[ad_1]
There is a joke that goes around in France: how to get a Frenchman to be vaccinated against Covid? Tell him he can’t have it.
My dentist – who is French – recounted this and found it hilarious. My doctor – who is not French – was not so amused. Like other general practitioners, she has tried, and not always succeeded, to persuade her patients to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine. Yes, you read that right, trying to persuade.
While the British have given their right and left arms for a Covid-19 vaccine, here in France still skeptical, people are refusing it. And not just the Anglo-Swedish jab AstraZeneca, although it didn’t help until after receiving unwarranted bad press, it’s the one delivered to generalists.
Misinformation, mistrust and downright crazy rumors have turned what should have been a fairly routine operation into an organizational nightmare. Doctors like mine who have only received 10 doses of AstraZeneca per week – all of which must be administered within 48 hours – are spending precious time and energy trying to get just 10 consenting patients together.
The reasons for French skepticism vis-à-vis vaccines are already well documented: previous health scandals have sowed doubt; the French are suspicious of their politicians and Big Pharma and complain that they are not told what to do. President Macron’s misguided destruction of the AstraZeneca vaccine on the basis of a misinterpretation of scientific data has not helped.
Yet it is surprising to find such illogical, if not unenlightened, thinking in the country that produced both Louis Pasteur and René Descartes.
After a year of lockdowns, curfews, closings of restaurants, bars, cinemas, theaters, gymnasiums and more and the severe restriction of freedoms, not to mention the general shift in the economy, one could imagine the French rushing for the exit from the pandemic nightmare. that vaccines offer.
And many of those who refuse are those with the most reason to get the vaccine: themselves at high risk or likely to transmit the virus to other vulnerable people. Last week, to the astonishment, Prime Minister Jean Castex revealed that only 40% of health workers in the country had been vaccinated. He reminded others that they have a responsibility “for themselves, their families and those in their care” to make it right. right now.
There are echoes of the UK’s spiteful Brexit debate in the responses some give for refusing to be vaccinated. It’s like walking on eggshells even asking the question, and the answers – deeply, sincerely and sincerely withheld – often make no sense to those who believe that having vaccines in general, and that of Covid in particular, is an individual and collective responsibility.
In a supermarket in a small town in Burgundy, I overheard a woman detailing her health problems and those of her husband, including cancer, a recent contact with death requiring multiple heart bypass surgery and blood tests. diabetes. She was asked if she plans to be vaccinated.
“Absolutely not. Nobody knows what is in it, ”she said. An unscientific poll of neighbors revealed similar sentiments: “It was developed too quickly”, “It is not sure”, “It causes autism”, “It does not work”, “There is something fishy about all of this… ”
Back in Paris, a colleague told me that her two elderly in-laws had serious health problems but refused to be vaccinated. Another said he knew a couple of professionals who were “not anti-vaccine … but happy to wait and see how it worked in the UK”.
An equally unscientific survey on social media showed that the reasons for skepticism were many, varied and spread across France. While some French people had harassed their doctors to get the vaccine or traveled miles to get a dose, others confused science and logic with claims that the vaccine would change their DNA or was as bad for human health as human health. 5G and smart electricity meters.
An American-Parisian told me that she “had several French people whom I consider to be quite intelligent who told me that they feared they had not had enough time to do extensive research into the safety of this all. “
Another friend reports: “In the rural regions of Auvergne, skepticism is everywhere. I’ve heard farmers say, “I don’t want a vaccine that could make me sick. Even a friend who works at Intermarché (supermarket) said that not in a million years… vaccine skepticism also seems to go hand in hand with Linky electric meter fear.
It looks like conspiracy theories may trump France’s legendary reputation for hypochondria, and vaccine skepticism outweighs fears of a virus that has already killed nearly 88,000 people here.
Skepticism aside, the deployment of the vaccine in France has been terribly slow. Since January 18, the date of the start of vaccinations, France has received just under 7.86 million vaccines. The latest figures available show that less than 3.39 million people received one dose and just over 1.83 million two doses. Skepticism does not explain why millions of doses of vaccines are still in the refrigerators, and why every weekend the number of vaccinations given drops to a relative net. The work-life balance in France is a wonderful and enviable thing, but as Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly said, it is a “war” against a deadly virus.
After Castex announced that France would speed up vaccinations last week, including at the weekend, a colleague joked, “What is the country going to get into?” But at the current rate, the VaccineTracker website estimates that it will take until March 7, 2023 to vaccinate the adult population.
And this is not a joke.
Source link
