They call each other “the three Gs”.
Germain Forestier, Guillaume Saint-Quentin and Guillaume Rozier, together with nearly 30,000 Twitter subscribers, specialize in monitoring the Covid-19 epidemic.
Their graphs, curves, visualizations and various tools published every evening, as soon as the Public Health France indicators are updated, are commented on, relayed, shared ... sometimes by the Minister of Health Olivier Véran himself!
Not much predestined them to such visibility, amplified by the arrival of the "second wave" of the epidemic.
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Back to early 2020. The coronavirus is still only a distant pathogen which mainly affects China.
Over the weeks and the first hospital and intensive care admissions in France, the epidemic starts to get carried away with us too.
“Some data was made freely available, doctors began to post small graphs on Twitter.
I in turn wrote small scripts, I saw that it was starting to interest… ”, rewinds Germain Forestier, 36, teacher-researcher in Mulhouse.
Update with today's data for testing (02/11).
Only data from 02/11 are available for W45 (this week).
⚠️Caution in the interpretations, it would seem that there are significant delays in the data feedback.
pic.twitter.com/fsbTnt7wnS
- Germain Forestier (@gforestier) November 5, 2020
It was also in the Haut-Rhin sub-prefecture that the religious gathering was held in February 2020, accused of having "super-spread" the epidemic.
Being also married to a general practitioner, Germain Forestier had something to be aware of the health situation.
“I asked myself:
can I help by trying, with my computer skills, to better understand and inform?
», He says.
"A way to bring my little stone to the building"
At the same time, Guillaume Rozier takes advantage of his free time freed up by teleworking during his graduation stage.
At barely 24, he finished his studies at an engineering school in Nancy.
“At the beginning, I made very simple charts and the idea was to compare countries.
We were all wondering if we were going to follow the curves of Italy, ”recalls the young man, who launches his site with an equivocal name: CovidTracker.
On Twitter, he met Elias Orphelin, a young student at ESCP Business School and also keen on numbers.
"I had a little time during the confinement, publishing graphics on the epidemic was a bit of a way to bring my little stone to the building", testifies the latter.
Guillaume Rozier, 24, has just completed his engineering training.
DR
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Over the weeks, the indicators multiply and they are more and more made available in "open data", that is to say in free access on the government portal.
The incidence by age group?
The number of hospitalized per department?
Our "geeks" are constantly imagining new visualizations to put them in shape.
Germain Forestier has been a hit since this summer with its heat maps, which represent in color the evolution of the incidence rate or the positivity rate by age group.
“At the beginning, in the middle of summer, I felt a bit lonely when I put all this online from the back of my vacation home on the island of Oléron with a 4G connection”, laughs- he tapping into his memories.
At least several hours a day
Each of them finds its tone.
The most "playful" is the Lyonnais Guillaume Saint-Quentin, also 36 years old.
This digital project manager within the Keolis group is not so much a specialist in graphics at the start, but above all a professional in website creation and user experience.
On its "Covid Weather" that it delivers every evening, each French department is represented by a smiley that describes the local epidemic situation: a guy who laughs if all goes well, another frightened or in tears if the resuscitation services are overloaded .
"I try to popularize and do something very general public", explains this young father of two children.
[THREAD] # MétéoCovidFrance of November 05
🚑 Hospitalizations
👉 Metropolitan France:
2953 entries ⬆️ D-7 (2587)
Average 2726.57 ⬆️ D-1 (2674.29)
👉 DOM:
36 entries ⬆️ D-7 (20)
Average 23 , 14 ⬆️ D-1 (20,86)
Graph over the whole period and the last 120 days
The continuation ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/1zid3ypK5P
- Guillaume Saint-Quentin (@starjoin) November 5, 2020
In addition to being volunteers, these activities are of course very time consuming.
All say they spend on average several hours a day.
“At least one or two, sometimes three with time to respond to all the people on Twitter,” testifies Guillaume Rozier, alias GRZ, whose messages are often shared by several hundred Internet users.
"It takes a lot of time, three or four hours a day on average, sometimes between noon and two during my break and especially when coming home in the evening when the children are asleep", echoes Guillaume Saint-Quentin.
Guillaume Saint-Quentin, 36, works in Lyon.
DR
The game is worth the candle since the count of their subscribers is climbing at high speed, from a few hundred to several thousand in six months.
But no question of making this notoriety an end in itself, they assure in chorus.
"What gives me the most pleasure is not so much my number of subscribers as the hundreds of thank you messages that I receive", testifies Elias Orphelin.
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Their work is also praised by many doctors and health professionals.
Some visualizations of Germain Forestier are even taken up by the official authorities.
Olivier Véran has already "retweeted" his heat maps, which were also found twice in the opinions of the Scientific Council.
The teacher-researcher is delighted and sees "no problem", his work being usable without limits on condition that his name is mentioned.
“I'd rather they take my graphics over than pay someone to do the same,” he says.
"You are the first account that we dream of stopping following"
“Still, what a consecration for them, almost a humiliation for us!
“Laughs an agent of the Ministry of Health, who closely follows their work.
"They produce value, they participate in collective emulation and they also have a role of popularizer", he welcomes, well aware that everyone does not necessarily share this enthusiasm in the corridors of State services .
The band - exclusively male - has been invited several times to participate in discussions on the Zoom application in order to share their comments and wishes.
One question remains: what future after the Covid?
We may be in the middle of the second wave, it will all be well behind us one day.
“I find it difficult to project myself.
In March, I would have said I will quit in April;
in April, I would have said in May… There, for the moment, what I do still fascinates me as much.
I would never have imagined it because I am more used to moving on once I have explored a subject, ”says Guillaume Rozier, who is now even invited by certain TV channels.
Everything will depend above all on the health situation.
The last word to another member of the “three Gs”, Guillaume Saint-Quentin: “I am only waiting for one thing: for the epidemic to stop.
A lot of people have told me:
You are the first account that we dream of stopping following
.
"
