Of course, Zinc is an essential dietary element. And yes been around for ages and seems effective for many different conditions.
But there are a lot of people suggesting Zinc added to this regimen like the doctor says has a positive effect. Maybe it potentiates the effects of the other drugs, or increases the uptake rate or circulation or maybe it blocks the receptors outside cells to prevents the virus from attaching. I don’t know (someone I’m sure has a good theory).
As you said it does seem to help common flu symptoms so maybe it does have an anti-viral effect of some kind. It’s basically an ‘old wives tale’ people have used it for years - maybe centuries, like a shaman cure. Unfortunately there is no FDA style large randomized clinical trial proving that it works or its method of action that I know of. And nobody will pay to study it for profit because you can’t charge $400 for a bottle of Zinc tablets. Maybe if there was grant money, or maybe out of charity or generosity, but not for capitalistic reasons.
My rudimentary knowledge of the subject is that hydroxychloroquine allows the ionic zinc to invade the cell. Zinc stops the RNA from replicating while the hydroxychloroquine changes the pH within the cell to further stop it from replicating.The azithromycin stops other infections from occurring as a result of the weak immune system. For whatever that’s worth. Amen.
We have an enormous public health budget and infrastructure, but somehow such studies never get prioritized. But go to the CDC’s web site and do a search on transgender, and there is an enormous number of hits and content (= $$) for an issue that affects a very small percentage of the population. I’m sure there are plenty of other such questionable prioritization choices.