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Photo credits: AFP / Eric Feferberg
This Friday, Emmanuel Macron announced in the regional press the stages of deconfinement. This, intended to allow a return to a “more normal” life, consists of four stages: on May 3, lifting of restrictions on travel over 10 km and interregional travel; May 19, opening of terraces, shops, theaters and cinemas as well as curfew at 9 p.m. on June 9, reopening of indoor cafes and restaurants, curfew pushed back to 11 p.m. and establishment of a health pass; finally, the curfew was lifted on June 30. On May 1, Emmanuel Macron thus announced: “ from May 19, successive stages will lead us together to define a new model of growth and prosperity », Playing on the weariness of the population which is only waiting for the reopening of places of socialization.
If the announcement of this deconfinement plan may have been right to rejoice more than one, it remains however very out of step with the health situation and condemns us to future new restrictions. Indeed, although a slight drop in the incidence and occupancy rates of resuscitation services has been noted, the indicators are still very worrying, and the epidemic is far from being resolved. On Thursday, April 29 alone, 5,585 people were in intensive care, and 321 dead and 9,888 new contaminations were recorded in the past 24 hours. Yet the government continues to downplay the epidemic, and, as explained an article from World, the « hopes to turn the effects of the coronavirus into those of some kind of flu “. Roland Lescure, LREM deputy, said: ” yes, we will have to live with a virus but whose virulence, contagiousness and dangerousness will be limited as and when vulnerable people have been vaccinated. “Under the pretext that almost all the elderly have been vaccinated, the government is thus putting the epidemic under the rug and opting for the strategy of” living with the virus, including in the face of a high level of incidence, higher than that of our neighbors ”, as Macron said during his interview with the regional press. A rhetoric which is not new as evidenced by the government’s attempt not to reconfine, but which, due to the current (catastrophic) health situation, is now openly assumed: it is a question of “living with the virus “without any health strategy, especially putting the economy before our lives.
At the same time, if Gabriel Attal asserts that “ we will keep our objectives As for the vaccination campaign, only 15.2 million people received at least one injunction, and only 6.2 million people received both injections. We are therefore a long way from “collective” immunity for the entire population. Especially since variants are a game-changer and scientists are still not sure that vaccines are effective against all variants. Researchers have thus shown that certain variants currently in circulation, such as the South African variant or the Brazilian one, could have the capacity to escape the immunity acquired with the vaccine, thanks to the fact that when the virus multiplies, it can acquire new properties, such as vaccine resistance. For example, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are effective against the original virus and against the British variant, but appear to be less effective against the South African and Brazilian variants.
The executive’s bet “on our lives”
It is therefore right that the deconfinement announced by the president has aroused negative reactions from the scientific community. Unlike the beginning of the year, when the executive had set a threshold of 5,000 cases per day not to be exceeded in order to be able to deconfin, the strategy chosen today is not conditioned on any figure. The government is only setting an incidence rate limit above 400 cases per 100,000 inhabitants to activate “emergency brakes”, a figure well above the alert thresholds put in place in other countries. Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva, confirms to Le Monde: “ the Japanese are scrambling to slow an epidemic so that it does not exceed 40 cases per 100,000 inhabitants over seven days. In France it is 400. Their level of requirement is at least ten times stricter! “And the scientist continues:” the president has said that he has come to terms with a virus that can cause 40,000 cases and 300 deaths a day, that is not acceptable. The problem with the “live with” strategy is that it has been a failure so far! »
But the stop-and-go strategy, a strategy previously favored by the government, is not for all that an alternative. Alternating the lifting of restrictions and confinements without any adequate health plan, the “Stop and Go” has in no way been a solution to slow the epidemic, quite the contrary. Result of the races: today, after a third confinement, the circulation of the virus is cataclysmic. In this way, we find ourselves, through the government’s fault, in an inextricable situation. This is what the government is now relying on to impose a new strategy on us: “living with the virus”. A strategy which – with the aid of falsified figures – is in fact very similar to that of Trump, Johnson, or even Bolsonaro … A strategy assumed therefore that the government has difficulty in justifying: “I assume to have done choices, but these are not bets. This would imply that it would be adventurous ”. For an LREM deputy, it is even a question of “doing foresight”!
However, this strategy looks like a bet on our lives, a reopening without means for health and education can only promote an increased circulation of the virus, making France a breeding ground and a factory for new variants. and condemning us to further restrictions in the future. To be able to ensure its deconfinement plan, the government has already planned the implementation of a health pass, a coercive measure which only aims to mask the failure of its health management. Thus, from June 9, all people wishing to go ” in crowded places, such as stadiums, festivals, fairs or exhibitions “Will have to present a health pass, that is to say a certificate of vaccination, a negative screening test or a positive test of more than fifteen days which will act as” certificate of reinstatement “. From June 30, this pass will become mandatory for people participating in large events of more than 1000 people such as festivals.
However, the National Academy of Medicine underlines the weakness of this measure to prevent contagion due to the uncertainty of the test results. In reality, the implementation of this pass represents a greater constraint for the population, and in particular for workers in places whose entry will be conditional on the presentation of a health pass, who will have to be tested each time before go to work or get vaccinated against their will. This coercive aspect will only increase the skepticism of those who are suspicious of the vaccine.
The government’s priority: maintain the economy
In reality, the government is relying on the weariness of the population, which can no longer be confined for more than a year, to put the interests of employers first. On Tuesday April 20, the president of MEDEF Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux put pressure on the government to reopen businesses, explaining that it was necessary ” ensure that the economy suffers as little as possible from the consequences of health restrictions “. Today, it is exactly this logic that the executive follows, obeying the injunction to keep the economy in full swing without additional resources for hospitals and schools. This strategy paves the way for deconfinement in a context where there is no guarantee that the epidemic will stop, and even poses the possibility of a fourth wave and a fourth confinement.
Beyond this concern to maintain the economy, the reopening also responds to a political imperative for Macron: to move on in the context of a presidential campaign. Frédéric Dabi, director general of the opinion of the IFOP polling institute explains in Le Monde: “ we are still on a betting logic. On the one hand, there is Emmanuel Macron anxious to close the Covid episode which should allow him to reconnect with the essence of macronism, the economy, reforms … and move from the status of candidate president to that of presidential candidate. On the other, there is the Covid and its unknowns. For the president, it is therefore a question of masking at all costs his catastrophic management of the crisis, even if it means tampering with curves and lying about the state of the epidemic, in order to prepare for the presidential campaign and to continue the anti-social agenda carried out since the start of his quiquennium. Macron thus promised to want to reform “until the last quarter of an hour”, explaining that “these last twenty years, we have fallen too late. Reform, transform, invest, these are the conditions for defending our social model ”. There is therefore no doubt that after the rail reform, the pension reform and the unemployment insurance reform, Macron intends to continue to apply neoliberal reforms and not stop there.
In reality, “living with the virus” without the means and without a health strategy commensurate with the situation will go hand in hand with the resumption of circulation of the virus, and therefore with future new measures to curb liberticidal and repressive measures. Faced with the erratic management of the government, which once again favors the economy over our lives, it is time to take our affairs in hand, bringing together the population and caregivers, for a real prevention strategy to break the chains of contamination , to implement a mass vaccination campaign with reliable, precise and transparent communication of information, the lifting of patents, all this accompanied by means for hospitals and education.
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