@notimagain
Politico.eu podcast had an interview with a journalist who was present at Macron’s interview when he made the comments about the AZ vaccine. “The real problem on AstraZeneca is that it doesn’t work the way we were expecting it to,” Macron told a group of reporters, including POLITICO, in Paris. “We’re waiting for the EMA [European Medicines Agency] results, but today everything points to thinking it is quasi-ineffective on people older than 65, some say those 60 years or older.”
It’s not clear to anyone whether this is what he meant to say, or if he expressed himself badly (he was doing the interview in English AFAIK), or if he’s misunderstood something further back, or even a combination of these things.
How has it played out in France? Hard to say. We have such a huge anti vax / hesitant population, maybe he was deliberately setting out to show how stringent and safety conscious the french gouvernement is being, compared to the reckless Brits :-) and got his phrasing wrong, or maybe it was a genuine error that he felt he couldn’t admit to. But atm the vaccination programme is absolutely crawling along, and weirdly it has dropped off the front pages of the papers completely. We have massive logistical problems to overcome, the french health system is set up for high quality, individualistic, treatment and does not lend itself to mass campaigns - which are treated with suspicion by many french people.
It’s frustrating watching from the inside.