Facebook sent me one of those reminders of what I was doing this time last year this morning – photos of teargas, black blockers, Yellow Vests and trade unionists on last year’s May Day demonstration. (You can see the pictures and read my account of the day here.)

There’ll be none of that this year. Although this loyal union activist set off for the manif. “It’s habit!” she declares.

C’est bien 11 h la manif Ste Ursule hein ?#1ermai2020 #1erMai #PlusJamaisCa pic.twitter.com/XpV873E3Qv

— SANDRA PEREIRA OSTANEL (@SPereira64600) May 1, 2020

Given that they can’t march, the unions, who as usual can’t agree on joint demands and action, are trying to “occupy the visible space”, ie post things online.

The most left-wing ones, the CGT, Solidaires and the teachers’ union FSU, have for the first time joined forces with ecology campaigners, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, to call for more resources for public services, repatriation of capital that has fled abroad and better conditions for those workers who have proved themselves vital during the crisis.

Supporters of the party that used to be called the Front National can watch video of their leaders placing a wreath on the Paris statue of Joan of Arc and slog their way through an hour-long speech by Marine Le Pen.

Also absent from the streets will be sellers of muguet (lily of the valley). The French give each other bunches of the flowers in the spring. The charming tradition apparently goes back to the Middle Ages and there are different legends as to which king, queen or other aristocrat started it.

The association with May Day itself has its downside. Before World War II left-wingers apparently used to wear dog roses on International Workers’ Day. The collaborationist Pétain government felt obliged to rebrand the communistic festival, renaming it Labour Day and encouraging people to wear the “national” muguet. The poor old dog rose never made a comeback.

Gaul is divided into three parts, almost. The government’s Covid-19 map has three categories, red (bad), orange (could do better) and green (soon-to-be-liberated). It will be revised before 11 May but it gives a good idea of which areas will be kept in some sort of lockdown.

The classification is based on three criteria: The estimated level of infection in a département, how overstretched hospitals are, and the capacity to carry out tests (there are actually two different maps, one for each of the first two criteria).

The north-east of the country, including the Paris region, is red, as are three other départements, one of them overseas. The south-east and much of the centre is orange. And most of the west and the Channel coast is green.

But no sooner had the map been published than some regional leaders claimed their fiefdoms should not be classed red at all. There have been hardly any cases in the north of Corsica, the south-western département of the Lot and the Cher in the centre.

In the Lot there are only 15 people in hospital at the moment, down from 27 a week ago, and only one in intensive care, down from nine.

Health officials say the confusion is due to errors in the way the statistics on admissions to emergency departments have been compiled.

They have a week to get their shit together, since the map drawn up on 7 May will decide which areas can go for full on déconfinement and which will remain under a form of lockdown, although what that means in details still seems unclear to me.

Are we dropping our guard? There seemed to be more traffic on the streets when I last made a trip to the shops, to days ago. My former colleague Jessica Phelan has also noticed this in Italy.

With four days to go til Italy officially enters ‘Phase 2’ of lockdown, it feels like there are more people on the streets and cars on the roads than there have been for weeks. Psychologically at least we’ve left Phase 1 and are now somewhere around… Phase 1.8437152

— Jessica Phelan (@JessicaLPhelan) April 30, 2020

A new poll shows a slight drop in observation of anti-virus precautions in France, although the use of masks has risen.

We don’t want a second wave, people!

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 24,376, 289 in the past 24 hours. 26,283 people are in hospital, down 551 in the last day, with 4,019 in intensive care, down 188. 49,476 people have been discharged from hospital, 1,248 yesterday.