Go through Covid once instead of getting vaccinated against it? More and more young French people seem to have this attitude. You want to get infected with the coronavirus. But experts warn.
In France, people reportedly want to intentionally contract the coronavirus to avoid being vaccinated if they have recovered. “In the worst case, it ties me to bed for a few days, in the best case I have no symptoms at all,” the news channel Franceinfo quoted a 20-year-old as saying.
A 25-year-old told the newspaper “Le Figaro” that he no longer wore his mask and that he was less likely to wash his hands in order to get infected and thus get the “pass sanitaire”. This controversial proof of vaccination, negative test or survived infection in France should be mandatory from Monday for restaurant visits or long-distance travel on the train. He didn’t want to wait weeks for the two vaccinations, the young man told the newspaper.
“Total mistake” to play the “Game with the Virus”
According to the report, a 20-year-old student said: “In all honesty, if a friend tells me that she has Covid (…), maybe I would go to her to make her cough on me.” Another young woman doesn’t necessarily want to get infected, according to “Le Figaro”. But she prefers the disease to vaccination – and would rather that her immune system learn to “defeat the disease naturally”.
Similar statements are making the rounds in social networks. One user writes on Twitter, for example: “I would rather have Covid once than to have to be vaccinated every three months until the end of my life.” Another user writes that her husband was quarantined because of Covid-19. “I’ve tried everything to get it. Impossible.”
Experts castigate this attitude. He fears a real trend, said the epidemiologist Philippe Amouyel the broadcaster LCI. Playing “the game of the virus” is a “total mistake”. Young people felt safe, but recently the average age of intensive care patients suffering from Covid has fallen. And even if the infection is initially asymptomatic, the risk of long-term effects cannot be neglected, said Amouyel.
