If we were more or less all housed in the same boat during confinement, today we are no longer experiencing the same health crisis at all. It’s a fact. The constraints to fight against the virus are not the same between the inhabitants of a large agglomeration, where the mask is imposed everywhere outside, and the administered of a medium-sized city or a rural area which can still be walk with your nose in the air.
And now, there are even disparities between the metropolises, with for example Aix-Marseille on one side where bars and restaurants had to close and on the other, Paris, to which the government has granted since Thursday a final deadline until see you Monday before deciding on new restrictions while the indicators are bad, as well as Lille, Lyon, Grenoble, Toulouse and Saint-Etienne, also suspended but them until next Saturday. These differences piss off part of public opinion and local elected officials.
“That a territorial logic applies to implement prevention measures, that seems obvious to me. However, it is necessary to have access to data to objectify these differences and for them to be understood by the populations. It takes time. However, with this health crisis, there is none. We are in a hurry. This makes this understanding more difficult, ”notes Audrey Bochaton, a geographer specializing in territorial health issues.
Government procrastination
The expert also points to the vicissitudes of government speech, at the origin of some of the reactions of non-membership. “We must recognize that the prevention discourse has changed a lot, for example on the mask. However, it is complicated to adapt to a fluctuating discourse, ”adds the teacher-researcher at the University of Paris-Nanterre. And to notice that “some people” have anyway “the feeling that the active circulation of the virus is only the problem of very large cities, where the population density is the most important”.
Another divide: “Young people are less sensitive to the concept of risk. A message of death does not reach them. It’s like tobacco, ”compares Sandrine Raffin, social marketing specialist. “We have to find other levers. Perhaps a different staging of prevention messages, find an ambassador among them to convey them … In the fight against AIDS, for example, progress has been made because the image of the condom had changed and was, in campaigns, associated with pleasure ”, specifies the CEO of LinkUp Conseil.
An equally social divide
She also insists on the fact that, young and old, we are all very influenced by the social norm. “In a place where everyone wears the mask, we’re going to feel weird if we don’t wear it, whatever our beliefs. It is both an individual and collective dynamic, ”summarizes Sandrine Raffin. Hence the sometimes heated debates, including within families. “Some French people have a hard time with the top-down national decision. Prevention messages are heard more when they are said by local actors such as the family doctor, the PMI, the school… They must be relays, ”she says.
Sandrine Raffin finally evokes another divide and not the least: the social divide. Here again, the executive who can telework does not experience the same health crisis as the worker on sites where the constraints of the profession are already numerous.
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