Posted on 01/31/2021 2:26:53 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
French President Emmanuel Macron has gambled by not imposing a third national lockdown to contain Covid-19 -- against expectations and the advice of his most senior scientific advisers.
The 43-year-old leader opted to tighten existing restrictions on travel and shopping at a cabinet meeting on Friday after a week in which his government appeared to be preparing the public for new stay-at-home orders.
The move keeps France on a different path to its biggest neighbours Britain and Germany at a time when the more contagious UK variant of the disease is spreading rapidly across Europe.
"Everything suggests that a new wave could occur because of the variant, but perhaps we can avoid it thanks to the measures that we decided early and that the French people are respecting," Health Minister Olivier Veran told the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper on Sunday.
He said that, unlike in other countries, the number of new coronavirus cases had barely increased last week, while other indicators -- such as traces of the virus detected in waste water -- were also reassuring.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
Probably because anti-lockdown rioting is breaking out all over Europe and he doesn’t want to go through that again!
How’s his “old lady” doin?
She’s 80 now.
Maybe he’s learned that the lockdown cure is worse than this flu-like disease — and that the “case” and death statistics need to be audited.
More likely he’s afraid of rioters.
More likely he’s afraid of rioters.
**********
Trying to find good in modern Frenchmen is not that easy.
The fact that President Trump is no longer in office and the fact that the leaders of Europe have locked down their nations to much larger extent than most U.S. states should be a clue that the must-not-call-it-the-Chinese virus is a real thing and has been perceived as a devastating threat by national leaders around the world.
No one, to my knowledge, has leaked what international leaders were told about this Wuhan virus about this time last year. I find that pretty remarkable and a bit off-putting. Remember the planeload of Americans with the flight attendants wearing ‘moon suits’? With a special sealed compartment for those who were actually sick?
Biden, bless his heart, has now admitted that “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” Happily, many in the public will not be aware of the trajectory since CNN pulled the death graphic after January 20.
Now he’ll look like a hero and be re-elected.
1% of 7.8 billion people is 78,000,000 dead in the world. Yes, that would be horrific. But life goes on for 99% of us. Despite our best efforts to contain the virus, the South African variant is showing us that our efforts may be for naught.
Do what you can to stay healthy. Apparently good French wine and great French bread have health-giving anti-viral effects.
The first European country to open gets my business. I’ll go anywhere. I’ve got a Passport, Duolingo and some Euros/GBP burning a hole in my pocket.
I was watching a live video from St. Petersburg Russia the other night, people were out in the bars having a good time, nobody was wearing masks.
The truth about the SA variation....SA has a lot of HIV cases. This variation is hard on those with HIV, those without HIV, not as bad. And the new vaccines will control the virus in non HIV cases better than those cases with HIV
France’s numbers are very odd. Worldometers shows France with only 300,463 closed cases out of 3,197,114 total cases. That by itself looks like the pattern of other Euro countries which stayed locked down hard through the summer and fall, limiting cases until the large surge starting in October. Where the oddity comes in is that of those 300,453 closed cases, 76,057, or 25%, are fatalities. The UK comes in at just under 6% and the US at 3%.
I thought perhaps France is only testing individuals with serious illness, but, in fact they are testing at a rate per 1 million population ~72% of ours — not that much less. Their Case Fatality Rate, likely due to their modestly lower testing, is high, but not crazy high (just under 2.4% compared to our 1.69%.)
The only explanation I can conjure up is that France, a very advanced country, is losing track of a lot of non-fatal cases.
They have a lot of immigrants in the suburbs of Paris and other major French cities so it would be difficult for the French to keep track of how many of them caught the virus.
Agreed. The immigrants might be a part of the moderately low testing numbers and moderately low total case numbers. But even so, France has had 3.2 million positive cases, and then when they come out "the other end" (resolved cases) the ratio of fatal resolved cases to recovered resolved cases is totally whacky. 25% fatal? No way! That is almost an order of magnitude higher than our 3% fatal. Even allowing for "lag", it must be that France is losing track of a lot of cases after those people have been tested or diagnosed as positives.
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