PARIS – At the Montparnasse train station in Paris, the contrast could not have been sharper.
About a year ago, facing the first national shutdown against a raging coronavirus epidemic, Parisians desperately got stuck in trains in an exodus that turned Montparnasse into a place of fear and anxiety, and the capital in a ghost town.
But on Friday morning, a day before the start of the third national exclusion, foot traffic was relatively low inside Montparnasse station and others in Paris. The state of mind was of deep fatigue before the restrictions that would severely restrict travel in France again, restrict people’s movements in their communities and close schools.
“There is a bit of fatigue,” says Muriel Sallandre, who took a train to visit her parents in western France but planned to return to Paris in a few days. “The absence of perspective, depending on the messages of the government – all of which is ultimately a bit depressing.”
Many French people rushed to buy train tickets immediately after the announcement of a new closure on Wednesday night. The stations in the capital will therefore probably be crowded over the weekend, as travelers planning to spend the latest exclusion outside Paris mingle with those traveling family for Easter. Some Parisians also left the capital after restrictions were imposed in the capital region a few weeks ago.
But nothing like last year’s exodus was expected, as panic mostly gave way to resignation. Although President Emmanuel Macron promised that it would be France’s last national exclusion before life returned to normal, there was no clear light at the end of the tunnel: infections rise as France’s total deaths from the epidemic are close to 100,000. , and, as in the rest of the European Union, the vaccination campaign is progressing painfully slowly.
“As it goes, I feel that in a month’s time we will be locked up even more strictly,” said Marie-Yvonne Bougrel, 53, adding that she does not “believe the measures are really effective.”
Like many others at the train station, Ms. Bougrel said she was disappointed by France’s slow vaccination since late December, adding that she only knew one person who had been vaccinated.
In a national television speech that was watched live on Wednesday by about half of the French population of 67 million, President Emmanuel Macron announced another national exclusion after months of advice from epidemiologists and pressure from political rivals. Mr. Macron has unsuccessfully bet that despite increasing infections and new powerful variants, a national exclusion can be avoided if enough people are vaccinated at a steady rate.
But logistics and other home-made problems exacerbate the problems of a campaign that relied on vaccines not expected to materialize, especially the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which ran into production shortages and said its contracts had to place orders to Britain comply first.
The vaccine, which France and other European countries have strongly urged to lead them out of the pandemic, has also been plagued by concerns about rare but sometimes fatal side effects, which has led to its brief suspension. Some nations still do not issue it or restrict who gets it.
Among the French, moods grew darker as other countries, particularly Britain and the United States, jumped back from a disastrous handling of the epidemic with successful vaccination campaigns. Only 13 percent of the French population shot at least one vaccine, compared to 47 percent of Britons and 30 percent of Americans.
At the train station, Brigitte Bidaut, a retired pharmacist, said she was ‘terrified of what was going on in France’.
‘The United States was in a complete mess and now they get 2 million vaccinations a day. The British were in a complete mess and now it’s better to go, ‘she said, adding:’ Well, what can we do? We have no doses. Even with four weeks of exclusion, I still do not see the light at the end of the tunnel. ‘
A poll released on Thursday showed that a majority of French people are skeptical about the ultimate consequences of the new closure. In findings reflecting the fatigue of the population, 70 per cent of French respondents said they approved of the new national exclusion, but 46 per cent said they intended to combat the measures.
Among young people, hit hard by a crisis that caused psychological wounds and left them in deep economic uncertainty, two-thirds of respondents said they would violate the new rules.
In a country very sensitive to its rank in the global pick order, France’s frequent mismanagement of the epidemic and the subsequent vaccination campaign have led to widespread hand-wringing. Last year, France relied on China and other countries for the masks, test kits and other basic tools to fight the outbreak.
This time, the country is completely dependent on outside help for its vaccines – a crushing blow to the country that Louis Pasteur produced and enjoyed a long history of medical breakthroughs.
Antoine Levy, a French economist and doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said France had invested heavily in enforcing millions of workers, and that restrictions on people’s movements were gradually tightened, but very little in the development of vaccines.
“Very little has been invested in the only way out of the crisis, while for a year great sacrifices have been accepted in terms of public freedom and in the economy,” he said.
While countries continue to compare themselves in their initial handling of the outbreak, their vaccination campaigns and their economic recovery plans, the French ‘felt that we were failing a little on all fronts,’ Levy said.
The third national exclusion, Levy said, gives the impression that France is back after the first exclusion of March 2020 and “that nothing has changed.”
“It’s what creates this feeling of deterioration,” he said.
Others have pointed out that France is the only permanent member of the United Nations Security Council where a vaccine has not been developed: While the United States and Britain have repaired some damage to their reputation, thanks to their vaccines, and as such China and Russia have used their own vaccines in their quest for global influence, France has been relegated to the position of bystander.
At the end of January, the Pasteur Institute announced that it would abandon research on its vaccine candidate after disappointing test results, just a month after Sanofi, the largest pharmaceutical company in France, said its own vaccine would probably not be ready by the end of 2021. not, at best.
“This is a sign of deterioration in the country and this deterioration is unacceptable,” said François Bayrou, recently quoted by Mr. Macron appointed commissioner for long-term government planning, in a radio interview in January.
The problems with the vaccines have left many French people of all ages deeply skeptical and pessimistic.
“I’m still waiting to see, but I think it’s an illusion to believe in a normal return,” said Victor Cormier, 22, a student.
Andrée Girard, 61, a retiree, said she could not make an appointment to be vaccinated. She did not believe that the new restrictions would limit the epidemic for the better, and feared that France would be caught in a “stop-and-go pattern” in the foreseeable future.
With reference to the promise of mr. Macron in his announcement on Wednesday that France will start reopening in mid-May, Ms. Girard said: ‘I’m skeptical about a light at the end of the tunnel. They have made unfulfilled promises over the past year. ‘
“I do not believe it, I do not believe it anymore,” she said. “I do not know if we will get our old life back.”
Gaëlle Fournier reported.