Monday, in the middle of the fifth wave, France took only weak measures to hope to stem the epidemic.
The country is getting closer and closer to England in its management of the coronavirus: laxity and a simple hope that the wave will disappear on its own.
Why Emmanuel Macron is becoming more and more optimistic in the face of Covid-19 and less and less cautious?
Faced with a great trial in life, we have all surrendered to providence at least once, abandoning all logical reason to take refuge in a magical thought: "It's going to be fine because it must be fine", If this strategy has already worked for some of our partials or job interviews, it is more questionable when it comes to the health management of a coronavirus epidemic.
Yet this is what seems to result from the (non-) decisions of Monday, following the Health Defense Council.
While the country knows more than 70,000 cases per day, only "measures" have been decreed, far from the firm screw turns during the first and second waves.
Gradually, the executive is copying itself with the pandemic management of Boris Johnson in England, adopting fewer and fewer restrictive measures and being content to hope that the fifth wave passes by itself without doing too much damage.
Choose what you want to see
"The government seems to engage in a sort of magical thinking, or at least irresponsible wait-and-see", confirms public health researcher Mickaël Ehrminger. All based on a single scientific basis: the Omicron variant, increasingly dominant in the country, causes fewer serious forms and less severe hospitalizations in an individual than the Delta variant.
If this fact is confirmed by several studies, the executive seems to voluntarily diminish the impact of another reality: the Omicron variant is much more contagious. "However, if the contagiousness is much more important, that will not reduce the absolute value of the serious cases and the deaths compared to a variant which would be not very contagious but very lethal", notes the researcher. Not to mention that this Omicron wave comes during the holiday season, and while the fifth wave of the Delta variant is not over. In other words, facing a hospital already at the end of the line.
Far from calming the letting go of governments, this hospital tension is sometimes used to justify an absence of measures.
Boris Johnson thus justified his lack of turn of the screw Monday by declaring that the hospital pressure "comes mainly from staff absences rather than overcrowded intensive care units".
The whole principle of magical thinking: distorting reality to look at it only from the point of view that we want.
Emmanuel Macron prisoner of his liabilities
Emmanuel Macron's “Boris-Johnsonization” actually begins in January-February 2021 when, against the advice of the Scientific Council, the president decides not to reconfigure France in the midst of the outbreak of cases. Since then, the president would be a prisoner of this past decision, according to Bruno Cautrès, researcher at the CNRS and specialist in French policy: “There is a desire for consistency in the face of his previous decisions. He is very much linked to this choice of January and nothing would be worse for him than to give a feeling of a policy in zigzag and retracing his steps ”.
According to the researcher, the desire not to impose too strong measures also allows Emmanuel Macron to maintain one of his other key narratives: the health pass.
Reimposing a curfew or worse a confinement, when the vaccine and the pass have been sold as preventing this, would call into question the entire success of the French vaccination campaign, one of the great leitmotifs of Emmanuel Macron.
The disavowal of November 2020
Double reason therefore to persist in not taking stronger measures and to hope that Omicron does not do too much damage, without listening to the alerts of scientists and caregivers.
"Unquestionably, we are moving more and more towards a completely political and economic management, and the scientific components are completely ignored", confirms Mickaël Ehrminger.
A disdain on the part of Emmanuel Macron which could well have its origin on October 28, 2020. In the middle of the second wave, and in his speech to announce a second confinement, the president justifies the measure by declaring that according to scientific forecasts, there will however have at least a peak of 9,000 resuscitations.
Finally, the resuscitations never exceeded the threshold of 5,000 people simultaneously.
Excessive optimism
Since that day, the president seems to be betting more on "what if things go well?" "As the" what if it goes wrong? ". A philosophy that also suits him well for the 2022 presidential election. "Emmanuel Macron also wants to reconnect with this embodiment of a positive and optimistic vision, a fundamental element of his narrative. Regardless of the alerts from scientists, politicians are there to chart a course forward, ”says Bruno Cautrès.
Unlike the non-containment of spring 2021, France shares with other countries this strategy of not imposing too many measures: England therefore, but also Spain, also rely on vaccination alone to pass the wave .
Countries which mutually support each other in their choice.
"France is moving towards an implicit laissez-faire, taking for example the nations which do the minimum", fears Mickaël Ehrminger.
The researcher concludes: “There is not much health in the management of this crisis, unfortunately.
Prevention is a bad word in many countries, and even more so in France.
"
All that remains is to believe and hope.
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