This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Tuesday, April 14th, 2020.

I'm Kila Brown.

Two drugs that have been in use for other purposes, and some have indicated would help address COVID-19 have as you might

expect been politicized and whether or not these drugs are a valuable treatment for this novel

coronavirus it's largely beside the point, according to Cato's Jeff Singer.

He argues the use of these drugs ought to remain a matter between physicians and patients.

Well, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there were practitioners clinicians who believed that

Chloroquin and hydroxicloricin, two drugs that have been in use since the 1960s or so for the treatment of malaria

and also of malaria prophylaxis and also to treat a lot of connective tissue

diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus there were reasons to believe that

it might be helpful in preventing the spread of the influenza virus.

So there were some scatter reports here and there of doctors trying it and saying that it reduced the severity of the illness or even reverse the illness.

But it was all just anecdotal. So the this outbreak from COVID-19 started there were

doctors treating patients in hospitals in China and elsewhere in Korea who knowing this and seeing patients get desperately ill began to try it.

And there are different theories as to why these two drugs might work.

And nobody really knows yet if they even do work.

And which reason for it working is the right reason.

So this is all in a very, very, you know, infant stage.

There are a lot of people who are describing this as there is some sort of conspiracy to keep this drug out of use to keep people

from talking about the potential for this drug.

Most of that is in right wing media.

Yeah, I don't think there's any conspiracy.

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