Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will tell us on Tuesday how we are to be deconfined. We already have a fair idea, since the proposals of the government’s scientific advisers have been made public and, of course, we all now listen to the experts – as long as we’re not Donald Trump.
Except apparently the government didn’t accept their advice on reopening schools. The committee at first proposed keeping them closed until September but in a second opinion accepted the “political decision of a prudent and gradual reopening”, while suggesting that it should be voluntary and that learning at distance should be maintained where necessary.
It is not clear whether the government is most concerned about children’s education returning to normality or their parents being able to return to their workplaces. Maybe both, eh?
So far as those workplaces are concerned, the scientists want working from home to continue wherever it is feasible – that’s going to become more common anyway, now we’ve discovered how practical it can be, isn’t it? – and office hours to be staggered to reduce crowding on public transport, where we will all probably have to wear masks, social distancing being judged unviable by the Paris transport network.
The word “discrimination” having been uttered, there will be no compulsory extension of lockdown for the over-65s but, given the extra risk for older people, the experts advise them to observe a “strict and voluntary” stay-at-home policy.
Most shops and businesses will reopen on 11 May but not bars and restaurants or museums and other places where large numbers of people may gather, a category that seems to include parks and gardens.
Preparing the end of lockdown seems to have been a fractious business, so far as the government is concerned.
Macron having announced that all would be ready on 11 May, he did not take kindly to some of his ministers prevaricating, according to the Journal du Dimanche.
There has even been tension between Macron and Philippe, which is “unprecedented” according to the paper.
The president himself seems to have dropped the idea of regional variations and the country’s mayors, who are important local powerbrokers, have told him that it is up to the government to draw up the rules, which they promise to implement.
A sad note on a Champigny Facebook page: A woman whose father recently died reports that the family home has been burgled. A bag containing his harmonicas, “the only thing I had to remember him by”, was stolen.
Given that they do not have much monetary value, she hopes that the burglars may have dumped them and that someone might find them and return them to her.
“The thieves, if you see this message and you still have a bit of humanity, please put them back in the letter box so that I can do my grieving,” she concludes.
France’s Covid-19 death toll officially stands at 22,614, 369 in the past 24 hours. 28,222 people are in hospital, a fall of 436 in 24 hours, with 4,725 in intensive care, down 145. 44,594 people have been discharged from hospital, 1,101 of them yesterday.
