Daily Archives: May 29, 2020

Coronavirus diary day 74 – France relaxes anti-Covid fight despite the spitters and litterbugs

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It will be back to nearly normal for most of France next Tuesday but Parisians will have to drink their coffees en terrasse and wait a while before they can go to the gym, the theatre or Disneyland. Meanwhile, the government suspects us of having squirreled away too much money during lockdown and wants us to spend it for the sake of the economy.

You wouldn’t think posters asking people not to throw masks, gloves and paper hankies on the ground during an epidemic would be necessary, would you?

“We protect you not the pavement”, poster in Champigny Photo: Tony Cross

But apparently some people can’t even make it to a rubbish bin just one step away.

Street scene, Saint Maur des Fossés Photo: Tony Cross

Then again, some people around here spit in the street. Not best practice.

Despite the health and safety delinquents’ best efforts, we seem to be making progress fighting the virus. The Ile-de-France region around Paris is out of the red and into the orange and the rest of the country is green for go, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told us yesterday as he announced phase 2 of déconfinement.

Here are some of the measures he outlined:

  • Numbers in schools will be limited throughout the country, above all in the Paris region. Parents who have had enough of their kids during lockdown will be able to enjoy a certain liberty in the summer – colonies de vacances (holiday camps) can reopen.
  • Happy couples can trip to the mairie for civil marriages, although probably with a restricted number of guests. The number of people attending a funeral remains limited to 20.
  • Museums and art galleries will reopen throughout the country but visitors will have wear masks. There are some quite pretty patterns out on the street, mind, so perhaps it will add to the aesthetic experience.
  • Beaches and watersports centres will reopen. While theatres, amusement parks, gyms and swimming pools will be in business again in the green zone, they will remain closed until 22 June in the Paris region.
  • Restaurants and bars will reopen in the green zone but we will only be able to drink or dine out front in the Paris region.
  • Discos and casinos are “discouraged” until 21 June, which, given the news of new clusters among clubbers in South Korea, seems like a good idea.
  • Cinemas will remain closed until 22 June, the operators having insisted that they should all reopen at the same time.
  • Travel will be possible all over France,the 100km limit on journeys being abolished even for potentially toxic Parisians.
  • The controversial Stop-Covid tracking device will be open to voluntary subscription from 2 June. Some opposition parties believe it is a foot in the door for the surveillance state. The right-wing Républicains couldn’t agree among themselves and voted for in the lower house and against in the Senate. Macronist orators appealed to parliamentarians’ patriotism, boasting that they weren’t using apps made by Californian big-tech, like the Germans, but had commissioned a French version, like the Brits, the only other Europeans to have their own nukes, as one minister pointed out.

Spend! Spend! Spend! is today’s message from the government.

Consumer spending is down by a third and the authorities don’t approve.

Despite unemployment soaring to 20%, they believe there are 60 billion euros we would have spent, had we not been confined to our homes, stuffed under our collective mattress.

The call will be a disappointment to the celebs and scientists who signed an appeal to dial back on consumerism in the aftermath of the epidemic. Some of the signatories raised eyebrows, given that they do ads for companies like Lancôme (Juliette Binoche, Penelope Cruz), Dior (Marion Cotillard, Isabelle Adjani), Chanel (Vanessa Paradis), Armani (Cate Blanchett), Versace, H&M, Dolce & Gabbana (Madonna) or Kia and American Express (Robert de Niro).

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 28,662, 66 yesterday. 15,208 people are in hospital, down 472 in 24 hours, with 1,429 in intensive care, down 72. 67,191 patients have been discharged from hospital, 607 of them yesterday.

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