What about the shopworkers? Our neighbour, Marianne, chatted with a checkout operator at the supermarket yesterday. Despite her mask and gloves, the woman was in a state of some anxiety. She said she hoped customers would use the newly installed automatic tills to reduce risk of infection.

“I don’t use them because it’s a threat to their jobs,” Marianne commented.

Today we’ve discovered we can’t survive without these workers. Is their thanks going to be the sack because people have become used to using automatic checkouts?

And, despite all our expressions of gratitude today, are we going to just shrug and say “Oh well, you can’t fight progress”?

And the millionaires, who promised donations after the Notre Dame fire, where are they?

Have they come forward to help finance the manufacture of Covid-19 tests, masks and research into a cure? Are they turning over production to make up the shortage that means even frontline workers are not being tested?

Are governments going to force them to do so, or at least ask them nicely?

Incidentally, it seems that some never delivered on the Notre Dame fire promise.

And when it comes to footing the bill for the emergency economic packages, reconstructing our health services and repairing the damage done not only by Covid-19 but also by austerity, will the wealthy – people who have more money than they know what to do with – pay up?

We in France have some experience of a certain disruption to normal life thanks to last year’s strikes. People have already had a bit of practice in working from home. And we in the banlieue – I don’t like to translate that as “suburbs”, which may be technically correct but sounds so Desperate Housewives and you don’t get many riots there, do you?  – were partly cut off from the capital by the effect on public transport. It’s difficult enough to get Parisians to come out to the wilds at the best of times. I didn’t see some of my friends for months.

Among last year’s protesters were health-workers, already sounding the alarm that the emergency services were overloaded due to funding cuts.

France Musiques, the radio station I listen to at home, is broadcasting replays, which is very enjoyable but leads to some confusion on days, times etc. Some of the programmes have competitions to win CDs that have already been distributed or tickets to concerts that have, of course, already taken place.

I wonder how many people take part in them.

The flamboyant Professor Didier Raoult, who has been administering hydroxychloroquine (I think I’ve got the science right this time) against Covid-19 in Marseille, has quit the government’s emergency medical council in protest at what he believes is an inadequate amount of testing.

Some papers have implied that he was not very assiduous in attendance before he resigned.

It’s my understanding that the problem is upstream – there aren’t enough kits and they are not being produced fast enough, which is, indeed, a scandal.

At present 5,000 tests a day are being carried out, according to Health Minister Olivier Véran, who claims that this is more than any other European country, although that is probably not something to be hugely proud of.

Health officials say the figure will reach 29,000 a day by the end of next week but that lockdown must be allowed to flatten the famous curve before systematic mass testing can get under way.

At least pollution is down. The Paris region monitoring body has found a 20-30% drop in air pollution, compared to a normal March.

Near major roads the level is 70-90% lower than usual.

Obviously, this is due to the reduction in road traffic and air traffic.

But the amount of fine particles, which are most dangerous for our health, has not fallen because of household heating and agriculture.

The death toll in France has risen to 1,100, although that is only those recorded in hospitals. There were 240 recorded deaths yesterday. There are 22,300 recorded cases of the virus, up 2,444, 10,176 people in hospital and 2,516 in intensive care.