• There is no known mechanism for chloroquine activity, even for Malaria, which is a caused by a cell, not a virus.
• Promoters of chloroquine for Corona virus are medical doctors, not scientists. Medicine is a healing art, not science. So they don't know that double blind experiments are needed.
• Zinc is always combined for the beneficial result. Zinc alone is beneficial; adding chloroquine is nothing but rock soup.
• The molecular structure indicates that chloroquine functions as nothing but an antigen.
• The chloroquine molecule has a lipid-soluble end which causes it to go through cell membranes easily. Entering heart cells is not a good thing, which is why it is dangerous for hearts.

Chloroquine does not have a known mechanism even for malaria. In addition to malaria, it is used to reduce the immunological reaction for such things as arthritis.

Looking at the molecular structure provides an indication of the mechanism. It contains a chlorine atom attached to an aromatic. Organic chlorine does not exist in natural biology. It is quite antigenic because of the unnaturalness and the polarized nature of the chlorine atom.

Aromatics are depended upon for structural identity, because they form a stable structure, where other configurations wobble a lot. The chlorine-aromatic combination is easily recognized by the immune system as antigenic.

So the mode of action is that an easy-to-recognize antigen reduces the immunological response to other problems by tying up the immune system on an externally added antigen. Redirecting the immune system away from the disease makes the reaction more comfortable, while is does not necessarily cure the disease any better.

When using chloroquine with zinc on the Corona virus, improvement is claimed. But it would be due to the zinc, not the chloroquine. Proper studies show no improvement with chloroquine. There is not a trace of logic for expecting chloroquine to have anti-viral properties.

Speculation that chloroquine functions as an ionophore transporter across cell membranes for zinc is not based on evidence and is not logical. Chloroquine is not the type of molecule that would attach to zinc or function as a transporter. Natural proteins serve that purpose.

Evolution produced numerous physiological functions for zinc in the absence of chloroquine. That physiology isn't going to be improved by a strange molecule such as chloroquine.

The ionophore transporter mechanism is now listed on Wikipedia. It's not scientifically credible and not based on evidence.

The usual theory is that since quinine (and chloroquine) moves through the lipid membranes of the cell quite easily, it must enter the lysosomes and do something magical there. There is no mechanism for the claimed magic. The superficial appearance indicates that the only mechanism that ever existed was to redirect the immune system away from the disease. Eighty years ago, that result might have appeared to be a cure. Now days, more accurate tests show that it doesn't cure. It never would have been a cure. Adding chlorine to the molecule would not have improved any curative properties, which indicates that the molecule never was anything but a redirect for the immune system.

A lot of poor quality studies are conducted on chloroquine showing a variety of results. What nonscientists seem to miss is that statistical relevance is not so easily produced. Low quality statistical studies are extremely scattershot. They produce widely varying results depending upon infinite factors including samples size that does not properly represent the purposes and factors which shift the numbers such as prior selection of test subjects.

When statistics are applied to something that does nothing, the results will always be off center somewhat due to the imprecision of statistics. Conduct two or more such studies, and one will error on the desired side of the issue.

Then there is the correlation problem. Any statistical study will correlate with the color of someone's shoes.

Combining the problems of statistics with the problems of correlation, and it's difficult to get a scientifically valid result through statistics. Yet the endless chloroquine studies inevitably show varied statistical results causing know-nothings to draw conclusions from them. That's why science requires a basis in developed knowledge and logic, not just statistics supporting nonsense.

Birds chirp real hard in the mornings as the sun comes up assuming they are causing the sun to rise. If they did a double-blind experiment, they would know they aren't singing the sun up. Medical doctors insisting chloroquine improves their patients are no different than the birds assuming they sing the sun up. The MDs assume the patients would have died without the chloroquine. How do they know that? They make guesses and assume they are fact.