Man, I'd love to argue with you on this. I'd love to do a decent job of pointing out that you're moving the discussion away from this potentially fraudulent paper published by The Lancet and towards the broader argument over HCQ. I'd love to spend the time to comprehensively review some dude's Google Doc that, at a random sampling, appears to contain non-peer-reviewed preprints and observational studies from discredited authors and not a single one of the much better studies that are critical of HCQ. I'd like to ask you why you're so readily willing to trust this particular treatment of this subject given the complete lack of contraindicating evidence.

But, I'm completely exhausted.

Between arguing against racists and arguing against bad politics during a global health epidemic and trying to catch and counter some of the relentless stream of disinformation on this and so many other subjects -- and all without any intervention at all from any of the social media platforms that enable all of this, including HN -- I'm tired, and discouraged, and dispirited.

I need to go away for a while. I hope someone else has the time and energy to curb stomp random dude's 25 page Google Doc minutes before someone else cites 25 pages of different BS.

There are well-intentioned and capable people who have done their due diligence and ended up on different sides of this topic. What's interesting about this particular "social media" discussion are the real world consequences and incompatibility of some positions.

If the list of possible scenarios includes death, and people have invested the time to reach informed conclusions in consultation with their doctors, perhaps their choices can be respected.

I haven't heard the phrase "curb stomp" used in science before. That type of emotional language would seem to me to indicate a wish to defend a certain position, rather than evaluate evidence independently and accept an answer of "we don't know with certainty yet" if things seem inconclusive.

Perhaps your exhaustion stems from defending a position, rather than seeking knowledge?

No matter how hard you pout about it some people just won't share your enlightenment. so frustrating, isn't it? Almost as if others have as much right to their own worldview as you do yours. Even if you really think they're wrong.