French situation as at 19/20 August and into November

Is this tourists?

Or just young people on holiday?

We have people of every age group… descending on our quiet village…
AirBnB gîtes are packed week after week…

Covid has previously hit our commune but not our village… … only a matter to time with this influx… the odds are stacked against us now…

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I was dreading the August influx of tourists into the otherwise sleepy Lot Valley, but the R rate in the Aveyron seems set to remain one of the lowest in the country and we’re just suffering from the usual August campervan congestion on what probably seem like minor country roads, but are actually some of our principal communication arteries.

I think the local low level of transmission is probably due to the type of tourism - comparatively few young people, with most older visitors camping in their vehicles and engaging in low level outdoor activities in small family groups. Nevertheless, I’ll be glad when they’re gone (SF visitors obviously excepted!) and traffic gets back to low-level normal.

And to think I once happily lived in Central London…

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I feel a mixed emotion saying this, knowing France has suffered billions of losses in tourism this year, but I then read the news and masks will be compulsory from September at work. Why did France allow the French to travel all over France spreading Covid 19? They discourage travel abroad but it’s ok for people from high risk areas to holiday all over France spreading a disease that was pretty much extinct in that area before? They have reciprocated the quarantine with Britain…and why? Tit for tat? I agree with Brittany Ferries…they’re being discriminated against when they’re going to lose millions while the French travel all over the country spreading the disease…it’s ridiculous

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It might not be so bad if the French visitors wore masks, kept their distance etc etc… but having seen their total stupidity or wanton defiance… we, locals, are retreating into our homes and gardens until they all go home… and the sooner the better…

School is supposed to start on 2nd September… and as many are families with children, we might lose some of them by then…

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If people comply with the advice… spreading should/could be under control… no matter where in France they have come from…

I suspect that it’s groups (large or small) who disregard the advice… that is where the spread is coming from…

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Really, when?

Not sure that it has actually been implemented but certainly it has been suggested. Just tit for tat really but, I suspect, inevitable.

I’m hoping - partly for selfish reasons - that it settles down soon.

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Tit for tat hasn’t happened as France is more concerned with controlling the explosion in cases rather than worrying about a dwindling number of Brits on holiday.

I don’t think France will respond tit for tat with the UK. Like others we will be glad to see the back of all the visitors who seem to think being on holiday protects them from the virus.

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Well, they did before - though it was only a voluntary quarantine.

I suspect visitor numbers from the UK will be vanishingly small now anyway due to the quarantine required on return from France.

Hi Alex and welcome to the forum.

After my rant about plonkers who are holidaying in my village… I actually found a couple who are taking things seriously… yippee.

I thought my friends had arrived at their holiday home and therefore I bellowed a friendly hello from outside their gates…

Not sure who was more surprised… me… or the strangers… when we caught sight of one another through the gap…

I was masked… and was pleased to see the chap don his own mask as he approached a little… towards the firmly closed gate.

They explained that XX and YY were allowing them to isolate there, for a couple of weeks…

Fair enough… I wished them well… and left them to it…

:slight_smile:

Thanks for the welcome Stella

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[quote=“Gilly2, post:6, topic:31414”]
Why did France allow the French to travel all over France spreading Covid 19?
[/quote].

Our area was lightly touched during confinement, but it is by and large the local young people who are now breaking the rules - not visitors. We have a low incidence rate, but and no new hospitalisations for months but there are still local cases.

It is very easy to blame “them”, when is is also likely to be spread by “us”.

4771 new cases today - higher than when the lockdown was announced in March (then running about 1000 cases per day). Nearly 11,000 new cases in the last three days.

Can France avoid further national lockdown?

If not national lockdown can Paris and the other major cities avoid lockdown?

Difficult one - it highlights the impossibility of striking a socially and medically acceptable balance of social, medical and of course, economic pressures. A thankless task, but I think our government is dealing more effectively with these conflicting demands,than is the government of the UK.

One is trying to promote social cohesion, albeit via an admittedly centralist collectivism, but the other is just using simplistic slogans and bland mission statements to paper over its failures to take effective direct action. Supposed governance has been simply shaped by crude, ideological imperatives. The whole UKsystem of goverment is becoming increasingly Orwellian and I’m both glad and relieved (albeit for many more reasons than jurt those above) that I no longer live in that country.