On February 16, 2020, Agnès Buzyn left the Ministry of Health, before the Covid-19 epidemic exploded in France, and after warning of the “tsunami” that was coming. At that time, “everyone thinks I’m doing tons. I am not taken seriously,” she confided in the columns of Le Parisien, this Tuesday, September 26, the day before the release of her book Journal – January-June 2020. A diary, retracing the events from her point of view , and with the subtitle “Agnes, you scared the president.”
The Covid crisis arrived in France at the same time as a political crisis in Paris. Benjamin Griveaux being forced to withdraw from the race for mayor of the capital, Agnès Buzyn takes his place, while the coronavirus epidemic is starting more slowly than she expected… “Six days later, the Italy faces an uncontrollable epidemic. I understand that the absence of cases in France is only temporary, that we are experiencing the calm before the storm,” she explains to Le Parisien. “Giving up on the Ministry of Health was the worst mistake of my life. »
Then came the imbroglio around the masks, which she had ordered on January 30, and the final blow arrived with the confinement. “We have been accused of not having anticipated the crisis. […] My image was also manipulated. I was the subject of an outpouring of hatred, named as the culprit by social networks. » A very complicated period, which she had to explain, point by point, “date by date”.