Brilliant death threats, the face of the fight opposing the Covid-19 pandemic in Belgium is fighting despite living under police coverage following attacks on social media.
Marc Van Ranst, the best-known virologist in Dutch-speaking Belgium, speaks bluntly and conveys misleading messages that politicians prefer to be pronounced delicately or not to speak out at all.
Opening borders “is dangerous”, staying away from the port city of Antwerp, cancelling summer projects: the virologist never hesitates to rebuke Belgians on the radio or on their Twitter account.
In Belgium, coronavirus has already caused around 10,000 deaths, one of the highest mortality rates in the world for its population of approximately 11. 5 million people.
The epidemic is currently recovering and the government is registering around 800 new infections, worrying Van Ranst.
In person, Van Ranst as a researcher.
Dressed in the same V-neck sweater, the Antwerpian place presents itself as a master, tore and with a jovial behavior that can temporarily become the frown of someone who does not voluntarily suffer from fools.
Constantly at the climax since the pandemic ravaged Belgium, his fame has attracted the wrath of Flemish nationalists and the right, the dominant political movement in Dutch-speaking Flanders.
Through trials, Twitter clashes and now death threats, Van Ranst resumes his role in Belgian society, convinced that his own are due less to the fitness crisis than to his politics.
“They have everything to do with me facing racism or xenophobia, I’m going to react. Right-wing parties hate me,” he told the AFP, without hiding his left-wing leanings.
– ‘Sick and tired’ –
Van Ranst, 55, spoke to AFP at his workplace, the Riga Institute of the University of Leuven, one of the universities of studies in Europe.
To his supporters, Van Ranst is seen as a weapon opposite far-right and anti-mask protesters.
He even paroded like a superhero in an online viral video in which a fake Van Ranst machine-gunned a fried fish through nationalists who violated closing measures.
A right-wing beast, in mid-August, Van Ranst was the war cry in one of the movement’s protests, which accused him of instiling a “crown circus” of unnecessary anti-virus rules.
The participants, who added several hundred that Sunday in Brussels, were invited to point out a letter not easy from their resignation from the expert school advising the government on the fitness crisis.
The demonstration was modest, but Van Ranst said he knew that the public’s willingness to fight the virus diminished and that “populist opinions” were fueling the challenge.
“Anyone who says we need to get rid of the mask and get rid of the five bubbles (the near contact limit allowed for the home) will generate a lot of interest, and I can fully perceive it,” he said.
“We may be tired of the virus, the challenge is that the virus doesn’t get tired of us. He infects us as he liked to do in March,” the virologist continued.
True to his style, Van Ranst turned to Twitter to criticize “in slow motion” for his lack of reaction to the new increase in cases.
Belgium is heading for a “disaster,” trunked into a tweet.
mad-arp / dc / tgb / gle