The Drug Tragedy

The mortality data show that many putative corona deaths are de facto due to the massive experimental use of highly toxic drugs.

by Torsten Engelbrecht & Dr. Claus Köhnlein

Cassandra calls like that of Germany's head virologist Christian Drosten on March 6, that in Germany "278,000 corona death victims are to be expected", gave the politicians the decisive pretext for implementing their lockdown measures. But not only did such horror scenarios lack any scientific basis even then. The hard data now also show that in numerous countries, including Germany, there was no excess mortality at all - and that even for the increased mortalities in countries such as Italy, Spain, France, England or America, a virus as the cause can definitely and irrevocably not be arrested. Instead, the evidence is unmistakable: it was primarily the massive administration of preparations such as hydroxychloroquine, Kaletra or Azithromycin that caused countless people to die prematurely.

When the Australian state of Victoria with its capital Melbourne

recently showed the world what a lockdown of the toughest kind looks like - with rules such as that the police can enter apartments without a search warrant, with a curfew from 8 p.m. onwards or even with a ban on weddings - Jeffrey A. Tucker, editor-in-chief of the American Institute of Economic Research wrote: "Melbourne has become a hell on earth. This brings to mind Tacitus' saying about the Roman Empire: 'They create a desert and call it peace'" (1) (in Latin: Solitudinem faciunt, pacem apellant).

In fact, such draconian measures are all the more a farce when one considers that any kind of lockdown has no scientific basis and is even already contrary to common sense. And so the rigid focus on an allegedly potentially deadly virus called SARS-CoV-2 prevents the true causes, especially as far as the so-called COVID-19 deaths are concerned: The experimental, large-scale administration of highly toxic drugs.

The mere fact that, for example, "in Australia since March there have been 50 percent more suicide deaths than there are officially Covid-19 deaths", as Tucker points out (2), should give everyone plenty to think about. Or let's take the issue of air pollution: although it causes more than 3 million premature deaths worldwide each year (3), decision-makers around the world do not get the idea of crippling those who cause particulate matter.

Apart from this, the so-called SARS-CoV-2-PCR tests, which have been and are being used en masse and whose "positive" results are used as a justification for the lockdowns, are scientifically meaningless (4). This is already evident from the fact that there is not even a valid gold standard for these tests, as the Australian specialist for infectious diseases, Sanjaya Senanayake, confirmed in an ABC television interview (5). Also, the Australian government website admits that PCR tests are completely unreliable.

Moreover, studies show that transmission and death rates have not decreased as a result of lockdowns and compulsory masking (6).

A lockdown in countries like Australia is even more absurd when one considers that, according to official figures, the corona death rate there is "26 per million inhabitants over a six-month period", as David James, a journalist from Down Under, recently wrote in an OffGuardian article (7). With the best will in the world, this cannot be called a virus pandemic. Especially since "the senior public health official in Victoria even admitted that they would not test for the virus, but only assume that COVID-19 would be available as soon as flu-like symptoms appeared," James said. "And the deaths attributed to flu in Australia, it should be added, are unusually low.

And not only Australia, but many other countries have not recorded any excess mortality at all during the first six months of this year. In Germany and Portugal, the mortality rate for this period is even lower than that of one or two previous years. This is the result of an analysis entitled "For they (the decision-makers) do not know what they are doing," written by Stefan Aust, former editor-in-chief of German Magazin 'Spiegel' and publisher of the daily newspaper 'die Welt' since 2014 (8).

The fact that in countries like Germany "there can be no talk of excess mortality," as even a senior official of a federal ministry stated to Aust, was "passed off by some people as a success of the government measures. However, this statement cannot be substantiated," said the former Spiegel boss. This is shown by the example of Sweden, where the average age of coronary deaths is higher than in this country, just like in most other countries - and where, in addition, the majority of the deceased came from the care sector of the seriously ill. "Their lives could not have been saved even with the sharpest general social lockdown.

Super mortality was limited to a short period of time: This alone leads the virus hypothesis ad absurdum

Certainly, some countries recorded significantly more deaths in the first half of 2020 than in previous years. This is particularly true of Italy, Spain, France, England, Belgium, the Netherlands and the USA. The hypothesis that a new, potentially fatal coronavirus would have raged in these countries is, however, already refuted by the fact that these very countries pursued a rigid lockdown policy. If one follows the logic of the virus hypothesis, these very countries would have suffered fewer deaths.

Moreover, Belgium, for example, had eight times more deaths (per 100,000 inhabitants) than its direct neighbor Germany. Or take the example of Spain, which had a proud 22 times more deaths than Poland, while Portugal, Spain's direct neighbor, did not have excessive mortality. But a virus pandemic, which affects countries that are so close to each other in such different ways, cannot really exist, especially in the present day.

My co-author, the internist Dr. med. Claus Köhnlein, therefore wrote a letter to the 'Deutsche Ärzteblatt' (German Medical Journal), which was published at the end of June. In it he explains:

"In view of the fact that very different excess mortality rates are reported in different European countries, it is reasonable to assume that a differently aggressive therapy could be responsible for this" (9).

In addition, the vast majority of excess mortality in these countries occurred only during a very short period of time, namely within about two to three weeks in April. As the Euromomo death rate statistics show, the curves in these countries had also been relatively "boring" until about the end of March, but then excess mortality suddenly shot up, only to drop drastically again around mid-April, as shown by a clearly visible jagged line in the graphs for Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom (see charts inserted below):

These graphs clearly show that what is known as COVID-19 is not a potentially deadly viral disease. Because, as they show, excess mortality in the first half of 2020 occurred not only in a few European countries, but mainly in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, France, Belgium and England (recognizable by the "spikes" in the curves). Moreover, the mortality rate only occurred within a very short period of time - with a steep rise and an equally steep fall in the mortality curve within two to three weeks in April. No virus can produce such "spikes", especially not outside the usual flu season. Particularly since no excessive mortality occurred in Germany, for example, although it borders directly on France and Belgium. The same applies to Austria, which is the neighbor of Italy and Switzerland, and to Portugal, which lies next to Spain. And while Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and England had a short, noticeable excess mortality rate, although they had implemented hard lockdowns, Sweden, which did not implement any lockdown at all, had a very low excess mortality rate. This also clearly contradicts the virus hypothesis. By the way, the fact that the "spike" in Switzerland is relatively flat is due to the fact that two thirds of the total population live in the German-speaking part of the Alpine country, where no excess mortality occurred, while excess mortality was recorded in the Italian- and French-speaking parts. So did the virus simply avoid the German-speaking Swiss? A completely absurd thought!

Expressed in figures, this means that within a few weeks in these European countries, 60 to 70 thousand more deaths were reported than is usual at this time of year. In addition, there are about 130,000 additional deaths in the US in the first six months of 2020 compared to the same period of the two previous years (the death rate in the US is 0.48 percent for the first half of 2020, compared to 0.44 percent in 2018 and 2019). The only difference between the European countries and the United States is that the "spike" in America is somewhat wider, i.e. it does not only extend over about two weeks in April, and that the peak of excess mortality is reached on April 11th, about two weeks later than in Italy, where the worldwide death drama began (see graph below).

The fact that within very few weeks outside of the flu season many tens of thousands more people die than usual, so to speak "at one blow", cannot be explained by a virus. Such a virus simply cannot exist. And even if there were such a super deadly virus, it would have to have created a gigantic "spike" in the chart of Sweden, a country that has not done a lockdown at all. But that is not the case.

Instead, only a flat "huckle" is visible in the chart (see above). Incidentally, the mortality rate, i.e. the proportion of deaths in the total population, in Sweden for the first six months of 2020 at 0.48 percent is absolutely within the normal range and only slightly higher than, for example, in 2017 and 2018 (0.46 percent each) (10).

Consequently, there can only be one non-viral explanation for this temporary massive excess mortality. And there is strong evidence that the massive and high-dose administration of highly toxic drugs played the decisive role in this context - drugs that have been administered in mass and experimental studies worldwide and beyond, and have subsequently cost the lives of tens of thousands of "guinea pigs". The fact that there were then relatively quickly fewer and fewer patients who could have died explains, among other things, the rapid drop in the curves.

A closer look at Germany also shows that the virus thesis is not plausible. The above Euromomo graph for Germany is limited to the capital Berlin. However, the Federal Statistical Office provides data on Germany as a whole (see the graph below with the mortality figures for Germany). According to this, 86,500 people died in March 2019, for example.

"In March 2018, a year when the flu epidemic was particularly severe, the number of deaths was 107,100, so even without a corona pandemic, death rates can fluctuate significantly, especially during the typical flu season," according to the authority's website (11). This alone makes it clear that, with the best will in the world, no corona "death train" could have been rolling.

The graph also reveals that there was also a "spike" in Germany, but this is also only visible in the same short time span (in April). In addition, the "spike" is very flat, so that there were around 6,600 more deaths in April 2020 than in April 2019 and around 4,200 more than in April 2018 (12). A pandemic would without question look completely different. And since the 19th calendar week (May 4 to 10), according to the provisional count, the death figures have also "returned to the average of previous years or fluctuated around it," according to the Federal Statistical Office. "By mid-July, the death figures had reached a minimum. In August, the mortality figures had increased again, but not because of a deadly virus, but because of "the heat wave".

Incidentally, the "spike" in April of this year - with an excess mortality of a few thousand people compared to 2019 and 2018 - corresponds quite well with the increased experimental use of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine in so-called COVID-19 patients (more on the crucial role of this drug later).

As the magazine "Spiegel" currently reports, according to an analysis by the health insurance company AOK, the drug had also found many supporters in Germany from March onwards and was prescribed to "almost 10,000 more patients this month than in the previous month" - patients, the vast majority of whom were very old and had to fight serious health problems and for whom toxic drugs such as hydroxychloroquine were therefore particularly dangerous. In April and May, the use of the drug also decreased noticeably again (13).

In fact, it does not seem very likely that there was no increased experimental use of highly toxic drugs such as Hydroxychloroquine or the antiviral drug Kaletra (Lopinavir/Ritonavir) in Germany in connection with the general COVID-19 panic, which was particularly striking in the second half of March.

In this context, it is also remarkable that on March 20, a Russia Today interview with my co-author Claus Köhnlein was broadcast on YouTube, in which he criticized the experimental use of highly toxic drugs. The interview had 900,000 views within a short time (14). A few days later, he received a call from a then doctor at the Charité named Felicia Kleimaier.

And Kleimaier asked Claus Köhnlein whether he was aware that his critical remarks had torpedoed the use of antiviral therapy in connection with COVID-19. His answer: If his interview statements had really contributed to the fact that significantly less medication was used, then he would have achieved exactly what he wanted to achieve. Not only are the drugs not approved by the authorities as far as COVID-19 is concerned, but they are also immunosuppressive and could therefore be fatal, especially for people who are already seriously ill.

In his already mentioned letter to the editor, printed in the medical journal "Ärzteblatt", Köhnlein says about it:

"It could be that we got off so well in Germany because we were therapeutically more cautious from the beginning and/or learned because of the bad experiences of Italy, Spain, France and England and hardly used any antiviral substances" (15).

Case study in the Lancet of 18 February 2020: Blueprint for excessive use of medications

The fact that there has been a massive experimental use of drugs was also made possible by papers such as the single case study published in the Lancet on February 18 (16). In it the casuistics of a 50-year old patient is described, who suffered from fever, chills, cough, tiredness and shortness of breath and was classified as COVID-19 patient.

He was then treated with a veritable drug armada consisting of the antiviral drugs interferon alfa-2b, lopinavir and ritonavir, the very hard antibiotic moxifloxacin and high-dose cortisone (methylprednisolone) - substances that can have fatal side effects even when taken alone. In addition, tissue samples were taken during the autopsy - and here the authors of the paper even admit that the observed liver damage could have been caused by the drugs.

The conclusion that the patient died due to the toxic effect of the drugs is therefore inevitable.

And when such a man, who was 50 and thus "in his prime" and had obviously not suffered from any other illnesses than severe flu symptoms, dies as a result of the administration of such a "drug cocktail", one can imagine how such a highly toxic treatment affects people who are 70 or 80 years old and who had previous illnesses up to and including cancer before they were classified as COVID-19 patients.

The question arises: Why did the doctors treat the 50-year-old in this way? And the answer is: From a virus tunnel vision, from the deep-rooted conviction that only drugs can bring salvation, and from the fear typical of today's medical system, especially in times of pandemic panic, that something could be left undone, which then often enough leads to drug actionism. As in this case.

And so the pitiable 50-year-old, because he was short of breath, was given cortisone, for example, a lymphocyte killer that slows down the inflammatory reaction. From then on, the swelling subsides and the fever drops. The patient temporarily feels better, and can breathe better again. At the same time, however, the immune reaction is suppressed, which, as this case shows, can ultimately be fatal, especially if other potentially lethal drugs are administered in addition.

Nevertheless, the Lancet paper does indeed conclude that "the patient died of a severe infection with SARS-CoV-2. In other words, it was claimed that the patient only died from a virus - and despite the drug armada not from the drugs. And since this study was published in a journal whose content is de facto law, it served as a kind of blueprint for the treatment of COVID-19 patients.

In fact, only a few weeks later, highly toxic and also potentially lethal drugs were being used in excess, especially in all the above-mentioned countries with excessive mortality, both experimental and off-label, which means that the drugs were used outside their regulatory approval.

The available data suggest that within a short period of time the deaths migrated like a great wave from Italy via Spain and France to the UK and Belgium, and then spilled over to the US and Brazil.

In Italy, especially in Lombardy, the "drug frenzy" began no later than March 17 and took place in homes, nursing homes and clinics. For Italy, there are death statistics dated April 9, 2020, which indicate that 84 percent of the deceased patients received antibiotics, especially azithromycin, 55 percent antiviral drugs, 33 percent corticosteroids, and 18.6 percent a combination of all three substances (17).

As for azithromycin, for example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns that it can cause a potentially fatal irregular heart rhythm. The fact that antiviral drugs can be fatal is also well documented. This is also true for the combination lopinavir-ritonavir, which was also administered to the 50-year-old patient mentioned above (18).

Regarding corticosteroids, a study published in the Journal of Infection on April 10, 2020, concluded that:

"Patients with serious diseases are more likely to receive corticosteroids. The use of corticosteroids is associated with increased mortality in patients with coronavirus pneumonia" (19).

The French cultural channel France Culture described on its website in the article "Covid-19: How doctors in France, Italy, Spain and Germany deal with the disease" how the disease was treated in practice. For example, the neurologist Francesco Alberti, president of the medical order of the Italian province of Imperia in the Liguria region bordering on France, spoke:

"We carry out many experiments and tests, because the disease has a very different course and is more or less severe depending on the patient. If someone only has a fever and it does not last longer than four or five days, we prescribe paracetamol. We also use antiviral drugs to limit the progression of the disease. The most commonly used drugs are hydroxychloroquine, brand name Plaquenil, in combination with an antibiotic, azithromycin, although it should be remembered that hydroxychloroquine can cause cardiac arrhythmia. We also give other antiviral drugs like Remdesivir and Favipiravir. We are also experimenting with tocilizumab, an immunological drug normally prescribed for rheumatic conditions, in case the immune system overreacts."

About Hydroxchloroquine, its lethal potential and crucial role, and about Remdesivir later more. As for tocilizumab, just like azithromycin, it can be fatal by triggering fatal allergic reactions (20). More than 1,000 deaths have been reported to the FDA since this immunosuppressant was launched in the US in 2010. However, the actual number is likely to be much higher as the FDA's reporting system only covers a fraction of the adverse events that occur in patients (21).

But continue with Alberti:

"There is no single therapeutic protocol. The drugs we use are 'off-label', which means we prescribe them outside their indications. The Ministry of Health and the Italian Medicines Agency have allowed us to use these drugs even if they were originally prescribed for other diseases."

Jean-François Timsit, head of the intensive care and resuscitation department for infectious diseases at the Bichat Hospital in Paris, also speaks:

"At present, the mortality rate for patients in intensive care is estimated at around 30 percent, although the range of variation depends on whether the patients are intubated (for machine ventilation) or not. When patients are intubated, the mortality rate increases to 50 percent" (22).

30 percent, which is already a very high figure, 50 percent is even higher. In fact, intubations (introduction of holoprobes for ventilation) were increasingly used because it was feared that the significantly less invasive mask ventilation carried a higher risk of a viral infection. In 2002/2003, it was documented in connection with SARS that intubations bear an increased risk of death for patients compared to mask ventilation. And there is also clear evidence of this in the treatment of COVID-19 patients (23). A Lancet study in February painted a very bleak picture: Only three of 22 intubated patients survived (24).

As far as drugs are concerned, hydroxychloroquine in particular has contributed significantly to the premature death of countless people. Hydroxychloroquine is anything but a lozenge, as it can have many serious side effects and can even be fatal, for example by causing cardiac arrhythmia. This is especially true when it is administered in higher doses, as has been the case in the treatment of so-called COVID-19 patients not only in Italy, but also in Spain, France, England and the USA.

"I also see it that hydroxychloroquine, when overdosed, is reduced in its efficacy and can have toxic effects," writes to me by e-mail (25) Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch, who is one of the most prominent researchers who see in the drug the potential to help patients - provided it is administered in low doses (26).

In Spain, the Agencia Española de Medicamentos y Productos Sanitarios (AEMPS) - the Agency for Medicines and Health Products - began large-scale distribution of hydroxychloroquine and its slightly more toxic variant chloroquine to COVID-19 patients in hospitals on March 16 (27). Miquel Barceló of Cerdanya Hospital, located about 150 km north of Barcelona and close to the French border, told France Culture in early April:

"There is a more or less reckless behavior in relation to this drug (hydroxychloroquine) ... There are many patients in intensive care and many deaths compared to Occitania (the region directly on the opposite side of France) ... As this disease develops, people say to themselves: we have to do something. There may be little stopping people from using this drug" (28).

18 March 2020: WHO Director-General Ghebreyesus launches major drug attack

On March 18, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, proclaimed a major study-based drug offensive to combat COVID-19:

"Several small studies using different methods may not provide us with the clear, convincing evidence we need to find out which treatments help to save lives. The WHO and its partners are therefore organizing a study in many countries to compare some of these untested treatments. This large international study will provide the robust data we need to show which treatments are most effective. We have called this study the SOLIDARITY study" (29).

And the focus of this solidarity study was on the following highly toxic drugs already mentioned: Remdesivir, lopinavir/ritonavir (Kaletra), interferon-β in combination with Kaletra, and hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine (30).

How hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine should be dosed is stated in the introduction to the report of a WHO consultation on April 8:

"The chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine regimen selected for the study includes two oral doses (250 mg per tablet of CQ or 200 mg per tablet of HCQ), followed by oral maintenance doses twice daily for ten days. This meeting was convened to discuss the adequacy of the selected doses for the study" (31).

However, as Meryl Nass, a physician from Maine State, writes in an article for the patient protection organization Alliance for Human Research Protection, the dosage information is "misleading because the dose actually used in the Solidarity study was 2.4 g in the first 24 hours and a cumulative dose of 9.2 g in 10 days" (32).

This extremely high dose seems all the more curious when one considers that a document on an informal meeting of the WHO on March 13 on the possible role of chloroquine indicates that the Gates Foundation investigated the effect and distribution of chloroquine in the body (of the 25 participants in this meeting, 5 were from the Gates Foundation). And this report states: "Higher doses are considered for treatment, i.e. 10 mg/kg base, followed by 5 mg/kg twice daily for seven days".

In other words, a person weighing 70 kg would, if he or she followed this suggestion, receive 700 mg of chloroquine base - i.e. the equivalent of 900 mg chloroquine (33) - as a loading dose, which is light years away from the 2.4 g in the first 24 hours, which is obviously used in the Solidarity study.

It should also be noted that both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are very difficult for the body to break down, so that doses taken over several days have a cumulative effect. Chloroquine is also used in euthanasia. In 1986, for example, the German Journal of Legal Medicine published the article "Death after administration of 1,250 mg chloroquine in porphyria cutanea tarda" (34). Other sources put the lethal dose at 2 to 3 g (35).

In 1979 the WHO hired a consultant named H. Weniger to study the toxicity of chloroquine. He investigated 335 cases of poisoning in adults by chloroquine. And on page 5 of his report, Weniger states that a single dose of 1.5 to 2.0 g of chloroquine base - i.e. 1.9 to 2.6 g of chloroquine - can be fatal (36). And, as mentioned, the dose used in the Solidarity study was 2.4 g in the first 24 hours plus 6.8 g on top in the following nine days.

According to Dr. Nass, "all experts agree that 'there is a small margin of error between toxic and therapeutic effects in chloroquine', as stated in the standard work Goldfrank's Toxicologic Emergencies. It's very safe if used correctly in the right patients," says Nass, "but a little more can be potentially fatal. Professor Nicholas White, who participated in both WHO consultations on chloroquine preparations, mentioned this aspect" (37).

"The high-dose regimen used in the Solidarity studies has no medical justification," Nass accuses. "The study design, which - in contrast to conventional drug trials - provided only a limited collection of data regarding the safety of the active ingredients, could make it more difficult to identify toxic drug effects. This is completely unethical."

Nevertheless, many countries around the world participated in the Solidarity study, including Spain, France, Switzerland and Belgium - countries with a marked excess mortality rate (limited to April).

At the end of March no one less than US president Trump even praised Hydroxychloroquine as "a gift from God" (38), which certainly must have given a special boost to the desire for this preparation and the belief in its possible healing power. But as promising as the well-meaning name "Solidarity" and Trump's glorification may sound, the whole thing ended in a catastrophe, especially because of the overtherapy with Hydroxychloroquine, which in many cases was also administered together with other toxic drugs.

How lethal Chloroquine was was demonstrated in Brazil. On April 13, the Chicago Tribune (39) reported that a study in the Land of Sugar Loaf, in which national guidelines recommend the use of chloroquine in coronavirus patients, was terminated prematurely for safety reasons. The reason: coronavirus patients who had taken a higher dose of chloroquine developed irregular heart rates, which increased their risk of potentially fatal arrhythmia. Patients in the study had also been given the antibiotic azithromycin, which carries the same cardiac risk.

"For me, this study provides useful information, namely that chloroquine causes a dose-dependent increase in an abnormality in the electrocardiogram, which could make people vulnerable to sudden cardiac death," the newspaper quotes David Juurlink, internist and head of the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Toronto. Juurlink referred to an electrocardiogram, which indicates the electrical activity of the heart.

In terms of dose, about half of the study participants received 450 mg of chloroquine twice a day for five days, a total of 4.5 g, while the remaining subjects received 600 mg every 12 hours for 10 days, a total of 12 g. Within three days, the researchers noticed cardiac arrhythmia in patients who had taken the higher dose (after three days, they had "intubated" 3.6 g of Chloroquine). Nevertheless, the patients continued to be administered diligently. And on the sixth day, 11 and thus a considerable proportion of the subjects had died, which led to an immediate end of the high-dose arm of the study.

A virus that avoids only Swiss-German? Absurd!

The fact that de facto only drugs can be considered as the decisive cause of observed excess mortality became particularly clear in Switzerland. There, a total of 16 hospitals (infirmaries) had participated in the Solidarity Study, including the University Hospital of Lausanne (40). The reason: in this Alpine country, increased mortality was only registered in the Italian-speaking part of Ticino and the French-speaking part of the country, while the German-speaking region was largely spared, as the data from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office reveal. Thus, the German-speaking canton of Zurich, with its 1,521,000 inhabitants, had fewer deaths than Ticino, with just 353,000 people. The idea that a virus could "attack" ethnic groups in such different ways is simply irrational.

The deaths also occurred "at breakneck speed", which also clearly speaks against the virus hypothesis. This is what happened, for example, in the St. Antonius nursing home in Saas-Grund. As the Swiss News program Schweiz Aktuell reported, the first positive test came on April 1, the first death on April 17, and "then things suddenly went fast," as the home's director Patricia Pfammatter tells in an interview.

"We had many residents who were relatively well on their way with the virus, where one actually had the feeling for seven to eight days that people were over the hill. And suddenly things went very badly. Within a few hours they were then partly no longer responsive, terminal, you could tell it was coming to an end" (41).

"It seems that the Solidarity studies were not intended to test the benefit of hydroxychloroquine in Covid-19, but rather to test whether the patients tolerated toxic, non-therapeutic doses," criticizes Meryl Nass (42).

France: Even more drug experiments

The Solidarity studies were by far not the only experimental attempts. On 22 March, INSERM, the French biomedical research agency, announced that it would coordinate an additional study in Europe called Discovery, following the example of the WHO and involving 3,200 patients from at least seven countries, including 800 from France. It was said that the study would test the same drugs, except for chloroquine (43).

On April 8, Newsweek reported that the University Hospital of Nice (CHU), which was selected for the discovery study on March 22, had to stop an experimental treatment with hydroxychloroquine (44).

In an interview with the French daily newspaper Nice-Matin, Emile Ferrari, Head of Cardiology at the Pasteur Hospital, which is part of the CHU, explained that some patients should have stopped treatment because of the risk of cardiac arrhythmia. According to Ferrari, the cardiac risk would be increased if the antibiotic azithromycin was also administered. For some patients treated with these drugs, the drug is more harmful than the disease itself, Ferrari said. "The new observations are quite significant, as the combination is currently being tested in numerous other COVID-19 studies," as the "Deutsche Apotheker Zeitung" (German pharmacist journal) reported in mid-April (45).

And extensive drug experiments have also been conducted in France. On March 23, for example, the newspaper L'Express reported that the High Council for Public Health (Haut Conseil de santé publique) "encourages doctors to involve as many patients as possible in the various therapeutic trials that are taking place in our country, because this is the safest way to quickly determine whether a treatment is effective or not" (46). These trials have also used drugs such as Remdesivir, Kaletra or Hydroxychloroquine, according to a list of different types of COVID-19 therapy projects first published on April 1 (47).

And as an official Belgian guideline document of 8 June 2020 shows, high doses of hydroxychloroquine were also used in the EU and by the WHO in the Discovery study (48).

Recovery study: Again, hydroxychloroquine doses at potentially lethal levels

With all this, we are far from reaching the end of the medication excess! On April 3, the British government announced

"Within just 15 days, nearly 1,000 patients from 132 different hospitals (in the United Kingdom) were already recruited, and in the coming weeks it is expected that many thousands more patients will participate in the study for the randomized evaluation of COVID-19 therapy, abbreviated RECOVERY. This study represents the largest randomized controlled trial of potential COVID-19 treatments in the world. A number of drugs will be tested in the study. These include: Lopinavir ritonavir (Kaletra), (the anti-inflammatory drug) dexamethasone, hydroxychloroquine" (49).

In addition, the recovery study was to test the previously mentioned azithromycin and tocilizumab as well as REGN-COV2, referred to as "combination monoclonal antibodies against coronavirus" (50).

The recovery study, co-funded by the Welcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, progressed at an unprecedented pace and had enrolled more than 11,000 patients from 175 hospitals in the UK within a relatively short period of time. But then the study's hodroxychloroquine arm was discontinued. Justification:

"These available data convincingly exclude that hydroxychloroquine offers any benefit whatsoever in terms of mortality in patients hospitalized with COVID-19" (51).

However, this formulation was a euphemism that completely distorted reality, as no less than one-fourth (25.7 percent) of those treated with hydroxychloroquine had died.

However, this is not really surprising considering the hydroxychloroquine dosage of the recovery study, which is similar to that of the solidarity study. Martin Landray, Professor of Medicine at Oxford University and co-head of the recovery study conducted in the UK, said the following in an interview with the French online newspaper France Soir on 6 June: "It is 2400 mg in the first 24 hours and 800 mg from day 2 to day 10, making it a 10-day treatment in total". This makes a total of almost 10 g of hydroxychloroquine in 10 days, with 2.4 g on the first day alone (52).

The dosage did not take into account the weight, kidney and liver function of the volunteers, as Meryl Nass critically notes.

"And the 2.4 g in the first 24 hours was administered to people who were in hospital in an already very sick condition. This was a potentially lethal dose for them" (53).

In contrast, when asked whether there would be a maximum dose of hydroxychloroquine in the UK, Recovery Co-head Landray replied in all seriousness: "I would have to check here, but it is much higher than the 2400 mg, about six or ten times higher". And when asked if "there would be doses of Hydroxychloroquine in the UK that are classified as lethal by the Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)," Landray replied: "The treating physicians did not report that they believed any of the deaths were due to Hydroxychloroquine.

In addition, the hydroxychloroquine arm of the recovery study would not have been stopped because hydroxychloroquine was not considered safe, but because of its lack of efficacy. "There is no approved dosing regimen for a new disease like Covid," Landray said. However, the Hydroxychloroquine dosage used in the study is not dissimilar to the dosage used in amoebic dysentery, a bowel disorder associated with abdominal pain and bloody-mucus diarrhea, for example, according to Landray (54).

Such statements leave one downright stunned. Not only is the dose used in the recovery study far higher than what is recommended in the UK as the maximum daily dose of hydroxychloroquine for known pathologies, namely 6.5 mg per kg, or about 500 mg per person. Also, the dose used in the recovery study for the first 24 hours (2.4 g) is even higher than what is reported in France as an overdose requiring immediate emergency hospital treatment. This is 25 mg/kg hydroxychloroquine. In relation to a 75 kg patient, this is 1.875 g in one day.

And the recovery dose is also higher than that recommended by the World Medical Association (WMA) in France, as the online magazine France Soir writes in its article "Recovery trial: Brexit and overdose" (55).

The Recovery study ended its hydroxychloroquine studies abruptly on June 5 (56), the Solidarity study ended its own on June 17 (57) - at a time when, for example, discussions about the excessive doses started on Twitter (hashtag #Recoverygate) (58).

But this is not the only oddity. As recently as May 28, the Recovery Control Committee had pointed out that there was no problem with hydroxychloroquine. And so it was recommended that patient recruitment should continue without interruption until the next session, which was scheduled for June 11. This, in turn, is strange considering that only shortly before that, on May 22, a huge Lancet study based on more than 96,000 patient records had concluded that hydroxychloroquine significantly increases mortality compared to the control group - and when combined with a macrolide such as azithromycin, it produces an even higher mortality (59).

But then the bad news increased. On May 29, the Indian Council of Medical Research alerted the WHO to the incredibly high hydroxychloroquine dosage in the recovery study. It was four times higher than the one used in the Indian studies (60).

On June 4, the UK Food and Drug Administration approached the recovery managers and said that the data for hydroxychloroquine should be reviewed, as the French Minister of Health had already done on May 23. Just four days later, on May 27, the French government decided to suspend a decree allowing hospitals to administer hydroxychloroquine to patients with severe cases of COVID-19 (61).

Withdrawal of the hydroxycholoroquine study in the Lancet: bad aftertaste

On June 4, Lancet magazine withdrew its aforementioned comprehensive study, which revealed the high lethality of hydroxychloroquine (alone or in combination with an antibiotic). And that begs the question: What is actually going on here? Doesn't something here stink to high heaven?

The Lancet study was officially revoked after independent peer reviewers informed three of the study authors that Surgisphere, a Chicago-based company that provided the raw patient data for the study, did not want to provide the complete data set for review (62). But how realistic is it to assume that the authors of the study - including cardiologist Mandeep Mehra of Harvard University, who is said to be "one of the stars in his field" (63) - compiled the study without carefully reviewing the raw data? And how realistic is it that this study has gone through the peer review process and been released for publication without the data having been meticulously checked beforehand?

And let's recall: A study was conducted here that dealt with what is currently the most hotly debated topic in the world: the treatment of patients who were given the COVID-19 stamp with one of the most hotly debated preparations. How realistic is it there that just here was "sloppily" done?

In this context, Roger Lord of the Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane and lecturer for medical sciences at the Australian Catholic University, for example, gives some thought:

"Things like the number of cases they reported in relation to Australia, even though the Australian cases were not even that high at the time, is something that a truly respected journal like The Lancet could have picked up on with its peer review process" (64).

Just imagine what would have happened if this Lancet study had not been "bashed". Yes, "then of course there would have been a lot of collateral damage in the form of patients not surviving the treatment," as Lord points out. In fact, this would have been some kind of incontrovertible proof that hydroxychloroquine, when administered in high doses, is a potential "killer" and that the life of countless patients around the world was wiped out within a short period of time.

And wouldn't it have been much, much more difficult to trivialize the results of the recovery study?

Or was it even a double game in the end? The confusion would then have consisted of demonizing Hydroxychloroquine initially on May 22 with the publication of the Lancet study in order to take other toxic drugs such as Remdesivir out of the line of fire. And shortly thereafter, Hydroxychloroquine was taken out of the line of fire again by the revocation of the Lancet study (June 4) and the termination of the Hydroxychloroquine arms of the Recovery and Solidarity studies (June 5 and 17). Contrary to the actual data, it was then simply claimed that hydroxychloroquine was not effective (instead of clearly stating its lethal potential), which in turn caused so much discussion and confusion that the topic of "lethal drug effects" could not even reach the public discourse.

Martin Landray, co-head of the recovery study, is "incompetent and dangerous".

Another very important question is: how could Landray, deputy lead investigator of the recovery study, seriously claim that the highest dose of hydroxychloroquine in the UK is "much higher than 2,400 mg, about six or ten times that. The dose of hydroxychloroquine used in the study is not dissimilar to the dose used in amoebic dysentery, for example?"

Was he possibly misquoted? In fact, the principal investigator of the recovery study, Peter Horby, claimed that France Soir misunderstood Landray's statements, but France Soir was able to completely refute this criticism (65|66).

And so Christian Perronne, Professor of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, provides the answer to this question. He stated to France Soir:

"In 1975, when I did my medical internship at the Claude Bernard Hospital, which was the temple for research into infectious diseases, I often saw the disease amoebiasis, of which amoebic dysentery is a sub-form, and chloroquine was no longer used to treat this disease. It is the first time I hear, as Martin Landray claims, that we use hydroxychloroquine in amoebic dysentery in doses that are super-toxic to humans. The classic treatment for colonic amoebiasis is the hydroxyquinoline combination of tiliquinol and tilbroquinol, whose trade name is Intetrix".

This is why Perronne is convinced:

"Landray has confused hydroxychloroquine with hydroxyquinoline. This man, who calls himself a doctor, is incompetent and dangerous. This is scandalous."

The concluding comment of France Soir: "British friends, you may be leaving Europe (much to our regret), but your government seems to be telling you a lie" (67).

The question remains as to why Landray told France Soir that hydroxychloroquine is not lethal and that the hydroxychloroquine arm of the recovery study was stopped not because of safety concerns but simply because it was not effective.

This statement is justified by the fact that the mortality rate in the recovery study was 23.6 percent in those who did not receive hydroxychloroquine - not much lower than the mortality rate in the subjects who had taken hydroxychloroquine (25.7 percent). But not only is a mortality rate of 25.7 percent extremely high in itself and should make everyone think about the drug behind it. The mortality rate of 23.6 percent in the comparison group is also exceptionally high.

"This figure is 18.1 percent in France and 12.9 percent in Bouches-du-Rhône, where Didier Raoult, a proponent of hydroxychloroquine, is based," as France Soir writes (68).

In a study of critically ill patients published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on May 11, 2020, in which the administration of hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin was compared with the administration of hydroxychloroquine, the administration of azithromycin and the administration of none of these preparations, the figure was even lower, at 12.7 percent (69).

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