Every morning, Nicolas Beytout analyzes the political news and gives us his opinion.
This Monday, he is interested in the start of vaccination for those over 75 years old and for people at high risk suffering from chronic pathology.
While the population seemed reluctant to be vaccinated, it now seems that the demand is much greater than expected.
The vaccination campaign will finally be able to start.
The so-called "general public" vaccination starts this Monday across the country, starting with those over 75 and younger people who suffer from serious illness.
Yes, and it was about time.
The government's strategic choice to reserve the first phase of vaccination for residents in nursing homes, then to extend to medical personnel over the age of 50 only, this choice was too restrictive to hold out for very long.
Especially with the appearance of ever more threatening variants, coming from all regions of the globe.
It has become obvious: our only collective chance to limit the number of victims and resume a normal life is the vaccine.
Why did it take so long to win?
When his interlocutors put the question to Jean Castex, who knows this world of health very well, the Prime Minister gives this explanation: "the Ministry of Health is a care administration, it does not know how to do prevention. The French administration is more of the diesel type, he adds, it starts slowly, but once it is launched, it turns.
Well, there you go, it seems that this time it's finally launched, and that it should work.
Olivier Véran speaks of four million people vaccinated at the end of February.
Absolutely.
Since the end of last week, we have had a complete turnaround.
The candidates for vaccination appear in the hundreds of thousands (half a million on Friday alone).
Where we heard especially anti-vaccines, for weeks, we now see the crowd of those who want to be vaccinated as quickly as possible.
It is a very simple mechanism, in marketing: the testimonial, to make people speak, to give the floor to the one who tested.
It is much more persuasive than any political speech.
Moreover, in the polls, the pro-vaxes have again become the majority.
Does that mean that the game is won for the government?
On the political level, this is surely the first time since the start of this failed sequence on vaccination that the pressure will be able to fall.
We now have more than 800 vaccination centers open across the country, the audiences authorized to be vaccinated will gradually expand and the government will be able to hammer out a general message of acceleration, and no longer of restriction of the campaign.
The only risk is that the labs cannot deliver enough doses.
But there, it will no longer be the responsibility of the public authorities, but of the mechanism put in place at European level to order and distribute vaccines.
A big question will remain for later: wouldn't a country which has spent more than 450 billion euros in support of an economy ruined by the virus have done better to pay more to pull out more vaccines faster?
In other words, to do more prevention than care?