> You can just buy it over-the-counter in some countries, right? How dangerous can it really be?

That's absolutely meaningless, some countries are nuts. Just about anything gets sold over the counter somewhere. There's even countries where guns are sold over the counter.

Given that governments of these countries are actually doing something in response, covid-19 must be way more dangerous than guns. Oh.

What kind insane countries could that be? Sounds like a black mirror episode ;-)

The UK has it otc

The US medical system is only great to those that don't have to go through great struggles to afford it. It is the worlds worst and most dystopian to everyone else (the majority).

Financial status deciding who gets health care is the ultimate death panel.

The US health care system is awful in all ways.

When I was on hypertension meds, I was on S1 scheduled meds which required a script (in Australia). I visited an Asian city and bought them over the counter without a script.

These medicines are not something you should take if you do not need them. "how dangerous can it really be" is pretty much why rule one exists. Not the least of which is, antibiotics are available over-the-counter in some countries, and this contributes to why antibiotics are not as potent as they used to be.

You can buy all kinds of super dangerous stuff in the cleaning aisle of your average supermarket. General availability is no indicator of toxicity. Ok, those are not made for ingestion. But even ignoring that factor you could list alcohol, tobacco and 30 different items from the grab-for-yourself stand at the local supermarket. You could likely kill yourself with just a handful of tablets from there if you knew what you were doing.

I was pretty excited when I realized you can buy fairly pure, concentrated sulfuric acid in the cleaning isle at Walmart. Nothing cleans dirty glassware quite like it! Accidentally got a stopper stuck in a flask? No problem, add some H2SO4 and just pour the stopper out a few days later.

Restricting what people can buy because they might hurt themselves with it doesn’t work (because everything can be misused) and only creates problems because sometimes restricted things turn out to be really important.

This seems a legit argument in 1000 years by a historian who wanted to logic why drugs clearly couldn't have needed prescriptions.

The therapeutic window for chloroquine is small, and there are very adverse side-effects if overdosed (heart arrythmias being the most dramatic I guess but macular toxicity is not something you'd want to risk either). I actually heard a story on that's how they dosed it "back in the days" - the sailors took it until they fainted our of various heart arrythmias and then they knew they had to back down a bit next time..

How dangerous is random medical advice from an internet forum? Over the counter drugs can potentially kill people, too, if used improperly.