“There were failures at all levels”: Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme tell us about their shocking investigation into the management of Covid

Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, investigative journalists at the daily newspaper Le Monde, shed a harsh light on the management of the pandemic in an investigative book, “The Judges and the Assassin”, published by Flammarion. Interview.

Your book, “The Judges and the Assassin” (Flammarion), sheds a harsh light on the management of Covid-19 in France. How did you come to investigate this subject? ?

Fabrice Lhomme: In the spring of 2020, we published a major series in Le Monde on the mask crisis, but we were left with a lot of questions and, while investigating, we were somewhat miraculously in contact with a great source who could give us access to a lot of information, including the contents of the Court of Justice of the Republic's file.

Thanks to this person and other sources, we got our hands on some absolutely incredible documents and the contents of this extraordinary investigation that had remained completely secret, which is quite rare when personalities are implicated. Yet, if any investigation deserved to be unlocked, it was this one, it is of public interest.

What lessons do you draw from this investigation??

Gérard Davet: Conducting an investigation into the management of Covid, from January to June 2020, was absolutely essential. This allows us to understand what could have gone wrong during these months when France lagged far behind other countries. It would really be an insult to the memory of the 170,000 victims not to try to understand what could have gone wrong.

Your investigation shows that the health crisis was predictable.

FL: It is striking when reading the confidential documents to which we have had access. There were 51 of them submitted to the highest authorities of the State, which warned of the possibility of a health crisis and, above all, recommended measures to limit the damage.

It is quite fascinating to see that all this was not taken into account as it should have been by certain political and administrative authorities. There were failures at all levels.

France was helpless in the face of Covid in the first months, did it try to hide it?

GD: Clearly yes, and one of the revelations in our book is that France wanted to hide the shortage of masks, tests, temperature detectors in airports, and artificial respirators. She found herself completely unable to care for the sick and this was only possible thanks to the caregivers, but also at the cost of tens of thousands of deaths.

If there is a general dismissal, this investigation will disappear into the safes of the Court of Justice of the Republic and no one will have access to it, our job as journalists was to bring this to light with a story at the heart of power.

Through this story, you also show how the government adapted its discourse to the shortages…

FL: Yes, from the moment the government realized that we were not ready, when we should have been, it did not have the political courage to recognize it. It was embarrassing because, even if the French health disarmament goes back to before Emmanuel Macron came to power, it has accelerated further since 2017.

It was necessary to have at least a billion masks in stock, when Macron came to power there were 750 million, when the crisis broke out at the beginning of 2020, there were about a hundred million, of which only 65 million were intended for the general adult population. It is derisory.

Not to mention that among the masks, some had expired, others were kept without anyone knowing whether they were usable or not, others had been destroyed when they should not have been.

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The Marolles platform (Marne), where all the protective equipment is kept, was managed in defiance of common sense. The government realized this but rather than admit it, it preferred to tell us that the masks were useless, to cover up the shortage. It was a lying speech, the underside of which we now understand.

GD:We are also publishing – this is the first time we have done so – confidential documents in full, because they are extremely convincing, in particular a note from the Directorate General of Health saying in substance: “We do not wish to reach the billion masks recommended by all scientists, for budgetary reasons”.

But there was also the maintenance of municipal elections, the inability to provide reliable tests, to take the pandemic into account in time, many mistakes were made.

One of the strengths of this book is these documents (emails, text messages, etc.) exchanged at the highest levels of the State. What do they say ? A form of disconnection from the duo formed by Emmanuel Macron and Edouard Philippe ?

FL: We see through these exchanges, at the beginning of the crisis, a Minister of Health, Agnès Buzyn, who is on the ball, fully aware of the crisis that is looming. She tries in vain to alert the Macron-Philippe executive coup, which, for its part, does not take her into account. They think she is doing a lot and above all they have other priorities, the “yellow vests”, pension reform, etc. It is interesting to see this disconnection from reality.

There are also all these email exchanges that show that the problem is also administrative. There is a form of general disorganization. No one knows who is doing what, who decides. For example, it was decided at one point that it was no longer up to the State to manage mask stocks, which undoubtedly had dire consequences, and what is fascinating is that in this sometimes Kafkaesque system, no one even today is able to say who made this decision…

You also quote these meaningful words addressed by Agnès Buzyn to Edouard Philippe: “Behind your decisions, there are people who are going to die”.

GD: Agnès Buzin plays an essential role in this story, she is a high-level doctor who will be the first to sense that this epidemic is about to become a pandemic. Even if, curiously, we will later discover through her text messages that she does not know the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic, which is still embarrassing for a Minister of Health.

But she warns the government early, she gets agitated, she tries to mobilize her colleagues, but it doesn't work. She is then offered the possibility of going to conquer the Paris city hall, she abandons her post knowing that she is making a mistake, but between the electoral catastrophe and the epidemic catastrophe that is looming, she realizes that she has chosen the wrong catastrophe.

And there, we see it between her exchanges of emails and text messages, she becomes really upset, aggressive, depressed, paranoid too and she will send extremely strong text messages to Edouard Philippe and Emmanuel Macron, telling them in essence “you are doing anything, you should not have held these municipal elections, I warned you”.

And these words: “Behind your decisions, there are people who are going to die”. This is exactly what happened.

Has France learned lessons from the crisis??

FL: We can hope that lessons will be learned in the coming months and that these elements will be imposed in the public debate to allow for an examination of conscience and responsibility. Because until now we have heard a speech (basically “we did what we could and no one did better than us”) that was not in line with reality.

We could have done much better and we have been wrong on several occasions. The French state has shown resilience in the second part of the crisis, where it was rather effective, but in the first six months, where everything is at stake, things went very badly.

We therefore have the impression that this feedback has not taken place, but we can hope for a collective questioning of those who are in charge of the state, because if a similar crisis occurs tomorrow, we do not see why the same dysfunctions would not cause the same consequences.

“The judges and the assassin”, an investigative book by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme at the heart of the management of Covid-19 in France, (Flammarion, 448 pages, €23). I subscribe to read the rest