After two days’ phoney war, the president has opened serious hostilities against the Coronavirus. From midday we are confined to our homes, at pain of a 135-euro fine for unjustified sorties.

“We are at war,” Emmanuel Macron told the nation yesterday evening, in a sharp turnaround from the complacency that allowed voting in local council elections to go ahead on Sunday. There was, of course, a record low turnout and the second round has been postponed sine die.

I imagine there are millions of Coronavirus diaries, in a great many languages, since the epidemic has put most of the world in the same awful situation, even if governments’ reactions have varied (I’m looking at you, Boris Johnson!).

Here’s my two-euros worth, anyway.

I’m 66-years-old and my mother, who lives with me, is 95.

So we’re both high-risk, her more than me, I suppose.

That makes our relationship even more interdependent than it already was. If I catch the virus, which is more likely since she rarely goes out, I will probably pass it on to her. Should she catch it, she’s pretty much certain to pass it on to me, since she forgets the recommended precautions and doesn’t really understand what’s going on.

So we can kill each other if we’re not careful and, frankly, that’s very frightening.

I suppose that’s true of everybody at the moment, although the young are at less risk, and it should be a lesson in our responsibilities to each other. The whole crisis is an incitement both to solidarity – we must behave responsibly so as not to endanger each other – and selfishness – if someone catches it, how much should we put ourselves at risk to help them? – and I suspect we all react to it in both ways at different times.

How seriously are people taking it all in France?

Anticipating the lockdown, I went to the shops yesterday. I wasn’t the only panic-buyer. There were queues in both the chemists and the supermarket – not much social distancing but quite a few face masks and scarves over the mouth and nose.

Of course the chemists had no more gloves or masks and at first I was told there was no hand sanitiser. But then they said that, if I went home and got a bottle, I could have some. Which I duly did, to be informed that it was strictly rationed and be charged 3.80 euros for a very modest amount.

Like the pharmacists, the supermarket till-operators have face masks and plastic gloves. The queues were long, so we stood there and judged each others’ purchases as we waited – I did, anyway.

People are clearly anxious about being confined to their homes – even though they will be allowed out if they have the necessary paperwork to buy food, walk the dog and even do some exercise, which strikes me as a major loophole.

I think many people are taking the virus more seriously now, too.

Our neighbour, who last week was asking whether the authorities weren’t taking it all a bit too seriously, is now shut up in her house with two weeks’ supplies.

The election turnout may have been low last Sunday but, my brother tells me, people in Paris went out to enjoy the spring weather, many of them failing to keep at regulation distances from each other. There haven’t been many people in the streets of the town where I live these last two days, although it’s difficult to judge if there’s been a big change since Monday is always a quiet day.

As for me, last week I drove my mother down to the Jura to visit houses with a view to buying, staying in a hotel, eating in restaurants and, worst of all, shaking estate agents’ hands.

Now we’re locked in the house as if the zombie apocalypse were going on outside, although I will probably exercise my right to go out to buy bread at some point.

Meanwhile, workers in jobs judged indispensable and impossible to do from home are exposing themselves to risk for the common good – and to keep earning a living. Turns out that most of them are low-paid and that many of them are part of that “privileged” caste whose pension rights will be reduced by the reform that sparked a big strike movement last year.

And finally, the health service. It’s in crisis. The government cut 900 million euros from its budget in 2018.