Is such a conclusion warranted? "Correlation does not imply causation" comes to mind here.
You enter people into a study you follow them. Who knows? The damned drugs may work. I hope it does (while hoping they find a better one fast because these a horrible drugs). But you just don’t do this, at least where I came from. If there was a death, I don’t care if they never got the damn drug, if they were registered they contribute to the data. If you publish this you defend it by saying “We did blah blah ...86% or whatever”. But you don’t rush out and breathlessly announce “100%”. It absolutely wreaks of snake oil and it’s a shame.
My instinct is to ignore this paper. Sounds to me like they heard someone else was going to beat them to press so they jumped out and went full retard. I am certain to a moral certainty had I ever told my chairman “we didn’t include him, he died”, I would have been fired on the spot.
RE: Six hydroxychloroquine-treated patients were lost in follow-up during the survey because of early cessation of treatment.
WHY did they cease the treatment? That’s the question.
SIDE EFFECTS? Cure worse than the disease?
They need to explain the reason.