Pharma companies have very deep pockets, and people are stupid. They'll launch a massive ad campaign, while also knowing that people are stupid.
While true, there’s going to be massive disruption to big pharma “Like you’ve never seen before!”. Once they are forced to re-shore manufacturing of APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients), the production of HCQ isn’t going to be on the top of their list of things to worry about.
I worked for a Fortune 100 company in the 2000s and watch (sadly) all this outsourcing happen. It was like a gold rush, the companies were totally unconstrained in how fast and how much they moved out of the US and the impact it made on US workers and communities was totally disregarded “Tough shit, basically”). The only thing that limited what could be moved offshore was ITAR (export restrictions on military/defense products) and in the case of my company, that is ALL that was left in the US. They’d have moved it too if they could have...
So it will be an interesting time ahead, since now people of all political stripes will be united in demanding that important APIs, some finished drugs, and all sorts of medical devices be produced in US plants. I never thought I’d see that happen but it will be a very good thing for our country. Who wants to end up in a hospital dependent on a drug made in China?