Posted on 05/16/2020 9:05:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
This past week the far left New York Times released a report where they belittled “eminent French microbiologist Didier Raoult” and his claims for a quick and powerful cure for the China coronavirus:
When diagnosing the ills afflicting modern science, an entertainment that, along with the disparagement of his critics and fellow researchers, he counts among his great delights, the eminent French microbiologist Didier Raoult will lightly stroke his beard, lean back in his seat and, with a thin but unmistakable smile, declare the poor patient to be stricken with pride. Raoult, who has achieved international fame since his proposed treatment for Covid-19 was touted as a miracle cure by President Trump, believes that his colleagues fail to see that their ideas are the products of mere intellectual fashions — that they are hypnotized by methodology into believing that they understand what they do not and that they lack the discipline of mind that would permit them to comprehend their error. “Hubris,” Raoult told me recently, at his institute in Marseille, “is the most common thing in the world.” It is a particularly dangerous malady in doctors like him, whose opinions are freighted with the responsibility of life and death. “Someone who doesn’t know is less stupid than someone who wrongly thinks he does,” he said. “Because it is a terrible thing to be wrong.”
The hit piece attacks Dr. Raoult for recommending a cure for the China coronavirus – hydroxychloroquine:
It is in this spirit that, over the objections of his peers, and no doubt because of them, too, he has promoted a combination of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, and azithromycin, a common antibiotic, as a remedy for Covid-19. He has taken to declaring, “We know how to cure the disease.” Trump was not the only one eager to embrace this possibility. By the time I arrived in Marseille, some version of Raoult’s treatment regimen had been authorized for testing or use in France, Italy, China, India and numerous other countries. One in every five registered drug trials in the world was testing hydroxychloroquine.
The NY Times Magazine hit piece uses the comments of another doctors and experts to refute Dr. Raoult’s exemplary success using hydroxychloroquine:
Other scientists disagreed with this characterization of the results. “The cure rate is almost identical to what’s been described about the natural course of the disease,” the virologist Christine Rouzioux told French radio.
The problems with the piece in the NY Times Magazine is that it is very biased and slanted. For example, the comments from virologist Christine Rouzioux are based on an BFM TV interview Christine Rouzioux gave on April 9th, which was based on Raoult’s interview on French France’s Radio Classique on April 1.
The NY Times Magazine is just amplifying the message that no other drug but Gilead’s Remdesivir will work.
Gilead has connections to China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the China coronavirus is suspected of originating:
Virologist Christine Rouzioux is connected to the ‘Bat Doctor’ Zhenzli Shi, who is reportedly connected to the release of the China coronavirus in Wuhan.
Rouzioux knows Zhengli Shi as they both hang around the same French academic and professional circles (both received the same French honorary medals for the same work). They also both have worked on projects that were directly related to Gilead drug R&D which were eventually translated to patents.
Rouzioux specializes in HIV and has worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology which is also doing joint HIV R&D with several universities and institutions in France including: Paris-Descartes University, Institute Pasteur, and University of Montpellier ( Zhengli’s PhD alma mater). Gilead Science has sponsored some of that research.
Beyond the joint research, there is also very close operational relationship between the Wuhan P4 site and the Lyon P4 Laboratory.
The French government designed and supervised the construction of the Wuhan P4 lab and were connected to all of the operational maintenance and personal training there.
This may explain this critical hit piece on Dr. Raoult.
New York Times just did a feature on @raoult_didier‘s research on hydroxychloroquine.
Surprise surprise…the three “prominent French doctors” quoted criticizing Raoult’s work are all either on Gilead’s advisory board and/or receive funding from Gilead.https://t.co/CxhXPOwzUi
— James Todaro, MD (@JamesTodaroMD) May 12, 2020
It makes you wonder who really wrote this hit piece?
Hat tip Yaacov Apelbaum
i hope so volunbeer- i hope they sue them into oblivion- course they won’t care- they will just raise taxes on everyone-
meanwhile...Telegraph behind paywalls:
16 May: UK Telegraph: Neil Ferguson’s Imperial model could be the most devastating software mistake of all time
The boss of a top software firm asks why the Government failed to get a second opinion before accepting Imperial College’s Covid modelling
by David Richards and Konstantin Boudnik
In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code.
But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasa’s budget and pride. Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost.
Since publication of Imperial’s microsimulation model, those of us with a professional and personal interest in software development have studied the code on which policymakers based their fateful decision to mothball our multi-trillion pound economy and plunge millions of people into poverty and hardship. And we were profoundly disturbed at what we discovered. The model appears to be totally unreliable and you wouldn’t stake your life on it.
First though, a few words on our credentials...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/neil-fergusons-imperial-model-could-devastating-software-mistake/
16 May: UK Telegraph: Coding that led to lockdown was ‘totally unreliable’ and a ‘buggy mess’, say experts
The code, written by Professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London, was impossible to read, scientists claim
By Hannah Boland and Ellie Zolfagharifard
The model, credited with forcing the Government to make a U-turn and introduce a nationwide lockdown, is a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming”, says David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco.
“In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust.”...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/coding-led-lockdown-totally-unreliable-buggy-mess-say-experts/
more details:
16 May: Fox News: Imperial College model Britain used to justify lockdown a ‘buggy mess’, ‘total unreliable’, experts claim
By Peter Aitken
The criticisms follow a series of policy turnabouts, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to extend the national lockdown. The United States also used the model, which predicted upwards of 2.2 million deaths in the US without proper action. The prediction helped influence the White House to adopt a more serious approach to the pandemic.
Experts have derided the coding from Professor Neil Ferguson, warning that it is a “buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming.”
“In our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust,” David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco, told the Daily Telegraph...
The Imperial model works by using code to simulate transport links, population size, social networks and healthcare provisions to predict how coronavirus would spread. Researchers released the code behind it, which developers have criticized as being unreadable...
Scientists from the University of Edinburgh have further claimed that it is impossible to reproduce the same results from the same data using the model. The team got different results when they used different machines, and even different results from the same machines...
“There appears to be a bug in either the creation or re-use of the network file. If we attempt two completely identical runs, only varying in that the second should use the network file produced by the first, the results are quite different,” the Edinburgh researchers wrote on the Github file.
A fix was provided, but it was the first of many bugs found within the program.
“Models must be capable of passing the basic scientific test of producing the same results given the same initial set of parameters…otherwise, there is simply no way of knowing whether they will be reliable,” said Michael Bonsall, Professor of Mathematical Biology at Oxford University...
A spokesperson for the Imperial College COVID19 Response Team said: “The U.K. Government has never relied on a single disease model to inform decision-making. As has been repeatedly stated, decision-making around lockdown was based on a consensus view of the scientific evidence, including several modelling studies by different academic groups.”
“Epidemiology is not a branch of computer science and the conclusions around lockdown rely not on any mathematical model but on the scientific consensus that COVID-19 is a highly transmissible virus with an infection fatality ratio exceeding 0.5pc in the UK.”...
https://www.foxnews.com/world/imperial-college-britain-coronavirus-lockdown-buggy-mess-unreliable
Gilead is a drug cartel. Confirmed.
Science and medicine are all about the money.
Don’t make æ doctor your heir.
Apparently also a conflict between some doctors/scientists in Paris and the Prof Raoult's group in Marseille. The diagram above indicates that for whatever reason the fatality rate has been much lower in Marseille. (Paris 2.14 million inhabitants - fatality rate ≈ 770/million, Marseille 0.861 million inhabitants ≈ fatality rate ≈ 170/million)
The HCQ + AZ cure may well be a large part of the difference. As reported on the IHU webpage a total of 4859 patients have tested positive for COVID-19. A total of 152 fatalities. However, 3295 patients have been treated with HCQ/AZ and among those only 17 fatalities.
No one is so blind as those who don't want to see!
RE: It’s Jim Hoft. Is it really necessary to explain how tenuous his guilt by “six degrees of separation” is?
Please re-read the name of the author of this piece.
“The story of the HCQ treatment during this pandemic is one of the most irrational things that I have seen. “
I agree completely. It is nothing less than a crime against humanity being carried out by people fighting the use of this drug.
The democrats talk about “the children” but it is quite dandy to dismember them and sell them for profit — when they are unborn.
Can’t help but wonder how long will it be until they start advocating the dismemberment of already born children for profit.
That's really where we are. Either Dr. Raoult is lying, or his treatment methods work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.