Dr. Raoult is amazed. “The countries that were the world leaders in science and medicine and to whom the rest of the us looked at for guidance posted the worst Covid records of anyone. At the beginning of the epidemic England had a hospitalization mortality rate of 58% which is enormous. Both the UK and the US registered a loss in life expectancy (1.4 and 1.3) bringing them to the same level as Morocco and Algeria. They did not treat patients well because they were obsessed with carrying out clinical trials.” As an expert in infectious diseases, Raoult is insistent on the need to treat Covid patients early. He is astonished still to see Covid patients whose first contact with a doctor takes place in intensive care.  His protocol of hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin/zinc, which is given early to Covid patients, enabled his institute (Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Mediterrannee=IHU) to post a lower mortality rate for every age bracket than the rest of France.

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.