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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI've eaten at restaurants, gone to a mall and attended concerts. That is life in France.
Consider this a companion to babylonsister's post This was written by an American ex-pat living in Italy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/30/us-could-learn-frances-response-covid-19/
Opinion by Timothy Searchinger
July 30, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
Over the past six weeks, Ive eaten out at restaurants five times, attended two concerts, visited a large, busy indoor mall three times, had two haircuts, and repeatedly watched school kids run around the schoolyard. But thats all been responsible behavior because instead of being locked down in my house in the D.C. area, Ive been in France, where life and the economy are now carrying on close to normal.
What France, like virtually all of Europe, has shown is that following standard expert recommendations for dealing with covid-19 works. France had a massive outbreak of covid-19 in the spring, almost as soon as anyone realized the novel coronavirus had reached Europe. The deaths began occurring late March and reached more than 24,000 by the end of April a higher death rate than even the United States at the time.
But while the outbreak occurred primarily in only two parts of France, French President Emmanuel Macron imposed a severe, nationwide lockdown on March 16. And during that lockdown, the government put extensive testing and contact tracing in place. Almost exactly two months later, France mostly reopened. And for the last two and a half months, the country has functioned in a primarily open status with around 500 new cases per day and only about 450 deaths in the last month.
The French lockdown was severe. People were only allowed out, after filling out a form, to take care of elderly relatives or to go grocery shopping. To buffer the economic impact, the government directly paid a portion of salaries for those who could not work. And, voila, it worked.
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France and the rest of Europe are just showing what grown-up governments in well-off societies do, which makes our U.S. disaster all the more painful to watch (and for me to rejoin next week, alas). And while President Trump obviously is the source of our juvenile response, Congress also passed three emergency bills with trillions of dollars for relief but almost no instructions or resources for reopening.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)LisaL
(44,962 posts)US is now averaging about 1,000 per day.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)magicarpet
(13,935 posts)... with those of infantile intellectual development residing in the people's White House and the halls of congress.
We must take our government and country back from these buffoons and clowns, right this ship of state, and replace it to a more beneficial charted course.
regnaD kciN
(26,035 posts)Im hearing reports from Europe that theres a new wave of the virus breaking across the continent. Other countries are noting the growth of new cases with alarm, and, if it hits all the countries surrounding France, its only a matter of time before it picks up there as well. It seems like properly implementing measures like testing and contact-tracing can slow, but not stop, the spread of the disease.
DrToast
(6,414 posts)DrToast
(6,414 posts)Lots of Europe is still having problems battling the virus.
Coronavirus: Home visits banned in parts of northern England
What Spain Is Telling Us About Second Wave of Coronavirus
Many countries that allegedly beat the virus did no such thing. They just shut everything down. That's the easy part. Beating the virus while opening things up is challenging, and many countries other than the US are still struggling with that.
Here's another one (although not specifically Europe): A second covid-19 wave is worrying Australia, Japan and Hong Kong
Initech
(99,909 posts)Myself included.