Macron tells critics: vaccine passport will protect all our freedoms

When the Great Plague struck Marseille in 1720, killing more than half of the city’s population, travellers were ordered to carry a “bill of health” and ships arriving at the Mediterranean port underwent a 40-day cordon sanitaire or quarantine. As a gateway for trade, the city authorities struggled to find a delicate balance between halting the spread of the disease and damaging vital commerce.

Three hundred years on, President Emmanuel Macron is walking an equally tricky tightrope just eight months before he seeks re-election in April 2022. And unlike the ancient Marseillais, Macron has to answer to social media.

On Monday, France’s contested pass sanitaire will be extended with the aim of coercing the final tranche of hardline vaccine sceptics to get inoculated, prompting protests across the country for the fourth consecutive weekend. Last week, more than 200,000 people turned out to demonstrate, according to figures from the interior ministry.

The protests have united the far left and far right and many in between. While there has been little opposition to the imposition of face masks, opponents fervently believe the pass sanitaire violates the most fundamental of French principles: the liberté and egalité of the national motto. They were joined in Paris yesterday by Gilets Jaunes and a motley crew of anarchists, conspiracy theorists and those who would compare the French president to Adolf Hitler and his centrist government to Nazis.