What if the outdoor mask was the restriction too much?

“You have to simplify the measurements and the messages, not because people are stupid, but precisely because they are smart enough to understand the really important devices and do without the rest. Michaël Rochoy does not mince his words. While, this Tuesday, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran declared “sincerely hoped” the end of wearing the mask outside this summer, the general practitioner and researcher in epidemiology considers [comme beaucoup de Français] that this outdoor mask is restriction too. For 20 minutes, Michaël Rochoy and others come back to these restrictions concerning the “outdoors”, particularly unpopular, which could have interfered with health communication and sometimes be counterproductive.

“We hit too often next to the target”

It has been almost a year since the mask became mandatory even outdoors in some cities, such as Paris. And the measure is one of the most unpopular of the coronavirus crisis. With it, the travel certificate, the curfew at 6 p.m., the 10-kilometer limit or the ban on access to the beaches. All these restrictions have two similarities: they relate to the “outdoors” and they are not the subject of any scientific consensus.

According to a study by the Institut Pasteur, only 5% of coronavirus contaminations would be outdoors. What seriously to question, this series of measures with uncertain results. Restrictions which, by accumulating them, could have scuttled more effective decisions? “We hit too often next to the target. The epidemic is transmitted particularly in closed places, and most of the measures taken concern the outside. It does not make sense, ”replies Jérôme Marty, president of the French Union for Free Medicine.

After fourteen months of health crisis, “people are fed up with being infantilized by the biai of heavy decisions socially and without great consequence on the epidemic”, supports the doctor. Proof of this is that many countries – Germany and Spain in the lead – have achieved much better results with more flexible and less intrusive measures.

“We need to better reflect on the efficiency / acceptability ratio of each measure”

Too much being the enemy of good, piling up measures would only reduce the population’s support for them. Especially after more than a year of confinement, barrier gestures, curfew … and low morale. “We need to better reflect on the effectiveness / acceptability ratio of each measure. What concretely does the obligation of the mask bring to the exterior? Losing the support of the French on these questionable measures is to take the risk of losing it also on more important measures, ”argues Michaël Rochoy. And if the French are smart enough to discern the most effective measures from the rest, “there is the possibility of a general fed up, or of poor prioritization”, points out the doctor.

This is the problem with this accumulation. By force, difficult to distinguish the bacon from the pig. Especially since the prioritization is not always very clear. Let us recall in particular that the mask was compulsory in the streets of Paris before being it at work in closed places. That always at work, collective meals were allowed during the curfew but that it was forbidden to walk outside after 7 p.m. While access to beaches or docks was prohibited, the messages on the importance of ventilation or on the danger of aerosols were only issued by the government in February and March 2021. CO2 sensors in schools had to wait until the end of April to be mentioned by the executive. What to disturb even more a message however simple in the absolute.

Redo simple

After fifteen months of research on the coronavirus, we could even summarize it in a few words: “The virus circulates mainly in closed places without a mask, so avoid these situations”, dictates Michaël Rochoy. Saying that is enough to understand why museums or cinemas can reopen but that we cannot eat inside, in order to keep the mask, or why the terraces will reopen in mid-May but not inside. restaurants. To say that is above all to appeal to science. Still according to the Institut Pasteur study, 80% of contamination occurs in completely enclosed places, and 15% in closed places but with an open window. This shows the importance of ventilation.

As for the idea that it is better to take too many measures than to risk not having enough, Jérôme Marty does not believe in it too much. Or in any case, more after fourteen months, when the issue is as much about the measures as about the adhesion they arouse: “We could have had this philosophy at the beginning, but now we have to trust the population. People who risk doing anything with a reduction in measures are already doing it, so they might as well free others from measures that are more restrictive than effective. “The doctor is convinced of it, at year of crisis + 1, it is time to concentrate on” measures where people find themselves there, where people are taken for adults “. Away from the mask outside, and towards more open windows and masks worn 100% in an enclosed space.