“If drugs were offered against the Covid, I would take them”, assured us a few days ago Marc *, 32, in Antibes. The young man, an auxiliary of justice, firmly rejected the vaccine against Covid-19. “This injection, I do not know it. I do not trust its technology, and the health professionals around me are very divided”, he affirmed, before continuing, anxious not to appear reckless: ” But I treat myself! I do preventive treatments of vitamin B, C, zinc… I’m careful”. From these capsules sold in pharmacies to a drug fighting against Covid, there is only one step for Marc. A step he would take with fewer doubts than those he has for the injection. “I have the impression that it would be less dangerous. That there are fewer risks”, he developed.
What to observe the arrival in pharmacies, this Friday, of the anti-Covid drug Paxlovid with serenity. Marc is not a priori concerned by the treatment: the pill, available only for patients who test positive on specific prescription, is intended for people likely to have serious forms, and who are insufficiently protected by the vaccine. Among them: the very old, suffering from certain rare diseases, or even immunocompromised. But this arrival on the market reassures some, like Bernadette, 70 years old. Unvaccinated, she would like “old vaccines” – understand: without RNA technology – to be available. “I know that there are already some without RNA, like the Janssen vaccine. But I don’t really want to trust them,” she says. Bernadette would have more confidence in the widespread marketing of an anti-Covid treatment. “The drugs are more reassuring. I would have preferred treatment to the vaccine,” she says. Like Marc and Bernadette, French people who refused to be vaccinated also expressed this choice. Opting for a “pill” rather than an “injection”, is it paradoxical? Not for them: for these people, preferring the possible “side effects” of a drug to those of the vaccine is common sense.
Preventative versus curative
Magali and Marie*, two friends close to their thirties living in Gard and Bouches-du-Rhône, are among them. The first, vaccinated with two doses, refused the third, explaining “to be disturbed”. “I am a life assistant, I can no longer exercise my profession since the suspension of my vaccination pass, she gets annoyed. But I prefer that to continuing the vaccine.” At his side, his friend vigorously marks her assent at the other end of the handset. “We don’t trust these vaccines at all!”, She says. Hostile to the injection, the two young women, however, see a possible treatment with a more favorable eye. “I’m not stupid, I can make the same criticism of a new drug as I do of current vaccines, continues Magali. They scare me, especially because I find that we lack perspective on their effects. secondary, that everything is going too fast”. She pauses, thinking. “But I find it less dangerous to cure yourself with a drug, when you are already sick, rather than taking the risk of getting vaccinated, she reasons. Marie and I are both young. We have little chances of getting seriously ill with Covid, so why tempt the devil with an injection?”
Magali summarizes here one of the main reasons that explain this favor, among some, of the drug to the vaccine. “It’s the difference between a curative product, which cures a disease which is there and which we therefore perceive as dangerous, tells us, in writing, Laurent-Henri Vignaud, historian of science, co-author ofAntivax. Vaccine resistance from the 18th century to the present day, and a preventive product. The latter protects against a disease that is not there and from which we always hope to be able to escape by various means.” As in the case of Marc, our previous witness who praised the merits of “preventive care”. ‘naturalist’ antivax, through appropriate behavior, including food, essential oils, protective gestures, meditation, etc.”, specifies Laurent-Henri Vignaud.
Confusing side effects
In a word, the drug is seen here as a “lesser evil” compared to the vaccine. “There is a dimension of betting that people want to make, approves its co-author, the doctor in virology and immunology Françoise Salvadori, lecturer at the University of Burgundy. To this is added a familiarity with drugs, which the French people consume a lot”. France has indeed long been the European champion of their prescription. Although the situation has improved in recent years, France remained one of the biggest consumers of anxiolytics and antibiotics on the continent before the health crisis. Better known, the drugs would therefore be more reassuring. A feeling shared by Magali. “I think I have a better chance of suspending the adverse effects of a drug by stopping taking it than with a vaccine, which I was injected with, and which I do not see coming out of my body”, says the young woman. “It is written in the minds of our contemporaries that the side effects induced by vaccines could be invisible and in the very long term, whereas this is doubly false, deciphers Laurent-Henri Vignaud. They are often immediate and visible and therefore, in most cases treatable, such as thromboses and myocarditis”.
A misunderstanding also seems to have arisen in recent years, as the health scandals erupted. “There was a confusion between vaccines and other drugs with distant effects, like that of the Mediator”, continues the historian of science. Antidiabetic drug marketed in 1976 by the Servier laboratory, it was withdrawn from the market in 2009. Prescribed to around five million people during this time, it is the cause of serious heart valve damage and pulmonary arterial hypertension . “The average citizen does not understand why we apply a strict ‘precautionary principle’ for some, such as GMOs, whose toxic effects we are always looking for, and not for others, namely vaccines, whose very real side effects are always presented as minors by the health authorities”, he continues.
This mistrust is all the stronger as the vaccine against Covid is perceived as imposed by the authorities through the vaccination pass. “My friend and I agree: the drug gives us more freedom, explains Magali. The vaccine was imposed on us overnight.” This demand for freedom, often mentioned in the arguments of vaccine-skeptics, constitutes the cornerstone of this drug premium. “I have the choice to treat myself or not, I am autonomous, underlines Bernadette. With the vaccine, I have less the impression of it.” A quasi-philosophical “fear of the bite”, which conceals the interest of vaccination, which, at the collective level, limits the circulation of viruses. “Yes, but we are careful,” Bernadette points out. Not close to being convinced.
*Names have been changed