BUZYN – MACRON. The former Minister of Health, Agnès Buzyn, had alerted Emmanuel Macron to the seriousness of the health crisis to come, at the start of 2020. With the feeling of not having been taken seriously.
Agnès Buzyn had warned the executive of the lack of preparation of the French health services in the face of the pandemic. And this, from January 2020. This is what emerges from his story, echoed by Le Monde, October 25. The evening newspaper met the former Minister of Health, consulted her long notes and reveals in a long article how Agnès Buzyn lived the few weeks before France confined itself, faced with the epidemic of coronavirus. These two certainties emerge: the former minister had a presentiment that the coming health crisis would be very severe; it was confronted with the lack of lucidity or understanding of the two heads of the executive, Edouard Philippe and Emmanuel Macron.
The article that Le Monde devotes to the moods of Agnès Buzyn raises many questions. It is established that the hospital system was not prepared for the coronavirus epidemic. Could deaths have been avoided if the State had set up an emergency organization earlier than this was done? Did the public authorities have the means to accurately characterize the health risks? The concern of the Minister of Health was in any case obvious and she very clearly expressed her fears to Emmanuel Macron.
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“It can be severe Mr. President”
The facts: on January 25, Agnès Buzyn sent an SMS to the President of the Republic: “Mr. PR, I am at your disposal to take stock of the situation whenever you wish”, she wrote, adding: “The WHO made the wrong decision not to issue a global alert.” A first case of Covid was then detected in France on January 24. Unanswered, she again alerted Emmanuel Macron on January 27: “All global cases come from the Wuhan region. The day we have cases abroad in people who do not come from China, it will be a turning point towards a global pandemic,” she wrote, warning him of the risk: “It can be severe if many people are affected.” The Minister of Health informs him of the work in progress of his services, carried out to “evaluate the impact on the health system and anticipate”. Emmanuel Macron thanks her for this message, without taking any action at this stage.
On January 30, she asked the Head of State for a face-to-face interview. The latter assures him that he will give him time the next day, but despite reminders from Agnès Buzyn, this exchange does not take place before February 8. “We had to start preparing public opinion, but I couldn’t get an appointment,” she regretted to Le Monde. “I didn’t feel like I was being heard.”
Agnès Buzyn is currently indicted for “endangering the lives of others” by the Court of Justice of the Republic. What indignant the former minister. “I had not only seen but warned. I was, by far in Europe, the most alert minister. But no one cared. People explained to me that this virus was a “flu” and that I was losing my nerves”, she insisted to the newspaper Le Monde. In hollow, once again, his story comes to question the responsibilities of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. But Agnès Buzyn wants to detail her story: “Every time I asked Edouard (Philippe Editor’s note), a meeting of ministers, I got it. That didn’t mean he believed in my scripts, in my anxieties, but we worked hand in hand and he trusted me, he didn’t neglect anything. The president let the government do it. At the time, they are like the rest of the French population and experts, no one can understand the seriousness of what is coming.