In the race for vaccination against Covid-19, it was the British who stung the first.
On Tuesday, 90-year-old Margaret Keenan led by example by lending her arm to the syringe.
In France, provided that the vaccine is conclusive, the campaign must begin in January in nursing homes, then with people over 65 and some caregivers from February-March, and the rest of the population in 2021. Fifty years earlier, on Christmas Eve, another vaccination campaign began.
The French then rushed to get immunized against the Hong Kong flu ...
On both sides of the street, police vans block access to vehicles and control passers-by.
Dozens of them advance in the cold winter and approach the tables that have been installed on the road.
They uncover their upper arm so that a "white coat" can prick their skin.
It is there, on the sidewalk, in front of the Bacteriological Institute of Lyon, at 77, rue… Louis-Pasteur, that we come to get vaccinated against the Hong Kong flu.
December 1969. The pandemic, which began in February 1968 in Asia (probably in central China), hit Europe hard.
The first wave went unnoticed.
The second, which arrived at the beginning of autumn 1969, promises to be devastating.
The “space flu”, as it is known in Italy.
To get back to heaven?
Rather, the first casualties were recorded as the Apollo 12 mission, the second to land on the moon, on November 19, subjugated the world.
In France, the subject is far from making the headlines.
A year and a half after May 68, strikes and demonstrations are linked in factories and universities.
The press relays with great noise the arrival in January 1970 of the minimum wage, more generous than the old minimum wage.
On the health front, Doctor Geneviève Cateigne reassured viewers of the ORTF in October: “There is no real epidemic in France at the moment.
"
Tens of thousands of eggs ordered
But a few weeks later, concern and panic spread to France.
A quarter of the population is infected with the virus, like postal workers and certain factories forced to shutdown due to lack of manpower.
On this Christmas Eve, everyone knows a loved one bedridden.
To heal themselves, the followers of herbal teas from phytotherapist Maurice Mességué, or the shots of rum advocated by the TV show “Dim, Dam, Dom”, quickly become disillusioned.
No treatment is effective.
So people turn to the vaccine.
There is already one, developed to fight against the previous worldwide pandemic of Asian flu in 1957. The Pasteur and Mérieux institutes, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), are working hard to get out of their factories 20,000 doses of serum per day.
You have to order tens of thousands of chicken eggs to grow the virus there.
Made harmless, it is then injected into the body, which produces antibodies in reaction.
The Minister of Health leads by example
The press describes the French pharmacy rush, "eager to be vaccinated".
"A real psychosis has seized the whole of France", writes "the Parisian liberated" on December 12, 1969. In Lyon, medical interns are called in as reinforcements for emergency street injections.
“We were vaccinating in the chain, it lasted for hours, with continuous lines.
It was impressive ”, one of them will tell in the documentary“ 69, pandemic year ”.
The Minister of Health, Robert Boulin, received his injection in September.
He "gave a good example [...] but, for the majority of French people, it's panic", comments "Le Figaro" of December 5.
The Minister of Health, Robert Boulin, in Paris, in 1970 Rue des Archives / AGIP / André Perlstein
Except that the vaccine did not integrate the H3N2 strain of this so-called "Hong Kong" influenza (it was particularly virulent there in the summer of 1968) and is largely ineffective.
The researchers were sure the virus was the same as twelve years earlier.
Even Robert Boulin, supposed to be protected, must remain bedridden in December.
In January, the former resistance member will ensure that he has been the victim of only ... a simple angina.
"I believe to be a living example of the usefulness of the vaccine", he blurted out in "France-Soir".
Giscard and Greco sick
His colleague in charge of Finance, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, is also doing well without any consequences.
The show biz is not more immune than the political world: Juliette Gréco, Michèle Morgan, Guy Lux… complete the list of personalities who have fallen ill.
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Some French regions, in particular the east of the country, are rather spared.
The cold has prompted people to self-confine themselves to warm in their homes, it is assumed.
The results will nevertheless be terrible, with more than 30,000 deaths in two months (1 million in the world between the summer of 1968 and the spring of 1970, according to the WHO), will conclude work carried out in 2003 by the epidemiologist Antoine Flahault.
Fatalist, “the liberated Parisian” was sorry about it in mid-December 1969: “It seems that it is already too late to be vaccinated and that it is best to wait for the flu firmly.
"