Should we see a simple "concern for freedom of expression, without censoring or condoning", as Didier Raoult wrote on Twitter on Wednesday?
A symposium entitled "Covid-19: first assessment of scientific knowledge and controversies" will be organized on March 30 and 31 at the IHU Méditerranée Infection, led by the microbiologist.
Didier Raoult will deliver the inaugural speech, according to the program, but he is not the organizer.
The IHU Méditerranée Infection Foundation is hosting a congress on March 30 and 31 for the sake of freedom of expression, without censoring or condoning it.
— Didier Raoult (@raoult_didier) March 16, 2022
At the initiative, we find the sociologist at the CNRS Laurent Mucchielli, originally a specialist in questions of delinquency and now a follower of polemical and contested positions on the Covid.
Author last January of the book “La doxa du Covid”, he believes in particular that “the new
vaccines
manufactured in emergency are ineffective and sometimes dangerous products, intended primarily to make the fortune of their manufacturers”, as indicated on the back cover .
Which is, on the basis of clinical trial and pharmacovigilance data, false.
The CNRS had called him to order (without naming him) last August, deploring "the public positions taken by certain scientists, often more concerned with ephemeral media glory than with scientific truth, on subjects far removed from their fields of professional competence.
Criticisms of health crisis management
Laurent Mucchielli then put together a panel of personalities.
“He asked me:
Do you want to talk about a subject you know?
I always answer yes, and I have total confidence in him, ”tells the Parisian epidemiologist Laurent Toubiana, who is one of the guests.
He is supposed to speak at the end of the day on March 30, around the theme “How to measure and assess the Covid epidemic?
".
In the list of guests to speak, we also find the virologist Jean-Michel Claverie or the American molecular biologist Robert Malone, among others.
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All have in common to hold a particularly critical speech of the management of health crisis by the government (restrictions, vaccination strategy, etc.).
And therefore, to be prized by the “antivax” galaxy.
Laurent Toubiana, for example, deplores “an incredible cascade of errors, triggered by the first confinement”.
He also criticizes the executive for having, within the scientific council, “brought together people who we knew were very identified as alarmists”.
Jean-Claude Claverie also believes that "politicians no longer understand anything and are hitting us with liberticidal measures which have no health justification at the present time" as he indicated last January on Sud Radio.
“To shelter is to endorse”
In their viewfinder, there is also the fact of monitoring the number of positive cases (among other indicators).
“I would like to know in these clusters at the campsite how many people are really sick to the point of suffering from it, of being hospitalized or of going to the doctors”, estimated Jean-Claude Claverie last July, in the middle of the fourth wave, on LCI.
A few days later, the French Society of Virology, which he had founded, had "dissociated" from these remarks and had "questioned himself on his need to legitimize his personal opinion by a fantasized role of founding father of a society where he was not re-elected.
The @SFV_France dissociates itself from the words of JM Claverie and wonders about his need to legitimize his personal opinion by a fantasy role of founding father of a company where he was not re-elected... Let's not get out of our role as scientists.
Opinion is not right.
– French Society of Virology (@SFV_France) July 26, 2021
Several of the guests also participated in the conspiratorial documentary “Hold-Up”.
“I do not regret my participation.
The only thing is that I did not know who the other guests were and I saw things that did not correspond to me at all, ”defends Laurent Toubiana.
Unsurprisingly, the organization of this symposium at the IHU in Marseilles is not to the liking of many scientists.
The reactions were strong and numerous on social networks, in particular in response to Didier Raoult's message.
“To shelter is to endorse.
And we don't invite this kind of stuff, ”wrote for example the teacher and doctor in molecular biology Alexandre Samuel.
Didier Raoult's entourage did not answer our questions at this time.