A sequence, broadcast Monday night on the
Daily
show , on TMC, quickly went viral.
At the heart of the demonstration against the vaccine pass, a couple claims to be positive for Covid-19.
However, no text would allow this couple to be prosecuted.
Explanations.
“Do you have the Covid? But you had to tell me at the start of the interview! The sequence, broadcast Monday night on the
Daily
show on TMC, quickly went viral. In a report in the heart of the Parisian demonstration against the vaccine pass, Saturday afternoon, the journalist Azzeddine Ahmed-Chaouch approaches a couple to question them. After a few minutes of discussion, the man confides that both are positive for the coronavirus. A voluntary approach, according to him. "We said to ourselves that we prefer to catch it, like that, we are naturally immune," explains the one who appeared a few moments earlier, masked under his nose in the middle of a compact crowd.
“We chose to have the Covid.
We said to ourselves that we would prefer to catch the Covid, so we are naturally immune.
On Saturday, more than 100,000 people marched against the proposed vaccine pass
.
In Paris there were 18,000, we were in the procession ⬇️ # Daily pic.twitter.com/JqURiYPJ7Q
- Daily (@Qofficiel) January 10, 2022
On social networks, the reactions were not long in coming.
"It deserves legal action", "filthy nonsense", "it's called endangering the lives of others, right?
"... That day, in Paris, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, 18,000 demonstrators were present in the procession, probably a significant portion of unvaccinated people, given the demands.
Could this couple be prosecuted for having transmitted the Covid-19 to other demonstrators, knowing they are perfectly positive?
"What is morally reprehensible is not necessarily so on a criminal level", immediately warns the criminal lawyer, Me Eric Morain.
Isolation, a simple recommendation
The couple, first of all, did not break any rule - except perhaps that of living together - by going to this event; even sick, even contagious. Isolation, whether contact or positive, is a simple recommendation. If the government had a plan to make quarantine mandatory, this provision was censored on August 5, 2021 by the Constitutional Council. The Wise Men, while recognizing the objective of public health, considered that such a measure represented a "deprivation of liberty".
Nevertheless, by thus mingling with the crowd, can they be prosecuted for "endangering the life of others"? If the possibility of having serious forms of Covid-19 - and therefore of dying from it - is now widely documented, the intentional element required for such an offense remains difficult to prove. "There is a difference between knowing that you are a carrier of the virus and voluntarily putting someone's life in danger", specifies lawyer Sylvie Personnic, specializing in victims' rights. Especially since the event takes place outdoors, as the Omicron variant - which the couple claims to be carrying - is, according to various studies, certainly much more contagious but also less lethal.
It is also impossible to determine the responsibilities in a context of epidemic upsurge.
"It would be necessary to be able to demonstrate a direct causal link in the contamination, to establish that such and such a person, crossed in the street, has indeed transmitted the virus to you", continues the lawyer.
In short: a person present at the demonstration who would discover himself ill with Covid-19 a few days later would have a hard time asserting who is at the origin of his contamination.
Especially when we know that in Paris, the incidence rate is around 3,800 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, a record since the start of the pandemic.
"Administration of harmful substance"
This debate, however, echoes another, born in the 2000s, around the criminalization of HIV transmission. The most emblematic case, which notably laid the foundations for case law, is that of Christophe Mora. In 2005, the man was sentenced to six years in prison by the Assize Court of Colmar for "administration of a harmful substance resulting in permanent disability", found guilty of knowingly contaminating two women. Released in 2008, he reoffended and was sentenced in 2014 to twelve years in prison. Since then, several sentences, often very heavy, have been pronounced: seven years in Pontoise in 2019 or ten in Chartres the following year.
"The conditions of this case law are extremely strict", however notes Me Eric Morain. The lawyer defends in particular a young woman who lodged a complaint in July against her former companion, whom she accuses of having concealed his HIV-positive status from him. The latter was remanded in custody. “All of the cases that have led to prosecution have brought to light a sometimes very extensive cover-up, with falsified test results. We were in the case of ongoing relationships in which there is a form of breach of trust, we pushed the victims to lower their guard ”, specifies the council.
Thus, even if the Covid-19 is responsible for forms that can lead to death or significant sequelae, especially after a long period in intensive care, difficult to prove, even beyond the intentional element, the implementation of a cover-up ploy.
At present, no case of transmission of a disease other than HIV has been the subject of a trial.
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