Monthly Archives: May 2020

Coronavirus diary day 52 – Warnings of second wave as France prepares to end lockdown

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The man in charge of guiding us out of lockdown has a relockdown plan up his sleeve, which is not reassuring. Nor are the findings of two studies that a second wave seems quite likely.

Jean Castex, the civil servant and right-wing politician who has been made Monsieur Déconfinement, has a reconfinement plan ready in case things go wrong, the AFP news agency reports.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe is to announce details of the phased withdrawal from lockdown today. Some of the details that have been discussed so far have proved controversial, particularly the proposal to send some kids back to school.

Noting that there has been some lowering of preventive standards in recent days, Castex has warned that things can go wrong if people become too relaxed about anti-virus precautions.

The findings of two studies are not encouraging.

One, under the auspices of the Paris hospitals authority, has some good news. The widespread use masks – you know, those things the government said we didn’t really need a few weeks ago – combined with social distancing should reduce the risk of infection by 75%.

But that’s not enough for those at high risk – over-65s and people with pre-existing conditions like diabetes, hypertension and obesity. Unless they keep out of danger, the hospitals will be overwhelmed by mid-July, it finds, and there will be 87,100 deaths, instead of 33,500, between May and December.

By then herd immunity should have been reached, it adds, which I suppose is some sort of consolation, although we still don’t know if you can be reinfected.

The other study, also by Paris-based experts, predicts that reopening schools will probably lead to “a second wave similar to the one recently experienced” unless “maximum attendance is limited to 50% for both younger children and adolescents”.

A leap in infections can only be avoided if 50% of the population stay at home, ie most people continue to work from home, if the elderly come into contact with 75% fewer people than they would normally do, and if there is only a 50% rise in the number of shops reopening and other public activity, the study finds.

There also needs to be enough testing, tracing and isolation to identify 50% of cases and the human resources to carry this out, the study warns.

Two cops have been jailed and another given a suspended sentence for battering an Afghan refugee in Marseille, then whisking him off and dumping 30 kilometres away.

The senior officer, 46-year-old Michel Provenzano, was sent down for four years, longer than the three years the public prosecutor had called for. New recruit, 26-year-old Mathieu Coelho, was sentenced to 18 months, while a colleague, described in reports as “a young woman”, was given one year suspended.

The team stopped 27-year-old Jamshed S on the Old Port on suspicion of spitting on two people who had refused to give him cigarettes.

Annoyed by being subjected to “invective in Afghan” (!) and being given the finger, the “guardians of the peace”, as the French like to call police officers, got him in a half nelson and threw him against their van.

“That’s when Michel started to get annoyed,” Coelho testified.

They handcuffed him and took him to the woods at Châteauneuf-les-Martigues, where Provenzano slapped and punched him and broke his mobile phone. Then they drove off, leaving him there.

Well, at least the brigadier left his gun and sunglasses in the glove box, “so as not to do anything stupid”.

Another court this week heard the cases of youths arrested during the urban violence in Clichy-la-Garenne that followed the injury of a youth apparently knocked off his motorbike by the door of a police car.

Asked to explain what they were doing on the street after midnight, one defendant said he was going to see his grandfather, “who never answers his phone”, and two said they were going to get cigarettes.

“Clearly in Clichy people have an irresistible urge to smoke at night,” commented the magistrate.

“Do people do anything in the daytime in Clichy?” she wanted to know, after another defendant said he was on his way to the shop. “Do you all wait till 1.00am to go shopping?”

“There aren’t so many people at night,” replied Makram S.

“Given the testimony in this case, that’s open to question,” was her honour’s response.

Another philosophical question: What do you think of this tweet?

Personally, I haven’t been appealing to any gods during the epidemic.

But I do often invent my own superstitions – “If I do this right, then such-and-such desired outcome will take place” – and can’t help reciting “One for sorrow, two for joy” etc to myself every time I see magpies (it’s a British thing).

If you’re religious, you will probably take this as evidence that we non-believers recognise the truth of God’s – or gods’ – existence in spite of ourselves.

I think it proves that man created god.

We bargain with the Lord, touch wood or count magpies when faced with problems we feel helpless to resolve. That’s the same reason our ancestors, living in a world that could deprive them of food, shelter and loved ones on an apparent caprice, invented deities to intervene on their behalf against the vagaries of nature.

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at  25,809, up 278 in the past 24 hours. 23,983 people are in hospital, down 792 yesterday, with 3,147 in intensive care, down 283. 53,972 people have been discharged from hospital, 1,236 of them yesterday.

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Coronavirus diary day 51 – Now there’s a Covid-19 beer lake

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France is swimming in beer. The brewers say they will have to pour 10 million litres down the drain because bars, cafés and restaurants have been closed during lockdown. One reason for the glut is that drinkers’ standards have gone up recently.

First it was wine, then cheese, now there’s too much beer. The brewers’ organisation, Brasseurs de France, has announced that its members have litres of product going bad in the barrel. They are already receiving emergency loans but now they want an EU grant to help destroy unwanted stocks, a measure winemakers are also lobbying for.

Apparently, trendy craft beers are more difficult to keep than the industrialised bière blonde that used to be pretty much all you could find in France. That’s becausethey taste of something other than chemicals. They’re heavy on hops so they lose their flavour within about three months.

The traditional game of parliamentary ping-pong is back, with the government’s bill to handle the end of lockdown sent back to the lower house of parliament by the right-wing controlled Senate.

The upper house wants the health state of emergency to end on 10 July, instead of the 24 July, which the Macronists seem to be able to live with.

The senators have also amended the bill to protect bosses, mayors and local councillors from prosecution due to the implementation of deconfinement.

Always on the lookout for a way to eat away at laws that protect workers’ rights, the bosses’ union, Medef, has written to Labour Minister Muriel Pénicaud demanding immunity from prosecution if their employees fall ill.

There have been many complaints of inadequate protection – failure to enforce social distancing, not enough masks, insufficient hand gel – by people who have had to continue working.

The Medef, and the small business body CPME, argue that the fear of prosecution, even if it is unsuccessful in the end, will be unbearable and will hamper economic recovery.

“How can you prove that an employee caught the virus at work and not when he went to the butcher’s to buy meat?” asks Alain Grizet, from shopkeeper’s group U2P. “Everybody should be made safe: the consumer, the worker, the boss.”

And, with a wave of a magic wand, the class struggle is abolished!

The law does in fact protect employers, as long as they have taken the precautions deemed necessary, employment law expert Pascal Lokiec told Le Monde.

Victims of domestic violence  will not be placed in isolation with their abusive partners in the event of infection in the household, thanks to a Socialist amendment that was passed unanimously.

Good news from the north! All of the Hauts-de-France region, which used to be rather summarily known as Le Nord, has gone from red (high infection) to orange, which is better although not the green all-clear we all aspire to.

The region includes the Oise, north-east of Paris, which was one of the worst-hit areas early in the epidemic, partly due to a high rate of infection on a military base there.

The Désinfox page on the government’s website, which linked to articles exposing fake news about the virus, has been scrapped, after media outlets, including those whose publications were deemed linkable by the authorities, pointed out that the state is not the best arbiter on this question.

One journalist’s union had taken legal action to force closure.

Macron will consult selected luvvies today to prepare a rescue plan for the arts.

He will announce the outcome of his deliberations this afternoon.

Left-wing MP Alexis Corbière has laid into Culture Minister Franck Riester (I’ve always wondered whether he got the part on the strength of his showbizzy name) for refusing to propose come up with a plan until his boss had spoken.

Corbière told RFI that he wants the arts to receive as much as Air France, ie seven billion euros, pointing out that the sector employs 1.5 million people, “not just artists but also technicians, dressers …” and contributes seven times more to GDP than the car industry.

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 25,531, 330 in the last 24 hours. 24,775 people are in hospital, down 773 yesterday, with 3,430 in intensive care, down 266. 52,736 patients have been discharged from hospital, 1,365 of them yesterday.

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Coronavirus diary day 50 – French end-lockdown plan in trouble + How bad is humanity?

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“One mask per household from the council” it says. Photo: Tony Cross

We’ve received our municipal masks. Champigny town council has distributed masks to every household ahead of the end of lockdown. And the Communist mayor says he will defy the government order to reopen schools.

This morning there was a package sporting the town’s logo in our letterbox. Inside there were two anti-virus masks, although the envelope only promised one per household. Our neighbour Marianne hasn’t received hers, which is probably just an oversight because her house is right at the bottom of the close.

Inside is a note from the mayor, Christian Fautré, who definitely wants you to know that his administration is behind the initiative. The second round of local council elections, which are in frozen animation at the moment, will take place once this is all over.

Fautré is a member of the Communist Party, which has controlled the council for decades, although nowadays it is obliged to share power with the Socialists, France Insoumise and the Greens.

What was once the banlieue rouge is now in the zone rouge, marked red for hard-hit on the government’s Covid-19 map. 

Ile-de-France, the region that includes Paris, has been the hardest-hit part of the country. It has seen 95% more deaths than there would usually be at this time of year – 10,200 more between 1 March and 20 April.

Paris, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, has suffered badly, with 74% more deaths than usual. But the neighbouring départements have had it even worse – 130% more in Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest département in mainland France, 122% more in Hauts-de-Seine, and 104% in Val-de-Marne, where we live.

Fautré is one of 33 mayors who have written to the president to say that the requirement to reopen schools on 11 May is unrealistic. On Monday he went further than his colleagues and declared he would refuse to obey the order.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has said that, if the recommended anti-virus precautions are taken, only 11% of the city’s pupils will be able to return to school.

There was more trouble for the government in the Senate yesterday. The right-wing controlled upper house of parliament rejected the plan for ending lockdown. It had sailed through the lower house thanks to an absolute majority of the ruling coalition.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told the senators that it was urgent to reopen schools and get the economy up and running again.

One concern is that local councils might find themselves in court if a child or teacher dies after the schools have gone back. Employers may share that concern, although the bill does have a clause saying that nobody can be held legally responsible for infections unless they have been caused deliberately or by conscious infringement of the rules.

Philippe admitted that the government is receiving conflicting advice from experts on whether there will be a second wave. Controversial Marseille medic Didier Raoult, who initially said the disease would not be that serious then claimed to be successfully treating it with hydroxcyhlorine, now says that the virus will probably die out in the summer, an opinion that is not shared by all his colleagues.

“We cannot offer you the confidence you are asking is for,” the top right-winger in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, told Philippe, pointing to the government’s “contradictions” and “confusion” over masks and tests, a criticism that was echoed by the Socialists.

The clamour of lively philosophical debate issued from Marianne’s house as I was sitting in the sun the other day.

“No, you can’t tell me humans are superior to animals,” she told her boyfriend, Christian, with a great deal of audible conviction.

When they came outside, I told them they were both wrong.

The notions of superiority and inferiority, and of good and bad, are not objective but values dependent on human consciousness.

On the one hand, humans have created art, architecture, philosophy, literature, science. On the other, we’re responsible for war, slavery and class society, pollution and the devastation of nature and we could even destroy the planet, if a meteorite doesn’t get there first.

But the universe is indifferent to all that. Worlds, some with sentient life on them for all we know, vanish all the time. Nobody apart from ourselves is passing moral judgement on us, not even the creatures whose habitats we are destroying.

France’s Covid-19 death toll officially stands, at 25,201, with 306 people dying yesterday. 25,548 people are in hospital, down 267 in the past 24 hours, while 3,696 are in intensive care, down 123. 51,371 people have been discharged from hospital, 587 of them yesterday.

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Coronavirus diary day 49 – Brits don’t have to go into quarantine on arrival in France – is this wise?

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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:

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.

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Coronavirus diary day 48 – Is France really ready to end lockdown?

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A poster welcomes “responsible” mask-wearers to Champigny Photo: Tony Cross

After a cabinet meeting yesterday the papers are claiming that the rules for post-lockdown France are becoming clear. I’m glad they think so, the government’s announcements don’t seem particularly earth-shattering to me.

Here are the main decisions:

  • Anyone arriving in the country will be placed in quarantine, which can’t be longer than 30 days. By the way, the French quaintly call 14 days’ quarantine a “quatorzaine”, since they speak what is essentially a dialect of Latin and quarantaine still shows its origins as a period of 40 days, apparently the time Venetians obliged plague-infested ships to remain isolated if they arrived on their shores;
  • Infected people will be expected to isolate themselves and their households, either at home or in hotels set aside for that purpose, but this will not be legally enforced;
  • Tracing the infected and those they have been in contact with will take place but not via the controversial StopCovid app. It will be done by doctors and other health professionals and there will be regional and national data banks.
  • Various quasi-police officers, such as security officers on public transport, will have the power to stop and check people. We won’t have to fill in forms to leave home, so they won’t have those to look at, but their duties will probably include making people wear masks on public transport, enforcing safety precautions in shops and stopping people stray more than 100km from their homes.

It is still unclear to me what the difference between red (high infection), orange (medium infection) and green (virus-free) zones will be.

The announcements are accompanied with appeals not to drop our guard. But this seems to be happening already.

There is more traffic on the roads than there were a couple of weeks ago, there are more cars parked on Champigny’s Place Lénine, where the Chinese greengrocers has reopened and the bookshop is taking orders to be collected two afternoons a week, and my neighbours are coming out of their homes to sweep in front of their front doors and chat.

Italy has reported a rise in deaths, ahead of its phased ending of strict lockdown. Those people must have caught the virus a week or two ago but there does appear to have been a relaxation of precautions there as deconfinement approached.

The Algerian Kabyle singer Idir has died.  I saw him perform with French singer Maxime Le Forestier in the grounds of the Palais Royal one Fête de la musique. They changed the French song Paris s’éveille into Tizi Ouzou s’éveille, in honour of the main town in Kabylie.

Idir’s song Avava Inouva heralded a renaissance of Kabyle culture, my friend Omar Bouraba comments on Facebook. “It gave us back pride and colours and we needed that.

“I remember as a kid when the song arrived on our old radios, for my family a Grundig,” he goes on. “We often subscribed to buy batteries to listed to Idir. We didn’t have electricity.

“Later, as an immigrant, I learnt how precious his songs were to help bear the absence and how easy it was to make connections, to exchange with other cultures thanks to Idir’s songs.”

Desperate for a haircut after lockdown? Try this hairdresser, which appears to be somewhere in French-speaking Africa.

The advertising slogan is “Come inside ugly, leave pretty.” Admit you’re tempted.

The photo appeared on a rather niche Facebook page devoted to French shopfronts 1950-75. Well, I like that sort of thing.

Paris’s rue de Rivoli will be closed to private cars as part of the city council’s fight against pollution.

Here’s how it looked in 1863, before the invention of the infernal internal combustion engine. I don’t think they plan to bring back the horse-drawn vehicle.

Rue de Rivoli, Photo Hippolyte Jouvin 1863

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 24,760, 166 in the past 24 hours. 25,827 people are in hospital, down 60 in a day, with 3,827 in intensive care, down 51. 50,562 people have been discharged from hospital, 350 of them yesterday.

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Coronavirus diary day 47 – Covid-19 boosts economy … with the truth

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At home, prepare the revolution, Poster by Atélier Youpi

The French government has opened an anti-fake news page on its website. Meanwhile, the health minister has assured us that more tests would not have reduced the number of Covid-19 cases, the official map of infection levels has had to be revised, and leaked documents show there will not be enough masks until June.

“The Coronavirus crisis encourages the spread of #fakenews,” the government’s indefatigable spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye declared in a tweet on Thursday.

So the government’s website now has a page linking to “viable and verifiable sources”. At least the sites are not run by the government. They are the fact-checkers of established media, such as Le Monde and Libération.

But these ingrates have not all been delighted by the official endorsement, which itself could lead the disaffected to see them as firmly ensconced in the establishment.

On top of which, some well-known media outlets, for example right-wing Le Figaro, left-wing Médiapart and the regional press, don’t figure on the good-guys list.

With immaculate timing, Health Minister Olivier Véran on the same day told LCI television, “A test doesn’t cure, it doesn’t change the treatment or the diagnosis … If we had tested absolutely everybody we would have more or less the same number of people ill.”

In South Korea, which is next door to China and has almost as big a population as France, there have been 10,780 confirmed Covid-19 cases, compared to France’s 130,185, (both figures are undoubtedly underestimates even if Véran implied in the same interview that the French statistics were accurate). South Korea’s death toll is 250, compared to France’s 24,594.

South Korea’s success in fighting the virus is universally attributed to a strict policy of testing, tracing and treating.

After publishing a map with three départements with practically no Covid-19 cases marked as heavily infected, the national health authority has been forced to issue a new one, having admitted that the original statistics were based on irrelevant information.

And Le Monde reveals that interior ministry internal documents point out that the masks that we are all supposed to wear in public once lockdown is lifted are unevenly distributed across the country, leading to the risk “that some French people will have too many and others won’t be able to find any”.

Not to worry though, the number of masks has “considerably risen in the last few weeks” and the situation should be sorted out by June, when we initially hoped all this would be over.

Let’s take a look back at our lockdown May Day.

Here’s a piper playing the Internationale on a Paris street.

The words to the Internationale were written by Eugène Pottier, who was elected to the Paris Commune and wrote them while in hiding from the repression that crushed it.

He fled to the USA and returned to France when an amnesty was declared in 1880.

The music was composed by Pierre de Geyter, a Belgian who lived in the northern French town of Lille, until he was obliged to leave because the bosses blacklisted him as a dangerous revolutionary.

And here and at the top of this post are some graphics for couch-stranded rebels, produced by the Atélier Youpi, which in normal times operates out of Saint Denis, the working-class town on the northern outskirts of Paris.

Stay/Resist at home Altélier Youpi

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 24,594, up 218 in the last 24 hours. 25,887 people are in hospital, down 396, with 3,878 in intensive care, down 141. 50,212 people have been discharged from hospital, 736 of them yesterday.

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Coronavirus diary day 46 – A May Day minus manifs and muguet

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Facebook sent me one of those reminders of what I was doing this time last year this morning – photos of teargas, black blockers, Yellow Vests and trade unionists on last year’s May Day demonstration. (You can see the pictures and read my account of the day here.)

There’ll be none of that this year. Although this loyal union activist set off for the manif. “It’s habit!” she declares.

Given that they can’t march, the unions, who as usual can’t agree on joint demands and action, are trying to “occupy the visible space”, ie post things online.

The most left-wing ones, the CGT, Solidaires and the teachers’ union FSU, have for the first time joined forces with ecology campaigners, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, to call for more resources for public services, repatriation of capital that has fled abroad and better conditions for those workers who have proved themselves vital during the crisis.

Supporters of the party that used to be called the Front National can watch video of their leaders placing a wreath on the Paris statue of Joan of Arc and slog their way through an hour-long speech by Marine Le Pen.

Muguet, Photo Kajebi II (Wikimedia Commons)

Also absent from the streets will be sellers of muguet (lily of the valley). The French give each other bunches of the flowers in the spring. The charming tradition apparently goes back to the Middle Ages and there are different legends as to which king, queen or other aristocrat started it.

The association with May Day itself has its downside. Before World War II left-wingers apparently used to wear dog roses on International Workers’ Day. The collaborationist Pétain government felt obliged to rebrand the communistic festival, renaming it Labour Day and encouraging people to wear the “national” muguet. The poor old dog rose never made a comeback.

Gaul is divided into three parts, almost. The government’s Covid-19 map has three categories, red (bad), orange (could do better) and green (soon-to-be-liberated). It will be revised before 11 May but it gives a good idea of which areas will be kept in some sort of lockdown.

The classification is based on three criteria: The estimated level of infection in a département, how overstretched hospitals are, and the capacity to carry out tests (there are actually two different maps, one for each of the first two criteria).

The north-east of the country, including the Paris region, is red, as are three other départements, one of them overseas. The south-east and much of the centre is orange. And most of the west and the Channel coast is green.

But no sooner had the map been published than some regional leaders claimed their fiefdoms should not be classed red at all. There have been hardly any cases in the north of Corsica, the south-western département of the Lot and the Cher in the centre.

In the Lot there are only 15 people in hospital at the moment, down from 27 a week ago, and only one in intensive care, down from nine.

Health officials say the confusion is due to errors in the way the statistics on admissions to emergency departments have been compiled.

They have a week to get their shit together, since the map drawn up on 7 May will decide which areas can go for full on déconfinement and which will remain under a form of lockdown, although what that means in details still seems unclear to me.

Are we dropping our guard? There seemed to be more traffic on the streets when I last made a trip to the shops, to days ago. My former colleague Jessica Phelan has also noticed this in Italy.

A new poll shows a slight drop in observation of anti-virus precautions in France, although the use of masks has risen.

We don’t want a second wave, people!

France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 24,376, 289 in the past 24 hours. 26,283 people are in hospital, down 551 in the last day, with 4,019 in intensive care, down 188. 49,476 people have been discharged from hospital, 1,248 yesterday.

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