A blind woman was begging outside the bakery this morning, right up by the door so that everyone had to pass close to her as they entered.

As we were waiting, she advanced towards the queue, squawking “S’il vous plait! S’il vous plait!” in a grating voice.

Everyone scattered. A man at the end of the queue rather pointlessly said “She’s blind,” and the woman nearest to her replied “I know but … ”, while backing away.

The woman – black and scruffily dressed, I think I’ve seen her around town – gave up asking for money, lit a cigarette and went back to her place at the door. I went to another bakery.

Coronavirus makes cowards of us all.

The hydroxcyhlorine controversy rages on. Health officials in Nouvelle Aquitaine have announced that some people who took it without a prescription have developed heart problems as a consequence.

There have been warnings of other side effects, especially for older people.

Professor Didier Raoult, the media-friendly Marseille doctor who announced the drug had “spectacular” results against Covid-19 after testing it on 24 patients, says he has been vindicated. In his latest study 65 of the 80 patients treated improved and were discharged from hospital in an average of less than five days, he says. One patient aged 74 was still in intensive care and another aged 86 died.

Some other scientists point out that the trial was not subject to the usual controls.

International tests of the drug’s use against Covid-19 are still being carried out but the French government has authorized its use under a doctor’s supervision.

Queues have formed outside the hospital where Raoult works and there has been a run on the drug, reportedly depriving some patients who were already prescribed it for other illnesses of their supply.

The professor has apparently attracted a fan club on the far right, whose adepts present him as an anti-establishment rebel whose work is being sabotaged by big pharma (although Sanofi, which is hardly an entrepreneurial insurgent, has ramped up production of its hydroxychlorine product, plaquenil).  

In fact, Raoult has spent years cultivating connections in political circles, mainly, though not exclusively, on the mainstream right. The hard-right mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, a friend since their schooldays together in Nice, has leapt to the professor’s defence on social media. Having tested positive for the virus, right-wing MP Valérie Boyer reported to him for treatment.

France’s Covid-19 recorded death toll now stands at 2,606, 292 on Saturday. There are 40,174 confirmed cases, up from 37,575, 19,354 being treated in hospital, up from 17,620, 4,592 of them in intensive care.