Take a look at these two graphs. Depicted on the left is the number of COVID-19 cases reported daily in the United Kingdom. The peak of the epidemic seems to have been in early April, with almost 9’000 cases on the worst day. On the right, we see France, whose peak came in late March, with almost 8’000 cases. I notice two things when I look at these graphs:
- Many more cases have been reported in the UK than in France, both as a daily average and in total;
- Whilst France had got through the worst of its epidemic by early May, the UK is still reporting well over a thousand cases every day, months after its first reported case.
I don’t think now is the right time to try to draw complex comparisons between these two countries, but I do want to take a moment to write down my experiences under lockdown/confinement in Britain and France. At a time when the rest of Europe seems to be creeping back to normalcy, the UK is floundering. I cannot help but notice a stark difference between what I experienced in France, and what I have seen in Britain. I was living in France for the entirety of its confinement, in the centre of Dijon. I returned to Britain on the 23rd of May, where I have been observing a 14-day quarantine.
On the 12th of March, in my flat in Dijon, I tuned into the radio to listen to President Emmanuel Macron’s speech. I had known little of the speech beforehand, but the events of the day, what with friends getting ready to make a speedy departure home, alerted me to the importance of this discourse. As I was washing the dishes, the President announced that universities and schools would be closing from the 16th of March. I was devastated: I watched my best friends and my flatmate pack up their rooms and leave Dijon, some for good. The next day, France was buzzing – it was really sunny and everyone was relaxing in cafés, bars and parks. Suffice to say that that Saturday the Prime Minister castigated us – our lack of discipline and understanding of the gravity of the pandemic meant that bars and restaurants would be closing. On the 17th, France entered into complete confinement for an initial period of two weeks. Everything was shut except a list of shops found on the government website (in classic French style, this also included tobacconists and boulangeries). Some of the things that have remained open in Britain were closed from the beginning in France, including beaches and parks. There were none of the ridiculous photos of beaches packed with people sunbathing on bank holiday weekend, as we have seen in Britain. Exercise was also more carefully regulated: we were entitled to one hour of physical activity within a radius of one kilometre of our home.
Initially, I was shocked to see how many people were still outside on the streets of Dijon. It felt that if you brought your pet or a even a shopping bag with you, you could claim you had a reason to be out of your home. This slowly changed as people watched the epidemic worsen. To go outside, we had to fill in a form, an attestation. This was signed and stated your address, your date of birth and, most importantly, the reason why you were outside, marked by a ticked box in the list of government-approved reasons. To go outside, I had to think through my actions – it was obvious whether what I was doing was legal or not: either it was listed on the attestation or it wasn’t. I had to put my name to my decision.
Dijon wasn’t particularly seriously policed – the police were present but throughout the whole confinement I was never stopped. I have reason to believe however that Paris was under much more intense control – when I arrived at Gare du Nord on my way home to Britain, soldiers and police officers were patrolling the station.
There were always exact dates as to when we would know more about the confinement. Although there were regular government press briefings, whenever Macron made a speech, we could expect a big announcement. Two weeks into the confinement, restrictions were extended to the 13th of April. I remember rushing to watch the President’s speech on the evening of the 13th – we knew the confinement would be extended, the question was, until when?
That evening, we received clear information. On the 11th of May, France would begin to déconfiner. The President made us feel like it was a promise, we believed him, so we continued to take the rules seriously. I still remember that date – it was exciting. It was one, clear day when things would start to change. We had an idea of what would be reopening, what would be changing.
A few weeks later, the government produced a map of the French departments. It was colour-coded, red, amber and green, based on the number of available hospital beds and the circulation of the virus in that department. If your department wasn’t green, certain regulations would stay in place. My department, Côte-d’Or, was amber – we all knew exactly what that meant and we understood which rules we had to follow. France is a unitary state, however, and true to form the policy was almost identical across the country.
From the 11th of May, wearing a mask became very à la mode. Free masks had already been distributed in Dijon – I would say a good 60% of people were wearing them. Masks, as they seem to be in Britain, were easily available in pharmacies. On trains and in some shops, wearing a mask is compulsory. Even on my way home, one man got on the train without a mask, and was quickly spotted by the ticket inspector who gave him one to wear.
It seems unnecessary for me to spell out to what point the situation and management of the crisis in France differs from that in Britain. Here, different nations follow different rules, which completely undermines the government’s strategy (if indeed we are to believe that there is one). We are still in lockdown, but people are congregating outside pubs to drink supposedly take-away beer. No one is wearing a mask, and I almost feel judged for wearing one. Roads are busy compared to the silence I had become accustomed to in Dijon (bearing in mind I am currently in a remote village, whereas in France I was living in the city centre). In short, I feel that very few people are taking the crisis seriously here. Britain is logging thousands of new cases every day and people are acting like nothing’s changed. I am tempted to blame the government – for weeks they just told us to wash our hands, they told us not to wear masks, they delayed lockdown. The Prime Minister refused to sack a high-profile adviser who had blatantly broken the rules, effectively giving everyone the green light to defy the lockdown as well. The government is also being far more lackadaisical in its management of the crisis. When France ended the confinement in early May, a couple of hundred new cases were being counted every day. Meanwhile, across the Channel, on the 20th of May the British government changed the coronavirus slogan from "Stay at home" to "Stay alert", despite the fact that that day alone almost 2.5 thousand new cases were recorded. I almost feel like the government is playing catch-up, announcing policies which legalise what people are already doing. I struggle to blame the public, because this crisis is hard on everyone, we all want things to go back to normal. France has by no means been perfect in its handling of the crisis, but I cannot help but feel the crisis management in France was more coherent and taken far more seriously. Unsurprisingly, the government's actions and the public response go hand-in-hand. Cicero said, "In times of war, the laws fall silent." Well in a sanitary war, the laws need to not only make sense in their context, but be heard loud and clear if we are going to save lives.