Indicted for endangering the lives of others for her management of the health crisis, Agnès Buzyn decided to give herself up. This Tuesday, “Le Monde” gives the floor to the former Minister of Solidarity and Health. Above all, the daily indicates that it obtained and was able to consult the diary that it kept from the beginning of the epidemic in China.
In this document of more than 600 pages, started on December 25, 2019, Agnès Buzyn transcribed her exchanges, her SMS, her emails and other Telegram loops. And she assures her today, her warning messages and her precautions were not taken seriously by the members of the executive, starting with Emmanuel Macron.
“I was made to pass for an idiot who saw nothing, whereas it is the opposite, she insists. Not only had I seen but warned. I was, by far in Europe, the most alert minister. But everyone didn’t care. People explained to me that this virus was a “flu” and that I was losing my nerves”, she regrets today with Le Monde.
In this famous writing, which today constitutes an element of the file at the Court of Justice of the Republic, Agnès Buzyn recounts having heard of the first cases of, at the time, unidentified pneumopathies, from December 25 via a blog . She then transmits the information to Jérôme Salomon, Director General of Health and tells him to “follow this”, then during the month of January, activates the “Orsan Reb” plan which must organize the mobilization of the health system.
Emmanuel Macron alerted from January 11, 2020
“I feel like I have a sleeping army in front of me, I can’t shake them off,” she explains. In addition, she writes that she alerted Emmanuel Macron and Edouard Philippe, then Prime Minister, on January 11. “The information is not yet in the media, but it can go up,” she says in writing to the head of state.
Agnès Buzyn says that, throughout the month of January, she kept the two men at the head of the executive informed of developments in the epidemic in China. “You have to get into combat mode,” she even said to Edouard Philippe on January 30. That same day, she asked to speak with Emmanuel Macron, to discuss this virus “much more serious than the flu”. In vain.
According to her, it was only on February 8 that she was able to really exchange with the President of the Republic on this subject. Invited, after the withdrawal of Benjamin Griveaux, to replace him in the race for mayor of Paris, she then left office. “I should never have left. Cheers, I was in my place. There, I was pushed in the wrong place at the wrong time, ”she says.
“We should have listened to Agnès”
Despite her forced departure from the government, she continues to be involved in monitoring the epidemic, and to exchange with the executive. “Hospitals must be prepared, public opinion, the country is not ready! “, she insisted with Emmanuel Macron on February 29. And goes up a notch on March 13: “I continue to ask you to stop everything, as in Italy, as soon as possible. It will be the berezina in the hospitals ”.
At the time, she lambasted the government for not postponing municipal elections, as the number of cases in France continued to rise. “All of this is ridiculous! Don’t make us do a second-round grub when the situation is so dire. We were quite ridiculous like that, ”she insists to Édouard Philippe the day after the first round.
“During the whole campaign, I continued to send text messages, to alert, but I felt that I no longer weighed anything and that I was speaking in a vacuum. »
. I was no longer in business and I was made to feel it, ”she admits to Le Monde. Several friends have since told him about the words of the Head of State: “We should have listened to Agnès”. As of February 13, 2020, she spoke to Édouard Philippe of a “widespread and very long crisis”.