Arnaud Danjean: "The 2008 white paper on defense and security had identified the risk of a pandemic"

European deputy (LR), Arnaud Danjean chaired, in 2017, the editorial committee of the Strategic Review of Defense and National Security , whose mission was to set the strategic framework for the 2019-2025 military programming law.

LE FIGARO. - The French public authorities invoke the unpredictable nature of this health crisis. Had this hypothesis never been studied by the State services?

Arnaud DANJEAN. - A crisis, whatever its nature, is very largely or totally unpredictable, if this means a perfectly precise anticipation of its date of triggering and its magnitude. So you need a lot of humility when you want to judge what was predictable or not. Unfortunately, we have too many examples of politicians or even scientists who asserted peremptorily, at the beginning of the crisis, that this pandemic had to be put into perspective and who are today at the forefront of asserting that nothing was more predictable as its severity!

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