French Hospitals - figures - controls 21st Dec - 31st Dec

It keeps getting repeated on here that in France there is more mask wearing and social distancing and everyone abiding by the rules in comparison with the UK. You even have the health passport which has not been implemented in the UK. Yet case numbers are going the same way as in the UK. Again.
All those who have been criticising the UK and the British people are strangely silent on these new and alarming French numbers.
Thanks for posting this update Stella, I sincerely hope it doesn’t get any worse for France.
Izzy x

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The overloading seems to be caused by unvaccinated folk catching the virus and needing hospital treatment.

Certainly there is a small percentage of vaccinated also needing medical care…

I’m not into comparing one country with another… just France as this is where I live.

I post the figures to encourage folk to follow guidelines and not be daft…

Every medical person who can… is at their place of work, the hospitals wherever… and trying to cover mass-vaccinations as well… these people are stressed and almost at breaking point.

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Omicron is feared to rampage through Christmas and New Year celebrations…

As this guy says… now is not the time to celebrate in large numbers… keep things very small, low-key… and follow health-guidelines…

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Talking to people recently in France who have had a bout of Covd19 after being double vaccinated, the common underlying thread was that people feel they’re invincible once they’ve been jabbed, and stop being as attentive to barrier measures, including when out and about. As for work, from the 3 businesses in the same building as my own office, people don’t seem to be wearing masks in the work settings. My nearest neighbour at work only started wearing a mask again, when the second nearest neighbour recently came down with Covid19 after having been vaccinated.

One only has to take a cursory look at how people wear their masks and the general state of them, around where we are, to be able to tell that in those circumstances, the spread of the virus is at best only going to be slowed down marginally.

Additionally, France was slower to decide on reducing the 6 month period for boosters - as a result, the booster program was much slower to kick off for the masses. All of these factors combine, and all of it was totally foreseeable unfortunately.

Add omicron to the mix, which includes a subtype (subtype B) that does not contain the “S” gene nucleotide sequence deletion of alpha, and you have a situation in which some of the PCR tests might fail, depending on how many probes they use, and whether or not they are specifically targeting the S-gene deletion.

From what I have read here N.B. not yet peer reviewed), perhaps of even greater concern is that the replication period and time to transmissible viral load of omicron is estimated to be 24-48 hours, which would practically defy any form of reliable mass systematic PCR testing and reporting regime. In other words, you could test negative before leaving a country and 24 hours later have developed a sufficient viral load to test positive (and transmit to others). That is why the T&T regime even today may fail to stem the tide of omicron. Even if you organise voluntary quarantining of people on arrival and impose a 48h post-arrival PCR test, there will be a period of 2-3 days from when you first tested to when you second test, in which you may have initially tested negative, and nonetheless developed an omicron infection and have been transmissible to others. The study I link to is one which is based on lab culture in bronchus cells of omicron, so its effect on real-life transmission in an active population might differ significantly. The jury is still out on the real-life severity in any given population.

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Very thoughtful post, thank you. More so than mine! Majority of people wearing masks now in the UK although, as you say, not always correctly. I’m working at home again, although broken up for the school holidays now. There’s been no increase in cases for 5 days now so hoping this is as bad as it gets but it’s worrying that the recent high cases will turn into hospital admissions in the next 10 days or so. I imagine all the Christmas mixing will send numbers shooting up again. We’re kind of expecting a lockdown from 27th December in England.
All very depressing once again.
Izzy x

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Personally, I don’t find it depressing, but I take a very analytical view of the situation, as someone having worked in the biotech industry where we were deliberately transfecting targeted host organisms for perceived industrial benefit (therapeutics).

What alarms me more is the unrealistic approach of politicians in general, and their general lack of “franc parler” - there are those who simply don’t understand the science, and will spout off anything to their target audience for whatever political gain they might see in their statements. I find that lamentable. Unfortunately, one might also argue that “Joe Public”, in the majority, is simply not ready to hear the truth that SARS-Cov2 will in all likelihood not be going away any time soon, nor can there be any guarantee that it will develop systematically into milder forms that won’t impact our daily lives in a significant way. How many deaths are people willing to accept in any given society from a single strain of SARS-Cov2 ? How great an impact on society of SARS-Cov2 are the voting populations going to be willing to accept in the long term - that is probably the conundrum that governments will have to approach in an honest, sensible and mature way in the long run. For the moment, it seems, many governments are like deer in headlights, or headless chickens.

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Early days perhaps, but news from South Africa shows Omicron fading…

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Didn’t Bogoff Johnson say 50,000 deaths a year was perfectly acceptable :scream:

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I’ve not noted/seen that said in France by the French Govt… they seem to be trying to stop people dying…

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It does surprise me that having said confirmed daily infections could reach 100K in a couple of weeks the government are not considering any further restrictions at the moment.

My take on it is that the FR gov are trying to hold out so that the festivities can occur as normally as possible, at least for family gatherings and hoping at the same time that the latest round of increasing booster injections will protect most people from not falling seriously ill. Politically, Macron will have been seen to allow Xmas/New Year to happen relatively unhindered, and then can make a decision to tighten things in January, when we’ll all be up to our necks in omicron cases. The minister for work is already signalling that businesses should be implementing a WFH 3 or 4 days a week from Jan 3rd, 2022.

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Actually… lots of things have already been cancelled… including the expected influx of visitors from UK…

New Year fireworks/festivities etc etc … cancelled in an attempt to keep crowds to a minimum and reduce the chances of contaminations… (I note London is doing the same)

and, before that folk are being urged to only have their small “bubble” around the table at Christmas time… and to test and test again… and to adhere strictly to the health protocols, no matter what the inconvenience…

and Discos are shut from December 10th to January 6th…with the objective of limiting the spread of the epidemic, facing the fifth wave of Covid-19.

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Our daughter who lives in Munich has been told to work from home until March and she has already been working there for at least a month.

I have tried to buy auto tests, but to no avail.
Is there a national shortage, or is it just around Macon and Cluny?

Strangely enough, I was in our local pharmacy yesterday, waiting for my prescription to be filled… and I idly looked at stuff on the shelves…

Boxes of auto tests, readily available… I had the time to read and investigate (with my eyes only)… and found the whole thing quite informative… as I’ve not needed to test (as yet).

I think that the whole point for us is that we are so far from shops etc. that we need to have them readily available at home.

Well, I must admit to wondering if this was something I should be buying …
but our lifestyle at the moment doesn’t warrant it. So they’re on the shelf waiting for those in need…

And on the other hand, a couple we know in Munich that we spoke to via zoom on Monday - the wife is still working full time at the university library, and people are still allowed to come in, subject to 3G status (geimpft/genesen/getestet) verification, but it has been hugely problematic recently because the permanent staff have to check the test results/vaccine status of the many volunteer workers that help the library to function, and all of them have to sit in the lobby whilst waiting to be allowed in ! The husband of this same couple has just been sent back to mostly working from home, except for exceptional circumstances, after having been in the office up to 3 days a week.

I have to say that our friends were rather concerned at the apparent correlation between lack or low levels of education, predominantly right wing conspiratorial thinking (Querdenkers and Impfleugner/gegner), and extremely high incidence of cases in Länder such as Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen.