Was the clinical study at the Henry Ford Health System for treating COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine interfered with to reduce efficacy? There was a statistically significant benefit with both treatment groups given hydroxychloroquine, the best showing 49% less mortality with hydroxychloroquine alone, although the group receiving hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin showed just 23.9% less mortality.

This study was, in fact, interfered with as you sensed intuitively. Even though both groups receiving the drug, either alone or in combination, showed a statistically significant benefit, the group that stood out with hydroxychloroquine alone would have shown much less degree of efficacy but for a divine intervention to forestall the manipulation to some extent, and it was enough to help the drug effect shine through. It was a partial victory for the interlopers because it looks inexplicable from a scientific perspective for the drug alone to do so well whereas hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin had a much more modest benefit even though significantly so. This is the kind of seeming disparity that dilutes enthusiasm by the hypercritical reviewer and opinion leader who has been manipulated to disparage an effective strategy, precisely to dampen enthusiasm and get it discarded. So those believing hydroxychloroquine is a phony promise will more easily dismiss this result along with the others showing effectiveness in considering it to be just a fluke, and the somewhat idiosyncratic result reinforcing the impression it was poorly controlled after all and subject to too much variability to be convincing, even though the threshold of statistical significance was reached easily.