But it is most definitely evidence.
I don’t think it’s intentionally bad but it’s still bad. In the end it’s easier to make things worse … and chloroquine could, we don’t know. So I wouldn’t touch it.
1st February: https://www.lejdd.fr/Societe/le-professeur-didier-raoult-ce-...
"This coronavirus isn't so bad"
26th February: http://m.lamarseillaise.fr/analyses-de-la-redaction/decrypta...
"The coronavirus isn't more dangerous than seasonal flu."
That's why it's difficult to understand how an expert could casually claim that this was nothing more than seasonal flu.
If he had the evidence explained to him and then just assumed it would be different in France that would be unscientific, but we'd all need to read French to ague about that.
It's difficult to understand why a country would go on lockdown and build emergency hospitals for something nor worse than seasonal flu...
They measured virus, not outcomes, they measured virus in the throat, not the lungs, the starting point was not the start of the disease but some later (more arbitrary) point in time, the two groups were not randomly assigned and the study wasn’t really blind.
It could be that they just happened to compare two groups where the treatment group was further along in the illness – especially since they try to sell that as a disadvantage for them, but that could honestly be an advantage for them. We know that virus in the throat decreases as the illness progresses. (Virus in the lungs is much more relevant and also dangerous here, better would probably be outcomes.)
Not really evidence, sorry.