Vaccination passport: "A solution to get your life back"

According to an exclusive survey, in partnership with Ifop, the French are in favor of the vaccine passport, that is to say the obligation to have been vaccinated to carry out certain activities.

62% to travel, take the plane;

at 60% to visit vulnerable people (in retirement homes, hospitals, etc.);

52% for taking public transport (metro, bus, tram, train).

Sociologist Marie Jauffret-Roustide, researcher at Inserm, is hardly surprised.

She explains why.

54% of French people now want to be vaccinated, or 15 points more than on December 1, 2020. Does this progression surprise you?

MARIE JAUFFRE-ROUSTIDE.

No.

When vaccines weren't there yet, getting vaccinated was a very abstract notion, with little information on their effectiveness and side effects.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen conspiracy discourse flourish, especially on social networks and TV sets where discordant voices with scientific evidence brought forward by some experts have been expressed, sometimes calling into question the dangerousness of Covid-19 and interpreting the government's preventive policy exclusively as a form of population control.

This staging of a controversial scientific debate has led some French people to question the validity of scientific discourse and the reliability of measures to manage the epidemic.

However, vaccines are part of these measures and embody science.

This mistrust may have affected confidence in vaccines in a French population where anti-vaccine movements are already more present than elsewhere in Europe.

This is no longer the case today ?

In a crisis, opinions can change quickly.

And this is the case today.

In recent weeks, political, scientific and media discourse has shown that vaccines are today the only effective way to get out of this pandemic which weighs on our daily lives, our economy, our mental health, our social ties.

Our lives are so disrupted by this pandemic and this virus affects our individual freedoms and our ability to move, to visit our families and friends, to cultivate and have fun, to travel to such an extent that reluctance that usually exists in France on vaccination can be called into question.

Suddenly, a majority of French people today say they are in favor of a "vaccine passport" to be able to travel, for example ...

That does not surprise me.

In 2008, with Santé Publique France, we published the results of a study on compulsory vaccination in the journal Vaccine.

We showed that more than half of the population was in favor of the obligation for all vaccines while the French are known around the world as being a people rather reluctant to vaccines.

Only a small minority was opposed to the principle of compulsory vaccination (7%), mainly the most qualified, believing that getting vaccinated should remain a strictly individual choice.

Today's poll shows the same trend.

The benefit-risk ratio is now in favor of vaccination.

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But many elected officials or doctors believe that making this vaccination passport compulsory poses an ethical problem ...

Yes, because this obligation can also be interpreted as a new restriction of individual freedoms in terms of vaccine choice and as a form of population control by the authorities which impose it.

This obligation also requires that access to vaccination be as wide as possible, which is far from being the case today.

But the Ifop poll that you publish shows that a majority of French people favor this tool as a solution to regain their freedom to travel and part of their former life, in a crisis situation marked by an uncertainty that is difficult to bear.

However, the French are generally said to be very reluctant to respect the rules issued by the State ...

These culturalist explanations were shattered with the pandemic.

Take the well-known Germans as a people who rather adhere to the measures decreed by the authorities.

It is in Germany that there have been many anti-mask demonstrations.

While in France, where it was thought that the population would not adhere to the preventive measures dictated by the government, well the mask is very present in the streets and the barrier measures are widely respected.