I know two presidents off the top of my head who were touting
hydroxychloroquine as a vaccine substitute, without any evidence.
This original article is about vitamin D and I agree with GP that I never saw claims that vitamin d alone can sort this out. I’m sure you can find any bunch of freaks on the internet, I was mainly following medical practitioners and select elected officials in this.
For me vit d was about improving general levels of immunity with the methods easily available at the time to minimise the death toll, not completely eradicate the virus.
(Now, there did seem to be this idea over in South Korea that untested, in-development treatments could make an effective substitute for vaccination. I haven't seen the same in the US or other western countries though.)
Yeah I misread GP as a supplement, not the supplement, but sadly can't edit the post anymore.
> IIRC, HCQ was promoted as an early treatment, not a replacement for the vaccine.
It was explicitly called a cure by Bolsonaro: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/world/americas/virus-braz...
edit: Trump saying it works in the early stages of Covid, and is extremely succesful when coupled with zinc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZYiS05FmiQ
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23403754
Meanwhile, you have stuff like this going on in the wider world:
https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-phnom-penh-coronavirus-...
March 2021, Cambodia has its actual first death from the virus.
Why?
They didn't listen to all the establishment people when they said "The OTC drug you've been taking your whole life to keep from being a brain-damaged malaria case is too dangerous to be used to treat Covid 19, Orange Man Bad pulled that out of his ass and also told people to drink bleach!"
Notice that noone in the Establishment is having to answer any questions as to why they banned HCQ based on a fraudulent study. Or why someone went and had a fraudulent study created in the first place. Or was able to get it into The Lancet.
It would be nice if someone asked Fauci these questions at a White House press conference.
PPS: Worldofmeters Laos Coronavirus statistics:
If Bolsonaro called it a cure, this still falls in my bucket of (early) "treatment". I don't participate in Brasilian society, but that still sounds to me that Bolsonaro was promoting HCQ as a _cure_. I can conceive that he was (erroneously) promoting cures, while still signing contracts for vaccines (preventions).