"It's French, it's Louis Pasteur": Macron continues his communication operation on vaccination via social networks

Vaccination, "it's French, it's Louis Pasteur", and messenger RNA, a technology used by several anti-Covid vaccines, is "again a French discovery", reassured Emmanuel Macron on Instagram on Tuesday. and Tik Tok to convince to get vaccinated.

On Monday, he had already beaten the recall for the vaccination on these two social networks.

Faced with increased mobilization (more than 200,000 people across France according to the Ministry of the Interior) during a third consecutive Saturday of demonstrations against the health pass, the Head of State launched since Monday in a pedagogical exercise on these social networks, responding with short videos in selfie mode to the questions of the French.

To one of them who wondered about the safety of messenger RNA vaccines, Emmanuel Macron replied: "The vaccine, first of all, it's French, it's Louis Pasteur, it's been a while" , and this has made it possible to eradicate many diseases.

As for messenger RNA: "A new French discovery, it's not yesterday, it's 1961," he underlines, referring to researchers at the Institut Pasteur in Paris Jacques Monod, François Jacob and François Gros who then demonstrated the existence of this RNA.

However, it was the Hungarian Katalin Kariko who worked on this technique for therapeutic purposes.

She became with the American Drew Weissman, the first to master the immune reactions linked to the transcription of messenger RNA.

Skepticism or even hostility

Asked also about the effectiveness of the anti-Covid vaccination, Emmanuel Macron underlines in another video that currently “85% of people hospitalized are people who are not vaccinated”.

While some Internet users welcome the initiative, others remain cautious, even hostile.

"But how can you compare a smallpox vaccine to this one?"

», Asks an Internet user on Instagram about the RNA technology, while others make the link between vaccination and cases of stroke and pericarditis of relatives.

Some criticize the rise in the prices of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, or say they are convinced that behind these “iterative and insistent words” by the executive to encourage vaccination lie “other issues”, in particular financial.

A total of 42,895,720 people received at least one injection (or 63.6% of the total population) and 35,738,643 people now have a full vaccination schedule (or 53% of the total population), according to figures from the Directorate General of Health (DGS). In hospitals, there were 7,840 patients with the coronavirus on Monday, including 1,232 in critical care services (against 952), according to Public Health France. However, the progression of the epidemic seems to be slowing down, suggesting a "plateau" during the month of August.