Bloomberg Opinion -- When King Louis XVI, his two brothers and his sister-in-law were inoculated against smallpox in 18th-century France, the public worried about the risks. Though the experiment was a success, even sparking a new type of hairstyle, the doubts never went away. As vaccines took off during the 19th century, the age of Pasteur, so did resistance, apathy and distrust.
Getting it right in France, where vaccine hesitancy is high and faith in institutions bruised, will be a critical test case for Europe. As a result, the first shots are now slated to be given on the continent before the year is out.
French orders of the Pfizer vaccine run to about 45 million, which means around 22 million people can receive the two-shot course. Every dose will count, something made harder by the complex supply chain of this vaccine, requiring storage at minus 70 degrees Celsius, meaning a higher risk of doses accidently going to waste. What will really count here — as with other aspects of the Covid fight — is having an efficient and effective public sector.
The first wave in the spring exposed a lack of medical equipment such as face-masks; the second in the fall an inability to build an effective test-and-trace system. Years of centralization and budget cuts have eroded public services. That will mean enlisting support from tired medical personnel: Doctors will be the trusted first port of call, but also nurses and care workers, and later pharmacies, of which there are more than 21, in France.
The U. But pro-vaccination campaigns need to be launched fast. Goldman Sachs estimates the U. Vaccines are critical for a return to some semblance of normality, and an economic recovery to go with it.
France, and Europe, have big hurdles to clear. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. He worked previously at Reuters and Forbes. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.
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What will the third round potentially look like? We give our best guess and prediction. It was the midfield that dominated, for a change. Close this content. Read full article. More content below. Louis XVI. Marie Antoinette. Nadja Sayej. In this article:. Last Queen of France prior to the French Revolution. Garden at Versailles Palace, Paris The gardens at Versailles are one of the most iconic settings in the world. The building used for the new hotel was built in and hosted guests—from diplomats to ambassadors and artists—during the Age of Enlightenment.
Story continues. The ornate restaurant inside the new hotel. Meanwhile, a wealthy Italian family possessed the gourd that allegedly contained the blood of the unpopular King Louis XVI. The handkerchief presumably had disintegrated.
Louis XVI was born in and died in , when the rising tide of revolution swept him and Marie Antoinette from power and eventually to the guillotine. At his execution, legend had it that witnesses dipped their handkerchiefs in the monarch's blood, Lalueza-Fox told LiveScience. Text on the gourd recounts the gruesome story: "On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation.
Last year Lalueza-Fox analyzed the genetic material in the blood and found it came from a blue-eyed European male. But without any comparison DNA, he couldn't definitively say it was the blood of the last French king. This year, however, the forensic scientist who originally studied the embalmed head sent DNA from inside it to the research team.
The new DNA was not as badly damaged, and Lalueza-Fox and his colleagues were able to get parts of the Y, or male sex, chromosome, which is often used to identify male lineages. By comparing the Y chromosome in both samples, the team concluded that the two men were times more likely to be genetically related than unrelated.
Both samples had genetic variants characteristic of the Bourbon region of France, and those variants are very rare in Europe today. Given the history behind the samples, the new findings confirm that both the dried blood belongs to King Louis XVI. It also verifies that the embalmed head once belonged to King Henry IV. Now that it has confirmed the blood came from Louis XVI, the team is planning to reconstruct the entire genome of the deposed French monarch.
Follow LiveScience on Twitter livescience. History's Most Overlooked Mysteries. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The duchess stepped in for the Queen who missed Sunday's ceremony. Another hectic week of College Football has led to some more chaos in the rankings as the season begins to wind down. Trump was admitted to the hospital on October 2, , while Christie checked himself into Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey the day after.
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