Self-medicating with veterinary drugs, that is. Yes, you can buy some mighty powerful prescription drugs sans prescription, if you look under pet/veterinary/farm/aquarium supplies.
But, if you don't know what you're doing? Don't just go gobbling the stuff. Like these idiots. Dosage matters, and if you're not sick, randomly trying an experimental cure for the disease you don't have is a dumb idea. You can end up looking very silly, or dead, or both.
Note, though: the reporting on this includes a huge amount of wrong information. In particular, chloroquine phosphate is one of the chemicals under discussion for treating the shinolavirus. Right chemical, wrong dose, wrong situation.
Addendum: Guys? Stop calling it "fish tank cleaner." The stuff the idjits took is a medication, sold in this case for treating certain illnesses in fish. At a dosage of perhaps 4 milligrams per gallon of aquarium water, which doesn't translate directly into human dosage but somehow a spoonful in a glass of soda sounds like a whole heck of a lot more.
From Wikipedia:
Chloroquine comes in tablet form as the phosphate, sulfate, and hydrochloride salts. Chloroquine is usually dispensed as the phosphate.[7]
Yeah, hydroxychloroquine is newer and maybe safer... but chloroquine phosphate does basically the same thing, and is the common form of the older drug. Your doctor prescribes chloroquine, chloroquine phosphate is what you'll likely get. But it'll come in tablets calibrated to a proper dose for humans, and with proper instructions.
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