Maria Laura Avignolo
03/29/2021 17:41
Clarín.com
World
Updated 03/29/2021 5:41 PM
Emmanuel Macron is losing control of the pandemic in France.
With days of 40,000 to 45,000 cases
, doctors encourage him to change his strategy and not be forced to decide, in less than two weeks, who lives and who dies in intensive care in French hospitals.
On a rostrum published in the
Journal du Dimanche
and in
Le Monde they
evoke "a catastrophic medicine situation."
They say they are prepared "to make an organization of patients to save as many lives as possible."
"In the next 15 days" - estimate the doctors in their request - we already know that our capacity to take charge
will be overwhelmed ".
Forty medical directors of the Paris public health system (AP-HP) warned over the weekend that they face a
"medical catastrophe",
as intensive care beds are depleted.
They are preparing to choose which patients to save, evoking the fateful term "triage", which sends shivers down the ruling party.
This is what happened in Bergamo a year ago when Italy was surprised by the Covid pandemic.
There are fewer political excuses for letting it happen a year later.
“It is an Airbus A320 that crashes every day
.
Is it legitimate for a country like France to accept that? "Asked François Salachas, a neurologist at La Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. Daily cases exceed 40,000 and continue to increase.
Sick transfers
Hospitals transport their patients to other regions in helicopters or medical trains to decompress the therapies.
Because of the variants and their rapid mutations,
patients remain
in intensive care
longer
than before.
"For 15 days we felt a general tension that we had not experienced since the autumn" (European) said Yohan Saynac, a clinician in Pantin, in Seine-Saint Denis, 5 minutes from Paris.
Another phenomenon is pollution in schools and high schools.
The government refuses to close them, except that it has now decided that if there is a case, the school must be closed immediately.
The Eugene Delacroix high school in Sainte Denis
has 20 suspended classes
and there are more than 3,000 closed classes in the country.
The decision not to close schools is at the heart of the government.
Many families are not sufficiently digitized or cannot help their children in school with Zoom, they do not have internet or a cell phone and they lose in learning.
At the same time
, three meals are delivered to French schools
, easing the budgets of the most vulnerable families.
Doctors notice more and more young people contaminated, with benign forms.
But contaminated adults say their children have had symptoms in the past week, according to Dr. Serge Smadja.
"I have parents hospitalized together, whose children go to the same class," says the doctor.
A stubborn president
President Macron
does not want to change course
or deepen the lockdown even further and close it like last year in the first wave.
At least immediately.
On Wednesday, before Easter, there will be a new Health Defense Council.
Until now there is mandatory teleworking, cafes, restaurants, brasseries, museums and cinemas are closed as well as boutiques and non-essential businesses.
The curfew was postponed until 7 in the afternoon due
to the time change.
Travel between regions is prohibited. Only pharmacies and supermarkets are open.
Entering France from abroad is practically impossible
if the 12 conditions
imposed by the government as entry conditions
are not met
.
They include the death of a relative or extremely serious situation, in a certificate signed by the treating doctors, translated and stamped by the respective embassy.
Many passengers are left behind because they do not comply with the regulations.
The dramas take place at the doors leading to the planes, where they demand documentation.
But
airports are ghostly scenarios
, without passengers, without their open businesses.
The image of desolation and global isolation Airplanes fly almost empty, with 30 or 50 passengers.
Germany placed France on a "high risk" alert on Friday because its internal situation was complicated, although Merkel apologized and canceled the Easter lockdown.
It is only a matter of hours or days before the United Kingdom continues with its red card, but Macron believes that these strict lockdown measures, imposed by Germany or Italy, are copying his strategy, which in his opinion is successful.
Saturation
"We are going to hit the wall,
" warned Professor Catherine Hill, dean of French epidemiologists.
“We are already saturated and it has become totally unsustainable.
We can no longer accept non-Covid patients.
It's crazy. "Professor Hill told Radio France Info that the French president's policy of buying time is nothing less than a" strategy of death. "
Psychologists and psychiatrists disagree with epidemiologists.
They
are concerned about the wave of suicides, anxiety
, family violence, the population's sleep problems in the face of confinement.
They are inclined not to shut up any more in the face of emotional devastation caused by confinement.
The deepening crisis is severe enough to alter the character of the upcoming French elections and
delay the economic reopening
until the middle of the year, inflicting another quarter of the economic damage.
Macron's political survival is no longer assured in the next presidential elections.
His inner circle is immensely concerned that the figure of the xenophobic Marine Le Pen is growing in the midst of the pandemic.
Macron has an extremely difficult equation before him.
He must make a political decision in the face of overflowing intensive therapies,
the society that no longer tolerates confinement
and economic rationality in the face of the pandemic and the advice of scientists.
The government is divided.
Prime Minister Jean Castex and Health Minister Olivier Véran are inclined towards an epidemic and sanitary turn.
But the economy minister Bruno Le Maire defends the interests of the economy.
Macron, a former investment banker, listens to him.
"There is no divergence between Olivier Véran and Emmanuel Macron", they assure in the Eliseo palace. "Each minister exposes the problems of his sector and the information from the field" they assure.
Macron cannot hide his vulnerability to this third wave of Covid in France.
The South African and Brazilian variants advance in the Grand East and the Ile de France
and the north of the country is seriously affected by the British mutation.
It is the mutations that have caused this new crisis.
The head of state insists that the cost-benefit calculation no longer justifies depriving people of their freedoms.
Any action had to be weighed against the psychological costs and increasing economic damage.
He enjoyed a bounce in the polls with these arguments.
The Elysee already knew from regional intelligence reports from the prefects that the consent of the French public for intermittent shutdowns was being broken.
Compliance could not be assured.
Macron imposed a curfew at 7 p.m.
A policy that concentrates shopping in a short period of time after work, and tried to get by with partial measures and technocratic tinkering, but Easter will be another litmus test in this third wave that scares France.
A closed confinement given the worsening of cases and the real threat to the health system
should not be ruled out
.
Paris, correspondent
PB
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