Paris (AFP)

Seen hundreds of thousands of times and relayed massively on social networks since Wednesday, a documentary called "Hold-Up" unfolds a conspiratorial argument full of at least thirty false claims, according to the verification work of the AFP team Factual.

Here are the main vehicles in audiovisual production:

Useless "germ nest" masks

Speakers rely in particular on comments from the government which, at first, felt that it was not necessary for the general public to wear them, before changing their doctrine.

According to Astrid Stuckelberger, presented as a doctor of medicine, "the WHO does not say that everyone should put on a mask".

It's wrong.

The World Health Organization advocates the wearing of masks for the general public in a note released in June.

Dermatologist Claude Veres affirms that surgical masks are "not very protective" and that cotton masks become "nests for microbes in a few hours", two theories already contradicted by experts at AFP.

Surgical masks make it possible to limit the spread of the virus, especially by protecting others from our own postilions, according to several experts interviewed since March.

Many other specialists have ensured that the so-called "general public" masks were not dangerous for health, when they were worn correctly.

Sweden spared without confinement

The authors of this audiovisual production compare the peaks in daily deaths between France and Sweden, which has pursued a less strict strategy than most European countries in the face of the coronavirus.

Proof according to the authors of the ineffectiveness of containment, Sweden had 115 deaths per day at the height of the crisis in mid-April against 1,483 in France.

But when we compare these figures to the population of the two countries, we see that the death rates are quite close and this despite a lower population density in Sweden, according to data collected by AFP.

Portugal, which has a population comparable to that of Sweden and which has put in place strict containment in the spring, has a death rate twice that of Sweden.

Hydroxychloroquine, Lancet and Rivotril

Many stakeholders claim that hydroxychloroquine is a treatment against Covid, claiming that this drug promoted by Didier Raoult has proven its effectiveness.

It's wrong.

Since the start of the epidemic, Professor Raoult has indeed made several studies public, but they have been widely criticized because of their significant methodological problems.

Since then, other studies - such as the large British Recovery trial, the French Hycovid, or Solidarity, conducted worldwide by the WHO - have come to the conclusion that hydroxychloroquine is not effective against Covid-19.

By broadcasting a graph of the preliminary results of the French Discovery test, the narrator of "Hold-up" says that this test was canceled "to block hydroxychloroquine, which displayed the best intermediate results".

This intox had already been verified by AFP.

The first results actually showed "no effect" of treatment with hydroxychloroquine on the disease, according to epidemiologist Dominique Costagliola, member of Discovery's decision-making committee.

At the end of May, the medical journal The Lancet published a study concluding on the ineffectiveness and even the dangerousness of treatment with hydroxychloroquine.

Extremely rare, this study was withdrawn by some of its authors the following week because of doubts on the reliability and the origin of the medical data of the patients used in the study.

In "Hold-up", Professor Christian Perronne states that in "Switzerland, Asia and America" ​​"a peak in mortality" occurred "for 2-3 weeks" under "the Lancet effect, when people have stopped prescribing ".

These comments are unfounded.

The official mortality figures for the countries and regions concerned, compiled daily by AFP, do not show a trend peak in mortality over this period.

A little later, pharmacist Serge Rader claims that elderly patients with Covid-19 are given a "Rivotril syringe to completely finish them off while they were in respiratory distress".

This interpretation is wrong.

Rivotril is not used to "finish" the sick or "euthanize" them, as the poisoning denied by AFP in April already mentioned.

A global conspiracy

Former pharmacist, Jean-Bernard Fourtillan ensures in "Hold-Up" that a patent had already been filed on "the tests to detect the Covid-19 disease, October 13, 2015", an assertion already invalidated by AFP.

As indicated on the website of the European Patent Office, this patent was updated in 2020 by its inventor to adapt the initially patented technology (techniques for analyzing biometric data) to the detection of the new coronavirus.

Mr. Fourtillan then affirms that the virus "was manufactured by the Pasteur Institute", false information verified by AFP on several occasions and denied by the Institute.

This infox is based on a patent filed by the Institute in 2004, which relates to the genetic code of a cousin virus but different from SARS-CoV-2.

At the beginning of November, justice condemned an Internet user who had disseminated similar false information for "defamation".

Find the complete list of AFP verification articles on Covid-19 on the AFP FACTUEL blog: https://factuel.afp.com/le-coronavirus-les-verifications-faites-par-lafp

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