Dr. Raoult’s early treatment therapy for Covid 19 has been categorically vindicated by an important study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, Evaluation of strategies to fight Covid 19 :The French Paradigm (Link).  The study compared Covid mortality rates from March to August 2020 in a number of countries (France, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, S. Korea & China) with that of Dr. Raoult’s institute, the IHU of Marseilles.  In every age group, the IHU had the lowest mortality rate. The study also compared the IHU’s mortality rate with the rest of France and here too the IHU came out lowest.  While the Paris/Ile de France region had a whopping mortality rate of 9.9% the IHU had a mortality rate of 2.3%.

To remind readers, unlike the almost universal approach for Covid patients in the West,  which has  and still consists in waiting till Covid patients develop serious treatments before treating them, usually in hospital, when it is often too late, Dr. Raoult has consistently insisted on the importance of early treatment.  We now know that the first few days, in the fight against Colvid, are critical in preventing the development of serious symptoms. Early treatment therapies, such as Raoult’s  combo of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin, can prevent 85% of hospitalizations and significant lower the mortality rate.

Raoult notes that studies often cited to prove the inefficacy or danger of hydroxychloroquine are  generally biased (as in the notorious Lancet study of May 2020 which claimed that hydroxychloroquine caused cardiac arrest and which was subsequently retracted because of bias and inaccuracy), or use inappropriate or ineffective dosages. “The UK’s Recovery study used a toxic hydroxychloroquine dosage three times higher than ours while France’s Discovery study used too low a dosage. No one bothered to ask me what the correct dosage should be,” exclaims a frustrated Raoult in a recent interview.

The good news – Covid infection rates are plummeting around the world

While political leaders attribute this outcome to the mass vaccination programs, Dr. Raoult is more circumspect. “To a certain degree the vaccines have played a part in lowering the infection rate but this outcome also reflects the natural evolution of the virus. We know that the more a virus mutates, the weaker it becomes. There is a definite correlation between the rate of infection and the number of mutations. Our data shows that the Delta virus has proven to be much less lethal than previous mutations.” Raoult points to the mortality rates for the different variants: “The most lethal was the Marseille 4 variant, which was a local mutation and had a lethality rate of 3.78%. The UK variant, subsequently called Alpha, had a lethality rate of 1.96%, while the Delta variant has a lethality rate of only 0.82%.”

 For or against vaccines?

To this question, Raoult is also circumspect: “It depends which vaccine one is talking about and for whom.  I certainly recommend vaccination for vulnerable populations such as the over 80s, the obese, cancer patients, people with serious pathologies and exposed health workers. In other cases the benefit/risk factor may not be valid. We know that the Astrazeneca vaccine is not recommended for women under 50 and now the UK has decided not to use it at all for people under 40.”

Bolstering his view is the realization that the vaccines come with a high risk factor. Lately Slovenia temporarily suspended the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after the death of a 20 year old woman  (the J&J vaccine was temporarily suspended in the US after being linked to numerous cases of blood clots) and Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland have all halted the Moderna vaccine  because of myocarditis problems.

The current Covid vaccines, says Raoult, offer limited protection. “Recent studies show that the vaccines offer the greatest protection straight after vaccination but their efficacy wanes within a few months and is limited against the new variants.”

Vaccination of children?

While numerous Western countries have been vaccinating 12-16 year olds and may soon even allow vaccination for 5-11 year olds, Dr. Raoult is firmly opposed to the idea: “There is no evidence that Covid is dangerous for the young,” He says. “During the last 2 years, in France, less young people have died than in the previous three years.”

Asked why so few doctors use Hydroxychloroquine, Raoult  cites the book “Manufacturing Consent” by Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky which puts forward a propaganda model of communication that facilitates the transformation of lies into truths.  He also points out that hydroxychloroquine is used by 9 billion people around the world (in Russia, China, India, Africa etc.) and that the countries where it is used have a low mortality rate compared to countries (mainly in the West) where it is not used.

Lockdowns: While the entire Western world is still in the throes of a second or third lockdown, it now appears that  lockdowns have little affect the evolution of the epidemic. A cursory look at the statistics for California and Florida confirm this: the two states show similar rates of infection and mortality even though California opted for a strict lockdown policy and Florida chose to keep its economy open. Scientific evidence is also mounting against lockdowns. Dr. Raoult points to a paper  written by world expert in epidemiological studies, John Ionnidis and published in January 2021 in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation (Article). Entitled “Assessing mandatory stat-at-home and business closure effects on the spread of Covid 19” it states that there is “no evidence that social restrictions played a part in controlling the epidemic.”

Analyses of sewage by marine firemen in Marseille, a tool much favored by Dr. Raoult, also show that restaurants are not sources of contamination. The main sources of virus contamination were found in self-service gas stations, supermarket trolley handles and handle bars/buttons on public transport.

New variants: Dr. Raoult offers several possible explanations for the emergence of new variants:

1. “One reason is what we call pressure of selection.  This means that if you attack a virus with a particular tool, the virus defends itself by changing. With the new vaccines, we launched a strong attack against the spike protein and, as a result, the spike developed mutants. The same thing occurs with the flu virus. Because of the flu vaccine, the virus mutates and so we have to constantly change the composition of the vaccine.
2. Animal reservoirs such as mink colonies provided potent breeding grounds for new mutations;
3. The use of the drug Remdesivir (see The Remdesivir Story article) in treating Covid patients favored the development of new mutations. An immune-depressed patient in Marseille, who was treated with Remdesivir, developed an incredible 15 mutations during her treatment. We have known for a long time that Remdesivir does not work against Covid 19 but, in spite of this, the EU and France bought tons of the drug and it is still being used. We now know also that, because Remdesivir is a mutagenic agent, it favors mutations of the virus. I believe that the British, South African and Brazilian variants all emerged because Remdesivir was widely used in these three countries.”

Vaccines: Dr. Raoult is circumspect about the ability of vaccines currently in use to offer complete immunity against the new variants. “I would like to see the development of traditional vaccines using an inactivated virus (the Chinese have already developed two vaccines based on an inactivated virus: Sinovac and Sinopharm) because these  offer an immunity that is closer to natural post-infection immunity. While the RNA vaccines focus solely on the spike protein in the virus, natural immunity works against all the other proteins and therefore offers greater protection. The new vaccines may help to reduce the number of cases, particularly when the virus that is circulating is the one which they were designed to target, but they are not going to stop the epidemic  overnight.”

His advice: for those who are at risk, the benefits of the vaccine are superior to the risks.

Mortality rate: After analyzing the mortality rate for France in the last two decades, Dr. Raoult came up with some surprising results: “As expected the mortality rate in 2020 for the over 75s was high (7.34%) so yes we had excess mortality for this age bracket last year. For the over 65s we found a mortality rate of 4.06% which is not very different to previous years. But the big surprise was the result for the under 65s. In 2020 the mortality rate for this group (0.197%) was less than in 2019 and in previous years. These results are not widely published because they contradict the standard narrative that we are going through an apocalypse.  What we need to do is focus on the most vulnerable such as residents in nursing homes where the mortality rate was 28% in 2020.”

Other fascinating data revealed by Dr. Raoult emerges from a graph showing the number of cases in the years 2017-2020 for respiratory diseases such as coronavirus, rhinovirus, pneumonia, RSV, influenza virus, etc.  In 2020, from the moment coronavirus arrived, all the other respiratory diseases disappeared almost completely, while coronavirus surged.

A similar graph compares the number of gastroenteritis diseases in the years 2017-2020. The same phenomenon emerges. In 2020, almost all the regular gastro diseases, rotavirus, adenovirus, norovirus etc., disappeared completely while coronavirus surged.

Dr. Raoult draws from this two conclusions:

1. It is impossible to make any sort of prediction regarding these types of infections;
2. The measures taken by governments (social distancing, washing hands, lockdowns, etc.) had a positive effect in preventing the usual respiratory and digestive infections, causing them to practically disappear, but they had little effect on Covid 19.

Dr. Raoult’s base is Marseilles, a fitting city from where to throw down the gauntlet to the authorities in Paris.  He serves as the Director of the IHU – the Institut Hospitalier Universitaire Mediteranee Infection, which he helped to create. His credentials are impeccable. Raoult is considered one of the world’s leading experts on transmittable diseases and is the most cited microbiologist in Europe, with numerous weighty books and thousands of academic papers to his name. He even has a bacteria genus named after him – Raoultella!

Raoult became famous in Spring 2020 when the pandemic first broke out. “Hysteria began as soon as I started to speak out about the treatment I had introduced for Covid patients which was a combination of hydroxychloroquine, which the Chinese were also using, and the antibiotic azithromycin. We found that by treating patients early, we obtained good results.”

Raoult, like other colleagues, was shocked that Covid patients across France and elsewhere were not given any form of treatment but simply told to stay home. His mantra, which he keeps repeating, is that Covid 19 is a disease that can and must be treated.  “It is vital to stop spreading panic. High mortality affects primarily those with a very low life expectancy. By treating early and efficiently we can maintain a low rate of mortality.”

In December 2020 Raoult gave this end of year update:

“We are probably unique in the world: we tested more than 350,000 people at our institute and over 20,000 tested positive. Some were treated close by and 16,000 at IHU. 2000 were hospitalized and 14000 treated as outpatients. We began treatment early. In such conditions we achieve a mortality rate of between 0.5-1% per 1,000, which is very low.”

“Of those who died, more than 80% had a life expectancy of less than 1 year. So the strategy of early detection and early treatment leads to a very low mortality rate.”

The greatest scientific scandal of the 21^st century

The hysteria that followed Raoult’s declarations was acute. He received death threats, was treated as a charlatan and his treatment dubbed all kinds of names: ‘controversial’ ‘dubious’ ‘questionable’… even though hydroxychloroquine had been used for years in France, was sold over the counter and had never been called into question before.

A similar phenomenon was experienced by other doctors.  As soon as they began talking about the results they had achieved with hydroxychloroquine or other cheap drugs, pressure was exerted to silence them. At the beginning of the epidemic, Dr. Jean Jacques Erlstein, together with 2 other doctors, treated 200 patients with a combination of azithromycin and zinc. “We had no hospitalizations and no deaths.” As soon as these doctors published their results in a national newspaper, they were instructed by the medical authorities to desist from talking about the subject and cease using antibiotics. No justification was given.   

It was clear that a nationwide clampdown had begun on the use of hydroxychloroquine and antibiotics to treat Covid patients. In March, GPs in France were prohibited from prescribing the drug, on the grounds that it was dangerous.

“This was the craziest thing I ever heard, says Raoult. “This drug has been around for 80 years. It is cheap (costs just $5 a dose) and is used by almost one third of the world’s population. In France it has been sold at a rate of 36 million pills a year.. and suddenly they were saying it was dangerous!”

Continued onslaught

Despite the onslaught against him, the death threats and the recent charge of charlatanism leveled at him by the Ordre des Medecins (French Medical Association), Raoult persists with his treatment and research. “To accuse me of not using a scientific approach is ridiculous. I have been extensively published, I have dozen books to my name… it’s absurd. I have been accused of charlatanism because I express a different view form that of the Ministry of Health. But this is my duty. I am paid to do research and to teach and it is my obligation to publish the results of my research.”

Dr. Raoult’s Insights& Recommendations

Oxygen:  A major sign of Covid infection is a drop in oxygen saturation. In contrast to other respiratory diseases, with Covid, the oxygen level drops before respiratory problems begin. Once these begin it can often be too late.  So if a person is infected, it is very important to watch his/her oxygen level. This can be gaged with an oximeter (bought in any pharmacy).  A level under 95 is cause for concern and requires immediate attention.

Transmission:  Unlike the current view which places the emphasis on airborne/aerosol transmission of the virus and the need to  wear masks, Raoult stresses that transmission of the virus is primarily handborn and comes from contact with contaminated surfaces. This is the case it seems with all respiratory infections. He cites a study that shows that the main points of Covid contamination are supermarket trolley handlebars and handlebars/buttons on public transport. The need to  regularly disinfect one’s hands is as important as ever.

Amazing things found in sewers :

The naval-fire battalion of Marseille has developed an original method of gathering data about the virus by analyzing trace concentrations in the city’s sewers. Their findings have been able to identify new mutations and pinpoint where the virus is increasing and where it is declining. They are also able to identify the most contaminated items. In contrast to claims that restaurants are important sources of contamination, the firemen’s  latest findings show that the most contaminated items do not come from restaurants but rather from private homes.    

“This is a revolutionary method of testing,” says Raoult. “It offers us unique epidemiological data and costs much less than current methods such as testing etc.”

Lockdowns: Raoult does not believe lockdowns and social restrictions lower the mortality rate. The major factors affecting mortality, he says, are life expectancy and treatment. “I am afraid of the fear which is not justified by the numbers. The more people panic the less one treats. “

New mutations:  As an honest scientist, Raoult asserts that the only thing he is certain about is that the virus is unpredictable! “All the predictions that were made have been proved wrong. We have never seen a form of epidemic such as this one. It is not typical of a coronavirus and takes different forms in different places. The Danes reported last summer that new mutants had appeared on mink farms. This was a case of zoonosis, an infection that is transmitted from animals to humans and vice versa. When animals live in large densities this can lead to major epidemics. And mink colonies had major epidemics of the human coronavirus, perhaps transmitted to them by a worker. The Danes immediately culled their mink farms. As for the new British strain, it is very unusual because it has 1,400 mutations. Usually mutations accumulate gradually and have intermediary stages but, in this case, they appeared all in one go. Several hypotheses have been put forward regarding the origin of the new strain. Some say it could have come from a mink colony while, in Britain, some hypothesize that it came from chronically ill patients who were given plasma taken from Covid recovered patients plus the drug Remdesivir.”

Vaccines:

Raoult is circumspect regarding the new vaccines: “No one knows what will happen when you inject genetic material into humans. When you begin to manipulate genetic material, complicated things can happen. From the start, everyone was looking for a magic wand… at first they thought it would be the drug Remdesivir, now the vaccines. Instead of putting into place a real strategy of testing and treating. We should be fighting a guerilla war, like they did in Vietnam from house to house, we need to fight from patient to patient.

I am not an anti-vaxxer but I know about vaccines. I gave a talk 10 years ago about infectious diseases and vaccines and I explained that in the last 30 years the field that devoured the most government money was that of vaccines. First they tried to find a vaccine against malaria, then against HIV… all without success. The same is still true today.  This is because these diseases are not really immunizable. The first vaccines were for diseases you get only once. Then it’s easy. When you keep getting re-infections, it becomes much more difficult. For instance, Covid has so many mutations that we are now seeing people who were infected last year getting re-infected again. The question is : will the vaccines, which are based on the first strain of the virus, continue to be effective?”