Vaccine hesitancy and coercion: all eyes on France
Résumé
With record levels of vaccine hesitancy, France faces the challenges of the contemporary crisis of trust
in vaccines in a heightened form. For this reason, a closer look at its situation helps to highlight some
often overlooked factors behind the rise of vaccine hesitancy. The prevalence of hesitancy among
medical professionals, and doctors in particular, is one of them. The changing landscape of vaccine-
critical activism is another. The French context also underlines the limitations of the current tools
available to public health actors. As in many countries, traditional top-down communication efforts
have proved unable to restore trust in vaccines. This led French public health authorities to conclude
that extending the list of vaccines required for daycare and school entry was necessary to reach
satisfactory vaccine coverage. This extension of mandatory vaccination constitutes a live experiment
to test the effectiveness of coercion in the so-called “post-truth era”. Where vaccine hesitancy is so
prevalent, vaccine-critical arguments circulate widely and trust in public authorities is low, this type of
measure could polarize attitudes toward vaccines. There is a risk that the public health authorities will
become complacent and rely upon coercion to do all the work. Coercive measures must be part of a
comprehensive plan aimed at restoring trust in vaccines and not just at increasing vaccine coverage.
The goal should still be to build a healthcare system immunized against doubts about vaccination
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