Composite portrait of the unvaccinated | The Press

Two-thirds of unvaccinated Quebec adults adhere to a conspiracy view, according to unpublished data obtained by The Press. Efforts must focus on the remaining third, most likely to take up the sleeve, says public health doctor Mélissa Généreux.

He is a rather young man. A father, who lives in a rural area. He’s not very rich. Not very educated, either. He gets informed on social networks. He is on the right of the political spectrum. He is anxious and depressed.

Here is a typical portrait – painted in very broad strokes – of the unvaccinated Quebecer. But beware: this only lifts part of the veil.

“There are all sorts of reasons why people don’t want to be vaccinated,” says Dr.^D Mélissa Généreux, professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Sherbrooke.

A certain vagueness envelops the 540,000 unvaccinated adults in Quebec. Sometimes they are presented as frenzied “antivaxes”, irrecoverable cuckoo clocks, sometimes they are described more as homeless people, immigrants or isolated old people. The overall picture is muddled.

Thanks to the work of the D^D Generous, we can finally see more clearly. The figures presented here are taken from a survey conducted in October among 10,368 Quebec adults. This survey is itself part of a large ongoing study on the psychosocial impacts of the pandemic.

“By crossbreeding, we can profile the unvaccinated, even if that was not the original intention,” explains Dr.^D Generous.

One observation emerges: among the approximately 10% of unvaccinated Quebecers, two-thirds adhere to a conspiratorial view. These, we suspect, are the most difficult to persuade of the importance of rolling up the sleeve to fight the pandemic.

There remains a third, among the unvaccinated, who do not subscribe in the least to these conspiracy theories.

The data shows that they perceive the threat linked to COVID-19 more than the conspirators. Moreover, they also comply more with sanitary measures. They do less “their own research” on the web. They trust authorities and experts more.

It is this third of the unvaccinated that vaccination campaigns must target.

There is no point in persisting in making a person listen to reason… who does not want to hear anything. It might even make things worse. “Our goal is to always move a little more in the right direction, without insisting in such a way as to fuel their conspiratorial vision. »

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We must stop putting all the non-vaccinated in the same basket, warns Mélissa Généreux.

“When the Prime Minister started talking about the 10% unvaccinated harming the 90% vaccinated, it came to me. A discourse that divides people will not put us on the path to restoring collective well-being. »

The D^D Generous knows what she is talking about.

She was director of public health for Estrie during the Lac-Mégantic rail tragedy in 2013. In the years following the explosion, she created a “toolbox” to help the hard-hit community return to a normal life.

Mélissa Généreux then took this toolbox to other disaster-affected communities: the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta, devastated by a fire in 2016; the flooded regions of Quebec in 2019. His expertise was sought as far away as Guadeloupe and the United Kingdom.

In short, the D^D Généreux knows a lot about the long-term impacts of a disaster. She knows the shockwave of the pandemic will be felt long after the virus is gone — or, at the very least, tamed.

“The way a community is affected by a disaster is always much the same,” she says. Same anxiety, same depression, same suicidal thoughts. The same tendency, within the affected community, to tear itself apart. And to be wary of the authorities.

“These are classics that arise as a result of crises. We are not surprised by what happens, but we must be aware of it to adopt effective strategies. »

When she was in charge of public health in Estrie, the D^D Généreux had deployed brigades of students responsible for knocking on the doors of citizens – a strategy which was also proposed again on Wednesday by Québec solidaire.

The purpose of these rounds, explains the doctor, was to start a dialogue with vaccine hesitants. Especially not to put a foot in the door to try to sell them the vaccine at all costs – an approach that would have been doomed to failure.

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When she heard the Minister for Health and Social Services, Lionel Carmant, reaching out to the unvaccinated on Monday, Mélissa Généreux thought: “Better late than never. »

This positive approach should have been adopted by the government from day one.

“If we only had to say to people: ‘Here is the knowledge. Apply them and you’ll be fine”, there would be no obesity on the planet. It’s much more complex than that. »

Science proves it: what works is listening. The opening. And, yes, this word so overused these days: benevolence.

The D^D Généreux quotes this sentence, in English, which sums it all up well: People only care about what you know when they know that you care.

People are interested in what you know because they know you are interested in them.