So how lockdown ends will vary across the country after all. First Macron said it would be “decentralised”, then media reports said it would be the same everywhere, as befits France’s Jacobin tradition. But when Prime Minister Edouard Philippe took the stand to unveil the déconfinement plan yesterday, he said it would be prudent, staggered and differ according to how badly hit your area has been.
There are to be red (badly hit) and green (little affected) départements. Which is which will be decided on 7 May, four days before lockdown is lifted.
There can be no doubt that the Paris region, Ile de France, will be red, since it has been worst hit by the virus, followed by the Grande Est, which includes Alsace and Lorraine. Since Ile de France produces 30% of national wealth, that’s bad news for hopes of economic recovery.
Raphaël, the local council employee who phones to check on Mum’s health, said that he and his colleagues spent yesterday drawing up plans for lockdown end, only to find that their efforts may have been wasted because of the regional variation.
On what this actually means, Philippe was a little short on specifics. Secondary schools will be slower to reopen in red areas, it seems, and parks and gardens will remain closed. Face masks will probably be obligatory on public transport and using the network during rush hour will probably limited to passengers going to work, who will probably have to be able to prove that is what they are doing to inspectors.
At a national level, working from home will be encouraged, older people leaving home will be discouraged and the authorisation slip allowing you to leave home will no longer be needed, unless you are over 100km away from your address, which is only allowed for urgent family or business reasons to stop the virus spreading.
There is supposed to be careful tracking of cases and those they have been in contact with, with a promise of 700,000 tests a week after 11 May – at last!
But the government chickened out of proposing its tracking app, which has proved controversial even among Macronists. That will be debated on a separate occasion.
Liberals in the US are hailing a journalist’s observation that the epidemic has now killed more Americans than died in the Vietnam War as a masterful put-down of Donald Trump.
The war was indeed traumatic for their country and the number of young men killed tragic, especially since many were either conscripted or forced into the military by economic circumstances. There were 58,220 of them, according to the US National Archives.
But aren’t we forgetting something here? Estimates of Vietnamese deaths range from one million to over three million, not counting those killed in Cambodia and Laos. They seem to have been largely wiped from the US national memory.
This time round, Vietnam is generally held to have handled the virus well, with only 270 confirmed cases and no deaths, despite its proximity to China.
France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 23,660, 367 yesterday. 27,484 people are in hospital, a fall of 571 in 24 hours, with 4,387 in intensive care, down 221. 46,886 patients have been discharged from hospital, 1,373 of them yesterday.
