Before the presidential election,
20 Minutes
met families who make up French society today.
They evoke what has changed during this mandate, their expectations and their vision of the current political world.
Carmen, Émile and their two children, Wilan and Essane, are among the families of French people who are not vaccinated against Covid-19.
A choice in reaction to the health policy of the government which they consider authoritarian.
Both come from backgrounds with a very different view of vaccines and have synthesized them.
“With us, only the dog is vaccinated,” Émile jokes as he opens the door to their townhouse in a small town in the Pays Salonais, in the Bouches-du-Rhône.
With his wife Carmen, these two young thirty-somethings have chosen not to be vaccinated, nor their children aged six and three, against Covid-19.
“Far be it from us to minimize the seriousness that Covid-19 can have.
There have been tragedies, ”they immediately defuse.
Scalded and limited confidence
Unconvinced of the usefulness of the vaccine for them - young and in good health - however, questioning a "perhaps selfish" position, they nevertheless believe that they have a responsible attitude towards the risks they could pose to those around them. .
"We do tests when there are symptoms or if one of the little ones has a fever before going to his grandmother's," they illustrate.
Responsibility is indeed the heart of their reflection and their opposition to a health policy deemed “authoritarian”, “infantilizing” and “incoherent”.
And to return to the various episodes during which the executive seemed, at best, to grope, starting with that of the masks "useless, because in reality, they did not have any", they accuse.
“Or again, this self-authorization to walk your dog.
Simply absurd”.
So much so that, when "the government said: 'get vaccinated', it was hard to understand, to trust".
A feeling no doubt reinforced by their distance from Paris.
At the time, they were both working in Mayotte before returning, in December 2021, a handful of weeks before the vaccine became mandatory for leaving the Indian Ocean island.
They make no secret of it, the two agricultural engineers by training, graduates in Montpellier where they met, will not vote Emmanuel Macron for the presidency.
Attentive to current political events, Carmen does not expect “very much from a new government”.
Émile, who had voted Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2017 during the 1st round, then white in the second, sets out three health principles that he would like to see defended during this campaign.
“First, encourage the lifting of patents on vaccines.
Then, support the search for alternatives to it.
And finally, organize real individual support for people at risk.
»
“State constraints have no hold on us”
For the rest, the family has no real expectations regarding this election.
"We aim to be as independent as possible", sums up Émile, who has set up as an organic market gardener, cooks his vegetables, seasons with oil from his olive trees or even consumes meat from small farms in the surrounding area.
Leisure, food, sociability, the couple manages to satisfy their desires, "without the State having any control over it".
Undoubtedly it is for that, also that they did not bend to the constraints which the government imposes on the not-vaccinated.
“It's an obligation where you can say no.
So we'll see how far they can go,” they argue, conceding that their non-vaccination is now “a position of principle.
A sort of reaction, of opposition to this system of population control which is becoming more and more established”.
However, “this does not mean that we will never be vaccinated against Covid-19”, they qualify.
A step that they would certainly take if the virus were to prove to be much more dangerous or “in solidarity with the children”, in the event that however it became obligatory for them.
Possibly “for work”, adds Carmen who works for a business cooperative, or even to be able to go and see part of the family in Côte d'Ivoire.
A position that has not always been easy to maintain.
“At one point, we said to ourselves: as much, it is up to us that we are missing a box”.
But so far “nothing has convinced us to take the plunge”.
Unlike constantly more people around them.
"At the beginning, many friends told us 'I will never get vaccinated' and today they are.
They almost apologize.
"Ah, but you understand, it's to see grandpa in the hospital", "to go to the restaurant with my darling", "to take my son to the movies"…".
Our presidential compass
Despite their common refusal of the Covid-19 vaccine, their more general position on the latter has not always been convergent.
Carmen, who grew up in the Ivory Coast, had never wondered about these: "When you see the damage from yellow fever or the old polio patients, I am grateful to science for having these vaccines, where I come from, they are important”.
Emile himself, despite having a few doctors in the family, comes from an environment where no one vaccinated and where one managed so that “it happened at school.
My first vaccine, yellow fever, I had it at 18 to go travelling.
Don't feel like being unreasonable
In the couple, the subject came to the birth of their first child, Wilan.
“Me, I was in for them to be done immediately and Émile not really.
We preferred to wait a bit before making them”, remembers Carmen.
Quickly, the bronchial problems of their son – “he is almost asthmatic” – encourage them to carry out the one against whooping cough.
The other vaccines followed when the couple left to work as an agricultural engineer in Côte d'Ivoire and then in Mayotte.
In fact, for the birth of their daughter Essane, the question no longer arose.
"To tell the truth, I realized that I didn't have the arguments for not having my children vaccinated", analyzes Émile.
An argument against the background of political opposition that the couple is now able to deploy for that against the Covid-19.
“The government takes us as if we were not capable of making our own choices.
But we don't feel like we're being unreasonable.
Rules are adopted to protect others.
If we refuse this vaccination, it is not for a certain idea of purity of the body or whatever.
It is from a systemic perspective, as for organic farming”.
That of having a coherence between his thought, his line of life and his actions, they explain.
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Vaccination pass
Coronavirus
Covid-19
Covid vaccine
Vaccine
Antivaccine
Presidential election 2022
Elections
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