Travels with Forty Roses: Week 5

How strange it was to experience Easter weekend in Paris this year. The silence was loud; only broken by sirens of ambulances and emergency vehicles. The sun shone, the wind blew and filtered golden pollen dust into every crack on the boat. We stayed inside the Port as sunny , warm days bring people outside for their hour of exercise in larger numbers than usual. . Running and jogging have been banned between 10AM and 19:00 hours but walkers and dog walkers and essential shopping trips seem to multiply on such days . Masks are strongly encouraged but have not been made compulsory as they ought in our opinion. We decided to stay put until Wednesday . Numbers have risen alarmingly here over the last week although yesterday brought a drop in new cases. Will it hold is the question? Now everyone is doing their Monday morning quarterbacking and yes, steps could have been taken earlier here and in every country as far as we can see. Companies could have been ramped up to fortify stocks of PPE and masks and hand sanitizer and ventilators in January if everyone had been wise enough to acknowledge the science, the speed of contagion and the swiftness of death. There was time for the rest of the world to get moving and prepare and get testing organized…but it did not happen unless the country was in east Asia and understood what happens when a highly contagious virus hits dense populations.

Our week has passed and Macron has spoken to the nation on Monday night extending the lockdown until May 11. It is proposed that there will be some lifting at that time for workers and child care and schools. Exactly how that will all transpire is in planning stages. One thing seems clear is that older people will be expected to continue the lockdown.

So we have completed our weekly shopping trip. John goes to a Franprix close by and I head to the greengrocer. The produce is still amazing, people are mostly very careful to keep distance and wear a mask although we do notice some younger people who must feel they are immune, pushing boundaries. But overall we say the population of this dense city is respectful and careful and abiding by the rules. Yes, we must fill out trackable phone attestations but to me it seems to be an excellent way to keep folks minding the reasons, distance and time restrictions, for outings. Frankly it gives us peace of mind that there is an orderly society in this pandemic. Without order and compliance we are all at very grave risk.

We worry about families in small apartments, people who have nothing in the bank to fall back upon, people waiting for their assistance, not knowing where rent will come from. France has relief packages and plans and we can only hope there are very few who fall between cracks. The expectancy here in this city is that 40% of cafes, bars and restaurants will never reopen. We are fortunate that France has done so much to try and flatten the curve and we are grateful to the government for the job they are doing. After all when one knows that the Marais sector of Paris alone has over 55,000 nights of Airbnb it is a miracle that cases are where they are. That does not count any other arrondissement or include hotel or hostel rooms. It is a heavily visited city with people from all over the world. Right now there are 150,000 cases and over 18,000 deaths with the east of France and the Paris area most affected.

With all the talk of reopening in the USA and the UK we fear that without orderly testing and tracking there will be second, third and fourth waves of contagion. After all a reopening date is just a date. Without clear plans and testing it is just asking for more cases to develop. None of us are safe from COVID-19 until there is a vaccine; end of story.