• Olivier Véran (finally) opened the door to a mandatory abandonment of the mask outside this summer.

  • This measure, particularly unpopular and without scientific basis, has it, along with other measures of this kind, parasitized health communication?

  • Between poor hierarchization, pressure on the population, and infantilization, return to a series of sometimes counterproductive measures.

This Tuesday morning, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran declared "sincerely hoped" that the obligation of the mask outdoors will be lifted this summer. For some cities like Paris, it would then be a year since the mask became mandatory even outside, undoubtedly one of the most unpopular and most contested measures of the coronavirus crisis in France, with the attestation of displacement, the curfew, the 10-kilometer limit and the prohibition of access to the beaches.

All these measures cited have two similarities: they concern the outside, and they are not the subject of any scientific consensus.

Thus, according to a study by the Institut Pasteur, only 5% of coronavirus contamination occurs outdoors.

What seriously question the usefulness of the mask outside, or even the ban on leaving home during the first confinement for example.

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The problem with all these measures with uncertain results is that by accumulating them, they could scuttle more effective decisions. Michaël Rochoy, general practitioner and researcher in epidemiology, launches the first round of criticism: "We must simplify the measures and the messages, not because people are stupid, but precisely because they are intelligent enough to really understand the devices. important and do without the rest. "

Same observation on the side of Jérôme Marty, president of the Syndicat Union Française pour une medecine libre: “We hit too often next to the target.

The epidemic is transmitted particularly in closed places, and most of the measures taken concern the outside.

That does not make sense.

However, after 14 months of health crisis, the population has largely accumulated enough knowledge to realize for itself the inconsistency of certain decisions.

“People are fed up with being infantilized with heavy decisions socially and without much consequence on the epidemic”, supports the doctor.

Many countries - like Germany or Spain - do much better with more flexible and less intrusive measures.

Non-essential measures

Too much being the enemy of good, piling up measures would only decrease the population's support for them. Especially after more than a year of confinement, barrier gesture, curfew, and French morale at the lowest level. “We need to better reflect on the effectiveness / acceptability ratio of each measure. What does the obligation of the mask bring to the outside? Losing the support of the French on these questionable measures is to take the risk of losing it also on the more important measures ”, raises Michaël Rochoy. And if the French are smart enough to discern the most effective measures from the rest, "there is the possibility of a general fed up, or of poor prioritization", points out the doctor.

This is the problem with this accumulation.

By force, difficult to distinguish the bacon from the pig.

Especially since the prioritization is not always very clear.

Let us remember in particular that the mask was compulsory in the streets of Paris before being at work in closed places.

That always at work, collective meals were allowed during the curfew but that it was forbidden to walk outside after 7 p.m.

While access to beaches or docks was prohibited, the messages on the importance of ventilation or the danger of aerosols were only issued by the government in February and March 2021. CO2 sensors in schools had to wait until the end of April to be mentioned by the executive.

What to disturb even more a message however simple in the absolute.

Redo simple

After fifteen months of research on the coronavirus, it could even be summed up in a few words: "The virus circulates mainly in closed places without a mask, so avoid these situations", dictates Michaël Rochoy. Saying that is enough to understand why museums or cinemas can reopen but that we cannot eat inside, in order to keep the mask, or why the terraces will reopen in mid-May but not inside. restaurants. To say that is above all to appeal to science. Still according to the Institut Pasteur study, 80% of contamination occurs in completely enclosed places, and 15% in closed places but with an open window. This shows the importance of ventilation.

As for the idea that it is better to take too many measures than to risk not having enough, Jérôme Marty does not believe in it too much.

Or in any case, more after fourteen months, when the issue is as much about the measures as about the adhesion they arouse: “We could have had this philosophy at the beginning, but now we have to trust the population.

People who risk doing anything with a reduction in measures are already doing so, so they might as well free others from measures that are more restrictive than effective.

"The doctor is convinced of it, at year of crisis + 1, it is time to focus on" measures where people find themselves there, where people are taken for adults ".

Away from the mask outside, and towards more open windows and masks worn 100% in an enclosed space.

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