Hydroxychloroquine isn’t a miracle cure, then. It appears that Professor Didier Raoult is a bit of a bullshitter and President Donald Trump is a bit of a mug. Who’d have thought it?

“Hydroxychloroquine has received worldwide attention as a potential treatment for covid-19 because of positive results from small studies,” the abstract of a French study published in the British Medical Journal today says. “However, the results of this study do not support its use in patients admitted to hospital with covid-19 who require oxygen.”

It bases its findings on 84 patients who received the treatment Raoult has so loudly advocated and 89 who did not.

There was virtually no difference between the results for the two groups, apart from the fact that eight patients in the treatment group had to stop taking the drug because of heart problems.

A Chinese study of 150 patients with mild or moderate symptoms also found the treatment made no significant difference, apart from the fact that 30% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine got the shits or some other side-effects, compared to 9% in the other group.

Raoult, who prefers to air his theories in online videos rather than peer-reviewed papers, has polarised opinion since he made his claim that the anti-malaria drug, when combined with azithromycin, could cure the disease.

Where you stand depends on how you feel about an energetic self-publicist who slags off his colleagues and cultivates the friendship of hard-right politicians, all qualities that don’t automatically make you a bad scientist, I suppose. Some people – conspiracy theorists, Marseille patriots – seem to like that sort of thing.

Allez les amis, RT à fond pour cette idée!@raoult_didier les Marseillais sont avec toi! pic.twitter.com/9ND0KETyIw

— René Malleville (@renemalleville) May 14, 2020

In an interview with the New York Times, Raoult criticised his profession  for being riven with hubris. Pot, kettle, black …

I went to Joinville-le-Pont yesterday. It’s the furthest I have been since mid-March. What an adventure!

I haven’t been around the world, as John Littlejohn claims to have done in his stunning rendition of this Jimmy Rogers number, but I have visited at least 35 countries, some on the other side of the planet.

 Now a drive of four kilometres to pick up some groceries seems unspeakably daring.

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 27,425, with a worrying rise to 351 yesterday. The other figures are more encouraging – 20,463 people are in hospital, down 608, with 2,299 in intensive care, down 129. And 59,605 people have been discharged from hospital, 932 in the pat 24 hours.