French public feel lied to as lockdown fatigue grows
Controversy over face masks erodes trust in Emmanuel Macron’s government
I watched France enter quarantine with some apprehension. Public trust in the government had run low, as had President Emmanuel Macron’s approval ratings, after months of gilets jaunes discontent and protests over pension reforms. Would my fellow citizens comply? If anything, the swine flu precedent of 2009 pointed to a negative.
The government of Nicolas Sarkozy, president at that time, had done what the Covid-19 crisis has made us realise is the appropriate thing to do when a pandemic looms: plan for the worst.
Following the World Health Organization’s advice, then health minister Roselyne Bachelot ordered 94m vaccines and replenished the stocks of face masks. One morning I waited for several hours in line in an overheated gym, with my infant son and our individual vouchers, to get our shots against H1N1 influenza. But it turned out we were among a small minority who showed up. Many around me ignored the vaccination campaign, including my neighbour with whom I was sharing a nanny and we nearly fell out.
France was singled out for its low vaccination rate — 8 per cent, compared with 45 per cent in Norway, 59 per cent in Sweden and more than 25 per cent in the US. Fewer than 30 per cent of pregnant women, deemed the most at risk, showed up. The fact that swine flu did not develop into a global pandemic emboldened the anti-vaccination movement. Ms Bachelot was chastised for wasting €400m in taxpayers’ money. Before Covid-19, only two-thirds of people in the country of Louis Pasteur agreed vaccines were safe, one of the lowest trust rates in the world.
Has coronavirus cured the French of their distrust? Witnessing the horror in neighbouring Italy, the French entered lockdown with discipline — we all have someone elderly to worry about and death has afflicted many, including my former neighbour who has lost her father in the pandemic. Last month, Mr Macron’s approval ratings rose to 43 per cent, a level unseen since his election. Ms Bachelot, now a TV commentator, has enjoyed full rehabilitation.
But controversy over the use of face masks is threatening to wipe away the goodwill. With depleted stocks in the country, the government sought to deter the public from buying them. “It is useless to wear masks in the streets,” Mr Macron was heard saying on February 27 during a visit to a Parisian hospital.
After admitting the earlier recommendation was guided by fears of panic buying, the government is now considering distributing reusable masks as it makes plans to exit the lockdown in May. Three out of four French people believe the government lied to them, according to a poll released last week.
Transparency in pandemics is “a necessary if not sufficient condition for accountable decision-making and the promotion of public trust,” the WHO advises, noting that “most measures for managing public health emergencies rely on public compliance for effectiveness”. In France, trust is being eroded at a time when fatigue is running high over the restrictions, the economy is reeling from the lockdown and society is about to undergo a complex deconfinement process.
The lack of domestic testing capacity is also emerging as a potential problem. Setting the tentative date of May 11 for relaxing restrictions, Mr Macron said that he would widen testing to “people with symptoms” — currently, only seriously ill patients and care workers are being tested — “because testing everybody would not make any sense”. This assertion does not address the question of asymptomatic cases or take account of more ambitious, and seemingly more successful, testing strategies in Germany or South Korea.
Among other issues in need of clarifying is the decision to start the reopening process with the schools, since they were among the first institutions to close. French teachers are worried and a proper explanation is in order. More broadly, is the French government now aiming for “herd immunity” — the infection of a large chunk of the population — in order to mitigate the economic devastation?
Whatever the hard truth, it would be better to lay it out early and clearly, or risk losing the French’s new-found trust.