Didier Raoult was heard by the Senate committee on the management of the Covid-19 pandemic on Tuesday September 15, 2020. -
AFP
"You will hear two echoes and time will sort out."
Didier Raoult defended his positions on the Covid epidemic on Tuesday before the Senate Commission of Inquiry, a few hours after Jean-François Delfraissy.
Citing his observational trials, he insisted on the merits of his approach, in particular that of massive screening.
But it was mostly about hydroxychloroquine and the endless debate about this treatment, which many countries have abandoned.
A missed appointment?
The hearings this Tuesday in the Senate, by the commission for the evaluation of policies facing the Covid-19, could have allowed to see more clearly in the management of the pandemic in France.
With two major interlocutors: Jean-François Delfraissy, president of the Scientific Committee, which has issued opinions on the pandemic since March 11, 2020. And Didier Raoult, the famous Marseille microbiologist.
Which quickly slammed the door of this committee and did not hide his criticisms and his very distant vision of the best strategy to adopt.
The senators, who hoped to question these two scientific figures together, will not have won their case.
Didier Raoult refused to come face to face with the members of the Committee.
As soon as he entered the arena, at 3 p.m., a few hours after hearing Delfraissy, the infectious disease specialist explained this refusal.
“To accuse me in a forum of fraud and then ask to discuss with me, it is beyond my strength.
There are limits to my conviviality, I don't like being insulted, having a complaint against me.
I have never defrauded in my life, I have written 3,500 international publications.
A refusal that several senators regretted.
"It is not our method of staging wrestling matches, but of better understanding," Senator Bernard Jomier justified.
We have to report to the French what happened.
Being able to hear you respond to you is essential for our understanding of what is going on.
We didn't want you to have a bad time.
With all due respect, you are not helping us.
»Will the day have enabled the rapporteurs to better understand the health crisis?
Not sure.
But Didier Raoult was able to detail his strategy at the university hospital institute.
And his convictions.
Here are the four points the doctor insisted on.
What was his strategy in Marseille?
You have to go back six months before.
When knowledge about this Covid-19 was more than fragmentary.
"I am not a man of speculation, but I am pragmatic", defends Didier Raoult in the introduction.
As usual, his team of around twenty researchers therefore began by devouring all the literature on this coronavirus.
“We read the only people in the know, who were Chinese at the time, and we looked at what happened with the other coronaviruses and Sars-1.
The first results, from China, showed that the two drugs that worked were chloroquine and remdesivir, which was not available.
It was the beginning of his reflection on this drug now known to all French people ...
Why did you do tests from the start?
Another contradiction carried by Didier Raoult: the question of tests.
In the beginning, the government decided, in the face of the shortage, to give priority to screening only caregivers and serious patients.
For his part, the Marseille professor was testing everything.
And the senators to wonder about the capacities of the hospital-university institute of Marseilles to receive the citizens.
“At the beginning, we said that it was useless to do tests, recalls the professor.
It is not true that there was no reagent.
The veterinary laboratories proposed to the ministry 300,000 tests, they did not accept.
We reacted.
We organized ourselves to face it.
It was the stewardship that followed the decision.
"
To the point of working non-stop and managing to find what to do these PCR chain.
It is clear that since then, the government has changed its position, making the test accessible to everyone without a prescription.
Has the virus mutated?
Another subject discussed this Tuesday, very useful for the rest of the epidemic, the question of the mutation of the Covid.
"Something is happening that I had not seen, it is the speed of mutation of the virus", assures Raoult.
Before developing his arguments: by observing 500 sequences of the virus, he ensures that the current one is different from that of May.
"Patients have fewer bleeding disorders, they are less severe and they die less," he reassures.
An example of the difficulty in France of having a clear and clear opinion on the evolution of the Covid-19 epidemic: the same morning, Jean-François Delfraissy swept this hypothesis aside.
And a few days before, Bruno Lina, virologist and member of the Scientific Committee, also heard by the senators, had also denied.
Why did you defend hydroxychloroquine so much?
The primary subject, one suspects, revolved around hydroxychloroquine.
"We tested with only one arm [without a control group] hydroxychloroquine with azythromicin", recalls Didier Raoult.
Why not have complied with a clinical trial that fits the bill, namely with a placebo group?
“I am wary of all methodological modes, Didier Raoult justified himself.
A meta-analysis of 4,000 studies showed that there was no difference in quality between randomized studies [with a placebo group] and observational studies [using data from one hospital].
The fact that randomized studies are the alpha and omega of research is not good.
To draw lots for the patients who will have the treatment, I don't know how to do it, I won't do it.
We are not here for that.
The sick, moreover, either do not understand or do not accept.
Do we become obsessed with a method or are we in the millennial contract: "I'm going to do the best I can for you specifically"?
There is a fundamental moral reflection to be had.
And the legislator must take up this question of human experimentation.
"
Several senators regretted the violent debate ... and the vagueness in which the French evolve on this complex question of treatment.
“Some people think I am making up the data.
But we must come back to Earth!
I give all the figures, the deaths, the tested, the positives to the ARS.
And the professor repeatedly reminds us that all the data he puts forward is available on the Internet.
For him, the standoff is nothing new.
“When you are in a phase of discovery, there are real conflicts.
Life is a combat sport ”, assures the contested professor with a small laugh.
“You think that the debate on hydroxychloroquine is a French debate, it is false.
How could a bunch of puppets publish an article in The Lancet, only to unpublish it three months later?
(…) There is a phenomenon of rout [of research] which is not uniquely French.
"
“Today, it seems that science has spoken, the list of countries which do not recommend or even advise against hydroxychloroquine is very long, contests Bernard Jomier.
Does that mean the whole world is wrong?
»An irony that the doctor tasted very little.
“I do not agree with you, of course, on any of the points.
I spend my time doing meta-analyzes on hydroxycholoroquine.
There are 4.6 billion people living in countries that recommend this treatment.
You will hear two echoes and the time will sort out.
I'm not talking nonsense.
Publications on the use of hydroxychloroquine show that it decreases mortality between 30 and 40%.
"
This will be the last word, after two and ten hours of defending the Raoult version of the strategy and philosophy of treatment.
During which the tone rose, but rarely.
The professor even admitted: “It's very difficult to say that we were wrong.
It's complicated for the president, for the prime minister, for Delfraissy, and probably for me.
”Without going so far as to recognize a misstep.
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