Can the (almost) deconfinement of December 15 work?

Olivier Véran and Jean Castex during the press point on Thursday, December 10 -

• The target of 5,000 cases per day will not be reached by December 15, but the government still decided on Thursday to maintain deconfinement on that date.

• Stagnation in the number of cases, winter cold and family celebrations as potential superclusters ... This deconfinement will be that of all the risks.

• Despite everything, does he have the slightest chance to thwart the pessimistic forecasts and to work?

Exposed raw on the table, the bet seems daring, even risky.

While the cases are starting to increase again in the country after a significant drop and then a plateau phase, France will let go a little ballast on health measures by starting a deconfinement on December 15.

This was announced by the government this Thursday during the weekly press briefing, while the target of 5,000 cases for next Tuesday, the initial figure for deconfinement, will be far from being reached, and the cases are no longer falling. .

"This Thursday evening nearly 14,000 diagnoses of Covid-19 were reported while there were only 12,000 last Thursday," announced Olivier Véran.

Impossible is not French it seems, so can this deconfinement which will start on (very) bad epidemic bases still succeed? 

answers you in three questions.

Can this deconfinement lead us to a third wave and a reconfinement?

"It is indeed a risk," said Pascal Crépey, epidemiologist and biostatistician at the School of Advanced Studies in Public Health (EHESP).

It must be said that the situation can be understood as a triple explosive cocktail: free movement of people while that of the virus is already no longer decreasing, the winter cold and family and friendly reunions during Christmas and New Year.

We are going point by point.

The first is obvious: the more the French are free to circulate, the more the virus can do it through them, the more contaminations increase.

This is even the whole principle of containment: lowering the number of contaminations by reducing interactions.

In recent days, the government has justified the current bad weather by the winter cold, comparing the French situation to that of other European countries, all of them suffering a particularly harsh second wave in recent days, "because of the cold".

The cold not only makes us more fragile, but above all boosts our risky behavior: less ventilation, more enclosed spaces, fewer meetings outside.

Everything the coronavirus likes to spread.

Olivier Véran supported this Thursday the impact of the cold in France, comparing Brittany, with the rather mild climate for a month of December and the rather good sanitary situation, with Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, which is experiencing a harsh winter and who has just resumed medical evacuations this week.

Pascal Crépey: “The situation is much more complicated to manage and control in cold weather, and things are not going to improve in the months to come.

"

Finally, last point, and perhaps the most dreaded, the holidays.

To see the disastrous impact they can have, take a trip to North America, which is beginning to measure the consequences of Thanksgiving, a holiday across the Atlantic that leads to many family gatherings.

In Canada, “Thanksgiving” took place on October 12th.

Two weeks later, the number of contaminations rose from 180,000 to more than 220,000 cases.

Two months later, Canada now has 423,000 cases of Covid.

For the United States, the sacred day takes place on November 26.

As of this date, the country had 12,883,000 cases of Covid-19.

Two weeks later, Thursday, December 10, it has 15,600,000.

Or more than 20% more in two weeks.

Deaths also broke the weekly record and increased 44% from the previous week.

And yet, the effects of the Thanksgiving peak should only really begin now, in the third post-party week.

Our weekly update is published.

The US saw record cases and hospitalizations.

Deaths also broke the weekly record and surged 44% from the previous week.

https://t.co/3VnkXiDemc pic.twitter.com/neLuRhkZqy

- The COVID Tracking Project (@ COVID19Tracking) December 10, 2020

Under these conditions, was it really necessary to deconfin?

All of this does not encourage optimism, but was there really a choice?

Pascal Crépey: “What matters is less the measures announced by the government than their applications and their respect by the population.

In other words, there is no point in not authorizing Christmas if it is to have the disavowal and massive fraud of the population.

As such, the measures announced this Thursday seem a success: according to an exclusive Ifop-Fiducial poll for CNEWS and Sud Radio published this Friday, 69% of French people intend to accept the instructions by December 31.

The epidemiologist continues: "The coronavirus will not be finished on January 1, 2021, so we must keep the support of the population.

And think about the psychic consequences ”.

Do not sacrifice Christmas to save the moribund morale of the French.

For Pascal Crépey, “Christmas is obviously a major risk of an epidemic resumption, but it is a risk that we all collectively accept to take.

It is up to the population to adapt and do everything to be careful and be ultra-vigilant during the holidays but also outside, to mitigate the virus elsewhere.

"

Can we get out of it?

"There is certainly a risk of reconfinement in January, but if we end up with this scenario, it will be a huge collective failure", estimates Pascal Crépey, for whom "France has all the cards in hand to succeed in not suffering a new epidemic outbreak ”: mask, test, informed and informed population, StopAnticovid application, etc.

Especially since it will not be a total deconfinement, far from it.

Closure of bars, restaurants, theaters, cinemas, museums and especially curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. (except Christmas Day).

Curfew that had demonstrated its usefulness in the cities where it had been applied before containment, having experienced a drop in cases faster than those that had no time restrictions.

The epidemiologist continues: "The virus is not magic, it does not fall from the sky and does not circulate on its own, it is transmitted from person to person, if everyone is careful to limit their contacts, there is no of objective reason that the situation worsens ”.

And too bad if all of Europe experiences an epidemic rebound with the cold or if the Thanksgiving effect worries about Christmas.

Pascal Crépey: “It is time to stop justifying our situation by comparing it to other countries and to try to do better than them.

So it's up to us to play.

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