For it to be a “cure” it has to work with ARDS patients at every level of illness otherwise it’s a therapeutic. In reality there is no such thing as a cure for viruses. Once a virus enters the human body it only knows one thing replicate and replicate some more. Any drug given is to slow or halt that replication so the bodies natural T Cells and or white blood cells can then remove the virus from the body. The medication does not “kill” a virus it was never alive in the first place its not a bacterium that has life processes. A vaccine is the ONLY way to prevent infection over the long term. There’s promise that taking antibodies from a survivor and infusing an infected could slow the replication enough to give the second person time to rid the virus. The cold truth is this bug will keep jumping from host to host until a vaccine is perfected and widely distributed or enough people have survived infection to have herd immunity. Drugs only treat the infected and give them a chance at surviving very few prevent infection in the first place.
Malaria drugs do not prevent infection from malaria as a geologist I have taken malaria drugs to work all over the tropics you will get bit by mosquitoes,you will get the malaria bug in your blood stream you will test positive for malaria if you have been taking quinine for at least two weeks before being inoculated you probably will not get a full blown case of malaria and once you leave the hotzone and stop being infected with malaria your body will rid the rest of the parasites that the drug has keep to a smaller and manageable number.
Agree, this treatment is considered therapeutic with the intent to reduce the duration that an infected person would shed the virus, reduce hospitalization time and in some cases avert the need for critical care. Certainly not a cure for the advanced stages of this disease where expected survival is less than a 50% chance. It was never considered highly effective in late stages involving ARDS. Barring patient contraindications , the French studies highly suggest it should be administered before conditions become severe. If the New York City trials are heavily weighted for patients on ventilation the benefits of this treatment will be unfortunately hidden from the public.