Arsonist monks and anti-vaccine outrage in France
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BURNING TOWERS AND VACCINE ‘LIBERTY’ IN FRANCE
We’ve been covering the anti-vaccination brigade in France — one of the most resistant countries in the world — for several years. Even before Covid-19, legislation by the nation’s ministry of health to make 11 core childhood shots mandatory and ban unvaccinated kids from school caused uproar, prompting many French citizens who had previously been quietly skeptical to become outspoken campaigners against immunization. It worked, though —uptake jumped significantly after the law was introduced.
Now, there’s a similar furore surrounding new vaccine passports, which are helping to push acceptance upwards, but some people view as a violation of their freedoms. As one activist from the French pro-vaccination group Les Vaxxeuses told me, “The only way to make French people vaccinate is to say to them, ‘You have no right to a vaccine.’” Only then, she said, would they be banging down surgery doors to get their shots.
President Macron has encouraged people to remember the “fraternite” part of their national motto. “The choice of brotherhood leads to liberty,” he said, arguing that people should think about others when it comes to following Covid-19 regulations. But many voters don’t agree. So, when a French textbook came out this week explaining the rules of quarantine to kids, furious parents complained online that it was a way to “teach children to get used to the limitation of individual freedoms,” some describing it on Facebook and Twitter as “scandalous” Macron propaganda.