French leader draws fire with vow to make life "miserable" for COVID vaccine refusers

Paris — French president Emmanuel Macron has promised to make life miserable for people who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Using some very unpresidential language in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper, Macron said he wanted to reduce the "tiny minority" of wilfully unvaccinated French people by "bugging them" into action.

"How do we reduce that minority? We reduce it, sorry to say it, like that, by bugging them even more. I'm not in favor of pissing off the French," he said. "But the unvaccinated, I really want to bug them. So, let's keep doing that, right to the end. That is the strategy."