Editorial of the “World”. Time is running out, and yet … Nothing in the bill integrating the vaccination obligation of caregivers and extending the use of the health pass is trivial. To be able to live as normally as possible, the French, who have just gone through the ordeal of confinement and curfew, will have to accept the discipline of health control.
Caregivers, in contact with vulnerable people, are the most affected, because of the mission they perform. But there is also the average citizen who, to shop, go to a restaurant, enjoy a show, must provide proof that it is not contaminating. People who test positive will be placed in compulsory isolation. The traders, restaurateurs, organizers of shows, SNCF agents who have the vocation to provide a service will have to integrate into their activity a dimension of surveillance, even of sanction against their customers. Nothing prepared them for it. The pandemic never ceases to shake up our lives, our relationship to freedom, our conception of good citizenship. Until now, the State was the only one to exert the health pressure; this time he enlists the citizens.
Since the announcements of Emmanuel Macron on July 12, a speed race is again engaged against the virus. In one week, its incidence rate increased by nearly 125%, accelerating the dreaded arrival of the fourth wave. If the epidemic gets out of control again, all economic, social and educational activity will again be deeply disorganized at the start of the school year, dealing a fatal blow to the recovery. On Monday July 19, a text was therefore presented to the Council of Ministers, before being submitted to Parliament for adoption by the end of the week. Everything is done so that the recalcitrant get vaccinated as quickly as possible. There is no other choice.
Deplorable overflows
In his crusade, Emmanuel Macron can count on the support of a silent majority who, according to a recent Ipsos survey, approves compulsory vaccination for caregivers as the extension of the health pass. The stunned who had forgotten to be vaccinated or who did not detect the urgency of it have rushed in recent days to the vaccination centers, which is fortunate. There remains a fringe of diehards, fed on conspiracy and extremism, who intend to prepare resistance. Proof of this was given on Saturday, through the demonstrations organized at the appeal of far-right figures or claiming to be “the anti-system”. Participants, who came to denounce an alleged “health dictatorship”, dared to display the yellow star by practicing a scandalous amalgamation with the Shoah. Fortunately, they have been disowned by the vast majority of political parties.
These deplorable excesses, which are the result of an extreme fringe, should not make us forget the dubious minority, not yet convinced by the quasi civic obligation to be vaccinated. Many young people are part of it, who must be persuaded not by coercion but by dialogue. At the end of the Council of Ministers, the government partially postponed the implementation of the health pass, added a running-in period for those who will have to exercise controls. This development is to be welcomed. It does not take anything away from the fact that once again the executive decides on its own and then leaves the national representation a very short time to decide on a text which touches on the exercise of freedoms. The health crisis has only exacerbated the defects of the Ve Republic, at a time when everyone’s commitment is becoming essential.