It's weird, right? I spent some time last night trying to figure out exactly what the mechanism is that chloroquine has when it works. It looks like there may b

It's weird, right? I spent some time last night trying to figure out exactly what the mechanism is that chloroquine has when it works. It looks like there may be more than one mechanism in place. In the malaria parasite, it kills the parasite by hitting up the lysosome (or something intracellular at least - interaction with a protein, can't remember details). In humans, things get a little bit more fuzzy. It accumulates in lysosomes, and then how it stops Coronaviruses or is effective in lupus treatment isn't very clear. I've seen arguments that it changes pH, or the caspases can't work any more, but that doesn't explain very much. My bet is that it's screwing with the organisation of the secretory system, which means that virus can't get out properly (maybe budding is broken). The ABO blood system link is something else altogether, but probably hints towards other functions of blood type in regulating something other than self/other recognition (although virus itself may carry ABO epitope).