The book. Successes, and above all many failures… Two years after the start of the Covid-19 epidemic in France, journalist Marc Payet, who covered public health issues for twenty years at the Parisianreturns to the chaotic management of the health crisis by the Ministry of Solidarity and Health in his book The Ministry of Broken Arms.
The title is provocative and the criticism harsh, the author basing himself on some fifty interviews with advisers from Avenue de Ségur, Bercy and Matignon, important players in the crisis such as Aurélien Rousseau, ex- director of ARS Ile-de-France, or Agnès Pannier-Runacher, minister delegate in charge of industry, as well as former officials, keen observers of the crisis, such as William Dab, former director general of health ( DGS), or François Bourdillon, former director of Public Health France. On the other hand, neither the current Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, nor his CEO, Jérôme Salomon, targets of criticism, have agreed to speak with him.
Underground tensions
In addition to the unmissable chapters on “the original sin of masks” – whose stock of several hundred million units had been destroyed without being replaced in 2018-2019, despite the recommendations of the Stahl report – and on the “Agnès Buzyn mystery”Minister of Health at the start of the crisis and today indicted for “endangering the lives of others”the book reveals more subterranean tensions between ministries and even within that of health.
Thus the rivalry between Olivier Véran and Jérôme Salomon, the “Mister Weather” of Covid-19 during the first wave, but disappeared from press conferences during the next four. A rivalry that dates back to 2017, when the two men, both medical doctors, advised candidate Macron on health issues for the presidential campaign. On another scale, it is the management of the regional health agencies that work with difficulty with the prefects. Another handicap, the multiplication of health institutions, to which are added a scientific council and a council of orientation of the vaccine strategy…
If the subject is a little complacent towards presidential choices, such as that of not reconfining at the start of 2021, the book has the merit of revealing the workings of a ministry traditionally considered weak and often losing arbitrations against Bercy – whose advisors are happy to criticize their health counterparts. But also how the logic of legal protection can hinder action. This administration is also shown in burnout, weakened by budget cuts and corporatism, powerful in the world of health.
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