The French government is trying to pass new legislation through parliament that will require a vaccination certificate for restaurant and cafe visits and public transport over longer distances. Unvaccinated persons will be excluded from 15 January: a negative test certificate will then no longer apply.
Nearly 90 percent of the French are vaccinated. “How do we increase this percentage? By harassing unvaccinated, sorry to say so,” Macron told the French newspaper Le Parisien.
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Do these kinds of statements make sense? Would unvaccinated people now be more likely to get a shot? Dutch experts have their doubts, to say the least. “Personally I would say: I don’t expect that much of an effect,” says Madelon Kroneman. She has done a lot of research into increasing the vaccination coverage in children.
Good information
She thinks that this kind of coercion would not work in the Netherlands. “We are not used to it here, that attitude of the government. In France and in some other countries you have been obliged to vaccinate children for other viruses for some time. The culture is different with us. We choose rather for good information.” Kroneman believes that we still have a fairly high vaccination rate in the Netherlands, without harsh coercion.
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Heels in the sand
Other experts say these kinds of statements can also lead to negative effects. “Some of the unvaccinated will bury their heels even deeper in the sand as a result,” says Bas van den Putte, professor of health communication at the UvA. “They want to decide for themselves whether they want to be vaccinated.”
This is in line with research by the behavioral unit of the RIVM. Most of the unvaccinated recently indicated that the main reasons for not getting vaccinated was because they felt pressured. 88 percent of the unvaccinated gave this as the reason.
Leave alone
This ‘stubborn’ group, says Van den Putte, ‘must be left alone for a while’. They distrust the government and the pharmaceutical industry. “My advice would be: don’t talk about them for four months. Anything that forces them to get vaccinated strengthens them in the conviction not to do it.”
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‘It also has to do with presidential elections’
France correspondent Eveline Bijlsma says that Macron cannot be done alone to increase the vaccination rate. “Presidential elections are here again in April. Macron is a great communicator. It is not a statement he made by accident. A lot of thought has gone into that. Interviews like this are read by him beforehand, so this was really intentional. He has a fuss want to create. Those elections are coming up and he also wants to corner his opponents in this way. They have to show their colors now: what do they think about this? I think it is mainly aimed at the center-right party Le Republicains. That party has just got a new candidate, Valérie Pécresse, and she is actually the biggest threat to Macron. Within that party there are different ideas about the 2G measure, there is disagreement about that.”
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But not all unvaccinated people are necessarily like that. The professor explains that unvaccinated people consist of different groups.
You have the group with genuine doubts, the scientist says, especially about the long-term consequences. Van den Putte advises to keep explaining the advantages and disadvantages to these people. “This group can still be persuaded to a large extent.”
14 percent adults unvaccinated
That is also what Niek Mouter, lecturer at TU Delft, says. He has investigated the motives of people who have not been vaccinated. This currently concerns 14 percent of the adult Dutch population.
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31 percent of unvaccinated people have doubts
In Mouter’s latest survey, 31 percent of those unvaccinated say they are still unsure, while 69 percent are sure they will not take the vaccine. That looks like this:
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Mouter expects that putting pressure on unvaccinated people will only lead to a higher vaccination rate for ‘a small part of the people’. But he also points out that coercion can also have the opposite effect.
This specifically concerns the group that is in principle open to vaccination, but cites the introduction of the corona admission ticket as the reason that they have not yet taken the vaccine. “It’s likely that this group will become even more negative about vaccination if you put further pressure on unvaccinated.”
“Dangerous what Macron is doing”
The experts agree: putting pressure on the unvaccinated is risky. UvA professor Bas van den Putte: “What is dangerous about what Macron is doing is that by polarizing a large group of people will increasingly turn away from society. That will not suddenly end when the corona crisis is over. In the longer term, it’s important to try to keep everyone involved.”
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So what does work?
The question that arises is: what does work? Earlier research that Mouter had done for RIVM and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, showed that vaccination doubters have great confidence in the information they receive from doctors and general practitioners when it comes to corona.
“Doubters, on the other hand, have little trust in RIVM, politics and the media,” Mouter knows. “They trust the information from family and acquaintances about Covid-19 even more than the information from RIVM, politics and the media.”
‘The key lies with GPs’
The key to increasing vaccination coverage probably lies with (general) doctors, concludes the TU Delft researcher. “They are a source of confidence. Doubters don’t seem to need a conversation with someone who is trying to convince them, but a conversation in which they receive objective information about the pros and cons of a vaccine.
The doubt telephone, where doubters can ask questions about the pros and cons of the vaccines and the fact that doctors in certain neighborhoods take to the streets to inform people, are good initiatives to increase the vaccination rate, according to Mouter.
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