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In a text published in The world, Duflo and Banerjee propose closing France in the Advent period, between December 1 and 20, in order to stop the epidemic and thus avoid the registration of infections during the Christmas holidays. “Family gatherings – emphasize the two economists – with their long moments of conviviality around a table, unfortunately favor pollution. In the United States, the long weekends of Memorial Day at the end of May and Independence Day on July 4, pollution peaks followed ”.
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The epidemic in France is progressing rapidly, with a spike in new infections that exceeded 16,000 in 24 hours. Despite the government launching new restrictions this week in Paris, Marseille and eleven other cities, Duflo and Banerjee are convinced this is not enough to protect the elderly or chronically ill, who number some 16 million in France. “Impossible to think of isolating them,” say Duflo and Banerjee. If the government doesn’t prepare in time, Nobel Prize winners predict, it could be forced to declare a shutdown when it’s too late, or have to ban family gatherings for Christmas.
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So here is the proposal for a total closure for three weeks. Before the closing period, the Nobel Prize winners say, the Christmas shopping period could be organized in November with nightly openings and sales. Schools would have a way to organize distance learning until the holidays. The total blockade would have a “significant cost” for the economy, admit Duflo and Banerjee. “But less than having to cancel Christmas or having to decree it in much worse circumstances two weeks later.” At the end of the three weeks of total quarantine, the Nobel laureates continue to suggest, “We should organize a big campaign of free tests to do before we go to spend Christmas with the family.”
Duflo and Banerjee’s proposal does not convince the Health Minister that it “excludes preventive closures.” “I do not want to be a fortune teller in such a distant period, I am focused on the present, on the evolution of today’s data,” he commented. Olivier Véran. The minister then reiterated: “We want to avoid completely stopping the economic, social, cultural, sporting and family life of the French. That is why we make decisions that are adapted to the gravity of the moment and the differences in the area ”.
And speaking of the hypothesis, circulated in recent days, of a general or local confinement in the second half of October, taking advantage of the school holidays as happened in Israel. “It is too early to talk about it, we are waiting to see the progress of the epidemic.” The epidemiologist Bruno Lina, a member of the scientific committee that advises the government, coldly welcomed the initiative of the two Nobel laureates: “I do not allow myself to make economic forecasts, it is curious that they do something about the epidemic. To each her profession ”.
