The voice is low, calm.
In his office at the IHU in Marseille, Professor Didier Raoult continues to bicker his white goatee during the interview he gave Thursday evening to BFMTV and which was broadcast this Friday morning.
The opportunity, he made clear on several occasions, to remind those who "do not listen" or "do not understand" the positions that he defends, always on the side of science, and without ever "slandering or insulting ".
On his post at the head of the IHU.
“People have mixed up two things,” began the controversial professor. If he was not renewed as a hospital practitioner at the end of August, reached by the age limit, Didier Raoult remains "professor emeritus of the university" and director of the IHU Méditerranée Infection, which he "thinks of leaving. functions ”in a year, time to organize the sequel. “You don't change a director like that, you have to call for tenders, all of that takes time, is scheduled. I intended to stop my duties as director now but we were unable to do so because my scientific council, my board of directors, asked me to postpone it for a year given the Covid epidemic ”, he added.
Unless a vote of the board of directors decides otherwise.
The council is expected to meet in the coming weeks.
The representatives of the Public Assistance of Marseille and Aix-Marseille University, founding members of the Institute, have already announced that they do not want to extend his mandate, but nothing indicates for the moment that they federate the majority. votes or that the president of the Institute validates the decision of the council.
Didier Raoult: "I will be leaving my functions in a year" https://t.co/pE7An0RNUX
- BFMTV (@BFMTV) September 10, 2021
On his work.
"Considering what the society I live in and what my possibilities are, I find that I did as well as I could do," said the microbiologist, promoter of a controversial treatment of Covid-19 patients via a dual therapy combining hydroxychloroquine (whose effectiveness has been denied by studies) and azithromycin. The doctor has repeatedly recalled that he was a pioneer on several subjects. So the journal Nature has "started talking about variants in July 2021 (while) we were talking about them in July 2020".
Surprised by the "level of nervousness" around his positions, Raoult observed that "what excites people is that you cannot say anything that calls into question the ideal solution which will be the vaccine. », A posture more political than scientific. But we do not imagine that it is anti-vaccine for all that. “Immunologists think, have thought a lot, that the virus is an object. (….) The vaccine is an immunologist's point of view. I believe that microbes are alive, that they keep changing, all the time. As they arrive, the variants are more and more contagious and less and less virulent ”. The microbiologist will also say that the Delta variant "is less lethal" than the previous variants: "0.8 against 3%", he asserts.
On the anti-Covid vaccine.
He recalls his tweet of July 9, which earned him a congratulatory message from Olivier Véran, in which he called on caregivers to be vaccinated.
And that we do not try to make him a bad trial: with a vaccination rate of 89.5%, his former service is "the most vaccinated of all the public assistance", he pleaded twice .
In view of the challenges of the current epidemic, I am in favor of the systematic vaccination of nursing staff, with the vaccines recommended for their age group.
I therefore encourage all my colleagues to approach their vaccination center.
- Didier Raoult (@raoult_didier) July 9, 2021
Likewise, it is in favor of the vaccination of all people over 80 years of age, frail people, of monitoring their serology, and even considers it "reasonable" to inject a third dose to the oldest.
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"The third dose seems reasonable to me" for people at risk, says Didier Raoult https://t.co/jc0OswjTj5 pic.twitter.com/jTg4H7K52M
- BFMTV (@BFMTV) September 10, 2021
But he won't say more.
Be the hero of antivax?
"The demonstrators, it is not my problem, I do not read the newspapers and do not watch television", he kicks in touch.
By dint of being asked the question, he admits never having read the conspiratorial column published on the France Soir site, at the beginning of September, and which he nevertheless relayed.
Didier Raoult: "The demonstrators, it's not my problem" pic.twitter.com/pA3FLehAP7
- BFMTV (@BFMTV) September 10, 2021
Finally, the specialist in infectious diseases advises to "look at the animal side of what is happening, there is a reservoir there, and the variability of viruses is greater in animals than in humans," he warns. .