“Hold-up”: false information on hydroxychloroquine, treatments and vaccines considered

“Hold-Up”, a video that strongly denounces the measures taken in France and around the world against Covid-19 and evokes “a global manipulation “around the pandemic, has been seen hundreds of thousands of times on social networks since it was put online. Attention, its many stakeholders interviewed advance several factual errors on the treatments and vaccines considered against the disease.

Seen hundreds of thousands of times and broadcast massively on social networks since November 10, a long video called “Hold-Up” unveils a conspiratorial argument filled with a lot of false information.

By imitating the codes of journalistic investigations, this video combines the testimonies of thirty speakers, from anonymous taxi drivers to controversial infectious disease specialist Christian Perronne.

Many stakeholders interviewed by Hold-Up specifically defend hydroxychloroquine, presented with incorrect statements, as a treatment for Coid-19.

AFP Factuel has identified at least 6 incorrect or unfounded statements regarding the treatments against Covid-19 spread in this production. Here is the list:

Screenshot of the “Hold-Up” video of November 13th

1) “Didier Raoult had shown that hydroxychloroquine worked. ” Pascal Trotta, radiologist, homeopath and nutritionist (at 1h10). Faux

Since the beginning of the epidemic, Professor Didier Raoult has indeed made public several studies which, in his opinion, demonstrate their effectiveness, but have been widely criticized, due to their methodological shortcomings: in particular groups of patients too small for the first two, no control group in the third. .

Since then, other randomized trials (the method considered the most reliable for testing a treatment) – British Recovery, French Hycovid, or WHO-led Solidarity – have decided: hydroxychloroquine is not effective against Covid-19.

2) The French Discovery trial was canceled to block hydroxychloroquine. (Voiceover at 1h15) Faux

Releasing an alleged graph of the preliminary results of the French Discovery trial, the narrator of “Hold-up” claims that this test has been canceled “to block hydroxychloroquine, which showed the best intermediate results compared to placebo “.

This is false, this intox was already verified by AFP on October 16th.

The first results are not actually displayed “no effect” treatment with hydroxychloroquine, or other treatments evaluated, on the disease, explained Dominique Costagliola, a member of Discovery’s decision-making committee and director of research at Inserm.

Permanent cessation of inclusions was decided by Inserm because Discovery’s parent study, conducted by WHO, had already demonstrated the ineffectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in a very large sample of patients.

“Ccontinuing the test meant throwing money away “, Ms. Costagliola told AFP.

3) The anti-hydroxychloroquine study published and denied in The Lancet caused a spike in mortality in Switzerland, Asia and America. Christian Perronne (58 min 20) Unfounded

26 never, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet published a study that concluded on the ineffectiveness and even the danger of hydroxychloroquine treatment. Extremely rare, this study was disavowed by its own authors the following week, due to the unreliability of this large-scale collection of the data used.

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

“When we saw the fraud, doctors prescribed chloroquine and mortality started to decline again”, He adds.

No record of the epidemic proves this. Official mortality data for the countries and regions concerned, compiled daily by the AFP, show no trend in mortality over this period, as can be seen in the graphs below.

Evolution of the number of daily deaths, according to official data compiled by AFP and zoom on the month of June

Beware of false interpretations: in these graphs representing the new daily deaths recorded by the authorities, the spectacular increase seen in the United States for the day of June 25 (2,470 deaths) has no connection with a lasting peak linked to hydroxychloroquine.

This is a “budget recovery” carried out by the New Jersey authorities, which have integrated that day 1,900 patients suspected of having died of Covid-19 and not previously counted, causing the American budget to skyrocket in this single day.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that doctors around the world have reused HCQ on a large scale following the withdrawal from The Lancet study on June 4, as Mr. Perronne claims.

Indeed, the next day, June 5, the vast sage Recovery concluded that hydroxychloroquine did not manifest itself “no beneficial effect” for Covid patients.

4) White House Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci Advocated Chloroquine Against SARS (43 min) FAUX

At the 43rd minute, Hold-Up highlights a televised interview with Professor Raoult in which he declares “who first spoke of hydroxychloroquine in coronavirus, is for SARS, it is Anthony Fauci anyway eh, now he doesn’t say it anymore”.

This rumor has already been denied by the American press (here, there or still there). It is based on a study published in 2005, which showed chloroquine against the SARS virus, a coronavirus of the current virus family.

First, this study highlights chloroquine and not hydroxychloroquine. Secondly, it demonstrates the effects of this molecule only in the laboratory and not as a treatment on humans.

Third, as the Snopes site summarizes, American Anthony Fauci is not the author or author of the study.

Its true authors work for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Montreal Clinical Research Institute in Canada. This 2005 study was published in the Virology Journal, distributed by a UK publisher.

5) Rivotril to “finish” the elderly. Serge Rader (1h14) FAUX

Pharmacist Serge Rader says elderly patients with Covid-19 receive a “rivotril syringe to completely finish them while they were in respiratory distress. “

This interpretation is wrong. Rivotril is not used for “to end” the sick or the “euthanasia”, as already mentioned by the poisonings denied by AFP Factuel last April.

This drug is a “anticonvulsant” intended “to alleviate pain, alleviate mental suffering, safeguard the dignity of the patient”, according to the definition of the French Society of Palliative Care.

Prescribe it “it is not the same as euthanasia of elderly patients “, the French Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology (SFGG) explained in a press release.

6) The Phase 3 of the studies to find a Covid-19 vaccine was skipped. Alexandra Henrion-Caude (1h12) FAUX

In the vaccine manufacturing process, step 3 is the last step before an application for approval. Evaluate, on thousands of patients tested over a long period, the effectiveness of the vaccine.

This decisive phase was “skipped” during research on Covid-19 vaccines says Alexandra Henrion-Caude in “To sustain”.

This is wrong, this phase was never skipped. In its latest update on November 3, WHO identifies ten potential vaccines currently in phase 3 and tested on tens of thousands of volunteers across continents.

Among these, that of the American company Moderna, the German-American alliance BioNTech / Pfizer, several Chinese laboratories, a European project led by the University of Oxford with the English AstraZeneca or the Sputnik V vaccine, developed by Russia and its Gamaleïa research institute.

“Phase 3 trials must be terminated and that the analysis is not based on intermediate results, both on safety and efficacy issues”immunologist Alain Fischer told AFP.

The other 37 vaccine projects identified by the WHO are still in phase 1 (which mainly aims to assess the safety of the product) or in phase 2 (where the question of efficacy is already being studied).