Why can’t Macron and his joke of a government réalise that the only way to slow down the pandemic is by a lockdown, as proved last summer and autumn ?
The curfew has been a disaster and obviously an attempt to appease the public and keep the economy open to help fill the government coffers. The latest nonsensical plan,to shut down certain areas for a weekend is the biggest folly as more people have been concentrated or crammed in these town’s shops etc for the remaining five days.
A complete lockdown is the only answer as Boris and co quite rightly have proven until the vaccines take hold. This isn’t rocket science so, will Macron and co. finally admit defeat and do what’s required ?
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Actually France has been pretty successful at not letting the virus accelerate. Nationally, the case rate has been hovering around 30 per 100,000 people since the middle of January. The mortality rate has been dropping since the beginning of February.
The 6pm curfew, as well as keeping bars and restaurants closed, university courses online and lycées working in ‘hybrid’ mode have all contributed to reducing lengthy social interactions in enclosed spaces (the main way the virus transmits) while still keeping the economy functioning at least minimally and, more importantly, keeping kids in schools.
(Source, FT: Coronavirus chart: see how your country compares | Free to read | Financial Times)
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I agree, being stationary for long periods of time in enclosed spaces seems to be the riskiest activity - family dinners and small offices.
Encouraging tele-travail and try to minimise social grouping is not a daft strategy.
Here…
https://hal-pasteur.archives-ouvertes.fr/pasteur-03155847/document
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Yes, tele travail has been one of the positive things to come out of this, it’s just a pity workers in the front line can’t take advantage of it.
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Or not even hybrid mode, just working normally. I have a permanent renewable dérogation on my telephone for getting back from work. There are some things like certain meetings we can do en distanciel but not all. Also the rule about meetings with no more than 6 people is frankly a joke for us, seeing we can be in the very same room used for the meeting all day only with 30-odd young adults and that is OK.
Those few classes in my lycée (some 2des) which do half the week at home the other half at school absolutely hate it, they were telling me about it yesterday - they just want to go back to the usual school week as they find it very demotivating and difficult doing the hybrid timetable since we are rural and a lot of them have rubbish internet.
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It’s actually doubled since Christmas. Could be down to the UK variant taking hold or that the restrictions aren’t working.
I think it’s a bit of both Tim.
According to the FT graph, there were 22.1 new cases per 100,000 people registered on Christmas Day and 33 per 100,000 yesterday. Over nearly three months that’s not a huge rise.
While other countries (Spain, Ireland and of course the UK) had big spikes, France didn’t.
Remains to be seen how long this will last though, and there are signs of the situation starting to degrade
Isn’t that about a 5o% rise? Sounds quite a lot. …
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I have colleagues in lycées and it sounds like a nightmare trying to make hybrid learning work.
Fortunately we’re still 100% présentiel in collège, a move to hybrid is not something I want to think about!
On the plus side I read recently that, compared to all other European countries, French schoolchildren have lost the least in-person school days over the last year (or perhaps second least). That has to be a good thing
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In itself it’s quite a rise but over three months it has been slow and manageable
I think you men acceptable to the government.
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Try saying the situation is ´ manageable ´ to those members of staff in the medical profession on the front line. With respect, you have no idea how some hospitals etc are on their knees.
Is that the case in France? I thought the ICUs were at about 25%
The existing ICU capacity in the country is at 80%.
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Thanks for the correction.
Depends on where you are, in some parts the ICUs are saturated hence patients being shipped to quieter areas. Some areas like the Basque region are almost empty apparently.
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‘Some’ areas, precisely, which is why those places have gone into weekend lockdown (or are about to, as it seems in the case of the Paris region) to try and reduce social contacts and stem the flow.
On a national scale the picture isn’t the same. Hospitals in Brittany, for example, are currently managing well (which is why some are receiving patients from the worst affected regions).
I imagine the next step, if this doesn’t work as much as needed, will be a more general lockdown in those worst affected areas (while hopefully keeping schools open).
I’m not certain a full scale lockdown, with all the damage it brings, would be the right approach right now. But the situation may well change in a few weeks
Sorry I seem to have repeated some of the things you’ve already said Peter! Your second message appeared just after I posted mine
Ile de France should have been locked down weeks back but the government was too scared of the economic damage. Now they’re going to have to lock down longer and the economic damage will be worse. They could have worked that one out by looking at what went wrong in the UK last year. It’s possible that they are dumb enough to have believed that the vaccination ‘campaign’ could save the situation, but they’ve made an astonishing pig’s ear of that too.
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