Right, I gotcha, and I'm happy for your friend, and for you and everyone else who loves him.
Still, asked the question of Cliff in the way that I did, not so much to ask about the treatment and the anecdotal evidence in favor of it, but to get an answer about his difference in reaction. (Anecdotes on hydroxychloroquine are beginning to pile up, but as they say, "data" is not the plural of "anecdote," at least not unless your anecdotes happen to be randomized and set side-by-side with a similarly-randomized control group!)
See, Cliff's an engineer, and engineers think a certain way. It doesn't necessarily follow that their emotional reactions always track perfectly with what the data is saying they should be -- engineers are human after all -- but clear-headed engineers try to follow the evidence where it leads, and change their minds as new evidence comes to light.
The evidence for Ivermectin is a study, and while I'm not well-informed enough to know if the study has any design flaws, I'm guessing Cliff wouldn't have responded so positively to a single study, if it had anything glaringly wrong with it.
If the evidence for hydroxychloroquine were nothing-but-anecdotes, then I can imagine Cliff saying to himself, "I'm not going to allow myself to feel hope on the basis of hydroxychloroquine until I see at least one real study." But there have now been three or four studies, and unless they're all equally badly-designed (in ways Cliff's already aware of), I don't see why the lack of a study would still cause Cliff to hold aloof.
Anyway, Cliff's smart and we all respect him, and it seems churlish to talk about Cliff in third-person when he's here and able to answer for himself. I want to let him do that.
So, again: happy for your friend! ...but I do hope Cliff will let us know what, for him, distinguishes between the ability of an Ivermectin study to provide hope, and the inability of the studies of hydroxychloroquine thus far to similarly provide hope.
