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5 million French citizens become ‘unvaccinated’ overnight

Credit: Getty

February 15, 2022 - 7:00am

The French government rescinded the vaccine passports of up to five million of its people today, effectively banning them from much of French society. 

From 15 February, French citizens must have received a booster jab within four months of their second dose in order to access the vaccine pass, replacing the earlier deadline of seven months. 

This means that unless they have recovered from Covid within the last four months, the passes of several million unboosted people will expire, leaving them completely excluded from bars, restaurants, cinemas and other public venues.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal estimated that this change will affect “between three and five million French people”, with just over half of the entire French population triple-jabbed. The new rule also applies to any tourists visiting France. 

They will join the estimated four million unvaccinated French adults who have been banned from public venues since 24 January, when the French health pass was replaced by a vaccine pass.

The French government’s campaign against the unvaccinated has been one of the most draconian in Europe, with Emmanuel Macron notoriously vowing on the 4th January to “emmerder [piss off]” those who haven’t taken the jab by “limiting as much as possible their access to social life”. 

France had already imposed a harsh array of restrictions in response to the Omicron wave in late December. Mask mandates were introduced in city centres, remote working was made compulsory when possible and indoor gatherings were limited to 2,000 people. 

This stance provoked fierce resistance from France’s small unvaccinated minority. Most recently over the weekend, police fired tear gas at a gilets jaunes-style protest in Paris who had formed a Canadian trucker–inspired “Freedom Convoy”.

Covid has also become embroiled with the approaching presidential election. Éric Zemmour condemned Macron’s “emmerder” remarks as “a political coup” in January, while the socialist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon gave his backing to the Paris convoy protest over the weekend. 

Yesterday a group of 20 French senators also signed an open letter calling for a complete end to vaccine passports, calling them a “political measure hidden behind a health pretext”. 

However, daily Covid cases have fallen from over half a million to below 200,000, and the number of people in hospital has also begun to fall for the first time since October. As a result the government’s rhetoric has begun to soften. Nightclubs are set to reopen in France tomorrow, and Attal suggested last week that the vaccine pass might be scrapped by late March or early April.

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Francis MacGabhann
Francis MacGabhann
2 years ago

People need to understand who their enemies are, and I deliberately use the word “enemies” because that is exactly what they are. It’s not a question of honest difference of opinion between people of goodwill. Macron is part of a transnational caste — not a class, a caste, because there’s a hereditary element here — of upper middle class people who hate, loathe, with every atom of their bodies anybody with a pound less than they have.
Castro Junior over in Canada is another one. He has now literally declared war on his own people by invoking martial law, something unheard of in Canadian history. We have spent the last two years being systematically lied to by people like this. They thought covid was their opportunity, that their hour was at hand. Only we’re aren’t buying it, and they are incensed. What we’re seeing is pure malice and it needs to be fought on every front in every country. Bury the English glee at the travails of the French. It’s time to stand with them. Fascism is back and it’s out to get us all.

James Joyce
James Joyce
2 years ago

EXTREMELY WELL SAID!
You beat me to it! Hats off to you, sir!

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago

Nah, the only reason we have nukes is for the French.

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
2 years ago

I agree. This is not about left v right or French v English it’s about the lords v the serfs.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago

That is a thin explanation of what is going on, well it is not really an explanation. Nasty elites who hate everyone else? Do they? If so, why? Did they before? When and why did this occur? Etc. Macron did after all, actually get elected, as did Trudeau, and may well do so again.
Authoritarianism, scapegoating, dislike of others’ freedom, and intolerance of minority positions have always been common among the population as well as the ‘elites’. As a 61 year old gay man, I must say that I didn’t notice much concern for my ‘freedoms’ when I was growing up! The very uncomfortable fact is that the ‘war’ is being waged primarily on an minority ‘deplorable’ set of the population.
‘Safetyism’ and the idea that governments can solve all health issues is part of the explanation. In addition the Identitarian Left has undoubtedly made huge strides among our institutions. And no doubt the extremely wealthy corporations etc can gain cover by left-wing virtue-signalling at the same time as inequality remorselessly increases.

Justin Clark
Justin Clark
2 years ago

Macron is a Quisling for the WEF, as is Trudeau.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Justin Clark

And Ardern.

Stephen Walshe
Stephen Walshe
2 years ago

As long as people are talking about vaccine mandates, they are not talking about inflation. Vaccine mandates affect only a minority, but inflation affects everyone.

Justin Clark
Justin Clark
2 years ago
Reply to  Stephen Walshe

good point, and apparently inflation is “a great asset” according the the US government?!?!?!

Eleanoŕ Pitt
Eleanoŕ Pitt
2 years ago
Reply to  Stephen Walshe

Vaccine mandates do not only affect a minority. Those who are happily getting vaccinated and boosted might proclaim not to care, but the mandate is still an imposition on everyone, and means a QR code to go anywhere. Every time they introduce another “booster” there will be more and more people deciding they’ve had enough and joining the numbers of those who are classed as not vaccinated.
There are also many who got vaccinated and boosted only because of coercion, financial reasons, fear of losing their jobs. They are included in the majority of the vaccinated class but do not wish to be there.
If this goes on long enough, even those with currently no aversion to quarterly experimental jabs and constant digital surveillance will start to wake up.
Inflation is also of great concern. There’s no reason why both can’t be talked about.

Art C
Art C
2 years ago
Reply to  Eleanoŕ Pitt

Jep. And that growing number of people who are vaccinated & have decided not to succumb to endless “boosters” going forward have been further emboldened by public protests like the Canadian truckers. People like Macron are tying themselves up in knots trying to deal with the contradictions & absurdities of what they have done. Here’s one I saw out there:
The government now has 2 difficult tasks to execute simultaneously: convince the unvaccinated that the vaccination WORKS so they get the shot … and … convince the vaccinated that the vaccination DOESN’T WORK so they get the booster shot!

Aleksandra Kovacevic
Aleksandra Kovacevic
2 years ago
Reply to  Eleanoŕ Pitt

Agree with you 100%, and I must say I did NOT see this coming. I stood proudly at the front of the line for the first jab, same with second. Come booster, when they started to convince us that jabs don’t work as Art has said, I was seriously pissed off and decided that’s the end of the vax road for me. I’m sure plenty others felt similarly deceived, and there will be more and more with each coercive measure introduced. Looking back I can’t believe I fell for the propaganda, it’s so obvious in hindsight.

James Joyce
James Joyce
2 years ago

A point on vocabulary:
The boffins on BBC and elsewhere throw around the term “fully vaccinated” without having any real understanding, any real meaning. Wasn’t it obvious that this would be a moving target–from Jab 1 to Jab 2, to Jab 2 + Boosted…..
As this article shows, “fully vaccinated” means different things in different places, and will continue to change. Such some, even much, of daily life depends on getting this right, can’t we find better words to use? If France has one definition of “fully vaccinated” and Spain has another, get this wrong at your peril.
This vocabulary seems a bit like “hate speech” and “far right,” which seems to mean anything that leftists f@sc#st fanatics find “offensive.”

Roger le Clercq
Roger le Clercq
2 years ago
Reply to  James Joyce

Spot on. If you eat well you are fed. When the hunger wears off you are underfed. (Acknowledgement Simon Drew) So when exactly are you precisely derfed? Vaccination passports are thus a moveable feast.

Alex Stonor
Alex Stonor
2 years ago

Fully unvaccinated relatives in France have seen the inception of an alternative social network: markets, auberge and parties for the fully unvaccinated. Interesting non?

Art C
Art C
2 years ago
Reply to  Alex Stonor

Similar stuff going on in The Netherlands. For example, there are web site portals where restaurant owners who don’t buy all this c**p may advertise. They also welcome vaccinated folks 🙂

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 years ago

A nice tool for Macron to use to manage the split of votes amongst his competitors before the April elections ….

Cheryl Jones
Cheryl Jones
2 years ago

I had Covid last January which my body fought off successfully on its own. I then got double jabbed (AZ). I think that is more than enough for 1 year thanks. I also have doubts about the mRNA vaccines, as far as I understand it there are big differences between Pfizer/Moderna and AZ. I understand AZ is a more tried-and-tested vaccine. It was also created to be cheaper and more easily storable. Pfizer charge a LOT more, so therefore are making far more profit for a product that is not proven and does not immunise you… The EU smeared a decent AZ vaccine for political purposes and spent lots of taxpayer money on Pfizer, sacrificing lives in the process as it took so long and encouraged mistrust of the vaccines. Why wouldn’t I be cynical about that? I’m not anti-vax at all but I totally get why people are so nervous about vaccines and the fact is they only take on the risk themselves, on their own health, everyone who is multi-vaxxed has the maximum possible protection so what is the problem?? Why can’t they make that choice?? It is a virus with a 99% survival rate, it’s not Ebola ffs. This whole thing is nonsensical and the hysteria and draconian measures adopted by world govts has really pulled the curtain back to reveal the Wizard of Oz. And he looks like wannabe authoritarian CCP-friendly regimes, Klaus Schwab and the Great Reset (the last people who would have the plebs best interests at heart) and neofeudalism where the elites own everything and their flying around on private jets and eating steak is justified, while we own nothing and eat bugs. Very concerning.

dave fookes
dave fookes
2 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

I was never against vaccines until I’d read Robert Kennedy’s The Real Anthony Fauci and Dr Judy Mikovits’ Plague of Corruption. What they say simply has to be the truth, otherwise they’d have been sued to the moon and back. There’s been attempts to ‘fact-check’ and discredit these two courageous people, but those attempts are pathetically hollow.
Bottom line – the vast majority of pharmaceutical companies, governments, their agencies, the WHO, the majority of ‘big-tech’ MSM and many social media companies, simply cannot be trusted.
The world is in a truly parlous state – and it’s growing worse.

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
Reply to  dave fookes

Then the book: ‘COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey’
https://www.amazon.com/COVID-19-Global-Predators-are-Prey/dp/0982456069

It gets good reviews and is always cited by Dr McCullough, who did the intro

dave fookes
dave fookes
2 years ago
Reply to  Galeti Tavas

Thank you, Galeti. I shall grab a copy of each. If only more people could put aside their handheld devices and read books.

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
Reply to  Cheryl Jones

“everyone who is multi-vaxxed has the maximum possible protection so what is the problem??”

Maybe they have taken the maximum possible risk?

1,967,579 Vaccine injuries reported on the CDC website VAERS thus far

Art C
Art C
2 years ago

” .. the vaccine pass might be scrapped by late March or early April.”
Isn’t that a beguiling suggestion: “might” is the operative word of course. Have you noticed that even now as the whole covid narrative crumbles, all the powers our governments have assumed under the covid regime are never fully revoked or rescinded. It is “possible” that we could return to (the old) normal BUT … and there follows a litany of “buts” which would require resolution first. We “may” be able to reduce ALL restrictions IF everyone gets a booster. And so on. Of course all these suspended powers are just that; they can be reactivated at any time. Thus does absolute power corrupt. Remember that line early on in the covid drama that “we’re all in this together” because covid was “not political”?
The best thing that could happen would be for Macron to be thrown out in the upcoming election, even if only for a short period, to stem the rot enveloping France. But I fear this won’t happen. And this histrionic little ****bag will continue to strut about the country pecking away at basic liberties which were once considered sacrosanct

Aleksandra Kovacevic
Aleksandra Kovacevic
2 years ago
Reply to  Art C

There IS a way to get back our rights, look at us in the UK: the more that **** Johnson gets in the ****, the more restrictions are rolled back! Interesting correlation, non?

Art C
Art C
2 years ago

Jep, but the problem is that if Johnson carries on sinking into the **** and gets voted out the alternative – in terms of liberty – is far worse: petty little commissar types who would resurrect all the authoritarian restrictions which the Johnson regime has only shelved, not got rid of.

Jason Highley
Jason Highley
2 years ago

As Foy Vance captured so beautifully: “It ain’t over, Baby Blue.”
At this point I’ve seen enough signs showing people are in this for the longer game than their rulers. I would not bet on the petty, little tyrants. Suffering has a way of purifying the world views and priorities of many.

Martin Smith
Martin Smith
2 years ago

Can a French speaker please explain why “emmerder” is translated as “to p*ss of” rather than “to drop in the sh*t”, given that merde means sh*t. Merci.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago

The situation in France is abysmal but in the context of draconian covid restrictions the fact that ‘indoor gatherings were limited to 2,000 people’ isn’t a particularly good example….