative being proposed is already in your bathroom cabinet or under your kitchen sink. There is nothing new, of course, about people clinging to the false hope of an easy cure. Humans probably started doing it as soon as they were aware enough of their own mortality to look for ways to fend it off. But medical misinformation is more dangerous now than ever, because it can travel faster and farther than ever, with tragic consequences for many of the people who believe it. I don't have a complete solution to this problem. But I do think there would have been fewer wrong ideas going around about COVID if science had found an actual treatment sooner-- something that everyone could point to as a legitimate therapeutic--and if it had become widely available around the world. Early on in COVID, that's what I thought would happen. I was confident that a vaccine would be developed eventually, but I expected that a treatment would come along well before that point. I wasn't alone: Most people I know in the public health community felt the same way.