It was approved for Emergency Use on December 23, 2021.
The pandemic hit the U.S. (officially) a year and a half earlier. Below, Tyrone's handlers are feeding him information to regurgitate comparing Paxlovid's effectiveness vs. the HCQ protocol. The problem with that is that NO ONE that I'm aware of is trying to claim that Paxlovid is inferior. But the reality is that it wasn't available for a loooooong time. If there was data that indicated that the HCQ protocol may be effective when used as an early intervention shortly after the onset of symptoms, why was there such a massive pushback against it? This wasn't a high-risk intervention to prescribe for patients, so why did so many do everything they could to discredit and block it?
I'm not a physician, and I don't have any claims about its effectiveness. But I absolutely recall that the "wrong" people were discussing it, and it became a political lightning rod when it shouldn't have.