You are right that I didn't address that part of your question. I simply don't know much about it. I am not following a lot social media (outside Hacker News) or regular media, and I'm simply not in the loop with the topic.
The only thing I have noticed myself was that the CDC and the FDA (and the NIH) are quite conservative institutions. If some drug does not have the solid evidence showing it is effective, they will not endorse it. Sometimes this is frustrating, but if you put yourself in their shoes, what else can you do? When you judge a drug for yourself, you have a lot of information, you know everything about your own body, what it tolerates, what it doesn't, etc. But these organizations have to make a judgment that potentially affects the lives of hundreds of millions of people. They will err on the side of being conservative: it's better from their point of view if 1 million people die because they don't use an unproven drug than if 1 million people are saved, but 100k other people die of side-effects. For the simple reason that the 1 million who are saved will become invisible, and only the 100k who die of side-effects will be the center of attention in the media. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is.
The only thing I have noticed myself was that the CDC and the FDA (and the NIH) are quite conservative institutions. If some drug does not have the solid evidence showing it is effective, they will not endorse it. Sometimes this is frustrating, but if you put yourself in their shoes, what else can you do? When you judge a drug for yourself, you have a lot of information, you know everything about your own body, what it tolerates, what it doesn't, etc. But these organizations have to make a judgment that potentially affects the lives of hundreds of millions of people. They will err on the side of being conservative: it's better from their point of view if 1 million people die because they don't use an unproven drug than if 1 million people are saved, but 100k other people die of side-effects. For the simple reason that the 1 million who are saved will become invisible, and only the 100k who die of side-effects will be the center of attention in the media. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is.