A poorly managed crisis, a divided country, an upset daily life ... Faced with the coronavirus, the French remain faithful to their image of grumblers quick to criticize. Among the nearly 15,000 citizens of fourteen countries in America, Europe and Asia questioned on the management of the crisis by their governments between June and August 2020 by researchers from the Pew Research Center, the French are indeed among the less enthusiastic.
According to this poll published Thursday by this research and information analysis center based in Washington, more than four in ten French people believe that public action to fight against the coronavirus has been bad. All countries combined, nearly three quarters of respondents find that their countries have risen to the occasion. Thus, 94% of Australians and 95% of Danes are satisfied with the management of the pandemic in their countries. Conversely, the British and the Americans are the ones who judge their governments most severely.
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US researchers also asked respondents whether they think the health crisis has led to union or division in their countries. To this question, nearly half of French people answer that the country is now more divided than before, 39% believe that the country is more united, and 12% did not wish to speak. Americans are the most likely to say that the coronavirus has divided their country: more than three-quarters of them say that the United States is more fragmented today than before the crisis.
Danes less affected by Covid
The survey findings recall that in the United States, health measures and the number of patients vary greatly from state to state. Only Danes and Canadians are more than two thirds to answer that their countries are much more united than before the crisis.
The citizens of the fourteen countries were also questioned about the consequences of the epidemic on their daily lives. South Koreans are responding in greater numbers that their lives have been turned upside down by the epidemic. More than 80% of them say that their daily life has changed greatly since the appearance of the coronavirus. South Korea was often cited as one of the countries having best handled the pandemic earlier this year, despite a resurgence of cases in recent weeks.
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On the other side of the spectrum, nearly three-quarters of Danes consider that their lives have not been affected by the health crisis, after the country was one of the first in Europe to put in place a lockdown in early March . As for the French, the answers are once again divided: a little more than half believe that their life has not changed much, while 46% say that their daily life has been enormously modified by the health crisis.