Didier Raoult correctly anticipate the Covid-19 epidemic?

• Over the months of the coronavirus epidemic, Professor Didier Raoult has split several analyzes on the probable evolution of the pandemic.

• From the number of deaths to the death rate through the possibility of a second wave or the seasonality of the virus, the controversial director of the IHU in Marseille has looked into different aspects of the situation.

• Before the hearing of Didier Raoult before the commission of inquiry into the coronavirus epidemic,

  20 Minutes

  returns to these assertions, to see if they have been verified.

Didier Raoult is the first to repeat it: he is not a “diviner”. This did not prevent the controversial specialist in infectious diseases and director of the IHU Méditerranée Infection from formulating numerous hypotheses, over the months, on the probable evolution of the Covid-19 epidemic, sometimes with many 'assurance.

Did Professor Raoult get it right? 

returns, before his hearing before the commission of inquiry into the coronavirus epidemic, on two of the most striking analyzes of the one who affirmed, on the antenna of BFMTV, on June 3: "When I say something, what interests me is to be able to hear it ten years later - it will become more and more difficult with time - and not to be ashamed of what I said.

What we say day by day or what we think from day to day does not touch me […], what interests me is to agree with myself ten years later.

"

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"The death rate, today around 2%, will probably decrease"

At the very beginning of February, two weeks before a first death from Covid-19 was recorded in France, and a little over a month from the active circulation of the virus on French territory, Didier Raoult wanted to be reassuring about the death rate of the virus, according to its first media appearances.

He said in particular, in response to a question from the

on the possible exaggeration of the government around the danger of the coronavirus: “This virus is not so bad, it is not a blind killer. The death rate, estimated today at around 2%, that is to say equivalent to that of all viral pneumonia present in the hospital, will probably decrease once the cases that have not given symptoms will be taken into account. "While acknowledging in the wake:" Yes, papés will probably die of pneumonia because of this new virus, as in China. "

A month and a half later, in the columns of

, Didier Raoult was skeptical about the future number of deaths caused by the epidemic: “10,000 deaths is a lot. But here we are at less than 500. We will see if we manage to kill 10,000, but that would surprise me. "

To verify whether Didier Raoult was right or not, we must first differentiate between the death rate (the number of deaths from the coronavirus reported to the population of a country) and the case fatality rate (the number of deaths from the coronavirus compared to the number of cases tested, known as the “ 

 ” or CFR in English).

If Didier Raoult spoke well in the

of "mortality rate", he was in reality referring to the case fatality rate - like many media at the time wrongly using the first expression to designate the second case.

The real case fatality rate has decreased (but there have been more than 10,000 deaths in France)

At the beginning of February, the case fatality rate of the coronavirus in the world was indeed estimated between 2% and 3% by the scientific community, with an estimate of just over 200 deaths for 10,000 cases. While screening was rare during this period, the increase in testing has led to an increase in the number of cases while the case fatality rate logically declined. At the beginning of February, it would have gone from 3% to 0.3% or 0.4% once compared to the real number of cases in the world according to a model.

A month later, the CFR rate of Covid-19 stood at 3.4% according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which noted: “Globally, around 3.4% of people [Covid-19] sufferers whose cases have been notified have died. By comparison, seasonal flu typically kills less than 1% of those infected. And as of June 23, with 469,159 dead for 8.9 million cases, the global case fatality rate from the coronavirus is around 5%.

Reported across France to date, with the latest data available as of June 23 - 154,567 cases for 29,571 deaths - the national case fatality rate stands at 19%. A percentage similar to that observed in May. However, the WHO bases its figures on cases tested positively, without taking into account people with little or no symptoms mentioned by Didier Raoult to explain the future decline in the percentage. By including these, again thanks to modeling, we obtain the real case fatality rate (or IFR). This is what the Pasteur Institute did, leading, in a study published in mid-May, to an IFR rate of 0.7% for France.

“0.7% is a rate that corresponds to a very severe pandemic scenario. In a scenario where nothing is done, 50% of the population could be infected. And if we apply a rate of 0.7%, that means hundreds of thousands of deaths, ”explained the epidemiologist Simon Cauchemez of the Institut Pasteur to our colleagues at Checknews, at the end of May, recalling the clear superiority of this rate. compared to the 2009 H1N1 flu, which had a lethality of 0.02%.

If Didier Raoult was therefore right to anticipate a drop in the case fatality rate, he was too optimistic about the total number of deaths from Covid-19 in France, which has largely crossed the 10,000 death mark.

An error recognized by the person concerned in

beginning of May: “Yes, I said that I doubted that there would be more than 10,000 deaths.

I should have said, "I didn't think there would be that many."

"

"It is possible that within a month there will be no more cases at all in most temperate countries" and a second wave that would be "

At the end of April, in his weekly situation update on YouTube, Didier Raoult said: "I am not predicting the future, but if things continue like this, we have the impression that what was one of the possibilities of this disease, that is, a seasonal disease, is occurring. It is possible that within a month there will be no more cases at all in most temperate countries. "

A week later, in a video titled "Are we really risking a second wave?" ", He added:" [The curve of Covid-19] is a bell curve, the typical curve of epidemics. The rebound story is a fantasy that was invented out of the Spanish flu. […] Epidemics disappeared long before we had the means to contain them. They begin, accelerate, culminate, […] and they decrease and they disappear, we do not know why. "

Finally, in what remains his most publicized statement on the subject, during an interview on BFMTV carried out at the same time (from 39'41 below) Didier Raoult was more than skeptical about the possibility of a second wave of the epidemic: "I don't know where it came from yet, it's a fantasy ... We can imagine anything, we can have imagination on everything, but it's science fiction. […] Respiratory infections in which there are second waves, there aren't any, so I don't see why there would be any for that one. "While acknowledging, during the same interview (at 20'25) having sometimes" analyzed things too quickly, like everyone else "during the epidemic.

In February, he also reminded

, in response to a statement by Trump on the possible disappearance of the virus in the spring, a recurring characteristic for this type of virus: "Almost all respiratory viruses have a seasonality so we can imagine that this is the case with the coronavirus. It is, in any case, reasonable to consider it for a respiratory disease. "

At the end of May, knowledge of the seasonality of Covid-19 had not changed much, as the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) noted: “Our knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 remains for the a time still too fragmented to comment with certainty on its seasonality, but all the studies remind us of the importance of preventive measures. The institution pointed out, however, the results of a study suggesting "that this virus is able to cause epidemics at any time of the year in the absence of social distancing measures or lasting immunity, but that the autumn and winter are the seasons more conducive to a significant increase in the number of cases ”.

On the first point, Didier Raoult was too optimistic: there were still cases of coronavirus in several temperate countries at the end of May and this is still the case today. But if the number of clusters has increased in France in recent days, that China has adopted re-containment measures to stem a worrying increase in contaminations and that Germany has re-defined at the local level in order to cope with a significant increase in the rate. reproduction of the virus, there is no question - at this stage - of a second wave, in accordance with his analysis of such a scenario.

If Didier Raoult was quite categorical on the non-possibility of a second wave during his visit to BFMTV in April, he also denies having categorically excluded this possibility, as he notably reminded

 end of May: “I never said there would be no second wave. I recalled that, so far, this has never happened. It's like asking me whether to play EuroMillions. I do not recommend it, but ultimately there are some who win. Everything is possible. A second wave cannot be ruled out ”.

And he himself qualified his estimates, in his weekly YouTube point of June 16 (from 11'40 below): “No one is able to predict the future. There may be a new epidemic peak at the time of the winter-spring season, it may disappear, it will depend on the distribution in the intertropical zone and whether there will be people who will be carriers. chronic ”.

While indicating, in this video and more recently in

, that it was necessary to "monitor" New Zealand "very closely" in order to be able to anticipate the occurrence of a possible new peak in the epidemic: "It is a temperate country, climatically close to ours.

This weekend, we entered the summer, they entered the winter.

As we do with the flu, we will try to deduce what can happen by looking at how the virus behaves there.

There is a mirror effect.

If the number of cases soars there, we will have to fear a return of the epidemic in France in the fall.

"

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Coronavirus: "There should have been half as many deaths" says Didier Raoult

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