In France, many restaurants, hotels, etc. change their status to a PRIVATE CLUB. This way they don't have to ask the client for a Covid passport. New customers become "members" in less than 1 minute and for free. Thus, this restaurant is no longer "public", but private. All can join.
Original Tweet here
Secret restaurants, cinemas and venues - how Europe’s anti-vax mandate movement is going underground
Rob Picheta
Published: Monday, 17 January 2022 11:25 AM AEDT
Before COVID-19, Nicolas Rimoldi had never attended a protest.
But somewhere along the pandemic’s long and tortuous road, which saw his native Switzerland imposing first one lockdown, then another, and finally introducing vaccination certificates, Rimoldi decided he had had enough.
Now he leads Mass-Voll, one of Europe’s largest youth-orientated anti-vaccine passport groups.
FOLLOW ON TWITTER https://mobile.twitter.com/mass_voll
Because he has chosen not to get vaccinated, student and part-time supermarket cashier Mr Rimoldi is - for now, at least - locked out of much of public life.
Without a vaccine certificate, he can no longer complete his degree or work in a grocery store. He is barred from eating in restaurants, attending concerts or going to the gym.
“People without a certificate like me, we’re not a part of society anymore,” he said. “We’re excluded. We’re like less valuable humans.”
As the pandemic has moved into its third year, and the Omicron variant has sparked a new wave of cases, governments around the world are still grappling with the challenge of bringing the virus under control.
Vaccines, one of the most powerful weapons in their armories, have been available for a year but a small, vocal minority of people - such as Mr Rimoldi - will not take them.
MORE: Why young people are avoiding mass booster shots
Faced with lingering pockets of vaccine hesitancy, or outright refusal, many nations are imposing ever stricter rules and restrictions on unvaccinated people, effectively making their lives more difficult in an effort to convince them to get their shots.
In doing so, they are testing the boundary between public health and civil liberties - and heightening tensions between those who are vaccinated and those who are not.
“We will not allow a tiny minority of unhinged extremists to impose its will on our entire society,” Germany’s new Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said last month, targeting the violent fringes of the anti-vaccine movement.
Vaccine passports have been in place for months to gain entry to hospitality venues in much of the European Union.
But as Delta and Omicron infections have surged and inoculation rollouts have stalled, some governments have gone further.
Austria imposed Europe’s first lockdown for the unvaccinated and is scheduled to introduce mandatory shots from February 1.
Germany has banned unvaccinated people from most areas of public life, and the country’s Health Minister, Karl Lauterbach, warned in December that: “without mandatory vaccination I do not see us managing further waves in the long term.”
And France’s President Emmanuel Macron last week told Le Parisien newspaper that he “really wants to piss off” the unvaccinated.
“We’re going to keep doing it until the end,” he said. “This is the strategy.”
Rule-breaking and subterfuge
Many of the restrictions have public support - Switzerland’s were recently backed comfortably in a referendum - as majority-vaccinated populations tire of obstacles blocking their path out of the pandemic.
But the latest rounds of curbs have fuelled anger among those unwilling to take a shot, many of whom are now slipping out of society - or resorting to subterfuge and rule-breaking to create their own communities, citing their right to “freedom”.
“On Monday I was with 50 people eating in a restaurant - the police wouldn’t be happy if they saw us,” Mr Rimoldi told CNN, boasting of illegal dinners and social events with unvaccinated friends that he likened to Prohibition-era speakeasies.
Attendees will hand in their phones to avoid word of their meetings getting out, and will visit restaurants, cinemas or other venues whose owners were sympathetic to their cause, he said.
“Yes, it’s not legal, but in our point of view the certificate is illegal,” Mr Rimoldi added unapologetically.
‘A two-class society’
“We live in a two-class society now,” Mr Rimoldi told CNN. “It’s horrible. It’s a nightmare.”
But if life as an unvaccinated person in Europe is a nightmare, it is one from which Rimoldi and his followers could easily wake up.
MORE: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slams vaccine passports as discriminatory and creating a ‘two-tiered society’.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/desantis-slams-vaccine-passports-as-discriminatory-and-creating-a-two-tiered-society/
Unlike in poorer parts of the world where some are desperate to receive doses, access to COVID-19 vaccines is plentiful in the EU.
Mr Rimoldi insists that his group is “not anti-mask” and “not anti-vax” - concerned purely with democracy and legality, rather than the science of the vaccine.
“At our demonstrations there’s many people who are fully vaccinated,” he claimed, adding: “They say, ‘Hey, the government lied to us’” about vaccine rollouts meaning the end of COVID restrictions.
He was unwilling to discuss the vaccine itself, saying only that he refused it as a matter of principle.
“We don’t talk much about the vaccine ... that’s not one of the topics we discuss,” he said when asked whether he agreed the shots had done more good than harm.
Several campaigners CNN spoke to also expressed concerns that each new set of rules imposed in the name of halting the spread of coronavirus was part of a “slippery slope” of never-ending restrictions.
Families divided
As controls have tightened, groups such as Mr Rimoldi’s have become increasingly disruptive; few weekends now pass without loud protests in European cities.
And anger at restrictive COVID measures has led many who previously considered themselves apolitical to join in.
Thousands march on Amsterdam in protest over the government's Covid measures and vaccine rollout... while cases in Holland continue sharp rise
Thousands protested in Amsterdam on Sunday in opposition to the government-imposed Covid measures
Authorities had stop and search powers and scores of riot police vans patrolled neighbourhoods in the city
Crowds sang and chanted anti-government slogans and then marched along thoroughfares, blocking traffic
Even before the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy in Europe was strongly correlated to a populist distrust of mainstream parties and governments.
One study published in the European Journal of Public Health in 2019 found “a highly significant positive association between the percentage of people in a country who voted for populist parties and the percentage who believe that vaccines are not important and not effective”.
But leaders of anti-restriction movements are presenting their campaigns as more inclusive and representative than those studies would suggest.
“We have farmers, lawyers, artists, musicians - the whole range of people you can imagine,” Mr Rimoldi said.
Mass-Voll is aimed specifically at Swiss young people, and boasts that it has amassed more followers on Instagram than the official youth wings of any of the country’s major political parties. See Facebook link
Christian Fiala, the vice president of Austria’s MFG party, which was formed specifically to oppose lockdowns, mask-wearing and COVID passports, told CNN: “It’s really a movement which comes from the whole population.”
MFG caused a ballot box shock last September, winning seats in one of Austria’s provincial parliaments.
“Most of those who voted for us have never been really politically active in that sense, but they are so upset,” he said. “People are really fed up being locked in.”
In France, vaccination uptake is higher but those opposed to COVID rules are no quieter. Bruno Courcelle said he was not overly involved in politics before the pandemic - now the 72-year-old mathematics lecturer is a regular at demonstrations against the vaccine, lockdowns and other COVID control measures.
His stance has left him at odds with family, friends and colleagues. Speaking to CNN before Christmas, Dr Courcelle was preparing for an uncomfortable festive family dinner.
“The rest of my family got vaccinated,” he said, adding that he has had several arguments with relatives who fail to understand why he has joined the ranks of the anti-vaccination protesters.
“My wife said ‘Please, do not say anything (at the table),’” he said. “I will not start such a discussion myself ... (but) I will not stay silent letting leftists say their stupid things.”
He disputes the well-established effectiveness and safety of the vaccines, and claims nations are slipping into a “totalitarist (sic) world” distinguishable from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union only in the sense that it is global, rather than nationalistic.
But Dr Courcelle, who works part-time at the University of Bordeaux, where he has emeritus status, said he was comfortable cutting ties with those who disagree with him.
His increasingly public opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine, and to restrictions on unvaccinated people, have left him isolated at work. “This is disappointing,” he said.
“I’ve sent emails to my close colleagues (about the vaccine) ... I had only one response, which was negative.”
When he attends protests, though, he says he finds people he understands.
Suggs said this is one of the reasons for the movements’ ongoing appeal.
“It’s like a fraternity or being a fan of a football club.”
People sceptical of government messaging are “looking for something social, and these groups have done an excellent job at inviting whoever will come,” she said.
“I have met new people who share (my) opinions,” said Dr Courcelle.
Fuel on the fire
Two years on, and with opinions becoming more entrenched by the day, some experts fear it may be too late to bridge the divide between the authorities and those who have become vociferously opposed to vaccination measures.
“Those people who are against vaccination are going to be even louder whenever they’re told: ‘You vaccinate, or you die.’ That fuels their fire,” said Prof Suggs.
And they are “not going away,” warned Prof McKee.
France’s President Macron appears to have moved on from appealing to the refuseniks’ sense of solidarity - instead he’s now hoping to annoy reluctant French citizens into getting their shots by requiring proof of vaccination for access to a range of everyday activities.
“I’m not going to put them in jail (the jail’s aren’t large enough…lol), I’m not going to forcibly vaccinate them, and so, you have to tell them: From January 15, you will no longer be able to go to the restaurant, you will no longer be able to have a drink, go for a coffee, to the theatre, you will no longer go to the movies,” Mr Macron told Le Parisien.
But his plan - and his choice of words - have angered opposition politicians and vaccine opponents alike.
The small posse of hardcore anti-vaccine protesters in France “are more visible, more motivated and vocal” than at earlier points in the pandemic, according to Jeremy Ward, a sociologist and researcher at France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research.
Dr Ward estimates that between 5 and 10 per cent of France’s population is staunchly against the vaccine; a large rally against the vaccine pass, approved by France’s lower house last Thursday, took place in Paris on Saturday.
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