Until the vaccination campaign takes over the Covid-19 epidemic, the government has found its leitmotif.
"The collective objective is to hold together", hammered Prime Minister Jean Castex Thursday evening, like a warlord to his soldiers mired in the trenches.
Taking up the message launched by Emmanuel Macron at the beginning of the week, which already enjoined to "hold", by revealing a horizon - "four to six weeks" - before hoping for a return to normal life.
It is, according to the governmental semantics deployed for a few days, the condition to foresee “the end of the tunnel” after a year of restrictions: the French must “hold”, adhere to the “general mobilization” - these are again the words of Jean Castex.
Under penalty of generalized re-containment, he warns.
This injunction to make the round back must convince the French more and more refractory.
VIDEO. Covid-19: re-containment and new restrictions ... the announcements of Jean Castex
Until when is deprivation of social and family contacts, culture, sport, dining out or coffee at the counter acceptable?
In Paris, the margin of freedom has just taken a hit, this Friday: the police chief banned the consumption of alcohol in almost all areas usually popular with Parisians to clear their minds.
Not without consequences: a recent Elabe poll for our colleagues at BFMTV shows that opposition to restrictive measures to fight Covid-19 is increasing, after having voted for them.
Example: 59% of respondents are against national confinement according to the terms of that of last spring, barely less (58%) for the November version.
And the curfew at 6 p.m. in force displeases 53% of the French.
By way of comparison, in mid-January, the French voted 52% for national confinement.
They were 93% last April!
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“Faced with this, the government no longer speaks only of bans.
He no longer only transmits information, in particular health rules, but he engages his interlocutor, in this case the French, analyzes Julien Longhi, linguist, professor of discourse analysis at the CY University of Cergy ( Val d'Oise).
Thus, to
hold
, is also what a sports coach says to his athletes, or a military leader to his troops.
"
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After a year of measurements, can this “performative” discourse, says the linguist, prevent a relaxation?
“We're trying to save time, clearly.
There is a new notion, that of surpassing oneself: ministers turn into
coaches
, notes Julien Longhi.
It is a way of changing the register.
By saying
Hold on
, we will look less for the moral and civic sense of the French, but we
challenge them
.
"
Weather and vaccination
How long will it take to “hold”?
Recently, government spokesman Gabriel Attal spoke of "mid-April" before a possible reopening of "places that make up our social life", warning all the same that there would be "heavy weather weeks" of here there.
It is the imminent arrival, with the spring, of a "weather less favorable to the circulation of the virus", but above all, "the time for the vaccination campaign to produce its effects", assured Jean Castex, which allow to 'hope for an end to the crisis in a month and a half.
By that time, ten million people, those considered “vulnerable”, will have received at least a first dose.
But for some specialists, it will take longer.
This week, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned, through the voice of Michael Ryan, its director of emergency operations: it would be "unrealistic" to think that humanity will be rid of the Covid-19 of here at the end of the year.