Comment by laurent92 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by laurent92 | Hacker News Reader

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Same in France: Macron, the entire government and their health advisors said the following:

- Everyone should go to the opera/cinema to fight Covid (7th March 2020)

- Lockdown for everybody (20th March) (I guess people caught it in the theaters…)

- Masks are useless, absolutely useless for the general public (June 2020),

- Masks are mandatory (September),

- Blocking borders is useless, Covid will be here,

- Borders blocked during Lockdown II and III, if I remember the dates, because it’s useful (so maybe we should have stopped the direct flights between WUHAN and Lyon earlier than September 2020?),

- The idea of Passe Sanitaire (a generalized QR code suspending entrance in public buildings) is a conspiration theory (10th May 2021)

- Passe Sanitaire mandatory on August 1st, live and enforced in all public places except offices, including outdoor restaurants and public transport.

- Trust us this time, the vaccine is the right thing,

- But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines,

- Given they injected 10,000 patients with AIDS in 1989, and took 6 years to admit it, and press wasn’t under État d’Urgence Sanitaire at the time,

(and also, they didn’t know that Benalla had kept and used 6 diplomatic passports after being fired, just to show how they work).

If anything, they have taught us to doubt everything they say: They clearly didn’t know what they were doing, and did governance-by-lying.

None of these are contradictions, they are reactions to a disease we don't know much about.

- The population is panicking for only a few cases, people are even avoiding Chinese restaurants even when the owners have never been in China. The government wants people to stop panicking, the risks are still extremely low.

- Cases rise exponentially, faster than expected (possibly due to a new variant), hospitals are filling up, now we need to take it seriously

- That one is actually subtle, they told that surgical masks are for the sick and FFP2 (N95) masks are for health professionals, there was a shortage of masks and we didn't have enough for the general public. But they try to say it in a way that would limit fighting over masks, people still fought and stole masks, leaving people who really needed them without protection, I guess saying that masks are vital would have made things worse.

- Masks are back in stock

- Blocking borders is indeed mostly useless when covid is here in large numbers, it is only useful when you have a strict eradication policy and your country is not well connected, not the case of France.

- The point of a lockdown is to limit movement in general, blocking borders is part of it

- In May the situation was improving, vaccination was extremely successful, we were on our way to being mostly covid-free in the summer. There was no reason for such restrictions.

- Delta variant

- Vaccine is the right thing, it has always been the right thing, just look at the data if you don't trust the government. Even a less effective vaccine protects you.

- It is an emergency situation, no time to waste in lawyering, and I am glad they did, delta breakouts in unvaccinated areas are deadly (see DOM/TOM). It doesn't mean safety wasn't taken seriously, all vaccines available in France passed the trials.

- off topic

I am not a fan of Macron, or any political party for that matter, but without the benefit of hindsight everything looks reasonable considering the information available at that time and the specificities of the country. If you think it is bad what would you have done differently? Remember: you have no crystal ball, an unruly population, and a budget.

The budget is as large as the (perceived) danger. And there was no excuse for being ill informed, after China locked down the whole province.

And there's no better way to help the virus than lying to people about the masks. Even the Chinese government didn't lie about masks, while all the western governments did. If masks became a strategic product, then there are enough laws to regulate them (and France did so).

Let me tell you about the situation with masks in France in the early days of the pandemic.

- All mask shaped objects were quickly taken off the shelves. Including snorkeling masks that could be adapted!

- Health professionals received a limited number of masks. For example nurses had 2 FFP2 masks a day, in practice, except for those who worked with covid patients, most had only surgical masks. Pharmacists sometimes didn't have any mask at all (they should have had surgical masks)

- A lot of the masks were in poor condition and of dubious quality, they really tried everything they had. Some came from the stockpile intended for the 2009 flu pandemic.

- Masks regularly "disappeared". As an anecdote from a nurse, she worked in a psychiatric hospital and they didn't have masks (again, a mysteriously lost package). A guy came in, the leader of a big company and was appalled by the situation. He came back with 3 boxes, full of masks and told the personnel "this is for you, these will not got to the director's office, I will come back in a few days and if I don't see the masks, someone is going to have problems!".

- A friend of mine, a pharmacist, was constantly harassed for masks by random people. She had (not enough) masks available for doctors, but she was lucky when he could have one herself. And people had the nerve to ask for her own mask. And on a side note, at one point, they didn't even have enough ethanol for hand sanitizers!

Internationally, China kept most of the masks for themselves, and the ones foe export were sold to the highest bidder on the airport ground. Some countries had local factories, but were lacking in material, especially meltblown fabric, but sometimes even the metal nose strip.

It was bad, really bad. Things started to improve when volunteers started to make fabric masks. Initially, we were dubious about the efficiency of fabric masks, there was a fear that they would make droplets finer and more airborne, we still are, but it seems that they are better than nothing.

I want to think that the deception was a bad thing and that people deserved the whole truth, but I am glad I wasn't part of the government during that time.

It doesn't matter if masks were hard to source at the beginning, every single country found itself in the same situation. Korea is one of the biggest producers of what you call FFP2 masks in the world yet we had a severe domestic shortage here too (the reason for the shortage, after a government investigation, was that suppliers exported most of their production because China was ready to pay x10times the regular price; old dear capitalism at work), forcing the government to nationalize the supply (basically buy all the production) and take over distribution under a strict rationing scheme, until supply stabilized. Nowadays a KF95 (FFP2 equivalent) mask costs less than KRW 500 and supply is plentiful. In early March last year, I had to line up once a week for the chance to buy a maximum of three masks for KRW 2500 each. Sure, the government should have anticipated all of this and establish an export ban early, after all "gouverner c'est prevoir". But what's more important is to be honest with the people who elected you and fix things as soon as possible.

None of what you mention can excuse or justify the blatant lies of the French government. A democratically elected government should not lie to its population, under no circumstances. You don't send a spokesperson on national TV to tell the population that masks are useless, and that the general population wouldn't even know how to use one(!!!).

I suspect the French population will be far more forgiving of a government fuckup followed by an apology and visible and effective efforts to fix the situation, than an outright lie that was only necessary in the first place because of arrogance, complacency and incompetence.

Overall I agree, however:

> But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines,

What does that even mean? You're in France, you'll be treated no matter whether someone is responsible or not. I don't think you can be liable of something going wrong if you did everything properly (which is the case).

Everyone, governement and research companies, followed all the laws. Legal responsability exist only if you didn't respect the laws. If they didn't follow the laws, they won't be exempt from lawsuits.

So. What does "But both research companies and ministers are exempt from legal responsibility on these vaccines," mean?

It means that no one wants to take responsibility for any side effects. And it obviously creates mistrust.

If the state is practically mandating you to be vaccinated for covid they (or the companies that make the vaccine) should be held responsible for anything that happens to you.

You can't have it both ways; either there are no distinctions between vaccinated and unvaccinated people (no measures that only affect unvaccinated people) or someone can be held responsible for any resulting disability or death.

It seems to me that the state can mandate vaccination if they determine that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, full well knowing that there may be (probably will be, in fact) some rare side effects.

How is this different than the state drafting people into the military, knowing that some of them will die?

In both cases, the state is obviously responsible for the outcomes. But that doesn't mean that there is a liability on the behalf of the state, or that you can hold an individual functionary working for the state responsible.

There were many, many protests against many drafts, so yeah, people don't want to be forcefully drafted either.

> It means that no one wants to take responsibility for any side effects. And it obviously creates mistrust.

Ok, but noone ever took responsibility on anything, except what's in the law. I mean, I've never witnessed anything like that.

Did Bush took responsibility when going to Afghanistan? Did Obama took responsibility when enacting ObamaCare? Did Trump took responsibility when embargoing Huawei? Did Raoult took responsibility when recommending Hydroxychloroquine?

I can go on. But really, if you want someone to take responsibility for something beyond laws and contracts (which implies compensation, a contract can't be one-sided. What you suggest would be one-sided), I think you're not in the right universe altogether.

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