Tonic?

After reading yesterday’s blog on corona, my high school English teacher Mrs. Pharriss was particularly taken by the part on possible treatment of the virus with Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine), derived from quinine. She asked if tonic water might help. I have the answer. This is what I wrote back to Mrs. Pharriss.

Now you’re giving me math assignments!  The dose of quinine to treat malaria is 2-3 200-350 mg tablets 3 times a day.  Likely you’d want to achieve similar levels to kill coronavirus. That’s a daily dose range of 1200-3050 mg/d.  The FDA limits the concentration of quinine in tonic water to 83 mg/liter.  If you assume your quinine water is the strongest allowed by law (Schwepp’s, presumably), you’d have to down 4.4-11 liters, or 1.2-2.9 gallons, per day to achieve therapeutic levels.  If you had that nicely balanced with Tanqueray, you wouldn’t be worrying about Mr. coronavirus anymore.