“Who to vaccinate first? According to what criteria? How to prioritize all this?”

Grandstand. Vaccines … finally the word has spread and the news is piling up. We had expected them, now they are announced to us. However, vaccines are not enough. They are an opportunity, of course. It is still necessary to grasp it. Indeed, what value does a vaccination campaign have if it is not followed by the majority? Several surveys show that almost 40% of French people do not want to be vaccinated against Covid-19, while this figure averages around 25% in the world. The stakes are immense for public authorities: how to act in the face of this mistrust?

Perhaps it would be necessary, from now on, to involve citizens in the decision-making process, participating in the definition of the types of people and priority territories? An educational effort on the next vaccine seems appropriate to allow everyone to understand the problems. Individual responsibility must go hand in hand with fraternity, otherwise this crisis could perpetuate itself.

These are therefore some avenues that we would like to present here, to answer this apparently simple but in reality eminently complex question: who to vaccinate first? According to what criteria? How to prioritize all this? We have proposed a fair, acceptable and effective vaccination policy in Terra Nova (“A vaccination policy by zones”, 2 October 2020). While the first two imperatives help to ensure social cohesion, the third is essential to minimize the number of serious cases of Covid-19 and thus shorten this period of economic and social hardship.

Insufficient equity and fraternity

So far the main focus has been fairness. Thus, at the European level, for example, the EU has undertaken to ensure a proportional distribution of the vaccine among the Member States. Furthermore, all are committed to prioritizing the most vulnerable people (due to their age, or their co-morbidities) and nursing staff. These two points of agreement are important for safeguarding the European project. Yet fairness and brotherhood alone cannot eradicate the virus.

In a July report, a consortium around the Scientific Council identifies a further category of people on which it is essential to emphasize: the “connectionists”. Behind this strange word, a reality: some people are at the center of many social interactions. They are “Staff in contact with the population: traders, public service counters, banks, teachers, hotel staff, restaurants, public transport, prostitutes”. But why, then, make it a priority?

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