François-Xavier Bellamy is a Member of the European Parliament, and author of two essays: Les déshérités (Plon, 2014) and Demeure (Grasset, 2018).
It's a strange vigil of arms: everything has changed, but nothing can be seen. Despite the first measures taken by the authorities and the pervasiveness of the epidemic in the media and in conversations, life continues as before for the vast majority of French people. Without doubt the last moments of carefree, suspended, unreal - silence before the event.
In all probability, it is indeed a great test that awaits our country, like the world around us. Not that the disease itself is much more dangerous than others: those it will touch will mostly get through in a few days, without consequences, and even for some without symptoms. But a small part will need intensive care, resuscitation; and it can very quickly represent a large number of people in absolute terms, if the population affected is very large. The speed of contagion suggests that the number of patients in need of intensive care will soon exceed the treatment capacity of our health system.
Then will begin the great crisis to which we must be prepared, that which Italy has been experiencing for a few days already. She was entitled only to our indifference, and sometimes even to a very condescending glance from France; yet the hospital system, especially in the northern regions, the most affected, is very comparable to ours. Today, our Italian colleagues in parliament describe to us the war they are living, and which they are fighting courageously. Spain also enters. For us, it is probably a matter of days.
Individualism is simply not an option.This battle will first weigh on those who will be at the front in the coming weeks, health professionals, trained and trained to protect human life. Doctors, nurses, firefighters, they have been testifying for months to the difficulties they encounter in their daily work, due to budget shortfalls and short-term calculations, but also due to the uncivil and consumerist behaviors that have not stopped to increase. The moment we live in should remind us more than ever that individualism is simply not an option. Each of us must commit to the unconditional respect of caregivers, who take on the difficult task of managing life-threatening emergencies and making decisions; We must do everything to support them, with the recognition that we owe to their competence and their commitment. The outcome of the battle they will wage will depend largely on the civic sense that we will be able to find to enable them to be effective, and on the collective requirement with which we act. In China, the dictatorship responded to the emergency with its means of coercion; Let us show that democracy does not imply disorder, and that it is enough for a free people to know the sense of duty to face with discipline an ordeal like this.
This is the time when ever to demonstrate that European cooperation can strengthen us.This crisis will also affect our economy of course, and in particular the craftsmen, traders, small and medium-sized enterprises which support our society but whose balance is often already precarious. The urgency is to guarantee that all these activities can resume when we emerge from the few weeks of glaciation that our country is likely to go through. In addition to the responses provided by the government, in the face of this global crisis, it will also be necessary to deploy a very strong strategy across the continent; it is the moment when ever to demonstrate that European cooperation can strengthen us, far from the mistakes of the past which place us today in a situation of industrial dependence, and therefore of fragile health.
Finally, the test will strain our entire social fabric - and I believe that this concern should not be silenced. This crisis occurs in a France whose fractures are immense, and which has long fueled distrust, resentment, violence. We have given birth to a society at several speeds, in regional planning, access to education, employment, health ... We like to recall the "values of the Republic", but behind the incantations and political gestures, our failures and our inconsistencies have made many disinherited; by losing the sense of what connects us, we ended up getting bogged down in indifference and every man for himself, and politics itself was gradually dissolved in the conflict of interests, of classes or communities. Of course, we still know how to find ourselves in the ease of the party for a great sporting success, or to unite on the occasion of collective bursts, more and more ephemeral, caused by terrorism. But how will we hold out this time?
It is urgent to live again as a people.The rest of the story depends on us. This crisis will test not only our resilience, but even more our desire for unity. It is urgent to put aside divisions, suspicions, calculations. Political leaders will have to be exemplary for this, while not refusing any of the efforts that will be asked of all. It is urgent to live again as a people, that is to say as people who know they are linked to each other by a community of destiny. We are going to have an opportunity, painful but perhaps beneficial, to rediscover what Saint-Exupéry, a volunteer volunteer, wrote in Pilote de guerre : “Everyone is responsible for all. Everyone is solely responsible. Everyone is solely responsible for everyone. ”
Will we be able to do everything to protect others - including imposing ourselves the prudence that the feeling of omnipotence inspired by our technological universe has long made us forget? Will we be generous enough to just pay attention to the most fragile among us? Humble enough to trust authority and experience? Are you free and brave enough to never give up, even when everything seems against us? On our response today depends the outcome of this battle; but in reality, it will also decide, far beyond, the future of our country.
A small organization of a few tens of nanometers came to brutally disrupt our security, our projects, our habits, our savings. It will undoubtedly expose our weaknesses, and put our entire society to the test rarely; but it will also reveal, I am sure, a shared vital force of which we no longer thought ourselves capable. All crises are both a moment of truth and an obligation to choose. We still want to live, and bring to life the spirit which, despite all our defeats, continues to animate us: now is the time to show it.
