Living through a pandemic

in the south of France

400 days since the 1st lockdown in March 2020

▫️ DAILY AND WEEKLY STATISTICS HERE .

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PRESS CONFERENCE SPECIAL

Here follows the main points from yesterday’s press conference

▪︎ Schools to reopen on 26 April
The government remains “faithful” to its commitments. As announced by Emmanuel Macron, the reopening of nursery and elementary schools will indeed take place on Monday 26 April. While the health situation is “relatively improved”, Jean Castex defended a “conscious” choice motivated by the “catastrophic damage” – both “educational” and “psychological” – caused by the prolonged closure of these schools.

A hybrid start to the school year in the most affected departments. Departments in which 4th and 3rd graders will enter the school year in half-gauge from 3 May 2021 (Marked in blue)

▪︎ Saliva tests in schools and self-tests in high schools
The reopening of schools will be accompanied by a “very strict” health protocol as well as a “massive reinforcement of testing capacities”. From Monday, 400,000 saliva tests will be offered each week to elementary schools, with a target of 600,000 by mid-May. 64 million self-tests will also be made available to “all national education staff” from next week, and to high school students from 10 May.

▪︎ Daytime travel restrictions lifted from 3 May
As announced, the deadline of 3 May is also maintained. It will mark the end of the “daytime travel constraints”, i.e. the obligation to fill in a certificate with derogatory reasons to travel beyond 10 kilometres. However, this threshold remains conditional on “the evolution of the health situation”.

▪︎ Curfew maintained “until further notice
Jean Castex announced that “the curfew is maintained and will be until further notice”. “We will see in mid-May where the epidemic situation will be”, he explained, warning that there was “no automaticity to its lifting”. The Prime Minister stressed that he could not, for the moment, “make this announcement”, judging that “it would not be prudent”.

▪︎ Shops, terraces: reopening cautiously envisaged “around mid-May
The government is walking on eggshells for the de-confinement. The reopening of shops, restaurants and cultural activities will be “progressive”, territorialized and will depend on the evolution of the epidemic, the Prime Minister has cautiously advanced. It could begin “around mid-May”, if the decline in infections continues, but it will be done “cautiously” and in stages. The list of activities that will be resumed first has not yet been fixed and details will be given “in the next few days”, Jean Castex said.

▪︎ Johnson & Johnson vaccine available from Saturday, new groups eligible for vaccination
As of Saturday, people over 55 years of age, without conditions, will have access to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which requires only one injection. The first 200,000 doses will be delivered to pharmacists, doctors and private nurses. As of Monday, adults living “under the same roof” as an “immunocompromised” person will also be able to be vaccinated. Finally, people “suffering from obesity” under the age of 55 will “probably” be eligible from mid-May.

▪︎ Vaccination with AstraZeneca encouraged
Jean Castex once again defended the AstraZeneca vaccine. The product has aroused the mistrust of the French after several cases of thrombosis. The Prime Minister stressed that these were only “rare forms of undesirable effects”, recalling that “the medical authorities have drawn the consequences by recommending it only after the age of 55”. “I am 55 years old and I was vaccinated with AstraZeneca like 200 million people in the world”, he wanted to stress.

▪︎ A ten-day quarantine for travellers coming from territories affected by variants
As the so-called “Brazilian” and “Indian” variants develop, the executive wants to “do everything” to avoid their emergence in France. Jean Castex therefore announced that “from Saturday, a reinforced control system will be put in place for people coming from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, South Africa and India”. The Prime Minister said that “each person” coming from one of these countries will be tested on arrival and “will be subject to a strict quarantine” of 10 days which will be subject to “controls by the police”. Exit for compelling reasons will be restricted to between 10am and 12pm. These restrictions will also concern travellers from Guyana, Gérald Darmanin said.

▪︎ From the “brevet” to higher education, examinations will be held in person
In order to maintain the ‘balance’ between continuous assessment and final assessment, and to ‘guarantee the value of diplomas’, face-to-face examinations will be maintained for the brevet des collèges and the baccalauréat, but also in preparatory classes and higher education. In the specific case of the BTS, students who were unable to attend the examination scheduled for May, or who failed it, will be given a make-up session in the form of an oral examination in July.

● SPACE DRAGON

Watching the launch instead of working on the blog.

● GOOD PLANET

Towards the artificialization of our world: when the mass of objects made by the human species exceeds the living biomass.

In a study published in the journal Nature in early December, scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science show that the mass of man-made objects made by humans exceeds the entire living biomass Thus, the cumulative mass of objects buildings and roads amounts to more than 1,100 billion tons.

While in 1900, the human species had manufactured a total of anthropogenic (man-made) objects equivalent to 3% of the living biomass, in 2020, for the first time in the history of the planet and civilization, the anthropogenic mass exceeds the biomass.

It doesn’t stop there, since if the trend continues at the current rate of 5% growth per year in production, scientists estimate that the anthropogenic mass will have tripled by 2040…

The drawing is from my friend Gerard and made for the fondation GoodPlanet on the occasion of Planet Day.