Covid19. An antivax advertisement installed in the heart of Toulouse: why the town hall cannot remove it
By Thibaut Calatayud
Published on
You have surely seen it if you drive along the Canal du Midi in Toulouse. For several weeks, a advertising poster with “antivax” hints sits right in the middle of a private lot, boulevard de l’Embouchure.
A message signed by the “Independent Scientific Council”
“Covid vaccination: 1 serious side effect in 100, what if it was your child? “, can we read on this large panel visible from the road axis which runs along the canal. At the bottom of the poster, advertising invites Toulouse residents to follow debates broadcast on sites known to spread disinformation during this pandemic period.
This message is signed by the “Independent Scientific Council”. Behind this name with more than serious appearances, we find a collective of health and alternative medicine professionals, refractory to compulsory vaccination and/or covidosceptics.
Among them, we find many figures adored by the “antivax” such as the Professor Christian Perronne or the anesthesiologist-resuscitator Louis Fouche.
What is this assertion based on?
The claim on this panel is said to come from a readable report on a “European Database of Reports of Adverse Reactions Suspectedly Linked to the Use of Medicines”, from European Medicines Agency.
Nevertheless, this same source specifies that “the information appearing on this website concerns suspected side effects, i.e. medical events that have been observed after the administration of the COVID-19 vaccines, but which are not necessarily related or conditioned by the vaccine. These events may have been caused by another disease or be associated with another medication taken by the patient at the same time. We are therefore quite far from the subject peddled by the poster.
The town hall cannot remove the poster
If it has not provoked, for the time being, complaints from local residents, this advertising poster is not really to the taste of the Toulouse City Hallvery involved in vaccination campaign against Covid-19.
“If it is visible from the public highway, the display must comply with the rules set by the Environmental Code. The main purpose of this text is to ensure everything concerning the protection of the living environment. It is more about the location and format of the ads than the message, “explains Capitole to Toulouse news.
Here, what poses a problem is not the medium, but the content that undermines a public health policy. But without a law adapted to this situation, the town hall is limited, not to say stuck. The municipality could intervene if and only if this posting caused a disturbance of public order. Which is not the case at the moment.
The display believes to be in the nails
The billboard in question belongs to LPS Luchetta Display. “We verify the things we post”, assures this company based in Pumped (Meurthe and Moselle). She considers herself to be in the nails of the legislation:
“We are not allowed to display pornographic themes or pure politics.”
But with a message that goes against the action taken by the government on the health plan, is this poster not political? Called upon to justify itself, LPS Luchetta Display has not, for the moment, responded to our latest requests.
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