- Asked about CNews, Professor Jean-François Toussaint relied on data relating to the spread of the coronavirus in France and the results of the epidemic in Sweden and the Netherlands to affirm that the confinement had not been very useful.
- Epidemiologists do not agree with this idea and believe that confinement is on the contrary essential in the fight against Covid-19.
- As the accounting methods and data are still temporary, it is too early to decide on the direct effects of this measure.
An interview that makes you react. Professor Jean-François Toussaint was a guest of the CNews channel on Sunday, after having published a new note on the coronavirus. In preamble to his speech, this former member of the High Council of Public Health and director of an institute of epidemiology at Irmes (Institute of biomedical research and epidemiology of sport) indicates that for the first time since 17 March, according to data according to him from Public Health France, the number of contaminations in mainland France is less than 1,000 per day. “95% of the route has been crossed. The whole of this wave, which is strictly the same in all European countries, shows that we are at the end of this chaos, of this extremely deleterious wave. The main effect is now behind us, ”concludes Jean-François Toussant.
He continues: "For countries which have not confined to Europe, such as Sweden and the Netherlands, or which are doing very targeted confinement such as Germany, we see that all of these ascending and then descending phases are the same […]. The countries which confined and those which did not confine have the same mortality rate at the end of this wave […]. The containment measure comes long after the viral circulation phase, which is known to have started in November or December worldwide. "
Internet users were quick to react to this Facebook interview: "We were robbed of two months of freedom ... Who benefits from all this? "So what was the use of confinement ??? "" I read a deconfinement for July 31 ... The government is scheming and making the French hope, behind all this there is a huge staging aimed at letting as many people die as possible ... "or" Here it is was not worth ruining the country's economy, but it was clearly a choice to weaken social movements. "
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On CNews, the intervention of Jean-François Toussaint this Sunday was made as part of the program "Bonjour Docteur Milhau" and is located 34''25 'from the replay below:
The professor specifies, in response to a question from the journalist on the other measures adopted by the countries which have not resorted to containment measures, that "the barrier gestures, the fact of putting on a mask, the distance, all that a much greater effect than confinement. " If restaurants and bars have remained open in Sweden, health rules have indeed been established there, such as maintaining a space of one to two meters between the tables of the latter to prevent them from being crowded.
In general, the Swedish government has adopted the strategy of collective immunity, which is based on the idea that if at least 60% of the population has contracted the virus, the epidemic will stop by itself.
"Containment was extraordinarily useful"
Epidemiologist Catherine Hill does not agree with Jean-François Toussaint's assertion that containment measures do not affect contamination: "It is not correct to say that all European countries have the same curve. The scientist, who has been doing a lot of data cross-checking since the start of the epidemic, has herself established a curve of the number of deaths per 60 million inhabitants:
Unlike the doctor, the epidemiologist thinks that "containment was extraordinarily useful". Catherine Hill takes China as an example: “The authorities confined very early and had rapid results, which is seen in Hubei [the province of which Wuhan is the capital] on the graph. She still recognizes that, more than confinement, testing and wearing a mask in a massive way are decisive factors against the epidemic, as did Germany.
"Germany has not suffered the Mulhouse cluster"
An opinion shared by Pascal Prey, epidemiologist at the School of Advanced Studies in Public Health (EHESP): “I completely disagree with Jean-François Toussaint, simply because the examples they give are not correct. Germany has made containment, perhaps more effective and weaker than ours, but it also had not suffered the Mulhouse cluster, which particularly impacted the dynamics of the epidemic in France. We can also give as an example the United States which has not confined its population: we can see the health catastrophe which is unfolding before our eyes. As for Sweden, which has not made confinement, its number of cases is not decreasing, contrary to what it claims. "
On the latest graphs from the statistical data collection site Worldometer, the figures for new cases detected in Sweden are in fact rather jagged:
“Furthermore, the data [that Jean-François Toussaint shows] is not data from Public Health France (he noted source Irmes, Institute of biomedical research and epidemiology of sport) and is certainly estimated from hospitalizations , but we can clearly see in its time series that weekends have fewer cases, and that therefore the sharp drop it describes is just temporary and the figures recover on Monday. "We die less on Sundays, simply because the figures are not up to date. So you have to make an average over seven days, ”also observes Catherine Hill.
Reliability of statistics
Because therein lies the difficulty. How to decide formally when the methods of accounting for contamination or death vary from country to country? An April 24 investigation by Swedish Radio News, the Swedish national radio station, believed that the national public health agency had underestimated the number of deaths due to Covid-19 in several of its regular updates: 'They report every day are always somewhat overwhelmed, as many deaths are not reported immediately and there may be a delay of several days or weeks before they become part of the statistics. And it was this delay that underestimated the figures. "
A Le Monde survey published Friday abounds: "Globally, the Covid-19 kills more than what the balance sheets say." This study wonders: "How, then, to obtain a realistic vision of the situation? "No doubt by doubling, or even more, the number of deaths recorded in the world. We will notice this when we have figures of excess mortality everywhere, ”says Belgian virologist Steven Van Guch in the article. It will undoubtedly still require a great deal of perspective and perspective to decide on the usefulness of confinement.
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