This was a post originally published at medium.com, however, it has been flagged for removal because it goes against the bias Coronavirus narrative that there is no Covid-19 cure. This article is too good to just disappear, so I hope that the author does not mind me publishing it here. Copyright: Filipe Rafaeli
HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE – THE NARRATIVE THAT IT DOESN’T WORK IS THE BIGGEST HOAX IN RECENT HUMAN HISTORY
For those who are afflicted with the pandemic, afraid of dying, losing family or friends, I would like to inform you: I am the bearer of good news.
“I do not know Trump or Bolsonaro”, said Didier Raoult, a professor of infectious diseases at the IHU-Marseille, on 24 June, the French National Assembly, when provided a testimonial for a special commission.
There I saw that the teacher has already started to understand the hole that got involved and who were responsible for creating the first wave that fucked him.
This wave, after all, placed him, by chance, as an important piece at the center of the chessboard of the most ferocious geopolitical dispute since the end of the Soviet Union.
In addition to the denial of knowing Trump or Bolsonaro, which is quite fun, where Raoult tried to distance himself from these two demented leaders, the infectologist reported serious things: he suffered death threats soon after proposing the treatment of COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, two cheap and generic drugs.
The doctor behind the threats was found. It’s from a university hospital in Nantes. Incidentally, he was the person who received the most money from Gilead, a large pharmaceutical company, in the past 6 years.
Here I propose to put together, piece by piece, the puzzle of what I consider the biggest farce in modern history. I don’t worry about producing a short text. It will have analyzes, including new ones, and from different points of view.
It involves science, healing, politics, geopolitics, mass and group psychology. With the scenario set, it is not difficult to predict good and bad things that will happen in the coming months and years.
Throughout the text, the reader will understand the most important thing: the circumstance of how this false narrative was put together. The reader will also be prompted, by itself, to conclude whether the treatment proposed by Didier Raout works or not.
And you will also understand how the majority of the North American scientific class, from Latin America and Europe, regions of the globe under strong influence from the USA, were directed to an incredibly gross error.
In addition to the facts and figures, which are accompanied by external links, all I write are my own opinions, based on the facts, in first person, from my point of view, of how I see the world going completely insane in front of me.
I am not afraid to sign my name when publishing it, even though I know that the almost unanimity of Brazilian scientists are against the application of these drugs and repeat that “there is no scientific evidence” of the functioning.
And one thing I’m sure will attract attention. The fact that I have to give examples with incredibly basic logic, as if I were talking to children, to explain the facts. It is necessary. The farce has gone so far that I need many examples and analogies to bring reason back.
Signed, I make it available to cover me, today or in the future, if my analyzes prove to be incorrect, after all, it is not a simple or light claim.
In February there is carnival
From China and Europe came reports of large numbers of dead people and entire cities blocked, with people in confinement, preventing the transmission of the coronavirus.
On the top street of my house, in Atibaia, in the interior of São Paulo, 60 km from the state capital, the carnival took place.
For four days, loud music came through my window. I didn’t go to the party, which I do every year. The word agglomeration already bothered me.
It was the end of February, just before the WHO — World Health Organization, declared that we were in a global pandemic of apocalyptic proportions.
I preferred to go ahead and follow the guidance of scientists before government decisions. I was the first in the city to join voluntary confinement.
A few days later I still went to a bar. I thought the risk was low. In airy environments, the risk is less. It was the last time I went to one. It was an open bar, something normal in our tropical climate, where half the people are on the street and the other half inside the establishment.
It was the farewell of a musician friend. Samba and jazz were in the repertoire. He was already hired to go to Australia, where he would board a tourist ship. It would be one of the attractions. He was excited. I didn’t want to discourage him, but it was strange that the company was still confident, until that day, that new trips would come out, even with the Diamond Princess case, off the coast of Japan.
I no longer held hands to greet anyone. I ran away from close contacts, always stayed outside, and washed my hands constantly. They laughed and found it strange. Some called me paranoid.
I soon made a bad prediction: that all bars would be empty and closed in a short space of time. I decided not to leave anymore. I didn’t want to be bothered by crowds. I didn’t want to be a joke either. Our state and municipal governments had not yet taken action against the virus.
At home, it remained to read, to follow the news and scientific publications that began to appear frequently. I have a habit, healthy or not, of going deeper into research, and reading studies, when I’m interested in a subject. I don’t like to just wait and see, one or the other news, superficially, in the mass media.
The craze for going to medical research sites to read papers came from a few years earlier. In 2016 I broke a bone in an accident. Practically three months lying, with little mobility, without drinking, and with an IPAD in my hand, I read all the studies on my recovery, to the point that, in a chat, shortly afterwards, with an orthopedist professor at an important medical school, he says he has never seen a patient know so much about his problem. “This one studied more than my students”, he joked with a friend.
Piece 1: the hydroxychloroquine solution appears
March 17, 2020
The study ran the internet. He had this impressive chart. People who took hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin, an antibiotic, made a spectacular and rapid recovery.
Study graph.
By the fifth day, the six patients who received the combination no longer had the virus. The news was so good that I went to find out where it came from.
The differences between the other two arms, control and those who only took hydroxychloroquine, were great.
They didn’t even wait to finish. On the sixth day they already released these preliminary data.
Several scientists signed the study, but the main one was Didier Raoult, from Marseille, in the south of France. I went to research and soon saw that he was not just any adventurer.
Piece 2: Didier Raoult is the leading specialist in communicable diseases in the world
Didier has almost 3,000 articles in Pubmed. This is a resounding number.
According to the Expertscape website, which makes a statistic about studies published in the last 10 years by specialty, he is number one in the world in communicable diseases.
In addition, he won several awards in his scientific community, such as that of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, in 2010, and that of the Institute of France, in 2015.
This second prize is not just any prize, like those in cities in the interior that hold contests on the internet for the most sympathetic doctors in public service. It is a cash prize. He took 200 thousand Euros home. This is more than one million reais.
Professor Didier Raoult also received decorations from the French government. He is, since 2015, commander of the National Order of Merit, and since 2011, Officer of the Legion of Honor. One of them is awarded by the President of the Republic of the country. And we all know that France is not a banana republic. They don’t reward imbeciles.
With a brilliant career like this, I decided to keep following. The results were too encouraging to pass up.
Piece 3: the world’s second worst ally liked the idea
March 21st
Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is anything but simple. Four days after publication, he went on TV and used Didier Raoult’s study as a confrontation with American scientists. They spared no criticism for their stupidity in conducting the pandemic.
He always hit them head on. Trump is a blundering rotary machine gun. Just to give two examples, on the pandemic, he had said that the common flu was worse. And it unbelievably went so far as to say that the coronavirus was a farce from the Democratic party.
His track record has always been to nurture disdain for science and scientists. He says, for example, that he doesn’t believe in global warming.
But one thing Trump has always known: his policy of confrontation pleases his stupid, increasingly radicalized base, which in order to defend itself against the coronavirus, instead of avoiding agglomerations, is lining up to buy weapons.
How can someone who acts and thinks in this way guide how the solution to a pandemic should be?
Of course, the North American scientific community felt neglected, and with the clash, diminished. They reacted.
Piece 4: hydroxychloroquine’s first misfortune
In his ad, Trump spoke the name of the drug. And hydroxychloroquine, unfortunately, did not need a doctor’s prescription.
What happened? A rush to the pharmacies. Nothing surprising.
Experts were consulted. They said an obviousness that anyone would say seeing the people stocking up on medicines. They warned that everyone should be careful with side effects.
Following, honest journalism, which I would also do. They went to see if Trump had connections with the hydroxychloroquine manufacturers. They found out he had it.
Thus a narrative began to be put together.
Piece 5: US scientists call for calm
Didier Raoult’s study was preliminary. The focus was, at that time, on the six patients treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin who had an abrupt viral reduction. Dr Anthony Fauci, physician and leader of the coronavirus task force in the USA, took the lead. He asked for prudence.
Today, any reasonably well-informed person knows what a complete and impeccable scientific study is, the so-called “gold standard of science”: it is randomized, controlled, double-blind, peer-reviewed and published in a prestigious scientific journal. It was Fauci’s class.
Piece 6: Bolsonaro, the puppet and Trump fan, repeated the solution
Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right politic, is a longing for the Brazilian dictatorship (1964–1985).
He tends to praise torturers of that time, who in addition to being rapists, stuffed live rats into the vaginas of college students. Bolsonaro, behaving like a psychopath, praises these torturers laughing and having fun.
This political aberration was only elected president of the republic due to a fraudulent election that took place in 2018, where the leader of the polls, Lula da Silva, ex-unionist, ex-president, patriot and revered worldwide, center-left, was arrested in a process fraudulent, just so it doesn’t compete.
Lula led the polls even when arrested. The UN even demanded that he be allowed to run and that he have a fair trial. The Brazilian judicial system, behaving like that of a banana republic, ignored the order, even though the country was a signatory to international agreements related to human rights.
This election, in addition to repeating in Brazil the same fake news techniques used in the U.S., which favored Trump’s election, came just two years after a coup in the country. This coup removed Dilma Roussef, from Lula’s party, from the presidency, and was also supported by our class-based judicial system.
The story of this coup was spectacularly portrayed by filmmaker Petra Costa in his documentary “The Edge of Democracy”, an Oscar 2020 finalist and available on Netflix.
Oscar 2020 finalist documentary tells the story of the coup.
Soon it was proven that in this coup, as well as the previous one, of 1964, there was the participation of the USA. This is traditional and normal in all coups d’état in the history of Latin America. If there was no participation from them, it would be something new. And these are scams always aimed at putting US puppets in power, friendly to North American economic interests.
In addition, this coup was quite predictable that it would occur, after all, Brazil was the country in the globe that discovered the most oil in the last decade. Natural resource that always generates US greed.
And this deliveryist and fascist government, in addition to having members who copy speeches by Josef Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister, has a long history of attacking Brazilian science, aiming to weaken the nation as a whole.
The government guru, a self-styled philosopher astrologer, Olavo de Carvalho, admired by Bolsonaro, believes that the earth is flat and that the coronavirus epidemic does not exist.
It does not stop there. This government appoints, for scientific positions, defenders of creationism. Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo, whose father was part of the government of the previous dictatorship and made it difficult to extradite Nazi fugitives from Germany, and Araújo believes that global warming is a Marxist plot.
This minister, on course for diplomats, proposes possibilities for alien invasions of alpha centauri.
It is an anti-science government. They fire scientists when the government does not agree with disclosure of data on the Amazon rainforest being destroyed in an accelerated way.
In addition to all this, Bolsonaro, when asked by a reporter about the deaths from the pandemic, replied: “So what? I am not a gravedigger”. And has constantly been against the only thing that is absolute consensus in the scientific world. It promotes agglomerations and calls the COVID-19 a small flu.
In this context, Bolsonaro, who is even portrayed in the Financial Times, as “much more stupid than Trump”, repeated, like a parrot, the solution that Trump decided to support.
No surprise for someone who, upon meeting the President of the United States, says “i love you“, being scorned by himself and by almost the entire North American right wingers, except David Duke, a white supremacist of the Klu Klux Klan, who adores him.
How can a government like this dare to guide the conduct of treatment for COVID-19?
Piece 7: the confirmation bias
Sir Francis Bacon
One of the first to explain this psychological effect was Sir Francis Bacon, a British philosopher, for almost 500 years.
“Once an opinion is adopted, human understanding seeks everything around it to agree with and support it. Even if there is more evidence to the contrary, it neglects or despises it, or in some way rejects or fails to side“, Sir Francis Bacon.
Confirmation bias happens to everyone, including specialists, according to Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize, in his book “Fast and Slow”.
I stayed out of the negative confirmation bias. When I saw Trump announcing the Didier Raoult study, I had a positive bias and concluded that the study was really good. “For the first time in his life, this idiot listens to a renowned scientist”, I thought.
The same occurred when Bolsonaro parroted Trump. “Even a stopped clock shows the hour twice a day”, I reflected.
But yes, Didier Raout is unlucky. He had the two worst allies in the world.
Whoever was going to bars, parties and was not quarantined, and learned of the hydroxychloroquine studies from the mouth of Trump or Bolsonaro, along with Fauci’s explanations, automatically disavowed.
After all, from these mouths, the normal thing is to come shit.
Piece 8: Didier Raoult is attacked
In addition to explanations of side effects, and strong criticism for not being the “gold standard” of drug studies, extremely negative articles began to appear for Didier Raoult’s reputation.
The “For Better Science” website made one of the most viral. There began a massive smear campaign. “Wizard Doctor” was one of the titles. It was quickly translated into Portuguese and was published on the Nassif website, with great repercussion.
The texts addressed several things, but one caught my attention: a history of fraud in scientific studies signed by Didier.
They found at least four studies with microscope images altered by photoshop. But the total number of studies, almost 3 thousand, did not speak.
In addition, charges with expensive themes on the left, such as sexual harassment, bullying with students, pressure and overtime. The article contained the testimony of hurt people who broke with the infectologist.
The harassment was not Didier’s, but that he would have covered up occurrences at the institute where he runs.
In addition to the altered studies, already proven, the rest, probably, everything must be true. At least it’s credible. Didier accuses one of his students for the alterations in the images. I believe that under the pressure of being one of the most productive institutes in the world, a student’s attitude in this regard may be quite possible.
About harassment, Didier gave the worst possible answer, at the time, to the press: “Thank you for describing this place as a brothel, I will install a condom machine”.
However, I believe that such a scrutiny, absolutely no one is left unscathed. But for those who received the news by Trump and Bolsonaro, the “farcical” label stuck to Didier with ease, as an effect of the negative confirmation bias.
I still hoped that there was a result and went to find out about the institute’s website and its twitter. With such heavy articles, if Didier did not speak up, his study would be proven to be a fraud.
In his responses, Didier Raoult made a basic communication error. On the institute’s youtube channel, instead of being at the center of a table, with several researchers, after all, the study was signed by several scientists, he appeared alone. He was unable to show support for his team.
But I started to pay attention. In one of the interviews, in relation to the strong side effects, he stated that he would give the drugs to his own mother. About not being randomized, he made an analogy about the parachute. He said that it is not necessary to throw 20 people out of an airplane, ten with parachutes and ten without, to conclude that ten people would die.
The explanations made sense to me, after all, in Europe, the average death rate among those infected was approximately 15% of patients.
And a curiosity: the articles in “For Better Science” appeared on Google, before Didier’s page on Wikipedia.
Piece 9: “Miracle cure”. Didier Raout is detonated in the New York Times, the most influential newspaper in the world
“Questionable cure”, said the text. “It shocked scientists around the world”, they evaluated. In addition, they called what he proposed “miracle cure”. They heard other experts about his reputation and made a political connection to Trump.
A few days later, a US doctor, James Todaro, comments on his twitter:
And when would confirmation come or not?
The evolution of COVID-19 is well documented. It is not similar to AIDS, where the patient can die in six months or 20 years.
The vast majority of people incubate the virus for six days. Soon afterwards, he presents symptoms, and in another week or 10 days, about 5% of symptomatic patients become severe (the number varies slightly). Of the serious ones, intubated, about half die.
Now think with me. Let’s go to a very basic logic.
You stay in a pandemic focal point, give the medicine to 100 people who already have symptoms, if in 15 days, out of the total, only one or two need to be intubated, the medicine works and we have proof.
It’s simple. You don’t even have to wait to see if the intubates died, right?
It does not need a control group, peer review, double blind, or publication in a reputable magazine.
You just need to correctly count the number of intubated patients.
Therefore, it was only a matter of two more weeks and the treatment would be confirmed or not. Someone would.
Quite logical. Does anyone have any questions?
Piece 10: “Miracle cure”. The first doctor in the USA, confirming, enters the scene, but it didn’t work.
Next to New York, a doctor, Vladimir Zelenko, appeared in the story. He claimed, a few days later, that he had already treated some people with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, Didier’s protocol. And he added one more item to the cocktail: zinc.
And he took an important step: he released his treatment protocol in a letter to doctors.
The New York Times story on his story stated that he was not seeing patients personally, but with a team.
Due to a recent cancer, Zelenko has only one lung. He’s a risk group for Covid-19. Prudent, he remained in his home, isolated.
The article in the newspaper, in addition to photographing him outside a hospital environment, without being in white, unintentionally collaborating with semiotics, developed a political narrative. Zelenko is a supporter of Trump. “The country’s simple doctor becomes a star on the right”, said the newspaper.
In addition, they found memes on their facebook attacking Hillary Clinton, a Democratic candidate in the last presidential election. “Zelenko’s treatment reached a useful moment for Trump and his media supporters, who at times seemed more interested in discussing miracle cures than talking about delays or a shortage of fans”, he said.
He spoke some numbers. At the end of March, it had already treated 200 patients, with only six hospitalized, two intubated and zero deaths. His treatment was precocious, before the disease worsened, repeating Raoult. Their numbers, compared to the death rate among infected Americans, were encouraging.
However, numbers like this, presented, are not reliable. It is an “anecdotal case”. It is a doctor speaking who treated patients. And in his case, at home.
Scientists explained that anecdotal cases are worthless. I agreed. The argument is a good one. After all, if the patient dies, it is another doctor who signs the death certificate.
It served a little for me, who was trying to believe, as a positive confirmation bias, that it worked.
For those who had the golden rule of science in mind, the randomized, controlled, double blind, the confirmation bias remained “not scientifically proven”, with good reason.
But it raised a question to me: would he lie about the dead for being a Trump fanatic, to help him?
It could be. The article addressed a strong religiosity of Zelenko, an item always related to far right-wing politicians, such as Trump.
Could it be that Didier Raoult was completely crazy, was destroying a brilliant career with a gigantic lie and that Zelenko went into the same hallucination?
Yes, it was a possibility.
It is not uncommon for men to do giant shit out of a passion, for example.
I needed, then, a confirmation with more credibility: a hospital applying this. But a situation in which the same doctors who prescribe the drugs sign death certificates if the patient dies.
I think people can actually make up stories of healing for fame or political fanaticism, but everything has a limit.
Falsifying death certificates gives jail in any minimally civilized country.
Piece 11: “chloroquine can be even more dangerous than the virus itself”
What started out as a self-medication alert soon became a big, menacing monster.
One of the channels that I usually follow on Brazilian YouTube is Pirula . I’ve known him for many years. Pirula is a scientist, paleontologist, and makes videos on various topics.
He “translates” science into a language accessible to everyone. His predilection is for nerdy subjects, like dinosaurs, but he has already made great contributions to the Brazilian political debate, such as when he dismantled the creationist theory, which always tries to invade the public debate.
Charismatic, he is one of the most influential scientific disseminators in South America. Each of his videos has over 100 thousand views.
One of his most prominent videos was when he decided to fight the government guru, Olavo de Carvalho, intellectual mentor of Jair Bolsonaro, who in yet another common day of mental disorder, said that Pepsi made sweeteners with aborted fetuses.
And Pirula, influenced by the media and following the thinking of the herd, produced a video “Chloroquine what we know“.
His opinions are a reflection of the entire Brazilian scientific class. It is sensationalist and with a level of study shamefully primary for anyone who proposes to explain something scientific.
However, listening to reports from people who take this medicine on a daily basis, I started a research. Nothing difficult for a drug that is almost 70 years old.
You, the reader, probably bombarded with this speech, will be surprised now:
“You can have an absurd loss of vision, maybe even blindness”, said Pirula in his video.
This study, published in Pubmed in 2019, details how 0.68% of people who take hydroxychloroquine for 5–7 years can develop blurred partial vision. Yes that’s right.
You need to take it for at least five years to have a 0.68 risk of blurred vision. And nobody was blind.
Want more? On the same theme of “blindness”? Come on.
This 2003 study says that retinal toxicity due to hydroxychloroquine was not seen in any of the 526 patients during the first 6 years of treatment.
Yes. Before six continuous years. No problem.
“Chloroquine can cause heart problems. It can cause heart failure. This has already been observed. It is rare, but it has already been observed”, said Pirula.
In this study published by WHO — World Health Organization, in 2017, it says for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, when used in normal doses (and duration) of treatment of malaria, similar to Didier Raoult protocol for COVID-19, there was never a case cardiac arrhythmia.
Never.
Want more?
There’s this 2013 study. He says that cardiac risk is an extremely rare condition that is correlated with older women (over 50 years) who have pre-existing heart problems, chronic rheumatoid inflammation and chronic kidney disease. And who have been taking hydroxychloroquine for over ten years.
Yes. You need to take it for more than 10 years, and already have heart problems.
Do you want to go completely crazy now? I help you.
This 2018 study reports that hydroxychloroquine reduces the chances of cardiovascular risks.
That’s right. It doesn’t hurt the heart. It’s the opposite. It does well.
However, COVID-19, by itself, poses risks to the heart. That’s what this study says. Therefore, hydroxychloroquine, instead of increasing cardiac risks, may actually be reducing risks.
Want more? I have.
There is growing evidence that COVID-19 causes fatal thrombovascular complications. Hydroxychloroquine is shown to be thromboprotective, reducing thrombosis by 68% in patients with lupus. Early treatment with the drug can prevent thrombosis in COVID-19. That’s what this 2010 study says.
But does not stop there. I have more.
This is a document from the CDC — Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a US agency. It is a guide.
He says the drug can be prescribed for adults and children of all ages. It can also be taken safely by pregnant women and breastfeeding women. And it can be prescribed, believe me, preventively.
Now you want to know something fun? I tell.
Hydroxychloroquine is 65 years old. 5 million doses are prescribed per year. The Wikipedia apparently discovered many new side effects, “side effects” went from 345 to 440 words. “Overdose” went from 33 to 201 words and “contraindications” went from 0 to 41 words.
Seeing these opinions of “scientists” who do not study, and reading the studies, I made a decision: I would continue to research the subject to keep up with the news. You can’t trust anyone.
Definitely, to say that “chloroquine can be more dangerous than the virus itself”, as Pirula said, is paranoia or amateur work.
Piece 12: Didier Raoult is a “quack”
Pirula, probably not quarantined in mid-March, seeing Anthony Fauci’s explanation of the gold standard of science, after reading the “For Better Science” stories and Didier’s profile in the New York Times, could only come up with one conclusion: he is a madman or charlatan.
He drew a parallel with another story. A famous case in Brazil: phosphoethanolamine. It was “the cancer pill”. Other scientific disseminators were in the same direction.
It was a interesting case. A few years ago, a chemistry professor claimed to have discovered a cure for cancer. Of all kinds. This became a national discussion. Unicamp, a prestigious Brazilian university, released an editorial saying it should be a police case.
It is a coincidence to reinforce the negative confirmation bias. The obscure Bolsonaro, who spent 28 years as a federal deputy defending the dictatorship, had only two projects approved in his null career as a deputy, one of which was precisely the phosphoethanolamine.
The question I ask you, reader: is it fair to compare Didier Raout, with 3000 articles in Pubmed, inventor of several other treatments already established, director of an institute with eight hundred subordinates, awarded among his peers and by the President of the Republic of France, with an obscure chemistry professor who claimed to have found a cure for cancer?
No. It is not an honest comparison.
“Remdesivir has already been tested in vitro, against the first SARS, back in 2002, 03, and has given very promising results, and now this year it has already been tested at least once in vitro”, said Pirula in his video, about other treatment options for COVID-19.
Isn’t it curious that he, and other scientists, classified a clinical trial with promising results as quackery and, soon after, put all hope in a drug with only in-vitro tests?
Piece 13: Didier Raoult enters the game and starts to draw cards
April 1
Taxed as a sham, crazy, and with a flood of news of deadly side effects, Professor Didier Raoult did what I expected him to do: he started to answer.
If he were a fake or if his study was a blunder, he would probably start to be quiet. He would leave the scene in disguise.
One of the first things he did was to publish, at his institute, a safety protocol, which involved an electrocardiogram, to apply his treatment. It was done by another professor and researcher.
He wasn’t so crazy, after all, other important scientists were supporting him, I thought to myself.
Piece 14: Didier Raoult wins strong supporters in the scientific community
April 2nd
“We are witnessing an imaginary multiplication in the number of side effects in the past eight days”, said Christian Perrone, head of the infectious disease department at Raymond Poincaré de Garches hospital, in France.
Specialist in Lyme disease, Perrone was chairman of the commission specialized in communicable diseases of the Superior Council of Public Health of France.
“Care should be taken, especially in people with heart problems and, more specifically, in the elderly who take several medications simultaneously. This treatment should be taken under medical supervision, respecting the dose. As for retinal problems, they can only occur after taking very large doses for several years”, he said.
Perrone concluded his interview with something I suspected might be taking place: “The shooting that Didier Raoult received is also linked to egos fights”, he said.
Piece 15: more important people, like a former French health minister, decide to support the treatment. Didier is definitely not a freak or a fake.
April 7th
At Le Figaro, the former scientific director of the National Cancer Institute, the former president of the French National Health Authority and the former general director of the National Medicines Safety Agency, recommended applying the treatment developed by Professor Didier Raoult as soon as the first symptoms of coronavirus appear.
Piece 16: the President of France, Emanuel Macron, visits the hospital in Marseille
April 10
That’s when I discovered that it is not just any research center. They performed tests on 4,000 samples a day, across France, to track the pandemic. With these figures, it was perhaps the best prepared research center in the country to deal with the pandemic.
And one more important detail. There they treated patients.
Piece 17: the first study confirms hydroxychloroquine
April 10
It was from China. 62 patients were treated at Renmin Hospital in Wuhan. The treatment was 5 days with hydroxychloroquine (400 mg) and without azithromycin.
It was a randomized study. The four patients who progressed to severe pneumonia were in the control group.
Being a controlled, randomized study, coming from communist China, I concluded that it was the end of the drug’s politicization. It would no longer be a flag of the far-right. And I thought that the criticisms for “carelessness”, would now be resolved, because this is randomized.
But it didn’t come out in the mainstream media. I was wrong.
Piece 18: Didier Raout decides to hit the stick on the table
11th of April
The tension grew, the narrative of “quack” did not reduce, neither in the mainstream media, nor among scientists, and Professor Didier Raout took an important step to explain to the world that his treatment worked.
He started to publish, on his institute’s website, the daily count of patients treated with his combination of drugs and how many died.
There was an observation: they were patients who did not arrive serious enough and that the doctors were able to apply the medications for at least three days.
Since the beginning, the dead have always remained in approximately 0.5% of the treaties.
Publishing daily was an important attitude to guarantee the veracity of the data. With that, Didier eliminated suspicions of being a “fraudster” the label stuck on it globally.
It has an exaggeratedly simple logic, but in the midst of this widespread madness, I find myself in need of explaining, in detail, as if I were talking to mad children, not adults, scientists and doctors.
Follow the analysis with me.
With these great numbers in the air, it was enough to wait 15 days and we would have a confirmation if the treatment worked or not.
The options are as follows: either we would have a rebellion of subordinates with massive layoffs, or they would all be completely delusional, following a crazy leader, and would all be arrested soon.
People even take the risk of being arrested when there is a lot of money involved. But hydroxychloroquine is a generic drug, which costs less than $ 10 per patient, in addition to being manufactured by hundreds of laboratories worldwide, including in Africa. There is no such thing as a bribery center for scientists. You can’t match everyone.
Think with me.
Just put yourself in the position of a doctor working at IHU-Marseille:
I am a doctor, I work with Didier, I will change death certificates, which is a crime in any minimally civilized country, at the risk of being arrested, losing my medical degree, just so that my boss appears on magazine covers? No, fuck!
Changing a microscope image in photoshop is one thing, pretending that no people died in your hospital, altering death certificates or creating an underground cemetery to spawn corpses, making good numbers, is another thing.
It is only possible to believe that these numbers are false if you can imagine this possible dialogue, between two doctors in Marseille, as credible:
– What did he die of?
– Run over by a bus.
– And this one?
– Bicycle accident. He was without a helmet.
– Good idea. And this other one?
– Slipped in the bathroom. Write there.
– What about those other five?
– Disappear with them, otherwise the people will start to suspect.
There’s no logic.
Piece 19: another success story, but the politicization of the medicine has increased
April 10
Robin Armstrong, medical director of an asylum in Texas, USA, when finding that a large part of the inmates were contaminated with the coronavirus, prescribed hydroxychloroquine for his patients.
In the title of the NPR story, which covered the case, the application was “disconcerting”.
Robin said the drugs were safe. “Contrary to Armstrong’s claim that hydroxychloroquine has virtually no side effects, the drug is known to have serious negative health impacts”, the text warned.
Now for a comparison:
Washington (Kirkland) nursing home: no hydroxychloroquine, 35 deaths in 120 residents.
Texas nursing home: hydroxychloroquine treatment, 1 death in 135 residents.
Among patients and staff, Robin found 87 positive cases. Among the elderly, 38 were positive. One death is 2.6%.
The average fatality rate among those infected in nursing homes in the USA is 27%.
Politicizing the issue, they soon discovered that the doctor had ties to Trump’s Republican party.
The low mortality rate did not please. On a website that aims to discuss ethics in medical research, they asked if Robin Armstrong was committing an abuse of human rights. In the main newspaper in Houston, the state capital, an editorial accused the doctor of crossing the ethical line.
Doctors in Kikland did not cross the ethical line or abuse human rights. With 35 deaths, they were impeccable in good medicine. Robin Armstrong, reducing deaths by 90%, no. He did everything wrong.
“This is really disconcerting” said medicinal chemist Katherine Seley-Radtke, of applying the drugs.
US officials soon brought the matter to justice. They called for a ban on “medical experiments” with the elderly, to keep the death rate at 27%.
And a coincidence: Seley-Radke, president-elect of the International Society for Antiviral Research, was once a consultant to Gilead.
I also find it disconcerting.
Piece 20: a study came out that I was eager to see, the case of Prevent Senior, in São Paulo
April 18
A few days after the announcement of Didier Raoult’s study, Prevent Senior, a health insurance provider in São Paulo, announced that it already had the drugs and would apply the Marseille protocol to its patients.
They also announced that they would produce a scientific article to disseminate the results.
I was excited to know. It would be the ideal place to have confirmation. Unlike Zelenko, in New York, and Robin Armstrong in Texas, who could be lying out of political passion, without too many consequences, there would not be an anecdotal case, after all, with patients dying, they would have to sign the death certificates themselves.
I had never heard of Prevent. I knew exactly during the pandemic, from the announcement of the treatment and from criticism from Mandetta, the Minister of Health at the time.
At a certain point, at the beginning of COVID-19 in Brazil, Prevent Senior concentrated 60% of deaths in São Paulo, due to its health plan focusing on the elderly, over 60 years old, the main group of disease risk.
And it is a giant company. They have a portfolio of 470 thousand customers. It is 25% of the elderly in São Paulo. They are the owners of several hospitals and had become a case in universities around the world for being able to make a health plan cheaper than conventional ones, precisely for the elderly.
The secret, they say, is the use of technology, tele-attendance and speed for exams and medical procedures, not letting customers get serious, and costly, to start the treatments.
One of the first reports from there said that the operator’s owners’ own mother had received the treatment, generating confidence and frightening the speech of fatal side effects.
Before publishing, the doctors were already giving interviews, where they could not talk about the results, but the smile on their faces, and the spirits, were undeniable.
When it came out, the study had this graph:
The end result was how many of the patients needed to be admitted and how many did not.
For patients who gave the drugs less than 7 days after the first symptoms, only 1.17% needed to be hospitalized. For those who were medicated after a week of symptoms 3.2%, and for those who did not want to receive treatment, 5.5% needed to be hospitalized. Very good proof of the effectiveness of the treatment.
At the time, there was already mass collective hysteria about the fatal dangers of hydroxychloroquine, and part of the clients, fearful, did not accept the medication. They became a control group.
They had an interesting method. As there were not many tests in Brazil, neither in the public nor in the private network, and due to the low reliability in relation to false negatives, which occur in 33% of the cases, according to the scientists, the diagnosis was made by clinical analysis. A good part due to lung exams and the other part only due to symptoms.
Prudent, to avoid contamination of more people, many clinical examinations were by videoconference. Motorcycle courier services delivered medications to patients’ homes.
Piece 21: Criticism of the Prevent Senior study is a conspiracy theory
Natalia Pasternak, a scientist who has gained notoriety and fame during the pandemic, with several interviews with the largest media in Brazil, and Carlos Orsi, an experienced journalist in the science field, with passages in major newsrooms, such as that of the newspaper O Estado de S Paulo, published an opinion article on the website of the Instituto Questão de Ciência, an entity with a noble objective: the defense of the use of scientific evidence in public policies.
The article entitled “A class on how not to test a drug” went viral on the internet. In addition to criticizing the lack of coronavirus testing in patients, when Brazil had very few virus detection tests, and repeating Anthony Fauci’s class on randomized, controlled, double-blind, peer-reviewed and published in major scientific journals, The authors followed, after talking about the dangers of medicines, to a surprising conclusion: “It seems to have been a disastrous marketing operation”, they wrote, before giving several other examples of marketing influencing scientific research. The article said that nothing was proven.
Soon after, in one of the most influential newspapers in the country, the headline announced about the study: “Government sees evidence of fraud“. Interested, I ran to read. “Did the guys really go crazy and make up numbers?”, I thought to myself.
Fraud? I was wondering if people died or not died and they were bureaucratic questions: time to start and finish the research, authorizations, papers and stamps. Soon after, the study was suspended in the ethics committee for the same reasons.
Come on. Think with me.
And again, in an extremely basic and illustrative logic.
Promote a “miracle cure” by marketing?
For the medicine not to be working and this study to be just a marketing plan, it needs to produce a conspiracy theory to leave Olavo de Carvalho, the guru, feeling at a children’s buffet.
We need to find credible a Prevent Senior director, arriving at a meeting, and saying:
– I had an idea. We will pretend that no people die in our hospitals to promote a false cure for marketing.
– Interesting, and how will this happen?
– I bought a backhoe and we’re going to make a clandestine cemetery behind the hospital. With about 1000 corpses gone, we make an account that few people die here, and that we have drugs that work.
– What a great idea, boss. I’m in!
– Good, isn’t it? If everything goes well, we will increase our revenue a little. But folks, this can’t leak at all, because otherwise, in addition to us losing all of our fortune and our $ 100 million profit a year, we will all go to jail.
– I will go there to arrange with doctors, nurses, attendants and cleaning staff. Sure everyone is up for it.
In the health operator, 60% of the people in the greater São Paulo died, at the beginning of the pandemic, between March and April. And no scientist has said it has peaked to this day.
The normal, within the tragedy, in a place that only serves old people, was to have a motorcade of hearses or trucks at the door. Everyone remembers the famous photo in Italy, which went viral worldwide.
With this image, which everyone has seen, you don’t have to make crazy marketing plans involving hiding corpses. For scenes like this, you already have a speech on the tip of your tongue: “Unfortunately, we suffered the same tragedy that occurred in Italy, our patients are in the group most at risk”. Ready. The problem is solved.
And more: for the theory, that it is just a marketing plan, to make sense, you would need to agree with the families of the dead to keep quiet, you need to buy the press so they don’t publish, you need to prohibit employees from taking photos, you need to steal the cameras of photographers on the streets near the hospitals, in addition to putting together a good plan to assassinate doctors who possibly resign for fear of being arrested, among several other repression actions. A level of control is needed that would make Kim Jong-un so red with envy.
Does not make sense.
Piece 22: two simultaneous Jim Jones do not fit the puzzle
This guy in the picture is Jim Jones. He created and was the leader of a sect and had fanatical followers. Disturbed, in November 1978, he induced 900 people to collective suicide in Jonestown, a city he created in Guyana to shelter his followers, who left their lives behind, to follow him.
I even accept the official narrative that Didier Raoult is a new Jim Jones in Marseille and is leading 800 subordinates, of religious allegiance, to collective suicide, where everyone takes the risk of being arrested, losing their medical degrees, and ending their lives in French prisons, doing everything to defend their charismatic leader.
I also accept the narrative that both Zelenko and Robin Armstrong have been lying about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine because they are right-wing fascist fanatics, supporters of Donald Trump.
I also accept that the second paper, coming from China, out of corporatism, Chinese doctors rushed to defend the reputation of a French doctor.
But when they try to tell me that a second Jim Jones emerged simultaneously in São Paulo, with the same “miracle cure”, but without having been the inventor of the treatment, and therefore without being emotionally attached to it, taking hundreds more doctors and employees, in a company that makes billions, not a university that was not made to make a profit, to their respective suicides, everything went beyond any reasonable limit.
Piece 23: the perverted panda bears and scientific fundamentalism
This animal in the photo is a panda bear. They all have a sad expression. They have been on the list of endangered animals for quite some time. In addition, they are famous for a terrifying detail, scientific consensus for a long time: they rarely have sex.
That’s right. Yes, science has to study panda bears, their customs, and protect them, even if it involves invading their respective privacies, revealing to the world, on various TV programs, their terrible reputation as lovers.
Now let’s imagine a hypothetical situation: a scientist arrives and publishes a pre-print paper, saying that he has a horny panda bear, and that every Saturday that bear takes a girlfriend home and spends the whole night having sex. According to this scientist, they only sleep after dawn and wake up, always exhausted, after noon.
“You need to send me more evidence about your claim. You need to verify that they have sex”, says the reviewer, before publishing. That’s right. Science needs proof. All procedures must be followed. You can’t believe it like that, directly.
So a National Geographic reporter is sent to film, in secret, the alleged animal porn.
However, if it is later proved that the researcher lied when he said that his panda bear is a pervert, there is no problem. In the review, you eliminate his work, don’t publish, and destroy your reputation as a panda scientist.
The point is that this scientist is not going to be arrested for this lie.
In the case of medical treatments, where the patient dies or does not die, the review is not by peers. It is a three-level review and much more demanding: it starts with the police investigator, then with the prosecutor, and the last review is that of the judge of law, whether or not he issues a preventive detention order.
If in three months they did not discover a clandestine cemetery with bones of 1000 old people in São Paulo, nor another one in Marseille with 400 bodies.
If there was no rebellion of doctors in São Paulo, nor another in Marseille.
If they did not discover a gang of tampering with death certificates at Prevent Senior or Didier’s hospital, and no one is under arrest, the conclusion is different: the medicine worked.
There are no more options. Or do we have to conclude that, in conspiracy theory, that both the São Paulo and Marseille judicial authorities were purchased by hydroxychloroquine manufacturers? Only a troubled mind can think that.
I, who think more simply, concluded everything differently: what happened with Zelenko, with Robin, in China and at Prevent Senior, were scientific evidences.
It is that old science class I had when I was a child: when you reproduce an experiment and have the same result, you have scientific proof.
Piece 24: how today’s scientists would react to Yuri Gagarin
“The Earth is blue,” said Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961. The Soviet cosmonaut was the first man in outer space. A formidable scientific evolution.
The phrase became famous. At the time, it appeared in all newspapers, TV and radio programs.
“How nice, the earth is blue”, comments a layman. “We cannot affirm this. It is not scientifically proven that the earth is blue”, answers some scientist or scientific promoter.
“Why not?” Asks the average person. “It’s just that you lay people don’t understand the scientific method. Until we do a complete color blindness test in Gagarin, controlled, randomized, double blind, and then peer-reviewed and published in an impact scientific journal, we cannot conclude that it is scientifically proven. In addition, it can be a lie. Many people lie”, says the scientist.
“But man, the probability of him lying in the color of the earth, or being colorblind, is minuscule, as is the possibility that both Didier Raoult and Prevent Senior are hiding corpses”, says the layman.
“To say that it is blue is to be a denialist of science. It is to believe for the will to believe. The earth can be red, blue or pink. The only way to have scientific proof is to do a controlled, randomized, double blind test, in each of Gagarin’s eyes, and that takes about a year. Even, the newspapers could never have published this phrase, confusing all lay people”, explains the scientist again.
A year later, the color blindness test was published in a scientific magazine: “Look, it really came out published, the earth really is blue. He had no reason to be lying and he really wasn’t”.
Piece 25: the first negative study is published, making noise, but the study had serious problems.
April 21
I already had my conclusion: the probability of it not being working would be negligible. Now it was enough to follow how the story developed.
With the discourse that the drug is extremely dangerous massified, they started to apply hydroxychloroquine only in extremely severe patients, with the disease well advanced.
This was the case with the study of veterans in the USA. There was a higher death rate among those who received the medication.
While the study of China, which recommended its use, did not come out in the mainstream media, it came out with a fuss.
“Hydroxychloroquine is not a drug to be tried on patients at this time”, said former Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Dr. David Shulkin.
“Fraudulent study”, reacted Didier Raout on his twitter. “The control group was treated with azithromycin. Patients with lymphopenia nearly dying were treated with hydroxychloroquine”, he said.
On the same day, the Marseille Institute released a technical analysis of the veterans’ study and responded to the researcher. Criticisms and observations of the serious problems of the research did not appear either in the media or in the specialized media.
Piece 26: two studies on the same day. A positive and a negative. Only the negative came out in the media.
April 24th
The first study was that of Fiocruz. Made in Manaus, it was for critically ill patients. Very sick at the beginning of treatments: 43% in the ICU and 88.9% in respiratory therapy before treatment. And only with chloroquine, the most toxic version, not hydroxychloroquine.
There were two groups. The first, with high dosage. 1200mg per day, double the amount used in the original French protocol. This group had 39% mortality.
In the second group, 600mg per day. This had a low mortality of 15%, which is a good number for critically ill patients, already with advanced pneumonia.
“They suggest that higher doses of chloroquine should not be recommended for the treatment of severe COVID-19” was the conclusion.
I kept my focus. I wanted to know about equal doses of Marseille, in patients before they get serious, and with azithromycin. The results of the study were published in all Brazilian and US media. Commentators remained focused only on those who died of the heart in the high dose arm.
The second study came from Iran. Done by leading scientists in the country, the study concluded that hydroxychloroquine was good for patients. It didn’t come out in the media.
Soon afterwards, to increase the negative confirmation bias of Brazilian scientists, as something that should not even be studied, bolsonaristas threatened the scientists of Fiocriz with death, due to the high doses in one of the arms of the study.
Piece 27: a pre-print about Gilead’s Remdesivir, leaked. It was useless.
April 26
The drug did not reduce deaths. With the large pharmaceutical industry with no lucrative alternatives to offer, I concluded that attacks on hydroxychloroquine would soon cease.
Three days later, on the cover of Veja, the most influential Brazilian magazine, Remdesivir was the star: “a new hope”.
“Slow journalists”, I thought to myself.
On the same day that the magazine was published, in the United States, Anthony Fauci, the White House consultant, was excited. “Remdesivir shows promising results for the coronavirus, says Fauci“.
Not reducing the number of deaths, in Fauci’s announcement, turned out to be promising.
What was the result celebrated? Whoever was going to die, would die normally, but whoever stopped dying, instead of recovering in 15 days, recovered in 11 days.
That is a failure.
Argumentative juggling arrives, at a pace of good news, in the mainstream media. “Antiviral remdesivir accelerates recovery of patients with Covid-19, says US agency“. This was the headline of the most influential Brazilian newspaper, Folha de São Paulo.
On April 30, James Todaro, a US physician, on his Twitter, makes a note: “The NIH Panel on COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines is made up of 50 researchers and doctors. This panel will decide on treatment recommendations. for Remdesivir. Almost 20% of them are employed or have investments in Gilead”.
The next day, the drug was approved. It has become the standard of care in the USA.
“Gilead receives $ 37 million to develop and test Remdesivir. FDA approves Remdesivir. Cost per patient: $ 1000. Manufacturing cost $ 10”, comments James on his twitter.
Soon after, on a website specializing in pharmaceutical discussions, experts said the fair price, per patient, should be $ 4,460.
And on a major US policy website, criticism of the US president’s downturn. “The coronavirus gets a promising drug. The Trump world is not buying“.
Piece 28: seeing the party with Remdesivir, Didier Raoult calls Anthony Fauci to the boxing ring
Didier suggests that during the course of the study, the scientists, surprised, found that Remdesivir did not prevent deaths. The goal changed to “speed of recovery” in those who would no longer die.
Piece 29: in the first half of May, several encouraging studies came out, in sequence
In the first half of May, several studies on hydroxychloroquine were published. They always followed the same procedure. Those with positive results, most of them, were restricted to scientific forums. The negatives came out in the mainstream media. About the negatives, no criticism was made by journalists in the scientific field.
And of the positives, one caught my attention. It was from China, in critically ill patients. In the control group, without treatment, 45% of people died, in the treatment group, 18%.
Similar to Fiocruz’s low-dose arm number, which was 15%. However, with the same percentage, Chinese scientists recommended the use.
Piece 30: reinforcements to the confirmation bias of scientists
With this domination of the mass media with only negative studies, and without criticism of these studies, as if they were impeccable, Trump stopped promoting the drug.
Soon he came up with a brilliant idea: he said that people should inject disinfectants to cure the coronavirus.
As definitive proof that part of Trump’s voters are just as stupid as Bolsonaro’s voters, after Trump’s declaration, New York had an increase in cases of disinfectant poisoning.
At the same time, a Bolsonaro, the “much more stupid than Trump“, according to the Economist, was trying to convince the scientific class to adopt the drug. How?
With the contradictions of the studies? No. Bolsonaro decided to say that the WHO encourages the masturbation and homosexuality of children.
And it continued to promote public agglomerations, facing the only consensus of all scientists around the world.
In addition, he had a brilliant idea: he wanted to change, by decree, the label of hydroxychloroquine.
Soon afterwards, he dismissed Mandetta, health minister, who did not want to apply the protocol. And then he fired another, for the same reason.
And the government continued to attack science from all sides, as when the Minister of the Environment extinguished three bases of the Tamar project, for the preservation of turtles.
And his stupid supporters, in addition to setting up camps for self-medication, started cursing doctors who recommended social isolation.
Piece 31: Bolsonarist scientists defend, but no one but their bubble hears them
Being a scientist and conservative is already a contradiction in itself. Being a scientist, conservative and Bolsonarist, is something completely crazy.
They, until with important arguments, decided to publish an “ Open Letter to the President of the Republic“.
Extremely intelligent and smart, they chose the perfect vehicle for the publication of the letter: the website of the flat earth guru. This site is known for publishing fake news and hate speech. It is one of Sleeping Giants ‘ biggest targets because of that.
Another spokesperson for treatment in the country was Nise Yamaguchi. Doctor at one of the most important hospitals in Latin America. A Bolsonaro fan, in one of his interviews, in addition to defending the treatments, made comments without understanding anything, on a theme always present for them: Nazism. She was fired.
On these scientists’ facebook and twitter pages, posts about hydroxychloroquine share space with paranoid ideas of communist infiltration in universities, cultural Marxism and concerned comments about the Berlin wall.
Nobody, of course, takes these people seriously.
Piece 32: the two most prestigious medical journals in the world publish fake studies against the medicine
In the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, fraudulent studies on hydroxychloroquine have been published.
This led WHO to stop its research. All reported with worldwide repercussion. It motivated doctors and governments around the world to stop prescribing drugs, believing that they would have more risks than benefits.
On the day of publication of the study on the Lancet, with 96 thousand patients, Didier Raoult, already contested on his twitter. “Incorporation of falsified data”, he exclaimed. Experienced, he saw inconsistencies right away. He got it right.
For the first time, the inconsistencies of studies against treatment have come out in the mainstream media. The data was false. Patients and hospitals that did not exist. After a wide reaction from scientists from different places, the study was soon withdrawn.
The same thing happened with a New England study. I was also withdrawn.
And a coincidence: most studies that were against use, came from hospital databases. “The magic of the database?” Asked Didier Raoult in another post.
For those who believe in coincidences, the studies, even in the two most respected magazines, matched exactly the discourse on the “dangers” of medicines in the mainstream media.
Piece 33: Yale teacher, without emotional involvement with results, recommends early use
May, 27
Yale University’s award-winning professor of epidemiology, Harvey Risch, performed a technical analysis of clinical studies, not databases, and concluded that the drug works and should be applied early.
His article, published in the world’s leading epidemiology journal, is especially important, because one of the charges is bias in studies. Researchers, treating patients, could seek results to publish their studies and become famous.
And Professor Harvey didn’t treat any patient or conduct any research, he just did a technical analysis.
Piece 34: more than 50 studies. The vast majority report positive results, but it is not “scientifically proven” for some reason.
On the day I write, July 15th. We have 53 searches. 32 peer-reviewed. 76% of them are positive. Here, in this link, it is possible to have access to all.
For an ineffective drug, hydroxychloroquine is lucky. Maybe I should play the lottery.
Piece 35: the safety of medications in the treatment of COVID-19
Some studies have focused only on the safety of medications. With or without azithromycin.
This study published in the American Heart Association, explains that it is an exaggeration. There were 201 patients. No one died. “Although the use of these drugs has resulted in the prolongation of the QT interval, doctors rarely needed to stop treatment”, they concluded.
This other , with 105 patients and an average age of 67 years, the researchers also minimized the risks. “They did not result in fatal arrhythmias. Our findings suggest that any harm is unlikely to outweigh the potential benefits of treatment”, they concluded.
Piece 36: conspiracy theory in favor of hydroxychloroquine is impossible
Hydroxychloroquine is a 65-year-old patent-free drug manufactured in hundreds of laboratories worldwide.
In Brazil, for example, we have public laboratories producing, such as Farmanguinhos and the Army, in addition to several other private ones.
It is a cheap medicine. It costs less than $ 10 per patient to treat COVID-19.
It is impossible to have a global conspiracy between laboratories and scientists from more than 50 studies to promote this medicine.
Because it is impossible to have a central tuition fee to corrupt scientists so that they produce scientific studies favorable to this medicine. So much for the low value of the tuition fees, after all, the profit is low, so much for this global coordination with no chance of working.
That is. The studies on cheap and patent-free drugs are the most reliable that exist.
On the other hand, Philippe Douste-Blazy, a cardiologist, a former French Minister of Health and a former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, recently revealed that at a closed-door meeting at Chattam House in 2020, both Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine editors, stated their concerns about the criminal pressures of the major pharmaceutical industry in their publications. Watch on youtube.
Piece 37: everywhere the drug is applied, the same result: low deaths among those infected
Here I will select some countries and regions that have adopted drug treatment since the beginning of the pandemic. There, you can check the percentage of deaths among those infected.
In all the graphics I will generate, and I will also leave the links for you to access, you will see a comparison with Germany and the European Union. Germany is taken as an example in the fight against COVID-19 and, due to rigid lockdowns, it never filled its hospital system.
In these graphs, Germany functions as a “control group”, because there is no news from there that they are using these drugs.
There are more countries that use it, but without confirmation by news from reliable sources.
Piece 38: Malaysia
“It has been used to treat patients with Covid-19 since the first wave of the outbreak in Malaysia and has shown its effectiveness, says general director of health, Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah”.
On July 17, 8,755 cases, 122 deaths.
Graph generated on July 17th. For the updated one, click here .
Piece 39: Russia
“Russian doctors will start treating all patients with pneumonia for the new coronavirus without waiting for test results to confirm the diagnosis, said the country’s Health Minister, Mikhail Murashko“.
Confirmation here.
Curiosity: The New York Times newspaper accused Russia of underreporting deaths. Russia asked for a retraction of the newspaper.
One more curiosity: they refused to stop using , even under pressure. “According to the results of monitoring the safety of hydroxychloroquine drugs during the Covid-19 pandemic in the Russian Federation, there were no fatal results associated with rhythm disturbance in patients with HCQ”, said the ministry.
On July 17, 759,203 cases, 12,123 deaths.
Graph generated on July 17th. For the updated one, click here.
Piece 40: Turkey
“Many countries prescribe this drug to intubated patients“, said Koca. “However, our scientific advice has suggested that the drug is really beneficial in the early stages to prevent the virus from spreading in the body”.
Confirmation here.
On July 17, 217,799 cases, 5,458 deaths
Graph generated on July 17th. For the updated one, click here.
Piece 41: United Arab Emirates
Al Hosani, official health sector spokesman for the UAE. “Hydroxychloroquine and other antiviral drugs“.
Confirmation here.
On July 17, 56,422 cases, 337 deaths.
Graph generated on July 17th. For the updated one, click here.
Piece 42: South Dakota, USA.
Two news confirms. That South Dakota auditioned across the state. And that, stubborn and uncompromising, they continued using the drugs, even after FDA warnings.
On July 17, 7,789 cases, 116 deaths. 1.48%
Updated link here .
Piece 43: New Brunswick, a province in Canada
New Brunswick becomes Canada’s first province to “organize” and “authorize” the use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of certain patients with COVID-19.
The confirmation is here.
On July 17, 168 cases, 2 deaths. It gives 1.19%. While in the whole of Canada, it is 8.08%.
Updated link here.
Piece 44: Costa Rica
They apply since they made a conference call with Chinese. They taught.
Curiosity: the BBC did a story about the excellent numbers. They said it was a solid health care system, and did not mention the medication.
The question remains: 90% more solid and efficient than Germany? The funny thing is that this solid system, in other health numbers, such as infant mortality, is not so superior.
On July 17, 9,969 cases, 47 deaths.
Graph generated on July 17th. For the updated one, click here.
Piece 45: Morocco
“Zemmouri believes that 78% of coronavirus-related deaths in Europe could have been prevented if European states reflected Morocco’s chloroquine strategy”, said the country’s leading scientist.
And they continued to use it, even with alerts.
On July 17, 16,726 cases, 264 deaths.
Graph generated on July 17th. For the updated one, click here.
Piece 46: India
It is one of the countries that most studies with the drug, like this and this.
And contrary to what the WHO recommended, they expanded the use.
On July 17, 1,040,457 cases, 26,285 deaths.
Graph generated on July 17th. For the updated one, click here.
Piece 47: Kazakhstan
The country’s main doctor informed why she would continue using it , even with the WHO alerts.
On July 17, 66,895 cases, 375 deaths.
Graph generated on July 17th. For the updated one, click here.
Piece 48: looking at this graph and not seeing, has a name: scientific negationism
Graph generated on July 17th. For the updated one, click here.
Looking at all these results, much better than Germany, which is an example to the world, in all aspects related to public health, and far superior to the European Union, and concludes that it is just a coincidence, has a name: scientific negationism.
Science explains: when you reproduce an experiment, and it generates the same results, it means that you have… scientific proof.
Piece 49: the case of Switzerland and the suspension of the drug
At the end of May, when Lancet published the fraudulent study, several countries decided to cancel the authorization for use. Switzerland was one of them. It was banned on May 27. The country had a low daily death toll.
Between May 28 and June 7, only two people across the country died of COVID-19.
From June 8 to 23, Switzerland had 35 deaths.
The suspension did not last long. Switzerland has again authorized the use by doctors.
After June 23, deaths returned to a low level. In the next 15 days, Switzerland had only 7 deaths. The graph can be seen here on the Worldometers website.
The full report and this second graphic can be read here, on the France Soir website .
Piece 50: all you need to say are coincidences to maintain the narrative that the medicine does not work
1 — You need to conclude that the results by India, Russia, Turkey, Malaysia, Cota Rica, United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan, Morocco, South Dakota and New Brunswick, exactly the places that announced the use of the drug and subsequently have low fatality rate, represent only a coincidence or work of chance.
2 — You need to conclude that with the suspension of hydroxychloroquine in Switzerland, for a few days, and the increase in deaths to follow, and then the reduction again, represent just a coincidence or work of chance.
3 — You must conclude that, by coincidence or by chance, fraudulent studies were published precisely in the two most important medical journals in the world, Lancet and New England, fitting like a glove in the official narrative of the mainstream media about the “dangers” of the medicine.
4 — You need to conclude that the BBC reporters who made stories about the excellent results presented by Costa Rica and India , wrote everything, and by coincidence or by chance, they just forgot to ask which medicines were used in their respective countries.
5 — It must be concluded that by coincidence or by chance, both São Paulo police, in the case of Prevent Senior, and Marseille police, where the hospital where Didier Raout is director is located, as well as their respective presses, even months later , have not yet discovered gangs that falsify death certificates or conceal bodies.
6 — It must be concluded that almost 80% of the studies are positive, among the approximately 60 already done on hydroxychloroquine, are also coincidences.
7 — Needless to say that scientists responsible for the famous study of veterans, today being sponsored by Gilead, as this twitter shows, represents just a coincidence.
Piece 51: the ranking and logic that scientists do not know how to take into account
Bolsonaro tried, in one of his dictatorial attitudes, to stop publishing numbers of deaths from the Coronavirus in Brazil.
It didn’t even last 24 hours. A press consortium started to count.
According to the Reporters Without Borders Ranking, Brazil is number 107 in the world in terms of press freedom.
Costa Rica is the seventh. Was he underreporting for months without the press finding out? Malaysia is 101.
Imagine that you are a leader of a country and you did everything wrong when dealing with the pandemic. You have many corpses in your account. Soon you can find a way to underreport deaths without the press finding out.
Would you put your mortality rate much better than Germany’s? Do you want to go unnoticed or call your people an idiot and end your life hanging like Mussolini?
As this leader, I would mourn the dead, say that the coronavirus is a disaster for the country, create a death rate similar to that of Germany, pay homage, distribute medals to the country’s main doctors for reaching these numbers, and he would accuse the opposition of not believing in the potential of medicine and scientists in the country, by predicting a disaster that did not occur.
And so I would be carried out in the arms of the people.
Piece 52: Brazilian scientists are colonized mentally and prejudiced
India launches satellites, has already launched a spacecraft to Mars.
Russia was alone, for more than 10 years, supplying the International Space Station, taking and bringing astronauts from there, after the failure of the Space Shuttle project, with fatal accidents in 40% of the spacecraft built.
China constantly puts astronauts in orbit safely. The three countries have nuclear bombs.
Prominent scientists in India are in favor of using hydroxychloroquine. India is even one of the leaders in the research of the medicine.
The China taught Costa Rica to use. The Russians said fuck it when the WHO told them to stop using hydroxychloroquine.
But the Indians are all ugly, dark in color, dressed in a strange way and a good part of the country lives in slums. The Chinese are hungry and make soups with bats. And the Russians are constantly drunk on vodka. At least this is the stereotype created for idiots.
Meanwhile, the medical / scientific class in Brazil, a country that does not launch satellites or have an atomic bomb, is almost entirely white in a country that 50% is of African descent.
They are of upper class or upper middle class and are dazzled by the USA. It only has eyes for North America. They disdain China, Russia and India.
This class has, as a goal of victory in life, the participation of congresses or a study season in the USA. And if there is time, of course, take the opportunity to stop by Disney, so as not to miss the trip. All published, of course, in their respective instagrams.
They think US science and scientists are unsurpassed, even if the science there, to this day, very advanced, has not been able to define whether George Floyd died suffocated with the policeman’s knee, or if he had a heart attack or overdose at that moment.
With more than 80% of them voting for Bolsonaro, due to fascist and classist bias, today they have already seen that the president-elect is not “clean” and put themselves as sorry, while raising the flag of science to feel differentiated.
On their facebooks and twitters, they are at war with hydroxychloroquine. They want to be the same as North Americans. Share, as definitive proof of hydroxychloroquine not working, a study published in the holy grail of science, the New England Journal of Medicine, deficient in tests, while ignoring similar but with tests, made in India, but published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research.
Piece 53: group psychology and the quality seal
It’s simple. You doctor, professor of medicine, biologist, scientist or scientific disseminator, take the official narrative that there is no scientific evidence, do not analyze the numbers, studies and data, and stick yourself a better professional stamp than the others. Explain that doctors who prescribe this drug do not follow “evidence-based medicine”.
If someone disagrees with you, don’t forget to try to affix the “negationist” stamp to that person, or try to call him “chloroquiner”. You can also call it irrational, even though almost 80% of the clinical trials are in favor. Or you can call them picks.
Piece 54: because it is ridiculous to talk about randomized, double blind, peer-reviewed…
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail,” Abraham Maslow
The main function of scientists and journalists who write about science in Brazil, since the beginning of the pandemic, is to explain Fauci’s class on a daily basis: what is the “gold standard” of drug tests: randomized, double blind, revised by peers and publication in the “impact magazine”. The whole world already knows this.
Technical explanations for the general public always occur at major events. When Gol’s Boeing 737 crashed into another plane in 2006 over the Amazon rainforest, killing all occupants of the aircraft, the entire country understood what a transponder and a TCAS was.
The explanation of the RTC (Randomized controled trial) today is usually accompanied by a complaint of having to “explain the basics again”. Some even dare to ask scientists around the world to stop publishing observational studies on hydroxychloroquine.
However. It is ridiculous to ask, just in a pandemic, for level A of evidence. (Several RTC studies).
If we ask for it, 89% of the drugs used in cardiology, which do not have evidence A, should also be banned. And consequently, the doctors who prescribe them, must be called “denialists”.
Piece 55: sabotaged piece?
The World Health Organization also sponsored a study with hydroxychloroquine. It is the Recovery Trial of the University of Oxford. It is a complete “gold standard” study.
Professor Didier Raoult’s protocol was ignored. Only hydroxychloroquine and for very sick patients. The average was about 9 days after the symptoms, with 60% already needing oxygen. And 17% already need ventilation.
While Didier claims 0.6% of deaths in his studies. In Oxford, 25% of the treatment group died.
The dose was 2400 mg on the first day, four times higher than the French protocol. Then they continue to apply 800mg daily.
I am not a specialist, I had already read the study by Fiocruz, in the Amazon, with a dose of 1200 mg. There scientists already said that this dose was too high and should not be used.
In Recovery, they doubled the dose.
The biggest study, the most complete one, and they didn’t read the Fiocruz study?
It does it differently, with a toxic dose, says it doesn’t work and generates news for the world. And it was an unprecedented dose. No one has ever used this amount of hydroxychloroquine for any treatment of any disease.
It may just be another coincidence. But I bet that today we have researchers, inside Fiocruz, suspicious and beginning to understand what is happening.
Piece 56: the geopolitical situation
Police station in Mineapolis, after the death of George Floyd.
Trump, speaking of Didier’s study, confronted American scientists. This messed with egos and created a reaction. At the same time, Gilead thought it had a card up its sleeve, confident of the success of Remdesivir, whose results were about to come out.
Never doubt the communication power and influence of a $ 22 billion company. It is childish to doubt that.
Hydroxychloroquine, cheap, without patents and without a large corporation behind it, has no bargaining power. The drug was attacked and disqualified.
Big pharma’s trained monkeys are able to maintain the narrative that other drugs don’t work. But the script failed: the big pharmaceutical companies are failing to say that their profitable drugs works, despite huge marketing.
In fact, in addition to not reducing deaths, Remdesivir has caused kidney failure and left people on dialysis machines . And one more coincidence: I have not seen news in the mainstream media about the serious side effects of this medication.
In the end, it is not a “scientific war”, but narratives wars. And hydroxychloroquine will win.
You cannot hold results data from other countries for long. Nor is it possible to ban countries from using them, despite attempts, such as the lobbying over Russia, with its excellent numbers, which are already bothering.
Soon the narrative that doesn’t work will crumble like a house of cards. It can’t be all coincidence.
The problem is when it will happen.
In a political context in the USA of fierce spirits, black lives matter, bugaloo boys, accelerators, and 100 million people with guns at home, this retreat needs to be very well planned.
There will be an election this year in the USA. The chair of president worth a lot.
In addition, Trump, with his fits in search of quick results, ignored Henry Kissinger’s “triangular diplomacy” strategy, which guaranteed US supremacy. Trump has implemented economic sanctions in both Russia and China at the same time. A stupid mistake.
The two countries are now more friendly than ever. On the BRICS, Brazil and India have already fallen. Brazil with the 2016 coup, which removed independence from US and left the country a backyard in the USA, enforcing the Monroe doctrine, and India, with its traditional lack of self-esteem and eternal feeling of colony.
Today it’s just RC. And China is coming with its formidable “new silk route”, almost completed, to finish leveraging the whole of Asia. It is an existential threat to the USA.
In this context, the “deep state”, which is the unelected US government, the military industrial complex, the largest and richest lobby in the world, has arrived to help with the narrative that hydroxychloroquine does not work. The proportion was much higher.
The deep state has only one objective: to overthrow Trump and save the empire. For that he needs to be the worst president in the world in leading the pandemic. Hydroxychloroquine would be your hit. Chaos, in the USA, overthrows president.
Didier Raoult, fell in the middle of that boiling pot. He had a good perception. In his testimony at the French congress, he said that the United States was in a “civil war”.
This civil war comes from afar. The russiangate did not work. It had no evidence, despite years and years of trying.
While Trump is lousy for his people, and stirring spirits within the U.S., he is good for the world. He did not create external wars, despite the fact that the “deep state” threw banana peels at him, as when he made Trump authorize the assassination of General Soleimani, previously an ally in the fight against the Islamic state, with false information.
Iran reacted by launching missiles on US bases in Iraq. Trump did not continue to beat the drums of war.
That is, Trump is, in some ways, really anti-system. He did it right. They would lose to Iran. In all simulated war drills there, none of the US wins. Imagine a pandemic and the Strait of Hormuz, where 80% of the world’s oil passes, closed, at the same time!
Obama, with his good boy face, Nobel Peace Prize, and beautiful speeches, deceived us all. Nothing has changed. The Democratic party is the perfect portrait of the American establishment. Under his command, and with Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, we only saw capitalist, hybrid, real wars and colorful revolutions.
Libya today is a haven for terrorist training and the slave trade. Syria resisted with the help of Russia.
Brazil, Ukraine, and others: hybrid wars and colorful revolutions.
In addition, under Obama’s command, more support for neoliberalism, increasing the social gap in the USA.
Trump did not start external wars. The most he did was launch several Tomahawks into an empty airport in Syria, and much of it was intercepted by old-fashioned, but still efficient, Russian S-200 systems. It was just the most expensive pyrotechnic show in the world.
And with Trump in power, more good news: even hybrid wars and colorful revolutions lose their effectiveness. He doesn’t know how to disguise. Chinese intelligence, understood at the time, everything that happens in Hong Kong and has already defused the bomb.
Meanwhile, the Democratic party, the left-wing cemetery in the U.S., was more afraid of Bernie Sanders than of Trump, and sabotaged him, both in the 2016 previews and now. They launched Biden, already almost senile.
With Biden leading the pools, there is only one certainty: the official narrative about the scientific evidence for hydroxychloroquine cannot change.
“The purpose of the media is not to inform what happens, but to shape public opinion according to the will of the dominant corporate power”, Noam Chomsky
Piece 57: the political situation in Brazil
Believe me, it’s not photoshop. Bolsonaro offers hydroxychloroquine to an emu, who denies it.
Bolsonaro only talks about hydroxychloroquine to deflect the subject. Whenever the investigations come close to him and his family, he makes a show of it. Only I realized this?
So he throws his fanatics, each day more radicalized, to howl.
He never really wanted to implant hydroxychloroquine treatment. In fact, this government confesses other things: they say that deaths of elderly people improve pension accounts.
Bolsonaro really wants chaos. It remains for him to attempt a coup to have more power. It is the only option to try to save yourself.
But Bolsonaro is not a Trump. Its supporters are 15% quasi-religious fanatics. Trump brought numbers to the economy, being, in fact, anti-neoliberal. It has about 40% popularity.
Here, with neoliberalism surrendering and subservient to US interests, Bolsonaro and Guedes, the economy minister, never brought good numbers. “It’s the economy, stupid”, explained James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign marketer.
Bolsonaro’s support comes only from believers based on proto-fascist reactionary hatred.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian and world left, traditionally quick to distrust the USA when reading any news about the Middle East, Venezuela, Bolivia, Russia and Petrobras, because they involve great financial interests in oil, due to its almost unprecedented nature, has not yet learned to distrust narratives that involve another highly profitable branch: the pharmacist.
I saw left-wing commentators with heavy criticism of the US government’s “evil” when they bought almost all of Remdesivir’s stock . “They just think about them”, one said. Let them have everything. This medicine is useless.
And the worst is leftist scientists, the perfect discourse to please the big pharmaceutical industries: that a drug can only be applied with the “gold standard” test, which is very expensive and in practice only expensive drugs from the powerful pharmaceutical industries have.
And RTC trials are no guarantee of anything.
Forecasts for the future
1 — Some scientist will one day study this as the biggest case of confirmation bias in history.
2 — The most interesting of all, is that following this story, I saw that in science you cannot lie rudely. External influences can get in the way, and create narratives, but they are unmasked. The dose of the Oxford study, exposing the fragility of the experiment, and the two studies with false data, dropped instantly. Therefore, confirmation will come. The truth, it seems, in science, wins. It will be a consensus among scientists soon. It is too big a story to forget.
3 — Science will be rethought. It will develop methods to protect itself from major financial and political interests.
4 — The idiocy of the concept of “impact magazines” will be rethought. It makes no sense that publications in these magazines are synonymous of status and the only truth. Many scientists have to pay for their studies to be published in them.
5 — Any change to the “official narrative” before the US elections will only occur if China and Russia decide that, for their geopolitical interests, Trump is better reelected. Alone, Trump has no ability to change it.
6 — After the truth prevails, the guilt of the dead without treatment, broken companies, economic depression and millions of unemployed, will fall only on the big pharmaceutical companies. How many innocents!
My alerts
To progressive scientists: this disease has a greater fatality among the poorest and blackest. The wealthy are taking in their private offices and pocket doctors. Without their support, the biggest victims will be exactly those that the left aims to protect. How will the speech be? The charge will be contempt for the most vulnerable.
In addition, science is already attacked daily by this obscure government, imagine after the treatment is “scientifically confirmed”. As if all this evidence was not scientific evidence.
After all, who do you expect that confirmation to come from? Anthony Fauci? Does not the owner of Prevent Senior, who recently said that in his hospitals, in the first half of 2020, fewer people died than in the first half of 2019, even with the pandemic?
To conservative scientists: haven’t you noticed that Bolsonaro is being made of muggles, that politician that you defend with such commitment? If he wanted to implant the medicine, and not just fool around, he would have appointed one of you, with a curriculum vitae, to the Ministry of Health, where you could support, with real and scientific arguments, the use. Instead of calling them, he arranges meetings with a supporter who advocates sulfur for healing.
To doctors who do not prescribe: to differentiate yourself and claim that you are a better professional, you hit the chest and claim that you follow the “scientific evidence”, as if there were none. What will you do with your conscience after the death of a patient who ordered the drugs, you denied giving a class on your scientific ethics, and then came the “confirmation”, even with all the evidence in front of you for a long time, which do you deny seeing them?
Why did I write this article?
I studied the subject to exhaustion. I was wondering if I should take these drugs if I get viruses. My decision is made: if I take COVID-19, I go after doctors to prescribe the Didier Raoult protocol. I will add zinc.
I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t want their opinion, I already have it. If the first refuses, I will warn you that I will go from office to office, spreading the virus, until I find a doctor who will write the prescription.
The idea of writing is to explain everything I know to my friends and relatives, so that if they get it, they are not more afraid of the medication than of the disease.
And I post it publicly because I want these drugs available in all health centers, as a real public policy, so that friends without money also have access.
And I wrote for the sake of ethics. I leave the fake news with the far right. That label is theirs. I’m not going to be part of a cog that sends news that people can go blind if they take these drugs.
I will not collaborate with fake news just because it is an idea defended by those I want to eliminate from politics. Before we saved people, then we resolved this collective imbecility that took over the government.
Democracy in Brazil dies from time to time. The STF — Superior Federal Court, is in constant threat due to Bolsonarism, which aims to shield itself from investigations. Ministers want to arrest judges. The executive encourages protests for the closure of the court. Only a few without brains participate in these protests. Now entities activate the STF, using “science”, so that they stop the hydroxychloroquine.
In the US, they need to maintain the narrative that the drug doesn’t work for just a few months. Maybe they can. Here, our next election will be in 2022.
This STF is bad and washed his hands during the 2016 coup d’état. So they created little monsters. But it is what we have today to protect ourselves from authoritarianism. Without them, it would be worse.
If the STF takes the action to stop the medication, and later “confirmation” of effectiveness will come, bolsonarismo will have an easy speech against the court. “The STF chose to kill people”, they will say, with ease.
It will not be just 200 or 300 people wanting to close the court. There will be thousands of zombies wanting to set the building on fire and hungry for the brains of judges. I do not wish to see neither the STF nor the scorned Brazilian science.
Doubt: does this action also aim to stop 90% of cardiology medications that have never undergone an RTC (Randomized controled trial)?
If some idiot came this far and still thinks I’m a bolsonarista
I prove that I am not. Right after the coup d’état of 16, I made a film for the National Nanometer Festival. (up to 45 seconds). It was a political film. I denounced neoliberalism. This film was awarded. Then it was selected to be shown at festivals in France, Portugal and the USA. YouTube does not accept changing a file or publication date. Watch here and see the publication date.
The following year, I did another one. The idea was to denounce Bolsonaro to the world. This was also selected for festivals in Europe and the USA. Watch it here.
Filipe Rafaeli is a communications professional, filmmaker and aerial acrobatics pilot. Anyone who wants to get in touch, comment, get news, I’m on twitter. https://twitter.com/filipe_rafaeli