France pulls out the big guns!

[NotPregnantJustChubs]

I live in France and Macron has just made a speech saying that from the end of July, vaccination or a negative test is going to be compulsory for cultural and entertainment venues. From August, it’ll be compulsory for cafes and restaurants too. This applies to all 12+.

PCR tests will become paid as of September, to encourage vaccination.

I’m already vaccinated, thankfully, and I do think it’s necessary to contain the delta variant. But wowza, I’m waiting to hear the backlash in the morning. Macron is up for reelection next year as well, they must be very desperate to contain this…

Anecdotal data point - we were in the local shopping centre this morning (southern France) and there was a pretty long queue for the pop-up sans rendez vous vaccinations.

I'm pretty grateful that the period after the second vaccination has been reduced to 7 days so we'll miss 1st August by just a couple of days, although I think we'll have to do tests to be able to do our planned activity for next weekend.

Still irritating though that we'll have the inconvenience when we didn't delay getting our first vaccination, just struggled to get a convenient appointment.

@AuldAlliance

French doctors are corrupt

This has to be one of the most sweeping generalisations I've read on MN.
And that's saying something.

I get the impression some people (well one or two posters in particular) are trying to create a very very misleading impression of the general situation in France to further their own agenda…..

Yeah loads of France bashing here. It's apparently a dictature, abortion is about to get banned, and now doctors are corrupted (ptetty good news if you need an abortion though)

Yet, many people are trying to get in for summer, guess they enjoy the life in the gulag.

You still have a choice in all of those things.

Covid vaccine is not mandatory either, you have a choice. Get the vaccine. If you don't want it, get tested.

@FastFood

Yeah loads of France bashing here. It's apparently a dictature, abortion is about to get banned, and now doctors are corrupted (ptetty good news if you need an abortion though)

Yet, many people are trying to get in for summer, guess they enjoy the life in the gulag.

Distraction from the mess we are in.

17 years in France. Multiple Drs and specialists seen for various chronic illnesses, disabilities and childhood illnesses (yes I am sick of all the appointments! )

I have never met a Dr who is anti vax. The only one who queried a vax was the chicken pox one (DS1 was vaccinated by a very pro chicken pox vaccination Dr but then we moved and I asked the new one to do DS2 and she queried if I was sure, but agreed once she saw Id done the research).

Ive also never met a corrupt Dr. DS1 has ritalin for his ADHD and the hoops we have to jump through every month for the prescription and then again with the pharmacy are very strict. It is highly controlled.

@KatharinaRosalie

You still have a choice in all of those things.

Covid vaccine is not mandatory either, you have a choice. Get the vaccine. If you don't want it, get tested.

Except the tests are not free. So it will disproportionately affect the poor.

The poor will always by definition by disproportionately disadvantaged. Most of the planet is poor as vaccine diplomacy trickles down the food chain with a little help by first world privileged Covid non believers. Most of the world don’t have the privilege of declining medical intervention.

They are shooting themselves in the foot. France has a very active anti vaxx community, and everyone in that community knows where you can find a doctor who will prescribe you vaccines, put them down the sink and sign your child’s book so they can go to school...

I really cannot believe this is true in any way, shape or form!

The other thing is, in England you see the practice nurse who administers the infant/child vaccine, nothing to do with the GP prescribing anything whatsoever

There have been a few protests in France of course (twas ever thus), but a far greater proportion of the population have been jamming up the Doctolib site in the stampede to get vaccinated - over a million and a half yesterday alone I believe. So while Macron might have pissed a few people off with his speech, it has had the desired effect. France will be the tortoise in the race against Covid - plodding determinedly along after a slow start - while the British hare, which charged ahead out of the gate in the vaccination stakes, sits down before the end of the race by dropping all its restrictions before it has properly finished the job.

Sounds like a competition

Maybe it is to some. Hopefully won’t be too bad

@IRanSoFarAway1

I'm vaccinated

I've always said I won't go anywhere this is a requirement

I'm worried it will extend to the Tube....I really hope that's just impossible

Appalling precedent to set

Abortion bans incoming I'm sure.

Yes of course. Anyone who thinks this damning coercion will stop at vaccines which were already patented in 2019 is very naive.

@hangonamo

It blows my mind that anyone thinks the inevitable step 2 is banning abortion when step 1 is, we're fighting a virus that spreads most readily indoors, so you need to either get vaccinated or test negative if you want to access certain non essential places. Especially when we're talking about a country where some vaccinations are already mandatory and abortion is still legal. It's quite the jump.

It's all quite the jump ... until it happens. In fact most things that have happened recently have been put on the tin foil hat list... and then they happened. Why would that be such a leap when banning abortion in some states is currently happening in America and the Tories are rather keen on not only selling the NHS to the US, being advised by the American right wing and following America's footsteps generally?

Why would that be such a leap when banning abortion in some states is currently happening in America and the Tories are rather keen on not only selling the NHS to the US, being advised by the American right wing and following America's footsteps generally?

There is no political will to ban abortion here. We do not have the same pro-life movement or fundamentalist Christian culture as they have in USA. We have the most libertarian government of recent years and no major party has any wish to restrict the right to an abortion. If anything the UK has just taken a big step in the other direction, when abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland. If the Tories suddenly decided that they wanted to ban abortion, it would never get past the HoC.

Other countries have brought in Covid rules about accessing indoor spaces without affecting abortion rights. Some places have mandatory vaccinations. They have nothing to do with one another.

The US president is a Democrat and pro choice. Abortion is legal in all US states. If Roe vs Wade gets overturned, it would become a matter for state law. I don't think the governor of New Mexico or wherever would have much say in the NHS or in our abortion legislation.

This is not something we need to worry about.

Why would that be such a leap when banning abortion in some states is currently happening in America and the Tories are rather keen on not only selling the NHS to the US, being advised by the American right wing and following America's footsteps generally?

I thought this thread was about France and its slide into medical dictatorship, from required Covid vaccines to banned abortions?

If you know anything about French abortion law, you'll realise that's quite a leap.

I've been in France for over 25 years and seen multiple doctors of all sorts, all of whom have been sticklers for procedure, rules, etc. My current GP is no exception; he's also open to alternative medicine, talks me through everything and has suggested vaccines for my DC (meningitis, for instance, which is not mandatory), pointed me towards info on them and left me to decide.

A lot of people are being vaccinated at centres staffed by numerous people shepherding the public through the various stages of paperwork, etc. It would be hard to 'tip a vaccine down the sink' even if anyone was inclined to. Most GP surgeries in my region don't offer vaccines (perhaps partly because it's mainly Pfizer now and the storage requirements are so tricky).

No doubt I live in a bubble of non-corrupt doctors. If so, it's quite a big one and covers several départements and a whole range of medical staff seen over a quarter of a century.

Then there's Didier Raoult, of course...

Even the good Dr Raoult is pro-vaccin now.

www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2021/07/12/covid-19-non-didier-raoult-ne-fait-pas-volte-face-en-encourageant-les-soignants-a-se-faire-vacciner_6088052_4355770.html

I was referring more to the way Raoult's lab is run, the ritual humiliation of young researchers and the way he appropriates their work, the various instances in which his imagery appears to have been tweaked, his approach to data at the start of the pandemic when he excluded those who'd died from his amazing success rate with treatment, etc.
And the cult around him, defending him online:
www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2021/07/14/sur-les-reseaux-sociaux-les-methodes-extremes-des-pro-raoult_6088257_4355770.html

This tweet is unintentionally very funny. He claims to have published 3500 articles: the one that had to be withdrawn due to falsified images just happens to be the one he didn't take part in at all, but bunged his name on...
twitter.com/raoult_didier/status/1407256075620032512?s=20
Les accusations de fraude dont je suis l'objet sur Pubpeer relèvent de la diffamation.
Dans ma carrière, un seul de mes 3500 articles a été rétracté ; article pour lequel je n'avais de responsabilité ni dans la conduite des expériences, ni dans la rédaction.

He's a good illustration of the mandarins still found in some French research environments, IME, rather than of how corrupt all French doctors are. None of the HCP I know are anything other than critical of the damage he's done to the reputation of medical science with his posturing and anti-establishment number.

Science is very clear - vaccines work. The covid-infected people currently clogging up hospitals are mostly unvaccinated. If more people were vaccinated, there would be fewer people in hospitals and we could at some point get back to normal.

All those constant isolations, quarantines, not to mention lockdowns and closed businesses and schools are extremely detrimental to every single aspect of our lives, from children's education and mental health to the entire economy. But we will need to keep having them if people just can't be bothered to get the vaccine before the next wave hits us with full force.

And now there are a million people per day in France finally getting off their arses and getting their shots. The plan worked.

The plan to hopefully getting back to normal at some point, to be clear. Not the secret worldwide conspiracies to microchip and mind-control everybody some people are talking about here.

@AuldAlliance That name reminds me of a brilliant pub in Paris, I was a local there many moons ago!

ooh, fastfood, I didn't know about that pub!
I'll pop in next time I'm in Paris. God knows when that'll be...

@AuldAlliance - I always thought you were named after it.

I think about you every time I go past on the bus - even though I don't actually know you.

I'm kind of touched @LillianGish.
I was blithely unaware of the existence of that pub until today.
My name is a more mundane historical reference to the ties between my native country and my adopted one. I'll definitely try out the pub some time, though, when such things are easier again.
We could have a French MN meetup there...

It's literally taken me three days to read this thread 😅.

I'd like to come back to the mask exemptions with regards to people with disabilities. I also work in a school, I have a few classes with mainly SEN kids, some of whom (which?) are autistic (SEGPA classes). They have all just about coped with masks.

We have had two pupils in the school who have provided Dr's notes saying they are exempt. The head was clear, no mask, no mixing with anyone. One of the pupils agreed to wear a mask to attend lessons and a room was provided for them to 'escape' to when it got too much (they didn't end up using it at all). The other child refused to come to school, much to his mother's despair. I have seen him around town a few times (wearing a mask in order to avoid being fined I would imagine).

We also have an IME nearby which caters for kids with more severe disabilities (meaning that by French standards they are unable to integrate a mainstream school). None of these pupils have been expected to wear masks in the IME.

I fucking despise Macron due to most of the shit he has come out with since being elected. However, I don't think he's being massively unreasonable on this point, if we want the vaccin to work, then we need almost everyone to be vaccinated (so we can protect those who are exempt).

My paragraphs disappeared, making my post illisibe! Sorry!