PharmacistAnon here and I couldn't agree more. Even cocaine is a Schedule II (used a lot for nasal surgeries). Starting to see a lot of patients benefit from it, but until it's unscheduled, it's still not legal for us to dispense on a DEA level.
We've been in hard covid lockdown at my work for 3 months now with 4 overflow ICUs. HCQ was put in the vault with the narcotics we had it locked down so tight.
Our shipment of remdesivir was delivered by armed state patrol officers not long ago. Haven't seen much appreciable benefit from that or from actemra (the pricey ones). Our Infectious Disease docs are ordering HCQ more than either of those.
The big complaint with HCQ is the risk for heart arrhythmias (heart attacks can be deadly). We use what's called a QT interval, or QTc [corrected QT] on an EKG/ECG to check how risky it would be to give to an individual patient.
Now, if that patient has a fib, a bundle branch block, a pacemaker, etc., the QTc can be unreliable and we get a cardiologist to do a manual read on the EKG strip. If the QTc>500, it's risky to give a drug that can prolong it further, but a person can have a QT of 600 and a QTc of 450, it just depends.
I can tell you that psych meds and certain antibiotics give us FAR more issues with QT prolongation than I've ever seen with HCQ. I've never had to get an EKG within 24 hours of HCQ, but for any IV dose of haldol over 2 mg, we do.