Monthly Archives: April 2020

Coronavirus diary day 45 – Happy locked-down birthday, Mother!

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It’s Mum’s 96th birthday. She agreed that’s a pretty impressive accomplishment, once I had reminded her that it was her birthday and how old she was. We’ve made it through the epidemic so far, so that’s another accomplishment. Coming out of lockdown and a second wave, if it comes, will bring other challenges.

Mum in the courtyard earlier this month (when it was sunny)

I’ve promised we’ll open a good bottle this evening. “Peter [my brother] will have to come and share it,” she said. Another reminder: “He can’t, because we’re locked down because of the virus.”

The memory is going. I’ve given up rehearsing the anti-Covid precautions with her. Even if she remembers them, she ignores them. “You should wash your hands for 20 seconds!” “I don’t know how long 20 seconds is.” “Don’t take your teeth out unless you’ve washed your hands first.” She looks at me like a naughty schoolkid: “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

So both of us staying well means me being extra-careful not to bring the virus into the house. Unpacking the shopping is especially tedious but I expect you all know that by now.

Mum also has macular degeneration, which has been gradually depriving her of her eyesight for over 15 years. Eating is a chore now because she can hardly see what’s on her plate, meaning that she often puts an almost-empty fork to her mouth. She’s too proud to use a spoon.

She has survived my Dad by a bit more than 10 years now. I moved to Champigny so that she could move in. I couldn’t have afforded a two-bedroom home in Paris itself.

Despite her memory and eyesight problems, I think she’s fairly happy here.

It’s an ill wind that blows no good. The fall in air pollution due to lockdown has saved 11,000 lives, the recently established Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Creca) estimates. Given the epidemic’s death toll, this is a bit of a win-some-lose-some situation but it could lead to more responsible environmental policies after it’s over. Or is that too much to hope?

“Other avoided health impacts include 1.3 million fewer days of work absence, 6,000 fewer new cases of asthma in children, 1,900 avoided emergency room visits due to asthma attacks and 600 fewer preterm births,” Creca tells us, although, as one imagines they have noticed, there’s more win-some-lose-some so far as days off work are concerned.

The study actually puts the number of lives saved as between 7,000 and 21,000.

The reason is a fall of 40% in nitrogen dioxide emissions and of 10% in fine particle emissions. That’s because of drastic cuts in consumption of energy produced by coal and oil burning, as well as a reduction in road traffic.

If I understand the science, fine particle pollution has fallen less than nitrogen dioxide because of agriculture and wood-burning. Another study shows that halving the use of ammonia in farming – which was responsible that bucolic smell that has wafted over Paris at times during lockdown – could reduce early deaths from air pollution in Europe by 20%.

Lockdown has inspired some major cities to adopt more ambitious environmental policies. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has in the past been vilified by the right because of her moves to clear cars from the city centre.

Last year’s transport strikes reportedly changed some right-wing voters’ minds about the virtues of cycling. Maybe lockdown-induced blue skies will convince more people that we can’t go back to breathing filthy air.

The French government has promised 20 million euros to encourage bike riding once lockdown is over. As one of the few people in the world who never learnt to ride a bike, I have mixed feelings about this. It will definitely increase my chances of being mown down by a wannabe Tour de France winner while I’m strolling the city streets.

These photos of empty city streets. Am I the only one to be singularly unimpressed by them?

Didn’t any of you ever go out early in the morning or on public holidays?

I have one vivid memory of riding a bus through the Louvre – the complex not the museum – on my way to work one Christmas morning. Nobody there. But I did see one or two intrepid Japanese tourists elsewhere in the city.

Back to the bad news. France’s GDP fell 5.8% in the first quarter of 2020, the biggest fall since 1949, greater even that the 5.3% decline called by the strikes in the second quarter of 1968. The period includes the first fortnight of lockdown, so this quarter will be equally grim, if not worse.

The eurozone’s GDP has fallen 3.8%.

France’s unemployment rose a record 7.1% in March. Household spending was down 17.9%.

The health state of emergency is set to be extended for another two months.

France’s Covid-19 death toll is now officially 24,087, up 427 in 24 hours. 26,834 Covid-19 patients are in hospital, down 650 in 24 hours, with 4,207 in intensive care, down 180. 48,228 people have been discharged from hospital, 1,342 of them yesterday.

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Coronavirus diary day 44 – France’s colour-coded deconfinement plan seems a little vague

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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.

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Coronavirus diary day 43 – The police, the banlieue and lockdown

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As the nation awaits this afternoon’s announcement on the end of lockdown, the main news stories are back to the old abnormal – police brutality and a possible terror attack.

The most recent story is an attack on police in Colombes, near Paris. Yesterday afternoon a man drove a BMW at speed at police checking traffic, injuring two of them, one seriously, and crushing a police motorbike against a police car.

He has a police record for criminal activity about 10 years ago but was not on the national terror watch list.

The attacker reportedly told arresting officers that he was inspired to attack the police after watching videos of the situation in Gaza and that he wanted to die a martyr.

The case has not yet been classified a terror attack but may be.

On Sunday, at 2.00am to be precise, police were allegedly caught on video appearing to racially abuse a man in a scene that is followed by banging and screams.

The man is reported to have jumped into the Seine while trying to flee the police. After catching him, they appear to mock him, using a racial insult reserved for north Africans, and suggesting that the colleague who caught him should have weighed him down rather than fished him out of the river.

Later, although it is dark, one can hear the van doors slam, thuds, and what seem to be screams and laughter.

The video, reportedly filmed by a local resident, was put online by Taha Bouhafs, the journalist and activist who broke the story of presidential security guard Alexandre Benalla’s assault of demonstrators during a May Day demonstration in 2018.

Since then he has had his troubles with the police, being violently arrested while filming an undocumented workers’ protest in the Val-de-Marne in 2019 and charged with “outrage”, a catch-all accusation often levelled against people found insufficiently cooperative by the forces of law and order.

After he made the name of the arresting officer public, a police trade union published a graphic accusing him of having rabies and stirring up “anti-cop hatred”.

An inquiry into the alleged assault on Bouhafs was launched.

He was arrested again in 2020 after tweeting the news that the president was in the audience of a play he was watching.

The tweet prompted a small group of opponents of the government’s pension reform to descend on the theatre and try to enter, leading to Macron being forced to leave.

Bouhafs was detained on leaving the show, accused of planning acts of violence and vandalism and participation in an unauthorised demonstration.

Lockdown has done nothing to improve relations between the banlieue and the police, who are accused of using the extra powers it has given them as extra excuses to harass people in deprived areas.

Last week there was urban violence in Seine Saint Denis after a motorcyclist’s leg was broken when he hit the open door of a police car. He has admitted speeding but denies knowing it was a police car.

And in Champigny, as I mentioned in an earlier post, a home-made mortar was fired at the police station.

France’s Covid-19 death toll officially stands at 23,293, 437 in the past 24 hours. 28,055 patients are in hospital, down 162 yesterday, and 4,608 are in intensive care, down 74. 45,513 people have been discharged from hospital.

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Coronavirus diary day 42 – Is digital snooping a price worth paying to fight the virus?

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The French parliament is to vote on the government’s post-lockdown plan as a single package. That means there will be no separate vote on the controversial tracking app that critics say will mean more digital surveillance of our lives.  

MPs are to vote on the plan tomorrow after it has been presented by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. It will then be presented to local council representatives, unions and employers the following day.

The hasty vote has come under fire from France Insoumise leader Jean-Muc Mélenchon on the left and Républicains leader Damien Abad on the right.

Even some of members of the ruling party are said to be unhappy that there will be no separate debate on the proposed StopCovid app, as they had been given to understand there would be.

Downloading the app, which will track you to see if you have been in contact with an infected person, will be voluntary and anonymous.

Some scientists argue that traditional practices can’t cope with Covid-19 and that immediate tracing of contacts is needed to combat the hyperinfectious virus.

Similar tools have been used in some Asian countries. South Korea was able to avoid lockdown at the cost of only 243 lives so far in part thanks to a similar app, although that was combined with far more extensive testing than what is on offer in France.

Critics warn that it could lead to yet more digital snooping than we already have, with data possibly exploited by the state for other purposes, such as limiting immigration, or by private companies, as happened in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The French government has already accessed mobile phone data to estimate how many people fled to their holiday homes before lockdown and several European countries, including Italy and Austria, have used digital tracking to help enforce their lockdowns.

That hasn’t stopped some commentators posing the question as a difference between Asian and European attitudes to individual liberties, as they have also suggested that Asians’ readiness to wear masks is “cultural”, rather than a result of their recent experience of epidemics and stifling levels of pollution.

As from today we can buy masks in French pharmacies, if we can overcome our cultural misgivings, which I suspect most of us will.

Another day, another study. This time researchers bring the cheery news that fewer lives are saved in intensive care than French officials have implied.

Health boss Jérôme Salomon previously announced that 10% of Covid-19 patients admitted to intensive care died. Researchers at Reva, a European artificial ventilation network, say that the real figure is now 30-40%.

On the bright side, a study in New South Wales appears to show that kids aren’t as toxic as we feared. Commissioned to prepare for the reopening of schools, it found that no teachers in the state had been infected by their pupils and that half of all cases identified were teachers.

France’s Covid-19 death toll officially stands at 22,856, 252 in the last 24 hours. 28,217 patients are in hospital, down just five yesterday, and 4,682 are in intensive care, down 43. 44,903 people have been discharged from hospital, 309 yesterday.

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Coronavirus diary day 41 – Tension at the top as France prepares to end lockdown

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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.

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Coronavirus diary day 40 – The sordid history of the Covid-19 pseudo-cure Trump publicised

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The bleach-based “miracle cure” mentioned by Donald “Sarcastic” Trump during a Coronavirus briefing on Thursday has been knocking about since 2006, despite numerous warnings about its potentially harmful effects. It was foisted on Ugandans last year, thanks to a US-based pseudo-church.

Screen shot of the Uganda use of MMS

The Miracle Mineral Supplement (MMS) is made from the industrial bleach chlorine dioxide mixed with citric acid. It can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

It can also kill you by inducing low blood pressure due to dehydration. A Mexican woman travelling in a yacht with her American husband off Vanuatu died after taking MMS in 2009, Wikipedia tell us.

Despite warnings by health authorities in the US, the UK, Australia, Belgium and France, a New Jersey pastor called Robert Baldwin, working with British “clairvoyant” Sam Little, imported bulk shipments of the components of MMS, sodium chlorite and citric acid, into Uganda from China, the Guardian reported last year.

Through a network of 1,200 pastors, the most enthusiastic of whom were given smartphones, some 50,000 Ugandans, including children as young as 14 months old, were given the fake medicine, diluted in water.

Baldwin’s Global Healing ministry claimed it was a cure for cancer, HIV/Aids, malaria and pretty much anything else you care to think of.

After the Guardian exposed the scam, he shut down his operations, telling NJ Advance Media “People are calling me Satan.” This seems to have come as a surprise.

Baldwin chose Uganda because it was a poor country with weak regulation, as he told Fiona O’Leary, a campaigner against quack medicine who spoke to him posing as a freelance journalist.

“Those people in poor countries they don’t have the options that we have in the richer countries,” he said. “They are much more open to receiving the blessings that God has given them.”

Two French scientists were recently slammed for suggesting that Coronavirus drug trials should be run in Africa, where multinationals have tested other drugs in the past.

WHO boss Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the idea “racist” and a hangover of “colonial mentality” and there was an outcry on social media.

Less-than-successful trials in the developing world haven’t deterred mumbo-jumbo peddlers from pushing their product in the imperial heartland, now that a lot of worried people opens up the gullible market.

The bleach cure idea appears to have been planted in Trump’s disorderly brain by another US MMS advocate, the self-styled “Bishop” Mark Grenon, the Guardian reports.

Grenon, who runs Genesis II – a Florida-based establishment that claims to be a church and which is the largest MMS producer and distributor in the US – wrote to Trump earlier in the week, claiming the bleach mix could cure Covid-19.

Even before Trump’s statement, he was bragging about this initiative in a video on the Genesis II website.

“Trump has got the MMS and all the info!!! Things are happening folks! Lord help others to see the Truth!” he exalted on his Facebook page, which also carries posts relating to various conspiracy theories, on Friday.

Now that the US’s Food and Drug Administration has repeated its warnings about MMS, posts on the Genesis II website have become more defensive, accusing the FDA of “attacks on our Sacraments” and pleading “THIS INSANITY HAS TO STOP!!” (their capitals, obviously).

The term MMS seems to have been dreamt up by the founder and archbishop of Genesis II, former Scientologist Jim Humble, in a self-published book, The Miracle Mineral Solution of the 21st Century.

Tracked down in Mexico by ABC News in 2016, he told reporters, “MMS cures nothing”.

A website jimhumble.co continues to describe his “discovery” of chlorine dioxide’s supposed properties as “a breakthrough that can save your life”, however.

Grenon continues to carry the flame. And sell the product.

France’s Covid-19 death toll officially stands at 22,245, up 389 in 24 hours. 28,658 people are in hospital, down 561 in a day, 4,870 In intensive care, down 183. 43,493 people have been discharged from hospital.

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Coronavirus diary day 39 – Don’t cheer healthworkers if you don’t want to pay tax

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If the Covid-19 epidemic has proved one thing, it’s that there is such a thing as society. A French opinion poll shows people valuing health and the environment far more than individualistic concerns such as spending power and law and order or that hobby horse of conventional economists, the deficit and public debt.

The epidemic is the principal worry of 76% of respondents, the health service comes second at 42% and global warming 33%.

Spending power comes next at 31%, the deficit and debt 24%, unemployment only scores 18% and the hard right’s favourite dog whistle, law and order, a mere 16%.

Of course, all this can change. There could be an orgy of self-indulgence once the first wave of the virus is over.

But there are signs that some lessons have been well implanted in the public mind. The importance of the health service seems to be solidly established. Combating the virus has shown us how interdependent we are, that if one person is infected, that is a threat to the rest of us, that we can’t afford to say “Fuck you, I’m virus-proof!” and that we must act collectively to prevent its spread.

But it remains to be seen whether people will be ready to pay for public services.

Because, frankly, if you’re applauding healthworkers every evening but voted for politicians because they promised to cut your taxes, donning sack-cloth and ashes would be a more appropriate gesture.

The right’s greatest ideological victory has been to convince large swathes of the middle and working classes that they have a community of interest with the rich in cutting taxes. They have succeeded in making this the electorally decisive question in Europe and the US.

They have done so with the complicity of the social democrats, who “realistically” took fright at being labelled tax-and-spenders and swallowed economic liberalism whole. Even the real left usually dodges the question, because it is, indeed, difficult to convince people that they should sacrifice the immediate pleasure of disposable income to the social investment in public services.

Of course, the pillaging of society by the rich – in tax dodges, soaring dividend payouts, huge CEO salaries etc – has to be reversed. But that won’t be enough. Public services can’t be maintained and expanded without ordinary people contributing to their finances. And it’s important that we all understand that these services are our common property, that we invest in. You can’t have socialism – or even welfare capitalism – without that.

Nor can we save the planet without accepting some radical changes to our daily lives.

The crazed SUV-driving hordes demonstrating against lockdown in the US will fight against this. But it is encouraging that they are a small minority. On the other hand, they have guns.

And it remains to be seen whether today’s epidemo-Keynesians will revert to free-economy form once the crisis has subsided and whether there will be popular mobilisation to prevent them doing so.

As Donald Trump suggests that people might be injected with disinfectant to fend off Covid-19, there have been disappointments in the search for a cure.

Researchers in China found the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir didn’t improve patients’ conditions or reduce the amount of virus in their bloodstream, according to the Financial Times.

And a French drugs watchdog has found 54 cases of serious heart problems due to the use of hydroxochloroquine, the anti-malaria drug championed by Marseille doctor Didier Raoult and touted as a possible cure by Trump. There were four sudden or unexplained deaths and a total of 96 cases of undesirable side-effects, the Centre régional de pharmacovigilance (CRPV) in Nice reports.

France’s Covid-19 death toll now stands at 21,856, 516 in the last 24 hours. 29,219 people are in hospital, 522 fewer than the previous day, and 5,053 are in intensive care, down 165. 42,088 people have been discharged from hospital, 1,413 of them yesterday.

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Coronavirus diary day 38 – Lockdown tensions rise as government prepares to end it

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How do we get out of lockdown? The president has set a date, 11 May, but the plan is a bit short on details at the moment.

There are signs of tension, reports of vandalism and some clashes with police in parts of the banlieue, where some large families live in cramped conditions and many young people have strained relations with the forces of law and order.

A still from video of the attack in Bois l’Abbé

Last night shots from home-made mortars were fired at the police station in Champigny, which is situated on a housing estate in the Bois l’Abbé neighbourhood. There were two incidents, one just before 1.00am, the other at 3.30am, according to reports.

A CRS riot police officer was slightly injured and a police vehicle damaged.

The attackers fled the scene and have not been caught.

Videos have been posted online, including one apparently filmed by the attackers.

Raphaël, the council employee who phones to check on Mum every day, says that isolation is taking its psychological toll on some of the elderly people he talks to. One old lady was desperately sad not to have been able to hold her great grand-daughter, who has been born while lockdown has been in place.

The latest news is that lockdown exit is likely to be applied differently in different parts of the country – so there should be relatively tough restrictions in the Paris region for some time yet.

The president is considering a déconfinement that varies according to how local authorities judge the situation in their area, sources have told Le Monde, which comments that “Emmanuel Macron is not as Jacobin as people think”, according to his supporters.

In hypercentralised France it really is quite daring to leave such initiatives to the regions. But it makes sense, given the disparate effect of the epidemic.

Along the Atlantic coast the rate of hospitalisation it between 0.9 and 1.9 per 1,000, with rural areas less affected than those where the cities of Rennes and Bordeaux are situated.

Val-de-Marne, where I live, seems to have the highest rate in the country, at 14.9 per 1,000, although Paris has a higher per capita death rate – 6.0 per 1,000, compared to 5.8 per 1,000 here.

Although the proportion of their population in hospital is lower, the death toll in Haut Rhin and Territoire de Belfort, in the east, is even grimmer, 8.5 and 10.0 respectively.

Paris has the highest total of deaths – 1,288, compared to 817 in Val-de-Marne, 646 in Haut Rhin and 140 in Territoire de Belfort.

Whichever way you look at it, the Paris region, with its tightly packed population and high infection rate, is going to have to enforce more precautions than the rest of the country.

Those will probably include enforcing wearing masks on public transport. The worldwide controversy over their value continues, however, with the WHO repeating its assertion that they are not useful to people who are not infected while the French Académie de Médécine has called for them to be made obligatory in all public spaces as from now.

In any case, it will be back to business as almost usual on 11 May. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire wants all shops to reopen, but not bars and restaurants. On the other hand, there might be regional disparities, he says.

National health boss Jérôme Salomon says that social distancing and other precautions will be with us “for a long time”.

Some 61,700 lives have been saved by France’s lockdown, according to a study published yesterday. The health service, especially in Ile de France and the Grand Est, would have been swamped, with 100,000 intensive care beds needed, it estimates.

The report in Le Monde prompted one grumpy early-riser to denounce the publication as “propaganda and disinformation”. Not being under lockdown is “not a synonym for an orgy or a Covid party”, the commenter said, pointing out that the death toll was not nearly that high in countries that have not instituted lockdown.

But there are other variables, notably the extent of testing in Asian countries that were better prepared than Europe. And, as Le Monde points out, the recent rise in the death toll in New York, which was slow to enforce lockdown, and in Sweden, where it has not been implemented, show that the measure “has saved numerous lives”.

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 21,344, 544 in the past 24 hours. 29,741 people are in hospital, down 365, 5,218 in intensive care, down 215. 40,657 people have been discharged from hospital.

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Coronavirus diary day 37 – Covid-19 infection rate down in France but herd immunity is far off

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Lockdown has slashed the rate of Covid-19 infection in France. That’s the good news. The bad news is that herd immunity is therefore a distant dream and a second wave of infections is pretty likely.

The number of people infected by someone who has contracted the virus has fallen from 3.3 to 0.5 since lockdown was declared, according to a study by researchers from the very authoritative Institut Pasteur, the national health authority and the medical research institute, Inserm.

The number of people admitted to intensive care fell from 700 a day when lockdown began to no more than 200 by 14 April. That means there should be between 1,370 and 1,900 intensive-care patients on 11 May, when the confinement is to be relaxed, compared to 5,433 today.

But confinement has also meant fewer overall cases, so fewer people immunised.

The researchers estimate that 3.7 million people living in France will have come in contact with the virus by 11 May. That sounds like a lot but it’s only 5.7% of the population. Scientists believe that 70% of the population need to have been infected to attain herd immunity.

Even in the worst-hit parts of the country, Ile de France and the Grand Est, the proportion infected are only 12.3% and 11.8% respectively.

On seeing the headline, I hoped the researchers had based their estimates on the official figures of the infection rate, which are complete nonsense due to the failure to carry out widespread testing.

Unfortunately, they’re really serious scientists, so they were much more methodical than that.

They based their estimates on the number of deaths in France so far, compared to the ratio of deaths to infection aboard the cruise ship Diamond-Princess, which was placed in quarantine off Japan. Given that all the passengers were tested, the figures should be reliable after being adjusted for variables, notable age.

The study finds that you have a 0.53% chance of dying if you catch Covid-19, which confirms findings of 0.5-0.7% in China. As we already know, there are great variations according to age – there’s only a 0.001% chance of dying if you’re under 18 but an 8.3% chance if your over 80 – and some according to gender, men being more likely to die than women.

The researchers also estimate that only 2.6% of people who catch the virus end up in hospital – lower than an estimate of 4.5% based on Chinese figures – and 18.2% of them have to be placed in intensive care.

So a second wave is very likely, either soon after lockdown ends if people are not as careful as they are now, or in the autumn, if the change in the weather and the arrival of other flu strains gives a new lease of life to Covid-19.

“Population immunity appears insufficient to avoid a second wave if all control measures are released at the end of the lockdown,” is the researchers understated comment.

On the other hand, checking the spread of the virus has given scientists time to research possible cures and look for a vaccine.

But, according to Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, a vaccine is unlikely to be developed during the course of this year. So we have many anxious months ahead of us.

France’s Covid-19 death toll is now officially 20,796, with 531 people dying in the past 24 hours. 30,106 people are in hospital, down 478, and 5,433 in intensive care, down 250. 39,181 people have been discharged from hospital, 1,772 over the last 24 hours.

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Coronavirus diary day 36 – Will the virus change politics forever?

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An opinion poll shows growing dissatisfaction with the French government’s handling of the Coronavirus epidemic and divisions have opened up in Macron’s party. Will the crisis shatter preconceived ideas or reinforce them?

San Gennaro frees Naples from the plague, Lucao Giordano

Shortly before the virus hit us, I visited the Luca Giordano exhibition at Paris’s Petit Palais museum.

By eerie coincidence, some of the works on show were inspired by the plague outbreak in Naples in 1656.

One, by Micco Spadaro, is a gruesome portrayal of the devastation it caused. Sufferers are confined to a square, where they drop dead on the ground. Workers – one account says they were “Turks or galley slaves” – remove the bodies.

The Plague in Naples on the Piazza Mercatello, Domenico Gargiulo known as Micco Spadaro

Giordano’s painting is a thank you to the city’s patron saint, San Gennaro. You might think that the saint did not fufil his contractual obligations, given that he failed to prevent the deaths of 250,000 of the city’s 450,000 population and 50-60% of the inhabitants of what was then an independent kingdom.

But that’s not the way the church fathers viewed his performance. They told the faithful he was responsible for ending the epidemic, although Martinus Ludheim, a doctor from Bavaria who was visiting the city, seems to have had something to do with it. Giordano’s picture is entitled San Gennaro frees Naples from the plague.

We’ll never know if the loss of loved ones undermined any of the survivors’ faith in the saint or in an all-loving god. If you had made it through the epidemic, you didn’t want to end up being burnt at the stake for heresy. But ceremonies to thank the saint for deliverance seem to have been well attended and the Catholic religion has been pretty well-ensconced in the city in the intervening centuries.

Will the Coronavirus epidemic shake our certainties?

In a sense, it already has. Governments who worshipped at the altar of budgetary rigour have turned to epidemo-Keynesianism.

A new French opinion poll shows 85% of respondents want more to be spent on the health service, something the Macron government failed to do before the virus hit. It will be difficult to return to austerity in any form, whatever the pressure to pay for the present public largesse.

The Ipsos poll shows 58% dissatisfied with the way the crisis has been handled, up from 46% a month ago, while 45% say they are angry about the situation.

There is overwhelming support for the lockdown, at 77%. So the main bone of contention would not seem to be disciplined solidarity but the lack of masks and tests and the government’s U-turns on those questions.

Of course, opinion polls have to be taken with a pinch of salt, as several election and referendum results have shown, and the public mood will undoubtedly change when the epidemic finally ends.

Meanwhile, divisions have opened up in Macron’s party, La République en Marche. In the light of the crisis, some MPs who deserted the Socialist Party at the last election are calling for “social-Macronism”, which might involve more money for the health service, restraint of dividend payments and redistribution of profits to the low-paid.

France’s Covid-19 death toll officially stands at 20,265, up 547 in 24 hours. 30,584 people are in hospital, down 26, and 5,638 are in intensive care, down 61. 37,409 patients have been discharged, 831 of them yesterday.

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