“The coming days will be decisive”. This Friday January 29, 2021 Jean Castex held a press brief and claimed the government chose to delay lockdown instead of implementing it immediately. As Journal du Dimanche announced along with scientists and doctors a third lockdown in France was pending to fight against the Covid-19 epidemic, the executive wants to buy more time.
So far, “the idea is to buy time, to limit damage” Health Minister Olivier Véran explains to Journal du Dimanche, two days after the government’s media appearance. Same call for government spokesman Gabriel Attal who says on BFMTV “the least day in lockdown that can be avoided, should be”.
So far, the executive considers France can prevent another lockdown. Véran says the epidemic is experiencing a “slight deceleration” in contaminations, and all the more so as the spread of variants is “less intense than abroad”. In other words, it is still needed to “observe – for a few days – what will happen” the doctor says. This Wednesday February 3, a new Health Defense Council is to make the call.
Backstage, everyone is working hard to prevent the worst from happening, “whatever it costs” as Emmanuel Macron could say. The head of State “wants to use all settings” his entourage tells Le Monde. “There is a way that makes it possible to hold on, without lockdown. It goes through vaccines, treatments, complying with guidelines, reinforcing tracking and isolating, remote working, police controls…” his relatives say.
But according to epidemiologists, doctors and scientists, still on the front lines observing the virus, there is emergency. According to La Sorbonne virology professor Vincent Maréchal “we could live with [the virus] if the situation was not changing” he told Le Monde. Before nuancing his statement: “but we know this situation will evolve with the arrival of variants and despite it all the overall spread level remains very high. […] The longer we wait, the more we are exposed to difficult measures” the professor concludes.
But, there is also the strong and continuous pressure on hospitals, especially on intensive care units. In the latest epidemiologic report as to January 28, 2021, Santé Publique France notices a significant increase in hospitalizations and admissions in these units. “I’m afraid we are in a cognitive bias very well known in the crisis, aka refusing to consider the worst-case scenario” AP-HP crisis director Bruno Riou says, worried.
Yet, politicians are more worried about the impact of such a decision in the public opinion rather than in hospitals. “If it works, we won’t need to implement lockdown, it would be a wonderful political move, and it would be admitted that the President was right to go against the flow” someone close to Macron told Le Figaro.
Therefore, another Minister tells our peers that “if it gets worse and we have to instate lockdown in a few days, we would be happy to have sent Castex on TV and not Macron” on Friday evening. A third lockdown seems like a doubled-edged perilous gamble… In the end, the losers stay the same: the French.
