The health pass in France generates resistance in the middle of the fourth wave | Delta variant advances as opposition to measures hardens

From Paris

A perverted narrator seems to be writing the novel about the covid-19 virus on the skin of the real. Stimulated by the pandemic, the situations are a blaze of contradictions. After four days and four nights of often fierce debates, This morning, Parliament adopted the extension of the health passport (full vaccination – both dose-, negative PCR test or restoration certificate) required to enter public places with a capacity of more than 50 people and which also imposes compulsory vaccination of hospital staff and isolation of HIV-positive people.

Tensions due to the health pass

The pass is expected to come into effect at the start of August, but the difficult road it had to travel to be approved perfectly reflects the tensions it generates both in society and in the political class. Last weekend, tens of thousands of people again demonstrated across France against the health pass and what many consider the “perfect dictatorship” because, as Anne says, a 40-year-old woman employed in a bank , “With that of the collar and the excuse that they will treat us or protect us, what will happen is that we will all end up in a file, looked at, portrayed, x-rayed and checked”. However, despite opposition and the repeated destruction of vaccination centers, France exceeded the threshold of 50% of the population on Tuesday with a “complete vaccination schedule”, that is to say the two doses of the available vaccines (Moderna, AstraZeneca or Pfizer) or that of Janssen. According to the General Directorate of Health, 40,719,515 people received a dose (60.4% of the population) and 34,026,476 both (50.5% of the population).

Unvaccinated youth

We are still far from the percentage required to achieve collective immunity (90%) and the government is betting on maintaining the upward momentum to complete the scheme as quickly as possible at a crucial time: with each passing week, the Delta variant of the virus doubles the infections. Although it has different profiles from the previous ones, today it is accepted that the “fourth wave” is already taking place in the country. In the past 24 hours, nearly 23,000 new cases have been registered compared to just over 10,000 a week ago. These recent infections mainly affect unvaccinated young people. Everything seems to be on the rise, in a contradictory way: in the week of July 19, 4.7 million people were vaccinated in what was, according to the Ministry of Health, “the best week since the start of the campaign. vaccination in December 2020 ”. However, the wave of the virus is growing as opposition to the measures grows.

Mobilized

The response unites tens of thousands of displaced people for different reasons: yellow vests, hostile to everything that comes from the State, anti-masks, anti-vaccines, health passes and anti-containment, whose claims are usually a strange cocktail of protein ideas (conspirators, suspicions about the existence of “a higher entity that controls the government”, certainties taken from the books which spread the idea of ​​a generalized collapse ( the world is ending). 47 years old and with a comfortable past as a real estate agent, Etienne is very convinced that “people who have been vaccinated will die within two years. It is the unstoppable logic of the humanity Resources are running out, they are not enough for everyone Humanity must be renewed, war on a world scale is not possible and the virus and the vaccine have been the perfect alibi. First they killed the old men and now the young rebels s who do not accept vaccination.

The expressions most heard in the demonstrations are “Liberty”, “down with tyranny”. Dominique, a baker from Paris, complains to PageI12 “The transfer of the logic of domination: the health logic was used to stop the virus and, a few weeks ago, with the announcement of the rigors of the health pass, we switched to the security logic.”

There are small groups within anti-vaccines that have gone beyond rhetoric and taken violent action: they beat and persecute journalists or destroy or set fire to vaccination centers (over 15). An opportunist from the far-right party led by Marine Le Pen slipped in front of the anti. It’s about Florian Philippot, former number two of the far right and founder of the Patriots movement. Philippot defines himself as the “promoter”, the “creator” of the anti-vaccine movement. It is he who shouts in the megaphones or the microphones “Down with the sanitary dictatorship, long live freedom”, “Down with apartheid” (between vaccinated and unvaccinated). And in this mass of disparate ideas and common causes are the resistant, the tender, those who accept “the fate imposed on them, the fate of being outcasts of the vaccine, excluded from society”.

Monique collects with unprecedented creative patience everything she is going to do to avoid having to be vaccinated. The 57-year-old woman, with a solid career in a mall and two children, says: “They won’t bring me to my knees. I’ve already asked for retirement. They won’t! Just in case, I have too. bought a device to make Bread at home, I don’t need to go to the movies because that’s what Netflix is ​​for, I order food from Uber Eats or I order it online at the supermarket and no one goes Forbid me to walk in the streets. people. I make a clear choice to live differently so that my immune system remains intact. ”

The anti organized themselves cleverly. There is already a French directory with the list of shops, restaurants, businesses and services that do not require a health card. and a whole support system for people who will not “follow the herd of vaccinated”. There are two established struggles: that of the government against the emergency to prevent the spread of the virus from contaminating the most fragile again, and that of anti-vaccines, determined that their bodies “social and genetic” (Monique) are not contaminated. by the vaccine.