That's not what the data says, and it's people who claim to be championing science but are actually regurgitating headlines that are causing this problem.

"doesn't work for COVID-19" covers a lot of ground, and only some of it has actually been studied. I believe it's now been shown that it doesn't provide significant benefit for those already suffering from severe cases.

However, I don't believe there's any real data on prophylactic use at all thus far, just some anecdotal stuff.

Science is complicated, and doing it right requires a kind of finesse that just can't be captured in headlines - or apparently at all by our current media establishment.

A Randomized Trial of Hydroxychloroquine as Postexposure Prophylaxis for Covid-19

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638?query=fe...

Covid-19: Hydroxychloroquine was ineffective as postexposure prophylaxis, study finds

https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2242?ijkey=2811796ab15e...

There have been far more studies on Hydroxychloroquine than on any other existing drug that had any indication of potentially being effective. And many experts have argued that given what we know about HCQ, we have spent far too much effort on a drug that is unlikely to be effective.

But I'm going to stand behind my broader point that the media is doing a lousy job of communicating science with any finesse, and that this is leading a lot of people to mistakenly believe that "being scientific".

Last week a post on a local town Facebook page said something like

My family is into science so we understand that wearing masks is beneficial to the whole community. Also, covid-19 may cause male infertility so that may drive your decision as well.

Two things caught my eye here. First is the implication that there's some "being into science" that's binary, and if you follow the news headlines then you'll always be in possession of absolutely true facts. (I won't belabor all the various ways in which this is false.) And second is that while they like to think that they're even doing that much, they're still picking up on anecdata, presumably being it sounds vaguely science-y.

https://aapsonline.org/preliminary-injunction-sought-to-rele...

showing that countries using HCQ have much lower case fatality rates than countries such as the USA where use of HCQ is either banned or discouraged. [There's another graph similar but with many more countries. I can't find it at the moment. It is even more dramatic.]

Concerning your post:

HCQ+Zinc+Zithromax was initially proposed as an early treatment for Covid-19. The two studies you name test for something completely different: whether HCQ can prevent Covid-19 in someone who has been recently exposed to Covid-19.

But no one ever claimed that HCQ could prevent someone from getting Covid-19.

The claim was instead that, if given early in the course of the disease, HCQ+ZINC+ZITHROMAX would alleviate Covid-19. That is, HCQ+ZINC+ZITHROMAX, when given to people who have a recent diagnosis of Covid-19, usually proves beneficial. In particular it lowers the hospitalization rate and death rate significantly.

There are

- a. drugs that prevent illnesses(e.g., vaccines) from becoming established in the human body,

- b. drugs that alleviate illnesses(HCQ for Covid-19) once they are already established in the human body,

-c. drugs that do both (HCQ in the case of malaria, which HCQ can both prevent and treat (indeed, cure the disease)).

Testing protocols for these differ accordingly.

The insidiousness about his strategy is that one in a hundred times he guesses right, and then he gets all smug and his supporters feel like they have ammunition to use against those "elites" with their "being right all the time." (Not to mention all the times he just lies about what he was wrong about to frame it as if he was right all along.)