Professor Eric Caumes is known to speak loudly.
While the Prime Minister is due to speak this Thursday, after 15 days of confinement, the head of infectious diseases at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, author of "Health emergency" (Ed. Robert Laffont) , estimates that a curfew will be necessary until Christmas.
Where are we in the evolution of the epidemic?
ERIC CAUMES.
The situation varies greatly from one region to another.
That of Lyon, Grenoble or Saint-Etienne is particularly worrying.
Why more than in Paris?
Because I think that collective immunity played a role in the areas most affected by Covid-19 during the first wave, such as in Ile-de-France.
Admittedly, it is not very important, but sufficient to reduce R. The more the number of people who have been infected, the more the dynamics of the epidemic slow down.
It is mathematical.
Can we already measure the impact of containment?
Not yet.
It takes between 15 and 21 days and we are at 12. If we are now seeing a slight decline in the epidemic, this is not the consequence of confinement.
We can attribute it to the curfew, but we also see that the curve is bending in cities where it has not been implemented.
It therefore seems to me that this slowdown is due to the closure of schools during the school holidays of All Saints.
Obviously, interactions between young people have decreased.
And that, nobody mentions!
Does that mean that schools should be closed?
It seems to me that a compromise is needed.
Before the holidays, colleges and universities were still the second source of clusters.
There is concern that leaving them open will nullify the effect of the curfew or slightly lessen the impact of containment.
We also know that teenagers contaminate as much as adults, which is not the case with elementary school children.
But to close everything is to come up against the problem of dropping out of school.
So I think that pupils in difficulty should continue to go to school and the others stay at home.
Can we hope for a lifting of confinement on December 1?
Yes, provided that the drop in numbers is confirmed and that we keep a curfew, adapted according to the regions, until the Christmas holidays.
What I expect from the government is that it does not brutally deconfine like the first time.
If we start up again, the same causes will produce the same effects and the epidemic will start again.
What about restaurants and shops?
It is only necessary to authorize the well ventilated terraces, but to close the places where one is too congregated, bars are unfortunately part of it.
On the other hand, and colleagues will howl, we must reopen small shops on December 1, the risk is no higher than in supermarkets.
I don't see why they should be the victims of this crisis while large retailers and Amazon keep getting richer.
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Will we have a Christmas?
If the epidemic is still not controlled on December 1, unfortunately not.
If this is the case, we can celebrate it by taking precautions, wearing a mask for the most fragile, in a small group and by ventilating, hoping that it is not -10 degrees.
In general, the mask indoors seems fundamental to me, while it is ridiculous on a beach or in the forest.
In your book, you say that few of us will escape the virus.
Are we all going to catch it?
Collective immunity will be achieved whatever happens, either naturally or through vaccination.
At some point, the virus will continue to circulate without us realizing it.
This is the case with other coronaviruses.
If the 2003 SARS has disappeared and the 2012 Seas is located in the Arabian Peninsula, the other four are still there, the last since the end of the 19th century and we live with them.
Most of them cause colds, but can also send sheaves.
But I think we will have a vaccine.
In fact, Pfizer's announcement is very good news.
When?
This is another question.
According to you, the two other epidemics of SARS and the Seas were “warnings that we did not heed, unlike the Asian countries”, what did we miss?
We missed history out of arrogance and lack of curiosity.
It's the Gallic rooster syndrome.
Why weren't we interested in what happened in Asia at the time of SARS in 2003?
They had a trial run and they learned the lessons.
In China, Singapore, South Korea, we test better, at lightning speed.
By January, Vietnam controlled the fever of passengers arriving on its territory and placed all travelers in quarantine.
Taiwan is the second best performer, with just seven dead and not one more since the summer.
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And in France ?
We failed to test-trace-isolate. Between the onset of symptoms and the test result, at best, it takes four days. During this period, the chains of contamination are created, the game is lost! We had to wait for deconfinement to create tracing brigades. We weren't strict enough on isolation either. As a result, our economy has folded, not that of Asians. I hope we will learn from all of this. Because epidemics, there will be others. They have been part of human history since Antiquity.