As often, the mediatized doctors predict “the worst to come”. This time, it is the AP-HP crisis director who promises us “blood and tears”. A good opportunity to recall the absurdity of martial terms in an epidemic situation and to recall the greatness of a Churchill who is not ready to reincarnate in 2021.
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Let us come back to the shattering declaration of a director of Public Assistance in Paris.
Two rooms, two atmospheres. Thursday, during his weekly press conference, Jean Castex announced that he will not announce anything and hopes to stick with the curfew. Friday, it is Bruno Riou, crisis director of the APHP who invites the journalists. We are going to disaster, he said. “I only have to offer a Churchillian speech on blood and tears. ” This obviously alludes to the speech of May 13, 1940, when, once the invasion of France had begun, Winston Churchill addressed the Commons.
Is the comparison justified?
It’s totally irrelevant to be kind. At the time it was, says Churchill, “To engage in combat against a monstrous tyranny”. What is at stake is the survival of Great Britain as a sovereign country and of the British as a free people. We are living a painful ordeal, of course, but our national existence is not threatened. Not from the virus, maybe from fear. If freedoms are suspended, we still have the most precious, that of thought and freedom of expression. It shows above all the inanity of the war metaphor. War is the exercise of violence. Doctors fight with knowledge. They are not in the fire.
But doctors must sound the alarm if the situation worsens, right?
Except that, that they do it publicly and this, three times a day, that is discussed. Many constantly announce the worst, we end up thinking that they are blackening the picture so that we are wise. Riou is already head-on challenging the legitimacy of the Prime Minister. And in fact alarm, it scares us blue. “The situation is terrifying. ” If Mr. Riou is terrified, let him change jobs. What does he want to get? And does he know if the situation outside hospitals is not so terrifying?
Yes, the situation is serious, hospital systems are not sized for an exceptional event. But this is not war. Fortunately, because there is no Churchill in sight
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