On March 16, a Long Island attorney and blockchain enthusiast named Gregory Rigano appeared on Laura Ingraham’s nightly show on Fox News, “The Ingraham Angle.” Ingraham introduced the segment by asking: “What if there’s already a cheap and widely available medication, that’s on the market, to treat the virus? Well, according to a new study, there is such a drug. It’s called chloroquine.” Rigano, who at the time was falsely presenting himself as an adviser to Stanford Medical School, had recently self-published an acclamatory report on the potential of chloroquine, “An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus (Covid-19),” as a Google Doc formatted to resemble a scientific publication. It had begun to circulate in right-wing media and also in Silicon Valley; Elon Musk tweeted a link to it. Raoult saw it and noticed the attention it was receiving online. Another researcher might have found this sort of publication irresponsible and dangerous. Raoult began corresponding with Rigano and his co-author, James Todaro, an ophthalmologist and Bitcoin investor. Raoult authorized them to share his results before they had been published.
On air, Rigano announced that a researcher in the south of France, “one of the most eminent infectious-disease specialists in the whole world,” was about to publish the results of a major clinical study. “Within a matter of six days, the patients taking hydroxychloroquine tested negative for coronavirus, for Covid-19,” Rigano said. (He made no mention of azithromycin.) “We have a strong reason to believe that a preventative dose of hydroxychloroquine is going to prevent the virus from attaching to the body, and just get rid of it completely,” he added. “That’s a game changer,” Ingraham said.
In the coming days, Ingraham questioned both Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of President Trump’s pandemic task force, and Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, about the drug. Sean Hannity began promoting it as a cure for Covid-19. “Let’s put it this way,” he said on his radio show. “If I had it — personally, I am speaking only for Sean Hannity — I would be all over this.” Rigano appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show and claimed that Raoult’s study had shown hydroxychloroquine to have a “100 percent cure rate against coronavirus.” According to Todaro, Raoult had sent him a copy of his study and allowed him to post it on Twitter that day, two days before the preprint release. “I suspect he gave us permission because he knew it was the fastest way to disseminate the trial results,” Todaro told me. (Rigano did not respond to requests for comment.) Later, Raoult himself appeared on “Dr. Oz,” the talk show hosted by the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, a frequent Fox News guest who has promoted hydroxychloroquine. “I believe that ideas and theories are epidemic,” Raoult once wrote. “When they’re good, they take root.”
Trump began hyping hydroxychloroquine on March 19, at a White House news conference with his coronavirus task force. “I think it’s going to be very exciting,” Trump said. “I think it could be a game changer and maybe not. And maybe not. But I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer. Very powerful.” He suggested, inaccurately, that the F.D.A. had approved the drug for use against Covid-19. He made no mention of azithromycin. Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn of the F.D.A. gently corrected him later and said that a large clinical trial would be the appropriate way to evaluate the therapeutic value of the drug.
De l’autre côté de l’Atlantique, les travaux de Raoult ont aussi vivement attiré l’attention. Jusqu’à celle de Gregory Rigano, qui se présente comme « conseiller du programme de recherche translationnelle SPARK de l’Université de médecine de Stanford ». Il n’est cependant pas médecin. Il n’est pas non plus affilié à l’école de médecine de Stanford - l’université tente activement de l’empêcher de revendiquer tout lien avec elle -, et est en réalité... avocat. L’homme est intervenu à plusieurs reprises dans l’émission du très influent Tucker Carlson ("Tucker Carlson Tonight"), et notamment ce jeudi 19 mars : « Le Président doit autoriser l’utilisation de l’hydroxychloroquine contre le coronavirus immédiatement. Ce médicament est sur le marché depuis 50 ans et son utilisation est sûre. Didier Raoult, l’un des meilleurs spécialistes au monde, basé dans le sud de la France, a obtenu des résultats très concluants. »
Et Carlson de répondre : « J’aimerais croire à cela, et je pense que si ce que vous dites est vrai, c’est une très grande nouvelle et nous devons tester ce médicament. Je vous remercie d’annoncer cela ici et j’espère que nous en entendrons parler rapidement. » Et Tucker Carlson ne s’est pas trompé : Donald Trump annonçait le jour-même approuver le recours à la chloroquine. Il faut dire que Carlson, personnalité très influente dans les milieux conservateurs américains, s’enorgueillit d’avoir déjà fait changer d’avis le président des Etats-Unis. Après des semaines à minimiser les dégâts potentiels entraînés par le coronavirus, un monologue du présentateur avait fini par convaincre Donald Trump de prendre la crise au sérieux.