Like everyone, I observe the gravity of the situation. However, based on the Hong Kong experience, a simple solution to stem the worsening of the situation jumps out at me. Because warning our loved ones was useless. Despite our experience in Hong Kong, several family members and close friends have already caught Covid-19, to varying degrees of severity. Others will not escape it.
For the past week, the French government has placed almost the entire population under house arrest to prevent people from infecting each other, even banning walks in the fresh air and on the beaches. These extreme “Chinese-style” measures are not viable or sustainable beyond a few days. On the one hand, the French will not have the docility and patience of the Chinese vis-à-vis government orders. On the other hand, the terrible impact, social and economic, that this confinement will have risks turning out to be highly disproportionate to the results obtained on controlling the epidemic.
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In contrast, the Hong Kong example has shown that when an entire population adopts the mask, as a form of individual containment, the spread of the virus can be almost stopped. Despite one of the highest population densities on the planet (7 and a half million inhabitants, most of whom live in tiny spaces with very close proximity to daily life), despite intense exchanges of people with China, and Despite the geographical proximity of the first epicenters (until the borders are closed in mid-February), Hong Kong must to date deplore 4 deaths from the Covid-19, yes four ...
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I am therefore amazed to hear the French health authorities continue to assert that the mask is of little or no use. This seems to me to be serious and dangerous when, on the contrary, all French people should be encouraged to wear it, not just the medical profession and the police.
Because everyone agrees that the virus is mainly spread by mini-drops of saliva carrying the virus that everyone emits, in greater or lesser quantity, by coughing and sneezing, but also by speaking, by eating etc. The mask, even of poor quality, is therefore the most obvious physical screen which is used to prevent the spread of the virus. It is not used to protect oneself from the virus (and it is true that it protects rather badly), but it serves to protect others from oneself. Example: several taxi drivers who wore the mask in Hong Kong were contaminated because their passengers were not wearing it. In this regard, when a doctor examines a potentially carrying patient, it would undoubtedly be more effective in protecting the doctor if it was the patient who wears the mask and not vice versa ...
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It is therefore necessary to promote the wearing of the mask as a civic act of collective interest. In an epidemic, everyone should consider themselves a potential carrier, and protect others from themselves, not the other way around.
As soon as they saw the specter of the SARS of 2003 reappear, at the end of January, the Hong Kongers resumed wearing the mask as one man, overnight, despite the serious shortage that was taking place here too. The attitude of the Hong Kongers was all the more admirable as it was done in spite of government instructions which, as in France, only recommended the wearing of the mask for the sick and the caregivers.
Hand washing is step number 2: useful when the virus is already on computer keyboards, escalator rails, banknotes, coins, credit cards, doorknobs, screens touchscreen, fruit stands, supermarket shopping carts ... But wearing a mask considerably reduces the spread of the virus upstream. This seems elementary as reasoning.
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While one of my sisters, a doctor in Versailles (and mother of 5 children) had great difficulty finding her 18 weekly masks (pharmacies out of stock), China is currently in overproduction of masks. I just interviewed someone in Hangzhou who confirmed to me that I could deliver millions of masks in France in a few days. It is wrong to say that there are no masks available. Many Chinese factories have transformed their production lines to produce masks (of various qualities, from single-use ones to the highest standards). But France has imposed restrictions (Prime Minister's decree of March 13, 2020 attached) which seem to complicate and slow down the import and distribution of masks in France.
Flooding the French market with masks and forcing everyone to use them would allow containment to be lifted fairly quickly. Masks could be subsidized or distributed free of charge, which would cost the economy much less than the consequences of drastic “Chinese-style” confinement. Between confinement and wearing the mask as a form of individual and mobile confinement, French people should not hesitate long.