How good a job has Macron done so far?

But France is now the sick man, perhaps I should say, woman (Marianne) of Europe averaging 29000 new cases a day for the past seven days. Life is surely getting more difficult. It hasn’t been easy here in the UK, although as a retired man I’ve not been greatly impacted, but as the restrictions are lifted hopefully we will have life more like it is for you without huge numbers falling ill.

As a complete non-sequitur, when we were house hunting back in 2000 we started with an immobilier in Carmaux. We did look at a house in the town, but ended up in Carlus.

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I’m not far from Carlus in Lescure and go to Carmaux more and more often. I couldn’t stand the place on the first visit but it’s now growing on me, especially the substantial Friday market.

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Carlus is so much nicer than Carmaux, which is a bit of a hole but, as Peter says, it does grow on you.

As for the situation, no not ideal but as I said earlier, it really is a juggling game trying to get the right mix between “la santé et l’économie”. France couldn’t have been so advanced in its vaccination programme as the UK, we can’t get enough vaccines here but that should change sooner or later. BIL has just got over a very nasty 10 days with English variant covid (including a visit aux urgences) but is chuffed to be back at work now.

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I have just had a big shock as according to the website I’ve just looked at there were 65000 new cases today in France. Can that be right?

I have just seen another site which has 45000, a lot better than 65000 but still an awful lot of new cases. There are nearly as many people in ICU with COVID-19 in France as there are in hospital with it in the UK. Surely, something has to give?

Says 45641 today (25/3/21)

65,000 was yesterday - in fact 65373!! :astonished:

The problem is that the “UK variant” is much more transmissible, it needs strict lockdown to curb growth in cases and I think the French authorities might not quite have cottoned to that yet.

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In my bit of the UK the community figures are high ,but there aren’t that many in hospital

Vaccine effect? We know it massively protects against serious illness from Covid which predominantly affects the older age groups - who have a high %age take up, leaving the virus circulating predominantly among younger, less vaccinated groups but not making as many of them ill enough to need hospital.

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On the other hand - as I pointed out in the ‘Bojo’ thread, the day before the UK lockdown started there were 70,000 cases there (7 day average over 55,000) - and crucially daily deaths almost 2,000 (average over 1,000) - so we’re still not really anywhere near the UK lockdown threshold.

By the way - Worldometer has 45,000 today, but ‘only’ 33,000 yesterday, and 24,000 the day before - deaths 200+ per day - declining.

Combination of vaccine effect (mostly) and some lockdown I would imagine

I just hope it stays that way for everyone’s sake

Yep, not good and getting a little out of control but Véran only announced a few changes in certain areas yesterday while they keep an eye on the situation…which should calm down as the confinement in paris and the north take effect on numbers (10 days to 2 weeks after coming into place), on verra !

The ‘scary’ numbers are a catch-up from previous under reporting going back several days.

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So that’s all right then. Thank goodness for that; the situation is very bad, but as long as it isn’t as bad as the UK was it doesn’t matter.

But it was you that introduced the comparison with the UK Ronald! - with numbers in hospital. I just think it is a no-brainer that after the UK has been in strict lockdown for 12 weeks - 3 months! - it is going to have less cases than France, where we are living a pretty normal life. It’s not rocket science, is it?.

But if you want an accurate objective view of Macron’s performance - the topic actually being discussed here - the correct comparison is not the relative situations now, but before the UK lockdown.

It’s also noticeable among comments here that people in the UK tend to be more critical of France than people actually living here - interesting - perhaps they are only getting information from the UK main stream media - always a mistake, with one or two partial exceptions.

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I think then the question needs to be asked of the French population,which to they want,a near normal life but the numbers are going up ,or tighter controls but a reduction in the numbers

Exactly, the figures are only going one way and the selective lockdowns are not going to stop this especially when you saw the mass exodus from the departments further spreading the virus throughout France.
With vaccination not happening fast enough a national lockdown is coming whether Macron wants to dither about it or not.

We want a sensible balance - such as the partial lockdown in the north-east just introduced - and obviously for such measures to have time to work.

Look - I don’t particularly like Macron, but I still see the French government as doing OK on covid - it’s a balance. The UK got that badly wrong, is in the worst 3 countries in the world on every count - both covid deaths, etc and economic disruption - and I feel there is a bit of jealousy that life in France has continued more normally.

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Exactly, it’s very simple, we don’t want to be confined for economic and psychological reasons, confinement causes just as many problems as not being confined, France isn’t England and the French don’t/won’t accept what the Brits do. Also it’s a hell of a lot easier accepting confinement in the UK in winter when it’s pissing with rain and dark outside, you’re quite happy to be inside in the warm. Confining in light, bright sunny conditions when everybody wants to be outside and get on with their lives isn’t the same!
So much comment here is from an British perspective, which is more than undertsandable, and not much from monsieur tout le monde in France, just saying :wink:

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