Will some caregivers slip in a Marine Le Pen bulletin on Sunday because they have been suspended due to their non-vaccination against Covid-19? On Twitter, some assume and show clear support for the candidate of the National Rally since she promised to reinstate caregivers who lost their jobs because they did not want to be vaccinated.
Two opposing positions on compulsory vaccination
At a meeting in Avignon on April 14, Marine Le Pen announced it: “I would reinstate the 15,000 caregivers expelled as dirty. I will pay them the salaries of which they have been unjustly deprived”.
Two days before, the subject was addressed by the outgoing president. During a trip to Mulhouse meeting caregivers, the president was questioned on this controversial subject. And if the government has so far been quite intractable on the suspension of unvaccinated caregivers, Emmanuel Macron has, for the first time, qualified his position. By explaining: “I am in favor of the reinstatement of these people. As long as we are in an acute phase, I think it is too early. There will be a review clause when the virus returns to an endemic phase. Which means? asked a woman who had questioned him on this question. “It is a phase where the virus is circulating, but there is no more hospital impact. »
Rebelote during the debate last Wednesday. In the few minutes devoted to health, Marine Le Pen took care to attack the outgoing president on his lack of empathy.
“When you laid off 15,000 carers without pay overnight because you refused to allow them to be tested before coming to work and you wanted them to be vaccinated at all costs, it was not good. The president made no commitment on this occasion.
It is therefore one of the (many) subjects that differentiate Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. And who could count Sunday in the voting booth. For months, the split seems inevitable between the supporters of an exclusion of the non-vaccinated and their defenders. On Twitter, this opposition looks like a photo battle. On one side, doctors with a syringe in their arm. On the other, caregivers recounting their tenacious opposition to the vaccine and their misery since they were suspended without pay, without RSA…
“It is a swaying bellows to the caregivers who have remained to fight against the disease”
Questioned a month ago, the HRD of a major hospital confided to us his opposition to the reinstatement of suspended caregivers. “When the vaccine came out after only six months, it was scary. Months later, we say to ourselves that it is a contribution. If there were to be a deleterious effect, it would have appeared. Some opponents of vaccination told us that we were all going to die after six months. What I saw in my hospital is that the number of contaminations of caregivers before and after the vaccine is day and night! “He also recalled that two colleagues died of Covid-19, that others have still not returned to work because of this disease. According to him, “just ask the caregivers: they prefer to work alone than poorly accompanied”.
Same anger on the side of Jérôme Marty, general practitioner at Fronton and president of theFrench Union for Free Medicine (UFML). “When Marine Le Pen says that she is going to reinstate unvaccinated caregivers and pay them their emoluments, it is a blow to the caregivers who have remained to fight against the disease. This is to forget why vaccination was made compulsory. They had to be vaccinated to protect them from serious symptoms, and therefore from work stoppages. We tend to believe that all caregivers are young, but the average age among doctors is 55 years old. They are vaccinated to protect patients, but also to protect them themselves. »
Reintegrate them because the epidemic has evolved?
Oncologist Jérôme Barrière shared a thread on Twitter this Friday that makes another voice heard. He insists on the evolution of the disease… and of his position. “The vaccination obligation for caregivers during the summer of 2021 was based on data showing that vaccinated, we reduced the risk of contagiousness, and therefore we protected patients. However, things have changed. A less aggressive variant arrived with a significant immune escape and a marked decrease in vaccine interest as an anti-transmission measure, except to be vaccinated every three months. In my opinion, the evolution of the epidemic makes it reasonable to reinstate people who wish to do so, but obviously without paying retroactively. »
Paying financial compensation to people who were not working therefore seems very unfair in the eyes of those who worked overtime in a context of chronic understaffing. “You have to understand that these caregivers are people who, for many, were afraid of vaccination, adds the doctor, joined by 20 minutes. Are they trustworthy as caregivers, having refused vaccination when fully justified? There is the question… “