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?
As an atheist, I find myself making way too many mental bargains – please don’t let my mother/mother-in-law/husband/friends get #COVID__19 – with a deity I haven’t believed in since I was 15. Is it just me? #coronavirusuk #lockdown
— Nicola Jane Swinney (@NicolaJSwinney) May 3, 2020
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.
