The French are now a majority to want to be vaccinated -
Alexander Ryumin / TASS / Sipa USA / SIPA
While France is still accelerating its vaccination policy against the coronavirus, the executive can be reassured: it is not the volunteers who will be lacking.
Because 56% of French people want to be vaccinated, according to an Odaxa-Backbone survey.
However, the same survey indicated that as Christmas approached, they were only 42% wanting to be vaccinated.
How did this turnaround take place?
"20 Minutes" gives you some explanations.
According to an Odoxa-Backbone consulting survey for France Info and
Le Figaro
published this Thursday, 56% of French people want to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
They were only 42% on December 23.
How to explain such a comeback and a trend reversal in less than a month?
For the doctor and epidemiological researcher Michaël Rochoy, such a gap in a few weeks means above all that many refusals of the vaccination were in reality more indecision than a clear desire to avoid the injection.
He observed it himself: “Over the past month, I have had a lot of patients asking me for my opinion on the vaccine.
Not that they didn't want it, but that they doubted.
With the right arguments and the right data, they were in favor.
"
The reassuring data and facts
This indecision was also manifested in a desire not to be among the first to be vaccinated.
Now that France is vaccinating en masse (more than 70,000 people in twenty-four hours this Thursday), and especially that other countries have already vaccinated entire percentages of their populations (more than 30% of the Israeli population in particular), this apprehension is less strong.
"What the French are seeing is the absence of side or serious effects", rejoices Eric Billy, researcher in immuno-oncology in Strasbourg and member of the collective On the side of science.
France has thus identified only one case of an allergic adverse reaction out of 138,000 cases.
Globally, the United States (which has already vaccinated several million people) has about one case of severe allergy per 100,000 vaccinated.
"Noting these data, the French are reassured and see that the benefit / risk balance tilts to the first side, despite what the fakes news or rumors said", notes the researcher.
Intelligence and World Cup
For him, this may be what explained the poor membership figures for the population in December: a lack of information.
A defect now caught up with a popularization mission taken head-on, both by caregivers and by the executive.
However, Eric Billy assures him, the French are far from being the people that we wanted to caricature during the peaks of skepticism against the vaccine: "On the contrary, the French are logical, they seek information, have a good analytical and thinking skills, take a step back.
When they see that all the reliable and sourced information is pointing in the right direction, they are in favor of vaccination.
"
According to Michaël Rochoy, in addition to being logical and intelligent, the French people are also pragmatic: “They can see that currently, vaccines seem to be a solution to stop this stop and go and these confinements and restrictive measures.
Weariness and fear of variants also play a huge role.
“With all these cool intellectual qualities, we must add a certain chauvinism from home.
The doctor continues: “The figures for other countries are highly commented on.
As in a World Cup, we laugh at the sluggish start of our team, but at the end of the day, we want to see France win.
We refuse to see Germany or Denmark being better than us.
"
The double-edged snowball effect
Another highly anticipated and highly commented effect is the snowball effect.
Mehdi Moussaid, cognitive science researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, crowd specialist, and creator on the YouTube channel Fouloscopie explains this fairly well-known social phenomenon: “When people are indecisive or do not know what to do, they will tend to follow what their neighbors do, less by conviction than by imitation.
»Speaking example: during a fire alarm, if your neighbors remain seated, you will tend to remain seated.
On the contrary, if everyone is running in all directions, there is a good chance that you too have your legs around your neck.
In fact, “the majority are self-sustaining.
The more people there are in favor of an opinion, the more it becomes popular, ”notes the researcher.
Thus, the majority “no” swelled the ranks of the no for many undecided, while today, the majority “yes” does the same.
Even if some have more influence than others.
To use the fire alarm analogy, if everyone stays seated but a firefighter comes to you to tell you to run away, you will probably run away.
"Each social group has its own leaders and authority figures, also depending in part on the context", supports Mehdi Moussaid.
This role of leader of influence and change, it is undoubtedly the caregivers who played it during this turnaround.
By asking to be vaccinated, by encouraging their patients to do so, by publicizing the vaccination, caregivers have probably been decisive in the shift of the majority.
Michaël Rochoy agrees: “The vaccine could not be presented only politically by the government.
Seeing the medical authorities take it up probably meant a lot, as did certain non-politicized figures, such as the Queen of England or stars.
"
This is all well and good, but the explanations show one thing: if the conviction was not strong for the majority "no" in December, it probably is not strong for the "yes" in mid-January.
Michaël Rochoy concludes: “A lot of effects work by trend.
Suddenly, it would take nothing for us to witness a new about-face of the French.
A serious case in the media, stars who refuse to be vaccinated ... The snowball effect works in both directions.
".
As a reminder, the same survey was done in November 2020. This time, they were 50% wanting to be vaccinated.
The following month, only 42%.
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