Day 13: Word from Paris (Sat March 28, 2020)
And that word is… lockdown. If people think things are bad now, we have no idea what’s coming for us. Paris is in full lockdown right now, and it’s not pretty.
Had a Google Hangout video call today with a group of friends who play board games together. The one hinge pin friend that binds us all together is a girl who moved to Sweden to be with a man she fell in love with who’s from there. She loved it there very much, but now the two of them have moved to Paris for some new work opportunities. I had the pleasure of visiting them in Paris when they had just settled in there last winter.
My friend told the group of us, over video chat, about the situation in Paris at the moment. Being so close to Italy obviously their numbers got pretty big pretty quickly. They are now at around 40K confirmed cases which is pretty reasonable considering how close they are in proximity to Italy, and no enforced border between the countries. However that number is still staggering.
Because of this, the government has had to enact some very strict measures in order to keep people safe, and everyone is on lockdown. Essentially, what this means is that no one is allowed to leave their house at all except for very specific reasons.
Reasons such as: to buy groceries for their household once per week, to walk their dog and other accepted reasons. This is enforced by law. There are police in the street who will fine you thousands of dollars if you don’t have a good enough reason to have left your home.
I look at the situation here and I can see they will be forced to enact something like this soon here as well. People just aren’t taking this situation seriously enough. My roommates have been going out every single day to the grocery store. They are literally living in the home, and exposed to a sick person daily, which is me. Careful as I am, their risk of infection from me is pretty high. Even if they don’t have symptoms of the virus, they could still be positive, and they could still be contagious.
I don’t see that they have changed their behaviour much at all apart from the fact that they are both home a lot more than they were before. My roommate’s boyfriend doesn’t go to work anymore, since Bombardier was finally forced to shut down production.
And they are not the only ones. From what I can understand, a lot of people are just going about business as usual for the most part. Especially the young and seemingly “invincible” people.
My friends on the call talked about lineups at grocery stores with people six feet apart, but then someone will try to jump the line and cut in, or stand right up close to the person in front of them making them uncomfortable. If someone asks them to step back, they might say, oh whatever, I don’t care about this stupid thing, I’ll be fine. But they may not be fine when what’s coming finally hits its peak.
We may be even closer to it then we think we are, considering our reported numbers are likely only a fraction of the actual cases. In a matter of weeks, those who have been completely relaxed about protecting themselves or others, could find themselves the unlucky ones to catch this in the middle of the peek of the crisis.
Catching it early in the epidemic, like I did, I’ve been lucky to be able to access the medical attention I needed to determine my risk. If things had deteriorated in my case, I would have been able to access the proper care I needed. But those who get this in the middle of the spike, while the healthcare system is completely crippled, those people will be in a lot of trouble.
We are very very lucky here in Canada, we are being offered a deal that almost no other country is getting. We are being paid to stay home and watch Netflix, if we don’t happen to have a job that we can do from home.
Our government is bailing us out financially and protecting us so that we can get ahead of the curve, and hopefully flatten it before it gets as bad as the situation has gotten with our neighbours to the south.
I beg of you people of this country, do not waste this opportunity! STAY HOME! Take all precautions whenever you must leave to get groceries or supplies. Do your essential grocery shopping only once per week. And wear a homemade mask whenever you leave your house.
Right now we are managing to tread just above the water. Telling those who are sick, but not sick enough to need hospitalization, to just stay home. It’s not worth the risk of infecting others, perhaps the numbers don’t matter as much as that.
But on the other hand, perhaps not knowing the true numbers is giving people the false sense of security that the situation is well in hand here. That it could never fall apart the way it did in Italy, or like it is in the U.S. right now. And that is simply not true!
Lockdown, is just around the corner if we don’t all start taking this a lot more seriously. If we keep relying on the honour system to keep everyone safe, we could end up with numbers in the 10’s of thousands in a matter of the next week. It all depends on us, and we are proving that we are just not reliable. They are offering us a chance to go the easy way. Please everyone, TAKE IT.
Forget about the economy. I’m serious! I’m not just saying that because I’m a dirty socialist hippy, and I acknowledge that I am one. The fact of the matter is, the economy is broken! Everywhere in the world! We are going into a recession because of this, that’s just a fact now. It’s a foregone conclusion. There is no point in getting all upset about it. It’s happening, and it’s happening to all of us.
The question is what are we going to do about it? And, what we need to do right now is keep everyone fed, clothed, and in a place where they can isolate safely. It’s something we should have been doing anyway for a long time.
Right now we have many of our homeless, sick and vulnerable populations self-isolating in hotel rooms. We made the space for them there. There’s enough room for everyone to have a place to sleep in this city. Guaranteed income works, it can work, it is working in places like Sweden right now.
We all need to start taking a look at how we can be more responsible, more sustainable, how to consume less, make more, support each other more. It’s not OK for some to have 5 yachts, and others not to have food, or a roof over their head. The economy has been broken for a very very long time my friends. We are just now noticing the pile of corpses that it has created. It’s time for a rethink.
We have it easy here in this country. Please see that. And don’t squander this gift. Do not say another word about the economy, or the stock market. You’re probably not going to lose your house if you live here in Canada. Oh, you have five houses? Yeah, well maybe you should lose a couple of those so that someone else can have just one. But, you probably don’t need a bail out.
Things will change after this, absolutely they will. But take a look and ask yourself, is the economy really worth the risk of letting so many people fall between the cracks? It’s not even real! The economy is a concept. Money only has value because we all agree that it does. Could we create a new agreement?
I’m not a religious person, I’m an atheist actually, but perhaps this is the “Noah’s Arc” of our time, so to speak. And no, I don’t mean that God is punishing us, and he will only save those who love and pray to him. None of that horseshit!
But, what I’m saying is the parable teaches us that if we work together, sacrifice, and do our best, we can come out of this together. And if we are selfish, impatient and nasty, we will just end up tearing ourselves and our whole world apart.
What good is an economy built on top of a pile of corpses? What good is an economy without enough people left to run it? What happens when we lose so many of our elders, that the knowledge of those generations dies with them?
Lets find a new way of doing things that supports all people. Let’s help each other out. Let’s only take what we need. Let’s grow food in our back yards and our window boxes. Let’s pay more attention to the vulnerable people in our own lives, and become present to how we can support them best. This is my request.