The issue is not the retraction but their history of publishing shoddy work. I provided a source for that. They, of course, publish good work too. I don't think it's unreasonable to be skeptical of a medical journal that essentially started the modern anti-vaxxer movement.
The issue there is not the collection of data but the conclusions drawn by people who didn't author the study and the way it's being presented. The study only involved people that were hospitalized and treated within 48 hours. This of courses predisposes towards more severe cases and cases where a medicine that interferes with viral replication is already fighting a losing battle. The case fatality rate of the patients in the study was 11.1%. This is far higher than even the most liberal estimates of the CFR of COVID. This is a study of people predisposed to dying of this. Those people are also predisposed to HcQ complications. That was known and understood before the pandemic.
I read it and I understand it just fine.
I have no idea if HcQ is useful as a prophylactic/early treatment or if they are useless fluff pills. A strong amount of anecdotal studies and trials suggest it is useful in that setting. When this was about flattening the curve and not overwhelming hospitals that was very hopeful, as even something with a slight effect of stopping people from developing to severe was a game changer. Additionally, Plaquenil is a safe and well understood medicine that is cheap and easily mass produced. The side effects and contra indications are well understood. It's an over the counter medication in many countries.
All the evidence against it's usage as a prophylactic/early treatment is based on its use as a last ditch effort in severe/hospitalized cases. The only evidence that it would ever work in that setting was it killing SARS in vitro in 2005.
I'm using the exact same study that you posted so I don't get the implication that I'm getting my information from PaTRIOt FoLK FREEDOM MEDICINE!!!
In that study it says:
Our study has several limitations. The association of decreased survival with hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine treatment regimens should be interpreted cautiously. Due to the observational study design, we cannot exclude the possibility of unmeasured confounding factors, although we have reassuringly noted consistency between the primary analysis and the propensity score matched analyses. Nevertheless, a cause-and-effect relationship between drug therapy and survival should not be inferred.
I've been following it since the 2014 Ebola outbreak because that affected me personally and I got interested. I don't claim to be an expert, just an interested layman.
I trust and respect individual doctors. Medicine as a whole is incredibly untrustworthy. It kills more people than Covid every year and it's held to a lower standard of diagnosis than certified auto mechanics.
I don't know if HcQ will work and I'm not the person to ask. However, I can recognize when there's a narrative being pushed and I'm capable of looking at the data and seeing if it's horseshit. If someone who went to medical school tells me that it's actually Equine Fecal Matter for Fertilization I don't just step in it, because the experts have been dragging us through horseshit the entire pandemic.
Maybe it's helpful and maybe it isn't. Doing proper trials is going to be challenging because the disease is so mild in so many people. I don't see any reason not to continue those trials and I'm suspicious of the efforts to stop them.