Makes sense, but I doubt that HQC is the cause of the higher mortality rate.
The medical professionals prescribing repurposed drugs with a low level of evidence of the efficacy of that drug are obviously bad at their job, and the people seeing those medical professionals and taking their advice are clearly not great at critical thought. I bet that HCQ prescriptions from a medical professional would allow us to also identify the medical professionals that are bad at their job and have a higher death rate overall than medical professionals that are able to follow the science.
I also believe that patients willing to take HCQ are also easily grouped into those folks that weren't willing to take other measures to protect themselves or their family during a global health crisis. I'm not surprised that they have a higher death rate whether there's a pandemic or not. They probably make poor decisions about most things in their lives.
