The infectious disease specialist Olivier Rogeaux looks back on 2020, with lucidity and humility. 60 years old, 30 years of career behind him, he agrees to take a step back and believes that“at the Chambéry hospital in any case, we managed rather well, we did not panic”, without “shouting games”.
Faced with the coronavirus, the year has been difficult. He is part of the medical corps that France hired during the epidemic, which the population applauded on the balconies. One of those heroes of the year? “I’m not a hero. It was together that we managed to react. If I were alone to react, nothing would have changed”.
The fear of being overwhelmed
Yes, he was scared. Especially during the second wave of the epidemic, when he saw the entry into the intensive care unit at Chambéry hospital. “At the beginning I was really afraid that we would be overwhelmed, that we would not face it. Sometimes I was a little afraid for myself too. So yes, I was afraid”.
There was a pause. This summer, Olivier Rogeaux even went on vacation, “my emails open, my phone open. We had a few weeks a little quieter in July – August, when at the time the virus was circulating much less. From the beginning of September, in the hospital the crisis cells resumed , and they never actually stopped “. He also believes that during the summer, the pressure was perhaps a little too relaxed in the face of the epidemic.
On the antenna of France Bleu Pays de Savoie, he has never ceased to encourage respect for barrier gestures, even during the holidays. Simple to say, he knows it very well: “this summer, we were outside a lot … maybe I relaxed a little bit by kissing my children, because it felt good!”
He did not expect it
Doctor Olivier Rogeaux is very clear on this point: nobody could foreseer a year ago the scale of the health crisis and its consequences on our daily lives. On the other hand, in the profession, the specter of a pandemic had existed for a long time.
_“We knew it would hit us one day or another. But we said to ourselves: it won’t be for us_, it will be for others “ he recounts. Until the end of February, he himself is quite calm in the face of this virus, “The epidemic is in China, China will contain. We will have to manage a few sporadic cases, here and there“He admits. Then very quickly, faced with the growing scale of the crisis, he hammered home the risks of the disease.
Today, he invites skeptics and conspirators to come with him to the hospital, see what happens there. While remaining lucid about the media situation, and communication around the pandemic. “Scientific discourse has not always been absolutely clear. People have spoken in different voices, and I understand: from time to time people like to follow the one who is saying the opposite of what the majority of the others are saying. It’s up to us to be modest, scientific, to say: the truth, that’s it, that’s what we know, what we don’t know “ he reasons.
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