On the terrace of a Parisian cafe, a man approaches her.
"Are you Karine Lacombe?"
The infectious disease specialist barely has time to agree that the stranger enters into a black anger, treating her as a "Nazi" in front of the dumbfounded customers, at lunchtime at the end of summer.
"It is because of you that we live in a health dictatorship".
A person tells him to leave but the man hears nothing.
"The waiter had to come out for him to go away, I was shocked, it was the first time that I was verbally attacked", confides the fifty-year-old with the blond square, one of the most famous personalities. media of the epidemic and most attacked online by conspirators.
The head of service at Saint-Antoine hospital will not be silent.
“When a woman responds and resists, she becomes more of a target,” explains Karine Lacombe.
It is all the more important to hold our position, to show that we have our place in the public debate, without being aggressive.
"
An escalation of violence
If the infectious disease specialist refuses police protection, the #StopMenaces collective, to which she belongs, asks the authorities to ensure the safety of doctors who so wish.
"We appeal to the State to put in place all the necessary measures to ensure our protection: provision of a bodyguard or police protection for those who request it among the caregivers and scientists most at risk", he wrote in a column that Le Parisien - Today in France publishes exclusively.
Some go so far as to pay for a bodyguard out of their own pocket, like Dr Jérôme Marty.
"To be reduced to such extremes is a terrible observation of failure and abandonment on the part of the public authorities", deplore the signatories.
This is the other epidemic of this Covid-19 crisis: an escalation of violence that has further escalated this summer with the widening of the health pass.
Doctors, pharmacists, scientists… They are, more and more, taken to task by opponents of the management of the epidemic and conspirators.
These are centers set on fire, letters containing a bullet, sent to four pharmacists in Corsica, another treaty of "collabo" in Montpellier, demonstrators who, mistaking the address, believe they vandalized the entrance to the building of Director of Public Assistance at Marseille Hospitals (AP-HM).
The fear of taking action
"It is easy to defame and smear," laments the infectious disease specialist Gilles Pialoux.
“It is enough that names are thrown in the pasture on groups on Telegram
(a secure messaging system)
to make them targets, decrypts Tristan Mendès France, specialist in digital cultures.
The operation of conspirators is to find those responsible ”.
A torrent of hatred fueled by some political leaders.
To read also "A bullet in the head": these doctors insulted and threatened by anti-vaccines
For its part, the Order of Physicians, considered by some to be too wait-and-see, also asks the government to protect its white coats. "We encourage them to file a complaint and report to their departmental council and we ask for a defense proportionate on a case-by-case basis," explains their vice-president, Jean-Marcel Mourgues. For lack of census tools, it is impossible to know the number of these reports, he tells us.
"You have to file a complaint to mark the occasion", urges Jean-Luc Jouve, president of the medical establishment commission of the AP-HM.
But now, many are classified without follow-up, regret the caregivers.
“Recently, we were the subject of a list of names of people called to be tried and sentenced to beheading,” warns the collective.
More than anything, they fear today a passage to the act of a "radicalized or unbalanced person".
The forum of doctors in danger: "We ask the State to protect us"
“For eighteen months, scientists and caregivers have been subjected to a double challenge by the pandemic: on the one hand, that of research to better understand this virus and find treatments, on the other, that of a exhausting and long-term struggle to take care of patients with Covid.
Another epidemic, opportunistic, is also raging: that of scientific and medical disinformation and conspiracy, known as infodemic, which leads to mistrust of science and its carriers, and which is accompanied by an incessant outpouring of hatred.
This epidemic does not progress in waves: after an acute inaugural phase, it immediately became endemic and is growing in strength.
In France, it brutally fell in March 2020 on those who dared to raise the alert concerning questionable work on hydroxychloroquine in Marseille and the promotion directly to the public of this molecule in the Covid in defiance of the regulations, signaling the advent of scientific populism.
The floods of insults, attempts at intimidation, often extreme and explicit threats, violations of privacy have poured out on us, without ceasing, and continue at an increasingly sustained rate. Photos of homes, mailboxes with geolocation have been published. Nominative lists have emerged: some of us have been cited on social networks as part of "carts", intended to be taken to court, named as pests to be eliminated in weekly YouTube videos with very strong hearing.
Recently, we were the subject of a list of names of people called to be tried and sentenced to beheading.
Physical assaults have already taken place.
In the same vein, a punitive expedition took place in Marseille against the director of the Public Assistance of the Hospitals of Marseille, following what strongly resembles threats of reprisals on a TV set.
Thus, we are designated targets, with what that implies of moral damage and endangerment on a daily basis.
We appeal to the State to put in place all the necessary measures to ensure our protection: provision of a bodyguard or police protection for those who request it among the most threatened caregivers and scientists.
Because it turns out that we are destitute, in the absence of any action from the authorities repeatedly questioned.
In fact, some of us call on close security agents, at their expense, or seek functional protection from their employer with varying degrees of success.
To be reduced to such extremes is a terrible acknowledgment of failure and abandonment on the part of the public authorities.
We keep repeating that we fear an act of a radicalized and / or unbalanced person.
Since it is out of the question to remain without reacting, several new individual complaints have been filed within our collective #StopMenaces made up of the people listed in the list of convicts promised to the guillotine in an article published in France Soir on August 22.
The lawyers concerned have come together for collective action. Four ministries: Ministry of Solidarity and Health, Ministry of Higher Education and Research and recently Ministry of Justice and Ministry of the Interior as well as the Order of Physicians were directly urged to act by the association Citizen4Science from May 5 as part of its mission to combat harassment of those who speak scientifically. This action, brought by Senator Bernard Jomier via a written question, legally obliged the government to answer it in August; it remained a dead letter when it called for concrete actions to protect us.
Our collective #StopMenaces held a press conference in Paris on September 7, which had a strong media impact in France, but also in Europe and the United States. What was the government's only response? A
You will not pass
, launched at the National Assembly by Olivier Véran, Minister of Health, to those "who want to scare", followed by the assurance of "absolute firmness" by Gabriel Attal, spokesperson for the government.
Without action, these are empty words. This situation is intolerable and serious. While there is a beginning of awareness since the problem has been debated in Parliament, this has not been followed by actions or even commitments. Let us recall that in addition to public condemnations and threats, physical attacks took place on healthcare professionals in the performance of their duties (pharmacists, nurses, laboratory technicians, etc.) with deterioration of equipment, as well as verbal attacks by caregivers on public roads.
In such a situation, everyone is concerned and must mobilize.
We call on parliamentarians to act at their level with the authorities, and citizens to add their voice to our call on the ministries to take measures to protect the harassed and threatened people and to take action on the problem themselves.
Finally, we ask that the bill n ° 4 398 aimed at improving the protection of whistleblowers submitted to the National Assembly on 7/21/2021 as part of the transposition of Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of 25/2019, be submitted to parliamentary debate as a matter of urgency.
A real democratic issue, the protection of whistleblowers is a major issue, both in terms of the reports made and the consequences to which they are exposed.
Everyone can see the current inability of the public authorities to do their work in the face of the permanent endangerment that we suffer and relate.
Whistleblowers take risks personally, professionally, and as engaged citizens.
A rule of law worthy of the name cannot rhyme with their abandonment.
"
THE PETITIONERS
Citizen4Science Association - Dr Fabienne Blum
, president;
Collectif Fakemed
-Dr Cyril Vidal, president;
Patrick Detlefsen
, electronics and industrial IT technician;
Dr Thomas C Durand
, director of the Association for Science and the Transmission of the Critical Mind;
Pr Karine Lacombe
, professor of medicine, Sorbonne University;
Dr Hervé Maisonneuve,
Public Health doctor, Scientific editor, Paris;
Dr Jérôme Marty
, general practitioner, President of UFMLS;
Dr François Morel
surgeon, popularizer, former secretary general of the Fakemed Collective;
Dr Alexander Samuel
, math / science teacher.
