Macron likens unvaccinated to ‘drunken drivers’

As part of his proposal to respond directly to all French questions on vaccination from Fort Brégançon, Emmanuel Macron published this fact-free rant on Thursday, August 5 on social networks – including TikTok and Instagram. He even claimed it was to counter “false information” and “rumors”. But there are no scientific foundations or evidence for the president’s notions of the transmission of Covid-19.

In the US, the CDC now admits that the vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission even if they believe the jab to be protective against severe disease. If this is true, what purpose would a vaccine passport serve? And why would anyone care if some else is vaccinated if they carry the same viral load as the unvaccinated?

Macron filmed himself, with a French flag and wearing an unusual T-shirt, on the clip from August 2. “It has been accepted that after drinking, I am no longer free to drive because, at that point, my freedom to drive may put you in danger,” the President of the Republic said, trying to justify his controversial measure by the fact that “other countries [have] adopted it” and this was being done, according to him, in order “not to close down everything”.

He then linked forced vaccination to “the freedom of everyone in society”. “I am completely free to drink, one glass, two glasses, three glasses, four glasses of wine. Staying at home and seeing friends is fine. On the other hand, for years we have accepted that after drinking, I am no longer free to drive because, at that point, my freedom to drive can put you in danger.”

Because we have accepted that drinking limits our freedom to drive, he argued, we should accept limits on our freedom for “a lot of other things”.

“In society, because we depend on each other, freedom is not conjugated in the singular. [Our freedom] only holds because we also protect others and respect the freedom of others. It’s the same thing for getting vaccinated, the same thing for the health pass,” continued Macron, before reaching his Orwellian conclusion: “It’s a responsible freedom, the freedom of being a citizen.”

He was vilified on Twitter after his ridiculous comments in which he also suggested he was not a lobbyist for Big Pharma. This last remark resonated with several members of the right-wing opposition. Patriots party chief Florian Philippot, leader of the movement against the health pass, criticized the “influencer” wearing a T-shirt “to shill for Pfizer”, the one of the manufacturers of Covid-19 vaccines.

Pharma lobbyist Leana Wen, a Washington Post contributing columnist, as if on cue, repeated the same nonsensical script. On Friday Wen told MSNBC’s “Deadline” that it was time to equate not getting vaccinated with drunk driving.

According to German magazine Focus, a vaccination certificate will soon be required for shopping for food in the supermarket. The federal government is planning to introduce mandatory vaccination records and tests for purchases in food retailers this autumn. For the unvaccinated, the bill provides for a negative rapid antigen test, but from mid-October, citizens themselves will have to pay for that, as in France.