| > They were more local, more flexible, and were used to combat highly-deadly epidemics such as the plague or spanish flu. Such previous epidemics were more deadly, and were perceived as such by the local population, who therefore probably found the measures more justified. Yes, previous epidemics were more deadly, but also easier to contain because: 1) cases were symptomatic 2) incubation period was lower So the effectiveness of quarantines and lockdowns was much higher and easier to measure ( we have no more visibly sick people, and it's been like this for a week, everything is OK). > Also, the 2020 quarantines arrived at a time where global resource inequalities were at unprecedented levels in human history, and when popular insurrections were growing across the planet (Liban, France, Soudan, etc), I can't comment on Lebanon and Sudan, but in France you're flat out wrong. There were the Gilets Jeunes, whose numbers were falling all through 2019 and were at less than 100k before the protests against the retirement reform, which were sometimes done in coordination [0]. In any case, the numbers for february are at 10-30k protestors, which is nothing for a country of 67 million inhabitants. > which was confirmed by the lack of sanitary measures from most governments, including the French government who during the pandemic cut public hospitals budgets by 800M€, continued to shut down hospital beds while the bodies were piling up, and covered up their failures (such as destroying the national mask stocks before the pandemic) via heavy propaganda campaigns. Again, you're flat out wrong. Hospital beds were reorganised and more emergency ones were added - this is why during the third wave hospitals in many regions were over "original capacity"; in Ile de France we got to ~140% if memory serves me right[1]. Mask stocks have been falling since 2009, so you can't pin that on the current government[2]. > Finally, opposition to the quarantines was fueled by how unevenly the measures were applied. Government officials and rich people have been publicly documented eating in restaurants and throwing parties, while common people like you and me were routinely beaten up by the police, fined or detained, for daring to go out and breathe fresh air (which here in France was illegal by decree for most of the 1st quarantine, before that was relaxed). It wasn't illegal to go and breathe fresh air, there was just a distance limit from your home. > but they sure played a role in giving more facts to the population to know for sure the government can't be trusted to protect the local population (at least here in France). That's funny, because the government's approval was very high during the initial waves, and Macron's is still higher than before the pandemic[3]. Not only that, but he's the first one since Chirac to have such a high approval this late into his term. Honestly i think the French government's action was among the best possible ( and obviously i'm not the only one if Macron's ratings are any indication); at any case, they were really trying to strike a fine balance. No lockdowns on the third wave, keeping schools open, financial help, etc. 0 - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9roulement_du_mouvement_... 1 - https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/datasets/synthese-des-indicateur... 2 - https://www.lemonde.fr/sante/article/2020/05/07/la-france-et... 3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_the_Emmanue... |
Agreed, that is a major difference, that affects both body count and popular perception of the virus.
> There were the Gilets Jeunes, whose numbers were falling
Yet many polls agreed the gilets jaunes were as popular as ever. And if you think that dozens of thousands is a low number, can you name any other protest movement that has gathered so many people weekly for over a year? There was also a growing uproar about the new pension reform, the last of which back in 2010 led to the almost-collapse of the government (many petrol stations across the country were already out of fuel).
So my case is not that there was an actual revolution taking place in France, but rather that there were epicenters of insurrection which cost the State en private sector billions of euros: the gilets jaunes, the anti-5G movement, the ZADs, riots against police abuse in popular districts, growing and more coordinated strikes across all sectors. The elites tried to ridicule those movements (such as pretending the gilets jaunes were antisemites), then tried to repress them (including deploying armored military vehicles on the streets of the capital), but nothing killed the ideas so they were growing afraid of an actual revolution. They seized the pandemic as an excuse to reinforce social control on every level and make "acceptable" totalitarian measures while disseminating propaganda that the danger to you and your loved ones is your neighbor, not the State or the bosses. Some kind of anti-social opportunism, as described by Naomi Klein's Shock doctrine.
> Hospital beds were reorganised and more emergency ones were added
Reorganization is a word like reform, which means very little in itself but works fine in the mouths of neoliberal apparatchiks to downplay their tragic actions and their human cost. Also, you seem to be acknowledging it's possible to cut beds and at the same time expand "emergency ones" to appear like you're doing something good when you're in fact tearing down public service, so my point stands. "Look at this pie i baked just for you (while i was robbing your house)"
There were many health workers protests and strikes before and during the pandemic, denouncing the hypocrisy of the government's measures and exposing their terrible working conditions and the (bad) effects it has on patients. Are you saying these people (who know best because they talk about first-hand experience) are wrong and the government propaganda is right? I'm tempted to believe the health workers i've met who were severely burnt out and depressed (yet did their best every single day), rather than the psychopaths in power.
> Mask stocks have been falling since 2009, so you can't pin that on the current government
Oh i'm not blaming it on the current government. When i say the government, i liberally mean "those who hold power, whatever their party is". This was indeed a problem with the previous Hollande-formed government, but may i remind you that most of LREM (including Macron himself) were key players of that previous government? Whoever the head of this monstrous hydra, the result for the common people is the same: hard labor and unlimited suffering.
> It wasn't illegal to go and breathe fresh air, there was just a distance limit from your home.
On this specific point, you are wrong. The "going out for under 1h and less than 10km from home" checkbox on the laisser-passer forms was added late into the first confinement. For over a month, maybe more, it was illegal to go out just to breathe fresh air, unless you had a pet to walk (another checkbox).
> Honestly i think the French government's action was among the best possible
Breaking news: according to the french government propaganda in various news outlets controled by the State or private billionaires close to the State (Dassault, Lagardère, etc) i just read, the french government is the best government in the world. /s
Sarcasm aside, the government's actions and hypocrisies have been widely criticized, but the most striking fact about this whole pandemic is that the president single-handedly decided the fate and civil liberties of millions of individuals behind closed doors (the scientific community at large was not consulted, and when it occasionally was, it was ignored): do you think having a single unskilled individual announce surprise securitarian measures every other week on television is what we can call a democracy? It sounds like the very definition of a dictatorship.
Related: why are cops the only civil servants exonerated from wearing masks and getting mandatory vaccines? Why then are reactionary media fixated on the fact that lawless (non-white) proles in the suburbs are not civilized enough to respect the quarantine, and not addressing the elephant in the room? (it's a rhetoric question) It's a feature of authoritarian regimes than their armed hand (the police) needs to benefit from some forms of privileges, in order to keep the status quo intact.
Overall, we may agree or disagree on specific points, but i would recommend you check out more independent media sources every now and then to get a different perspective on things. There's only a handful of nation-wide independent publications left and they're worth encouraging: Mediapart.fr, CQFD-journal.org, reporterre.net. If you're more interested in popular analysis/discourse than professional journalism, i'd recommend medialibres.org, a planet [0] of various self-organized outlets for social critique.
Happy reading
[0] A planet, for the younger among us, is an aggregate of different RSS feeds. It's sort of like Google News, but you can setup your own to track the news sources of interest to you. For example, Planet Debian has a collection of blogs from the Debian ecosystem.