The results of his initial trial have yet to be replicated. “I think what he secretly hopes is that no one will ever be able to show anything,” Molina told me. “That all the trials conducted on hydroxychloroquine will not be able to even reach a conclusion of no efficacy.” In recent weeks, Raoult has in fact tempered his claims about the virtues of his treatment regimen. The published, peer-reviewed version of the final study noted that another two patients had died, bringing the total to 10. Where the earlier version called the drugs “safe and efficient,” they were now described merely as “safe.”
He has shown flickers of what appears to be doubt. In one interview, Raoult quoted Camus, from the fatalistic coda of “The Stranger,” hoping that “on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators, and that they should greet me with howls of hatred.”
Needull in a haystack 