A chasm between governmental initiative and the population’s adhesion

Another issue raised in the paper is the difference between the chaotic urgency that encompassed the government’s final decision and the almost inexistent adherence of the Belgian population. “Eight million doses were enough to cover a large proportion of the population, whether or not one or two doses were needed for the vaccine to be efficient", the researcher points out. “But, in the end, only 6% of the population decided to have the vaccination.” The phenomenon was similar in other Western countries, except for the United States, Canada and Sweden.

Without entering into an in-depth sociological analysis, the researchers have opened up a new avenue for reflection on this crisis, which clearly has multiple facets. For instance, the hurriedly marketed the vaccine, which lacked the benefit of traditional approvals, could well have been off-putting. The vaccination campaign was launched for real in the month of November, three months after the contract was signed. The wind had already gone out of the sails, and autorithies in charge were already acknowledging that this flu was less disastrous than seasonal flu.

New rules for public action

Another theoretical concept mentioned in the paper is that of the "risk society". Since 1986 and the Chernobyl disaster, and with the acceleration and systemisation of the global means of transport, the division of the world into nation-states has suffered a form of obsolescence in the management of global crises, which have completely exceeded them.

“The theory of the risk society”, François Thoreau explains, “stipulates that we go from a welfare state, that will generate and distribute wealth, to a state that, owing to technical and scientific developments, will generate a whole series of risks. Therefore, the major stake is no longer so much the distribution of wealth as the sharing out of risks between the populations. In the case of managing the A(H1N1) flu, the state reassured itself in its role as guarantor of the population’s health by telling itself that basically, in this case, the risk could be controlled. Vaccinating a population is a classic tool of governance. It provides control over the process. And yet, from a general point of view, this issue of control increasingly eludes decision-makers in the face of the proliferation of risks ‘that don’t stop at borders’. In terms of political philosophy, we were led to believe that the Belgian state, in the case of H1N1, had an influence. It is able to confront a risk, define it, padlock it, circumvent it, contain it and act upon it. Which is quite typical of our society where politics are supposed to be voluntarists, while being increasingly stripped of means in relation to the risks that exceed it.”

To conclude, the paper analyses the perfect case of a current societal problem. It illustrates very descriptively – through the scrupulous analysis of the contract signed between the Belgian government and GSK – several facts collected from a large corpus. It clearly reveals part of the decision-making mechanisms within the highest political spheres in the face of a major crisis, mechanisms too rarely brought to light with neutrality, nuance, reserve and intelligence. The carefully documented paper with its pedagogical focus, opens multiple paths of reflection, without claiming to answer or condemn the practices that appeared following the outbreak of the A(H1N1) crisis. It is very clear that the paper aims to clarify a complex subject, to serve as a basis for future studies in other disciplines, in order to broaden the eminently legal and political point of view of research. “It was certainly frustrating to limit ourselves to a single subject and to make do with initiating other paths without going into them more deeply. But that was the agreed purpose of the paper, and that of the Courriers Hebdomadaires du CRISP in general. This paper is a tree trunk with several budding branches.”