After announcing at the weekend that anyone entering France will be placed in 14 days’ quarantine, the government has said this will not apply to people from the EU, the Schengen area and the UK, the latter exception being extremely generous in the light of Brexit and Boris’s bungling of the Covid-19 crisis.
Given that Britain’s death toll has now overtaken France’s and that it is clearly at an earlier stage of fighting the virus, I doubt the wisdom of this otherwise-laudable lack of rancour.
With lockdown due to begin winding down in a week’s time (translation gripe: some English-speaking media are translating “progressif” as “progressive”, which must leave a lot of readers scratching their heads – in this context it means gradual, phased or staggered), there are concerns about the wisdom of reopening schools and the feasibility of social distancing on public transport.
Some 316 mayors, including Paris’s Anne Hidalgo, have demanded that reopening schools be postponed in the red zone – départements with high levels of infection – and especially in Ile de France. They say that the safety precautions required, which include classes of no more than 15, disinfecting material and no play, are “untenable and unrealistic”.
The government’s scientific panel at first advised that schools and universities should stay closed until September, before noting the political pressure to open sooner in a second opinion.
That didn’t prevent Health Minister Olivier Véran from telling Le Parisien that the expert had simply said schools should not reopen “as before” and so agreed with the government.
And what about the métro? How will social distancing be enforced in those narrow carriages and on those often-crowded platforms?
The Paris transport network, the RATP, the national rail operator, the SNCF, and other transport companies have warned there could be a danger to public order if they are left alone to enforce social distancing and mask wearing on public transport.
Even before déconfinement, this is the scene in one Paris métro station, as tweeted by a left-wing railworker:
Après on nous parle de #gestesbarrieres dans les transports.. regardez aujourd’hui, à 1semaine du #11mai 😱
— Laura Varlet (@Laura_Varlet17) May 4, 2020
Je vous le dis tt de suite, si c’est comme ça dans les transports ça sera #DroitdeRetrait! On mettra pas en danger salariés et usagers!#nosviespasleursprofits #COVIDー19 pic.twitter.com/GfAhvQxCDC
With lockdown ending, employers, and the government, will pile on the pressure to get back to work, especially for those workers who have difficulty working from home.
There are also signs that people have had enough of four walls and will be encouraged to take too much advantage of their refound freedom. There is already much more traffic where I live and there seemed to be a lot of family visiting this weekend.
At this rate we’ve bought a group ticket to a second wave.
But maybe people have more sense than I give them credit for.
The public takes notice of public health advice if they have confidence in the authorities issuing it, Rony Brauman, the former head of Médécins Sans Frontières tells today’s Le Monde.
“Police measures can’t work indefinitely,” he says, drawing on the experience of previous epidemics in Asia, Africa and Haiti. The long-term solution to an epidemic lies in people learning to adopt new habits.
It would have been pointless forcing over-65s to stay at home, Brauman believes. “They have no wish to catch this disease!”
Pointing out that the French government’s misleading statements about masks and tests have undermined confidence in it, he adds, “I only hope that it will be rebuilt, but that largely depends on the government.”
France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 24,895, up 135. 25,815 people are in hospital with the virus, down 12 in a day, with 3,819 in intensive care, down eight. 50,784 patients have been discharged from hospital, 222 of them yesterday.
