Tag: France

France’s ‘Deconfinement’ Plan

France has announced a carefully phased plan for easing the severe restrictions imposed in mid-March. The strategy is far more coherent, cautious and realistic than the miraculous ‘reopening’ envisioned by U.S. authorities.

On Tuesday, April 28, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe appeared before the French National Assembly to announce his government’s plan for releasing the French people from the confinement imposed on them since mid-March, when the severity of France’s COVID-19 problem first became apparent. The plan offers a tentative, reasonably detailed blueprint for rebuilding French social and economic life one step at a time.

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Lockdown in Nice, France: What life is like for visitors to France during the coronavirus pandemic



Stuck in a rented apartment 23 hours a day, a father and his teenagers cope with confinement in a beautiful hot spot.

Nice, France, is a city on hold. Its hotels are boarded up, its restaurants are shuttered, and its residents are confined to their homes 23 hours a day.

I detoured here on my way to Italy in mid-March, hoping to avoid a full lockdown. But a few days later, covid-19 slammed France with unexpected ferocity, and the entire country turned into a red zone.

Today my rented apartment is a cage. French police and military patrol the streets. My three teenage kids and I are only allowed out of the house for an hour a day. Curfew starts at 8pm. [ . . . ]

Continue at source: Lockdown in Nice, France: What life is like for visitors to France during the coronavirus pandemic

Lockdown Diary: Why I’m grateful for being on lockdown in Paris

“I’m grateful to be living in France, where there is universal healthcare and where the president has chosen to save human lives over the economy.”

Today, March 25, is the eighth full day of living in true confinement. As of Tuesday, March 17, at noon, the whole country of France has been on lockdown.

It was nearly two weeks ago that President Emmanuel Macron earnestly asked us to stay home, and the Prime Minister Édouard Philippe ordered all non-essential businesses to close at midnight. By March 15, there were whispers on the street that the government would be locking down, with the military and all, because the people here weren’t taking it seriously, and the infection and death rates were rising.

I’d been preparing for weeks.

Food Stored in Apt: Eileen Cho during Paris lockdown
The author’s stored food and books. 
Eileen W. Cho

Because most of my family is located in South Korea and Seattle, Washington, two places that were hit hard by the pandemic, and

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France ‘at war’: how Parisians are coping with life under lockdown

Residents of the French capital are adjusting to the country’s toughest restrictions on public life outside wartime

And suddenly, it was August. Grudgingly but obediently, the rue des Martyrs in Paris’s ninth arrondissement entered lockdown at midday on Tuesday, the few people on its pavements making their way home, baguettes and shopping bags in hand.

By 12.30pm, half an hour after France’s new reality – in essence, no going out unless to buy food or essentials, visit the doctor or get to a job certified as not doable from home – came into force, the normally bustling shopping street had emptied. Continue reading “France ‘at war’: how Parisians are coping with life under lockdown” →

A Letter From Wartime France

Streets that are normally busy, all of a sudden aren’t.

At noon today, as France slipped into confinement, I looked down from my balcony at the street below. A few people were riding bikes or walking. At the tobacconist next to the closed café, a woman was wiping down the door frame. The street is normally busy, and all of a sudden it wasn’t. For the next two weeks, and likely longer, we cannot go out except for urgent reasons: food, medicine, or essential work. A nationwide lockdown, enforced by police. “We are at war,” French President Emmanuel Macron said six times in a speech yesterday evening. “The enemy is there—invisible, elusive—and it is advancing.”

Macron is right. COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has killed thousands and will likely kill thousands more, a tsunami that doctors have been warning will overwhelm the health-care system, as it’s already doing in neighboring Italy, the country hardest hit by this virus after China. This weekend, the government ordered all restaurants, cafés, and retail stores closed in France.

And finally, last night, Macron followed Italy and Spain—but not Britain or the United States—and mandated confinement to slow the exponential spread of the virus. Overnight, Macron, who was elected on a fluke and has faced popular revolts and flagging popularity, has become a war president.

We are at war. How strange to hear those words in Europe in 2020. It’s impossible, here in Paris, not to think of the Second World War. Not since Continue reading “A Letter From Wartime France” →