“Piss off” the unvaccinated: who are the 5.3 million French people targeted by Emmanuel Macron?

“The unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off”, proclaimed Tuesday, January 4 the Head of State in an interview with the Parisian. Will his words produce an electric shock on the refractory? It all depends on who is addressed among the 5.3 million French people eligible for vaccination, but who have not yet initiated this step.

According to the estimates of several researchers, approximately 2% of the French population is considered as antivax strictly speaking. However, this figure could be higher if we are to believe an opinion study published by the Odoxa cabinet on July 1, 2021: 11% of those questioned assured that they would “certainly not” be vaccinated against Covid-19 . Like these demonstrators claiming to be anti-tax who took to task on Saturday January 1 the political journalist of LCI Paul Larrouturou not hesitating to threaten him. “We kill with this experimental injection. We kill children, we kill everyone”, one of them launched at him, while others accused him of conveying false information about the vaccination campaign.

But not all are fierce antivax, far from it. Thus, according to sociologist Jeremy Ward, researcher at Inserm, the multiple facets of French vaccine culture is more a matter of hesitation or fear than rejection. In terms of age category, for example, the least vaccinated segment is that of minors with 12-17 years old, little affected by the serious forms of the disease. According to CovidTracker, 18.46% are not vaccinated. However, it is among these young people that we find the most important progression, specifies the Ministry of Health, because the vaccination opened later for them.

The greatest distrust of the vaccine is actually found among 30-49 year olds, of whom 9.56% are not vaccinated. It is a population “more or less indifferent” on vaccination, in the words of Olivier Véran, who does not feel concerned, who is not afraid of being sick, and who has an active social and professional life saying to himself: “I don’t have time, I live my life”, according to the minister.

While the government has made it the priority public, it is then the 75 years and over who arrive on the third step of the podium: they are still 8.40% to refuse to receive the anti-Covid vaccine. They are often isolated people, far from a doctor and for whom traveling is complicated. Or who absolutely do not see the point of being vaccinated because they do not meet anyone. These are the French “who are far from everything”, says Olivier Véran, like many elderly people. For them, the most important thing is to continue information campaigns with a strong presence on the ground, according to the Minister of Health.

Among the unvaccinated, there are also those who are unemployed or have very low incomes. According to a study by the Ministry of Health, populations that benefit from a Solidarity Supplementary Health (State aid intended for people with low incomes) have a lower vaccination rate than the general population of around 40 %. The younger you are, the lower the household income and the greater the reluctance. Same observation according to the figures of Public Health France which show that adherence to the vaccination against Covid-19 is stronger among people living in cities rather than in rural areas and among privileged and higher socio-professional categories.

CovidTracker data also shows a territorial disparity. Thus, the South-East and Corsica remain the regions where the least vaccination is carried out. Within these regions, it is the department of Haute-Corse which wins the donkey hat with a vaccination rate of 65.50%, followed by Corse-du-Sud at 68.30%. Then we find the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence at 69.20%, followed by Bouches-du-Rhône at 70.30%. Across the country, another department is also pale: Seine-Saint-Denis at 65.90%. On the contrary, very few unvaccinated people remain in Vendée and Finistère with a record vaccination rate of over 83%.

It is also important to note that the Overseas Territories are by far the least vaccinated French territories. Guyana and Mayotte, for example, have a vaccination rate of 24.40% and 26.40% respectively. Several factors, including logistics, explain this delay, but local identity could also play a very important role.

This geographical map of the mistrust against the anti-Covid-19 vaccination is superimposed in a disturbing way on that of the historic vaccine mistrust. As the geographer of health Lucie Guimier noted on Franceinfo, the explanations are as much political as cultural. “In the South-East, we have a very strong environmentalist and National Rally vote, two political specters historically providers of anti-tax systems in France, with environmentalists on one side and frontist voters on the other. This RN electorate in Provence -Alpes-Côte d’Azur is largely made up of liberal professions, in whom the issue of individual freedom, particularly in terms of health, is very significant “, indicates the specialist.

According to the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, they would only be “few hundreds” not being able to get vaccinated for “medical reasons”. Yet many other people (difficult to quantify) also cannot, according to the advice of their doctors, be vaccinated. These include patients who are undergoing treatment for immunosuppressive diseases, or who suffer from long-term Covid.

Officially, the government has set three contraindications to the bite: people who have known allergic reactions to PEG2000, or polyethylene glycol, components of messenger RNA anti-covid vaccines; the people who made “a severe myocarditis, pericarditis and hepatitis-like reaction requiring hospitalization and following a first injection of mRNA vaccine” ; and young people who have made a “PIMS syndrome” (pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome), a complication “extremely rare” which has affected certain children and adolescents following an infection by the coronavirus, specifies the site Vaccination Info Service.

A decree published on August 8 indicates that people who present these contraindications to vaccination are exempt from health passes.