Paris (AFP)

A funeral litany sent out every evening, a flood of images of intubated patients, of coffins ... With the Covid pandemic, death was suddenly recalled to the memory of a society used to hiding it and shook the links between alive and dead.

Experts interviewed by AFP are trying to understand what is playing out behind the scenes of this modern tragedy.

An epidemic without memory?

The pandemic questions our relationship to death in an unprecedented way and we lack benchmarks.

For the historian Isabelle Séguy, the coronavirus revealed a "form of oblivion": "Under the Ancien Régime, epidemics followed one another quickly enough for people to remember them. Then there were generations and generations without epidemics ".

The Spanish flu in 1918?

"People were coming back from four years of war and barbarism, it did not cause a feeling of fear like the plague did," observes this specialist in epidemics.

The Hong Kong flu of 1968-1970?

(30,000 dead) "In France, Pompidou had not even felt the need to speak on television!", Recalls Antoine Garapon, magistrate associated with the "Covid Ad Memoriam" institute, which works on the impact societal impact of the pandemic.

“We were in a completely different relationship to time, we were still in the post-war boom”.

What about AIDS?

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"Today, we have a representation of death in old age, which the Covid amplifies. From this point of view, it disrupts less the relationship with ordinary death", notes the sociologist Gaëlle Clavandier, author of "Collective death ".

Denial to the climax

"This pandemic came to remind us that we were all vulnerable", analyzes Sadek Beloucif, head of the anesthesia-intensive care unit at the Avicenne hospital in Bobigny.

This is new, because "death has been gradually removed from our societies," continues the doctor, also associated with the work of Covid Ad Memoriam.

"When I was little, in the 1960s, I often saw large black hangings on buildings as a sign of mourning."

Before the Covid, our society had "slipped into the transhumanist dream which promised to + kill death", supports the philosopher Eric Chevet, author of "Death today".

There followed a "gradual erasure of symbols and rituals", which he calls "symbolic denial".

Tempted to forget natural death, we were therefore not prepared for the worst, and made "hyper sensitive to the tragic".

During the first wave, the denial was "pushed to the limit with the impossibility of participating in funeral ceremonies, or of accompanying people at the end of their life", adds the philosopher.

The suffering was all the more acute as the relatives could not access the hospital, which has now become the main place of death, notes sociologist Arnaud Esquerré.

Astonishment

"Suddenly, we only talked about that", testifies François Chauchot, psychiatrist at Saint-Anne hospital.

The virus has literally "invaded our psychic field and our exchanges. It is the first time that we speak so much about disease, that we see images of intubated patients", notes this specialist in panic disorder.

This "tidal wave" on pathology provoked in his patients "astonishment, a raw anguish not very expressible other than by + I am afraid of dying +, from a disease all the more feared that one suffocates, and which gives the impression of an infestation ".

"We could no longer think otherwise than in terms of the risk of dying, creating a psychic impossibility to think, precisely, about death", he regrets.

"The claim that the coronavirus was essentially killing old people was not audible. And it was guilty to feel responsible for the death of your neighbor."

Fear has generated defense mechanisms, such as the search for a culprit, adds the lawyer Antoine Garapon, who says he is "struck by the wave of judicialization" that occurred in the spring (lawsuits against the government, doctors, employers .. .).

He sees it as the sign of a society in "moral panic", which expects justice to "give meaning to death, because it cannot live without a system for interpreting evil".

Weariness and hope

Why is the "grim reaper" less in the headlines in this second wave?

"Over time, we have become accustomed to mortality figures because they remain abstract. Mathematization acts as a screen", analyzes Eric Chevet.

These figures are "not embodied, there are few associated faces, as can be the case with the attacks", remarks Gaëlle Clavandier.

"In most situations of mass death - attacks, catastrophes - we are on a reduced temporality. Two successive waves is unprecedented".

The fear is also mitigated by the masks, a better knowledge of the disease and the horizon of a vaccine.

The warlike vocabulary of the public authorities has disappeared, as has the applause on the balcony.

"The first confinement caused an extraordinary surge of solidarity (...). Today, we seem lost, we can no longer find our heroes," says Antoine Garapon.

"Psychic fatigue and the feeling of helplessness" took over from anxiety, says Dr Chauchot.

Like those grandparents who take the risk of seeing their grandchildren.

"During the AIDS years, remembers Dr Beloucif, some had unprotected sex, out of a need for normality".

© 2020 AFP