Tribune. The vaccination obligation for health professionals and the use of the health pass divide caregivers, but also citizens. To individual freedom and to worry about vaccines considered too recent are opposed the necessary protection of the most vulnerable and the urgency to fight against a possible 4e wave.
This debate reflects the state of confusion of our society in its relationship to individual freedom, to others, to the community, to our social protection, to the common good, in particular among people on the left.
Of course, the trust we place in decision-makers is legitimately damaged. We all have in mind the past health scandals, the conflicts of interest between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, the lies and incompetence of the government since the start of the pandemic, the contempt and then the stigmatization of caregivers as well as the denials of the President of the Republic who declared, on 1er May 2020, that the vaccine should be “A global good of humanity, and not the property of one or the other”.
General vaccination will allow collective protection
But if we can understand and share the mistrust of our rulers, refusing vaccination cannot be an effective act of opposition to this government. It would be a bad response to righteous anger. The individual risk of the long-term occurrence of serious side effects from vaccination is highly speculative: it is not based on any reliable theoretical basis, nor on observations made with other vaccines.
On this question, we can only advise the reading of ” Read if you don’t know what to think about Covid-19 vaccines ”. If being vaccinated gives us individual protection, it is the vaccination of the greatest number that will allow collective protection. Deciding to be vaccinated is therefore not only a health or medical decision, it is also a political gesture, because it concerns the affairs of the city, others, the collective.
Vaccination, like every medicine, is associated with an individual risk. Prescribing or taking a drug (or a vaccine) requires an assessment of the expected benefit of the treatment compared to the spontaneous risk of the disease and the risk of side effects arising from the treatment.
The political choice of a united society
For example, if you are sick with cancer, you most often agree to be treated with chemotherapy – which has a lot of side effects but which makes it possible to survive the disease – because the benefit of the treatment is greater than the risk of not take it and the nuisance associated with side effects. The benefit / risk ratio is therefore considered favorable.
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