Renaud Girard: "To not let the situation get bogged down, France must take the initiative"

Renaud Girard is a war correspondent and international chronicler for Le Figaro.

FIGAROVOX.- How do you analyze the current COVID-19 crisis in France?

Renaud GIRARD.- Faced with an exponential growth in the number of French people infected with the COVID-19 virus, faced with a very concrete risk of hospital congestion, the government has decided to confine the entire population. This is an understandable decision, because the virus is extremely contagious and can cause pneumonia in fragile people requiring intensive care in the hospital. However, this strategy cannot be sustainable.

How long can we stop an entire country?

Let us not succumb to panic, nor to the dictatorship of emotion, that leads nowhere. It is necessary to have a global point of view on the current crisis and to integrate all the parameters (health, economic…). Too long a confinement would have devastating economic, social and psychological effects. Questions will arise about prison disorders, sensitive neighborhoods, suicides due to loneliness or domestic violence. But especially the terrible financial and economic crisis of 2008 would be nothing compared to the economic crisis which threatens us if the activity does not resume. An economic crisis of such magnitude could destroy tens of thousands of businesses and also cause deaths (suicides of unemployed workers due to the recession or of business leaders, merchants and farmers ruined ...) . This gigantic recession would occur when the state is already heavily in debt (100% of GDP). However, a prolonged cessation of activity would imply an explosion in public debt. On the one hand, the state would have to make unforeseen and massive expenses to subsidize a stopped economy for a long time. On the other hand, the total absence of activity and the closure of shops mean the absence of tax revenue for the State (no VAT ...). We could very well witness bankruptcy and a financial collapse of the state. If the State is bankrupt, this implies in particular that the police, the military and the nursing staff can no longer be paid and that our hospital system will be destroyed. Today, we border to unclog our hospital system. Very well. But too long confinement risks provoking a financial and economic crisis which will destroy our health system much more deeply. The remedy (containment) may ultimately be much worse than the disease (COVID-19). It would be absurd.

On the social level, France is a highly eruptive country, as shown by the riots in the suburbs in 2005, the crisis of the Yellow Vests and the movement against pension reform. Too long a confinement could cause, when it is lifted, a gigantic explosion of social anger, of unprecedented magnitude. What we don't need right now.

France must not die healed.

Facing the Covid-19, should we do nothing?

Certainly not! On the contrary, we must act with determination.

The President spoke of a “ war ” against COVID-19. Through my profession as a great reporter, I have come to have concrete experience of the wars of the past thirty-five years. As a practitioner of war, I think that the essential thing in any war is to have an adapted strategy. However, confinement is an emergency response; it must not last forever. It is necessary to prevent suffocation in the hospital system and to delay the spread of the epidemic. But, it should not go on forever. Faced with the virus, we must take the initiative: adopt an offensive and targeted strategy.

As the Maginot line showed in 1940, static, passive and wait-and-see strategies have little chance of success. This essential offensive will require intelligence (use of data from the medical health insurance personal files, which will allow targeting of those most at risk); communication with civilians (inform the French that they should not take anti-inflammatory drugs, as these drugs worsen the disease); infantrymen (city doctors, who must be requisitioned); infantry protections (masks for medical personnel); engineering (requisitioning private clinics, their staff and ventilators, setting up field hospitals by the army, creating decontamination teams in public places, public transport and supermarkets on the South Korean model); ammunition (massive screening tests, including by self-sampling); innovative commando operations (isolation of epidemic "clusters" and people tested positive); armored vehicles and heavy artillery (treatment with chloroquine, combined with taking antibiotics). This war effort will have to be supported by the ECB, in the same way that the Central Banks supported the war effort during the two World Wars.

Above all, in wartime, we must abandon the conformist logics of peacetime, rendered obsolete by events. For example, we have just announced the launch of a large study ("Discovery") to test remedies against COVID-19. However, this study will only reach its conclusions in six to eight weeks! By then, the epidemic may have subsided on its own. Above all, thousands of people will have died and European economies will have been destroyed. This kind of study is fine in peacetime to advance science. But here, it is not a question here of advancing science, but of responding to an emergency situation. Let us abandon ritualism and bureaucratic procedures. In 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy was able to cope admirably with the 2008 crisis, because he demonstrated audacity, speed and leadership, breaking free from ordinary protocols.

Didier Raoult is one of the greatest infectious disease specialists in the world. Professor in Marseille, he discovered 400 microbes (20% of microbes capable of infecting humans). Two viruses are named after him. He has treated several thousand patients with chloroquine, a drug of which he is an expert. If your house is on fire and if a world renowned expert in first aid comes to rescue you, you cannot refuse his help on the grounds that his ladder is not approved. And all the more so since Didier Raoult's adversaries have no scenario for ending the crisis to offer.

This is what should be done: massively extend and as soon as possible the treatment protocol recommended by Doctor Raoult since we have nothing better to offer. In parallel, let's continue the Discovery program. If in six weeks chloroquine has not proven to be effective in the field, if a drug has proven to be more effective in the Discovery program and if the epidemic has not abated, then chloroquine should be discontinued and adopt this other medication without hesitation. We have to think in terms of realism, pragmatism and efficiency.

Chloroquine has been around for 70 years. It is inexpensive and easy to manufacture. Its side effects are perfectly known and controlled. Hundreds of millions of people have taken it worldwide, some for several years. In the United States, the Food and Drugs Administration , however extremely finicky, validated Trump's decision to follow Dr. Raoult's protocol. Until January 2020, it was even sold over the counter. And the Sanofi laboratory offers to supply us with 300,000 doses free of charge.

Chloroquine is a Pascalian bet, that is to say a bet in which there is everything to gain and nothing to lose. Either the treatment works, and we have won, we are out of the woods. Either the treatment doesn't work and we haven't lost anything. Because, for the moment, we are doing nothing.

If the treatment works and we don't use it, we will have missed the solution and it will be a huge political and health scandal. If it does not work, we can not blame anyone who used it, because they then had nothing better on hand. Anything that can be tried to save lives, unclog hospitals and get out of the crisis must be attempted as soon as possible. The precautionary principle well understood, it is precisely to make the choice of chloroquine. We have nothing to lose.

So screening is for you at the heart of an effective strategy…

Yes.

First, mass screening is the only strategy that is consistent with medical ethics. The mission of a doctor, in accordance with the Hippocratic Oath, is to diagnose and treat. Some patients have little or no symptoms at the start of the disease and are not tested. But they actually have serious lung damage that they don't know exists. After a few days, they experience severe breathing difficulties and must be rushed to the hospital. Screening would avoid this kind of situation. It is staggering to see that certain Regional Health Agencies (including that of Marseilles) call for refusing mass screening. It would be better to tell the truth to the French: France is in dire need of tests!

Second, mass screening would allow us to have a clearer statistical vision. For the moment, we have no visibility and we are sailing blind. Indeed, we do not know the true rates of contamination and mortality. For example, in Italy, the announced mortality rate (8.5%) is biased, because very few people are tested, and these are highly symptomatic cases. If we knew the real number of infected in France, we would see more clearly would also know the exact percentage of mortality, which is necessarily much lower than the figure announced.

Third, mass screening is a modern technique that has proven to be effective. WHO recommends it, with the slogan: “Test! Test! Test again! " Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have successfully brought the disease under control with a massive testing policy. And this, without resorting to containment. Their results are spectacular. No deaths in Singapore at the moment, only one in Taiwan, a decreasing number of cases and low mortality in Korea.

In France, you will not be tested even if you have all the symptoms while in Korea you will be tested even if you have no symptoms. In Korea, if you test positive, we will ask you for a list of all the people you have met in the past 72 hours and we will test them in turn. If some of them are also positive, we will start the same process again. Israel has also launched mass screening, including in parking lots where people are tested in their cars. Emmanuel Macron has often praised the merits of the nation's start-up. Well a modern method, worthy of a real start-up nation, is mass screening.

On this subject, Didier Raoult, shows a competence and a composure which would qualify him to become the main expert with Emmanuel Macron. Rightly so, this great doctor wondered why France was in the twentieth place in the world for the number of tests per inhabitant…

For you, what are the already observable political and ideological consequences of the COVID-19 crisis?

The COVID-19 crisis marks the death of three ideologies: Chinese communism, Europeanism and globalism.

The Chinese Communist Party will not emerge from this crisis unscathed. COVID-19 has been transmitted to humans because of a market for live animals, where the cages are piled on top of each other, in disgusting unsanitary conditions. These markets were very common in China. The problem is that the Chinese authorities have ignored a previous alert. In November 2002, an epidemic of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome, also due to a coronavirus) was born in the province of Guangdong (southeast of China), in a market also selling wild and domestic animals. All scientists know the danger of zoonoses (infectious diseases of vertebrate animals transmissible to humans). However, the government has never closed these markets. Even more serious than this recklessness, the CCP's second bankruptcy came from its addiction to state lies and concealment. Obsessed with the imperative of guaranteeing "social stability" at all costs, the authorities of the Hubei region preferred to close their eyes at the outset. They even sanctioned doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital for raising the alarm. CCP officials, shutting themselves in the dark, put the logic of an allegedly infallible power for three weeks before the logic of medical truth. These three weeks lost in the initial fight against the virus now weigh very heavily. If the disease had been treated as soon as it arose, there would not be a pandemic today. The CCP has still not explained to the world why it abruptly ordered the closure of the public health laboratory at Fudan University (Shanghai) on January 12, 2020. The day before, this cutting-edge laboratory had published the sequencing of the COVID virus- 19 on virological.org, a scientific discussion forum on viruses, in free access. It was the publication of this genome data that led to the development of a new test kit to diagnose the virus. Today, China, with a masterful sense of propaganda, dramatically stages its "aid" to European countries. However, in January, when the EU had delivered 56 tonnes of equipment to the Chinese, equipment which we sorely lack today, the Chinese authorities asked the Europeans to be discreet.

The second bankruptcy is that of European ideology, which considers European construction as an ideal in itself, instead of making only a pragmatic use, in the concrete interest of the different nations of the EU and their peoples. When the borders had to be closed tightly to prevent the spread of the virus (which is always done by humans), this was not done, in the name of a Europeanist ideology.

The danger today is that we are witnessing the death of the European Union, as it is so ineffective in its fight against the epidemic and its economic consequences. In Italy, after Russia announced the dispatch of medical equipment, many Italians take down the European flag to replace it with the Russian flag, believing that the EU has abandoned them. Gruppo Colle, the world leader in dyeing textiles, has just removed the EU flag from its headquarters.

Finally, the ideology of globalism, which is that of the international division of labor pushed to the maximum, is also bankrupt. It is unacceptable that the last factory which manufactures paracetamol in Europe closed its doors in 2008. It is unacceptable that 80% of the active ingredients in our medicines are manufactured outside the EU (compared to only 20% 30 years ago ). It is unacceptable that today we depend on a country as far away and different from us as China for the manufacture of our medicines. All the more so since this country has its own interests and its own strategic agenda: it can therefore use this terrible lever of drugs as a means of pressure and blackmail against us. When we emerge from this pandemic, we must urgently establish real European economic and health sovereignty!

We will have to choose reindustrialisation, economic patriotism and strategic protectionism. An authentic Foreign Investment Office, worthy of the name and endowed with real resources, will have to be restored in the Treasury Department. This is to prevent our industrial and technological flagships from being scrapped by foreign predatory investors, for example Chinese.