I can just imagine world renown virologist Dr. Didier Raoult's first impression upon viewing the Sar Cov 2 virus and expressing those infamous words attributed to Sherlock Holmes "it's elementary my dear Watson". If the world had just listened to him back in May of 2020 covid 19 would be a mere mention in the history book of viruses by now, or at a minimum considered a force that could be reckoned with.
Lost in the breaking headline news yesterday that a study published on Dec 10, 2018 that proved Dr Fauci lied about funding gain of function research was a fascinating tidbit about how the virus choose to attach to the ACE2 receptor. It choose a path of least resistance, most viruses do, even humans for that matter. What's interesting is the virus choose the furthest distance away from the zinc-chelating enzymatic site of the cell.
ACE2 binding is a critical determinant for the host range of SARS-CoV72,73. Electron microscopic studies have shown that the SARS-CoV S protein forms a clover shaped trimer, with three S1 heads and a trimeric S2 stalk74,75. The RBD is located on the tip of each S1 head. The RBD binds to the outer surface of ACE2, away from its zinc-chelating enzymatic site.
For a expert of Dr. Raoult stature the discovery would have been rather rudimentary, sort of like having put together his first set of lego's in life. The answer to impeding the progression of this pandemic would have been to increase the flow of zinc into the cells by using a chelator, that chelator would be chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine to stop the replication of the virus from occurring within the cells. It's rare an enemy's aversion to something is so pronounced but in this case it really was that simple.
By April 10, 2020 Raoult was meeting with the French president to show him the result of a wider study that showed:
As for professor Raoult’s latest study, it’s been performed on 1,061 patients tested positive for Covid-19 and not included before in the previous studies of the institute. Patients ticked all inclusion criteria fixed by the professor’s team. Their average age was 43.8 years old, 493 were men (46.4%) and no cardiac toxicity has been noticed.
Out of these 1,061 patients, 973 people have been cured in ten days, which leads to an effectiveness of the treatment rate of 91.7% with the mix of hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin.
Yet, it’s important to say that in 4.3% of cases (46 patients), the sick’s health has deteriorated. 10 patients have been placed in intensive care, 5 aged between 74 and 95 have passed away since then (0.47%) and 31 required ten-day and more at the hospital. Among this group, 25 have been cured at the time the study was released and 16 are still at the hospital.
The professor concludes his study with this sentence: the treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, when started right after the diagnosis “is a sure and effective treatment against Covid-19, with a mortality rate of 0.5% in the oldest patients. It avoids aggravation and eliminates persistence and contagiousness of the virus in most cases”.
As we seen with his first announcement it was belittled with:
Results that seem promising then but that should be treated cautiously since the absence of control group, vital to show the effectiveness of the treatment.
Funny how the vaccines weren't treated with this same cautionary measure especially given they went ahead and vaccinated their control group, it was, after all, pandemic, who had time for all that, which is what they should have given the same benefit of the doubt to Dr Raoult. It was never about stopping a pandemic it was about creating a pandemic.