Studies suggesting higher HDL cholesterol is better were not adjusted for other factors like high ApoB levels.

“the problem with hdl cholesterol as a metric is all those studies that seems to suggest say higher is better or lower is worse we're never adjusted for anything else so you know observational type data aha i found the answer here it is you got blue eyes and everybody with blue eyes gets this that or whatever and of course you never adjusted for oh wait a minute everybody with the blue eyes has this lethal thing going on also so in retrospect it turns out that the overwhelming majority of people who might have low hdl cholesterol have a high april b level”