Arrival of a person in intensive care following a transfer from region -
Frederic DIDES / SIPA
A few days before the anniversary of the first confinement in France, Île-de-France is transferring patients in intensive care.
Meanwhile, Italy is reconfiguring itself as a third wave seems to be emerging in central Europe.
How can Europe be in a situation so similar to the first wave, when so many months have passed?
This Saturday, the first transfers of patients in intensive care from Ile-de-France to other regions were made, while on Monday, Italy is reconfiguring most of its regions.
March 2021 is increasingly taking on the air of March 2020, which questions the European balance sheet: how, one year after the start of the first wave, can Europe give the impression of being back to square one departure ?
What mistakes has the Old Continent made to get this record?
What if the major problem came from the European strategy, that of "living with the virus" and of trying to control its circulation instead of aiming for its eradication?
Epidemiologist Antoine Flahault indicates that the current situation was part of the risks of this strategy: “Europe has accepted to live with the coronavirus, and has therefore accepted repeated re-confinements-deconfinements.
A choice all the more dangerous as the doctor and researcher in epidemiology Michaël Rochoy points to a second failure: the absence of quantified objectives.
“Apart from the 5,000 cases per day fixed for the second confinement - and never achieved elsewhere - France and Europe have sailed most of the time without a specific objective, which has led to a general vagueness on the measures to be put in place , when to get them up, etc.
Countries have lived along the evolution of the epidemic's curves, continually adapting to them rather than trying to take the lead.
“The alert threshold in France was set at an incidence of 50, so we created a super alert threshold at 100, then a scarlet super alert at 150… When we set precise figures, we do not keep them or we twist them.
Everything is still unclear, ”the doctor laments a little.
Same thing in Germany now, where the incidence of 35 to allow deconfinement is more and more questioned as it delays it.
Remember last summer
One could put to the discharge of Europe the surprise and the extent of the first wave, of a still quite unknown virus.
Where the bottom hurts and where the real regret is located occurs more in the summer of 2020, after the general deconfinement of the continent with a very low circulation of the virus.
"I think that the fundamental mistake that Europe made dates back to June 2020, when it did not then adopt a strategy aimed at living without the coronavirus, as we do Chinese, Koreans or Japanese when leaving of their first wave, ”notes Antoine Flahault bitterly.
Beyond this strategic choice, Michaël Rochoy regrets during this period inaction in the face of the slow and inevitable rise in cases from July to September, without any new measures being taken.
He also recalls the case of post-confinement masks, made compulsory in shops only in July, at work in September, and in October at school: “If only with all this introduced as soon as deconfinement in May, viral circulation would have decreased considerably, and would have taken much longer to recover.
"An example which illustrates well according to him" the lack of prevention adopted by Europe.
As if we were waiting to be up against the wall to try to avoid it ”.
Too much complexity in the wind
A lack of measure on the one hand aggravated by… too many unnecessary measures on the other side, explaining the despair and weariness of a part of the population.
Alice Desbiolles, a doctor specializing in public health, regrets the measures taken a little blindly: “We have not done enough in cluster areas and vulnerable people, and too much on the side.
Blind and national confinement during the spring when only the Grand Est and Paris were affected, national measures, an absence of difference between exterior and interior ... Wanting to take the same measures throughout the territory and for all populations is make sure to strike in the void ”.
A study by the Institut Pasteur on March 9 indicates, for example, that only 5% of contamination is done outside.
An analysis joined by Michaël Rochoy, drawing a parallel with the demands of the world of culture at the moment: “We should focus on moments without masks and allow everything else.
Museums, the absence of curfews, cinemas… making absolutely sure that the places are well ventilated, that there are masks and a good distance.
See loved ones after 6 p.m., but without removing the mask.
The European population would adhere to this discourse much more.
"
And now ?
Everything is not to be thrown into European equities.
The R (virus reproduction rate) has never again known the heights reached during the first wave (it was estimated above 3 last March in France, and has always remained below 2 since), the most contaminants are better monitored, resuscitations result in fewer deaths on average.
Europe continues to suffer, but Europe has learned.
And as criticizable as the strategy of "living with the virus" is, the hospital system has never given in - somehow, of course.
But the last stage of this Stations of the Cross, the European Union now seems to be paying for the slowness of its vaccination, due to cold orders months ago, in order to obtain the lowest prices.
A choice that Antoine Flahault regrets: “The Old Continent seems to have been afraid of its shadow in many aspects of the management of this pandemic.
By not taking the financial and industrial risks last spring that the United States, Russia and China dared without showing an ambition in the fight against the pandemic at the height of its level of development.
"
A bit of the drama of Europe throughout this year.
To have been too cautious and too lax when it was necessary to act, but also to have overestimated oneself.
Alice Desbiolles concluded: “What the coronavirus has shown to Europe is the fragility of its population, between comorbidity, obesity, aging, and a hospital weakened by years of deprivation and budget cuts.
It is a global health problem, and not just related to the coronavirus.
"A problem to which the Old Continent will have to tackle, if it does not want to experience a March 2022 with the air of déjà vu.
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