PARIS – At the Montparnasse train station in Paris, the contrast may not be as intense.
About a year ago, facing the first national lockdown against a raging coronavirus epidemic, the people of Paris jammed trains in the direction that Montparnasse was a place of fear and discomfort and turned the capital into a haunted city.
But on Friday morning, a day before the start of the third national lockdown, foot traffic inside Montparnasse Station and others in Pa Mont Reis was relatively light. The mood was one of fatigue in the face of sanctions that, once again, would severely limit travel to France, restrict people’s movement to their communities and close schools.
“He was catching a train to meet his parents in western France, but is planning to return to Paris in a few days,” said Muriel Land. “The absence of perspective, based on the government’s messages – is ultimately a little indifferent.”
Many French people rushed to buy train tickets immediately after the announcement of the new lockdown on Wednesday evening. So the capital’s stations will likely be more crowded over the weekend as tourists plan to spend the recent lockdown with Paris to mingle with travelers visiting relatives for Easter. Some Parisians also left the capital after a ban was imposed in the capital area a few weeks ago.
But nothing like last year’s emigration happened because the way to resign is largely due to panic. Although President Emmanuel Macron promised that this would be France’s last national lockdown before life returned to normal, there was no clear light at the end of the tunnel: the epidemic was spreading, the total death toll from the epidemic was close to 100,000, and like the rest in the European Union, The progress of the vaccination campaign remains painfully slow.
“The way things are going, I think in a month we’re going to be under a very strong lockdown,” said Marie-Yvonne Bagrel, 53, adding that she didn’t think the measures implemented were really effective. “
Like many others at the railway station, Ms. Bagrel said she was disappointed by the slow vaccine rollout that has been rampant in France since late December, adding that she only knew one person who had been vaccinated.
Mr MacCrone, who was seen live in a national television address on Wednesday by half of France’s population of half a million, announced a second national lockout after months of resistance from pathologists and months of pressure from political rivals. He made an unsuccessful bet that despite the growing number of infections and new powerful types, a national lockdown could be avoided if enough people were vaccinated at a steady pace.
But logistical and other raised issues created campaign difficulties based on a vaccine that was not completed as expected, especially by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which led to a shortage of the product and said its contracts gave it to Britain. The order needs to be completed. First.
The vaccine, which France and other European countries have placed heavy bets on to get it out of the epidemic, also suffers from concerns about rare but some fatal side effects, which has led to its suspension soon. Some nations are still not giving it or controlling who gets it.
Among the French people, the mood has intensified as other nations, especially Britain and the United States, have returned from the devastating control of the epidemic through successful inoculation campaigns. Only 13 percent of the French population has had at least one vaccine shot, compared to 47 percent in Britain and 30 percent in the United States.
At the train station, retired pharmacist Brigitte Bidot said she was “shocked by what is going on in France.”
“The United States was in complete disarray, and now they are taking two million vaccines a day. The British were in complete disarray, and now they are better off, “he said.” Well, what can we do? We have no dose. Even four weeks after the downdown, I still can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. ”
A poll released on Thursday showed that most French people were skeptical of the final effects of the new lockdown. In the findings, which reflected population fatigue, 70 percent said they had approved a new national lockdown, but 46 percent said they planned to step up the move.
Among young people, suffering from a crisis that has opened up mental trauma and plunged them into economic uncertainty, two-thirds of those surveyed said they would break the new rules.
In a country that is acutely sensitive to its order in the global stagnant order, France’s frequent absence from epidemics and subsequent vaccination campaigns has led to widespread handshakes. Last year, France found itself dependent on China and other countries for masks, test kits and other basic equipment to fight the outbreak.
At the moment, the country finds itself completely dependent on external aid for its vaccines – a blow to a nation that produces Louis Pasteur and enjoys a long history of medical success.
Antonio Levy, a French economist and doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said France had invested millions of workers in implementing its lockdown, gradually tightening restrictions on people’s movements, but doing little to develop vaccines.
“Very little investment has been made in what seems to be the only way out of the crisis in terms of public liberties and accepting huge sacrifices in the economy for a year,” he said.
“When countries compare the initial outbreak management, their vaccine campaigns and their economic recovery plans, the French felt that we have all failed a bit on all fronts,” Sridevi said.
The third national lockdown, Mr Levy said, was the impression that France was back in the first lockdown of March 2020 and “nothing has changed.”
“That’s what makes sense of this fall,” he said.
France, among others, is the only permanent member of the United Nations Security Council where the vaccine has not been developed. While the United States and Britain have recovered some of the damage done to their reputations by their vaccines, and China and Russia have adjusted their vaccines in their quest for global influence, France has returned to the status of a bystander.
In late January, the Pasteur Institute announced that it would abandon research on its vaccine candidate after disappointing results, a month after Sanofi, France’s largest pharmaceutical company, said its own vaccine was unlikely to be ready before the end of 2021. The best.
“It’s a sign of the country’s collapse, and this decline is unacceptable,” Francois Byrne, appointed by Mr Mac Krone as commissioner for long-term government planning, said in a radio interview in January.
Problems with the vaccine have left many Frenchmen of all age groups deeply skeptical and pessimistic.
“I’m still waiting to see, but I think it’s an illusion to think back to normal,” said Victor Cormier, a student at ’22.
Retired 611-year-old Andre Giard said he could not book an appointment for the vaccination. She did not believe the new sanctions would curb the epidemic for good and feared that France was stuck in a “stop and go” pattern for the foreseeable future.
Mr. Referring to Macron’s own pledge announced on Wednesday that France would reopen in mid-May, Mr Ginnard said: “I am skeptical of the light at the end of the tunnel. They have been making promises from last year that have not been kept. ”
“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it anymore,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ll get back to our old lives.”
Contributed to reporting
