It is 08.00 am on Friday 6 November 2020, sixty-seven days from the start of the school year.
The cheery thing to report
Mum and dad and all the other school parents got a nice email from our school director, congratulating us for the major effort to get all the kids kitted out and complying with the all-day wearing of masks. It appears that mum and dad’s initial concerns about lack of compliance were unfounded. Let’s hope the practice is sustainable going forward. It’s really no fun wearing masks, whichever way you look at it, this first flush of enthusiasm will be difficult to keep up.
The not-so-cheery thing to report
Mum and Dad normally do a weekly update of the school risks, to be satisfied that there no weak points in their home Covid security system that they need, and can, deal with themselves. With the lockdown, all the school risks have been examined anew this week. We found two problems:
Here are the daily French Covid 19 results for new confirmed cases and deaths as reported to the World Health Organisation:
THE DAILY LOCKDOWN RESULTS FOR NEW CONFIRMED COVID 19 CASES AND DEATHS
WEEK 1 | Oct 31 | Nov 1 | Nov 2 | Nov 3 | Nov 4 | Nov 5 | Nov 6 | TOTALS |
New cases | 936 | -16,043 | 16,760 | 2,866 | -15,902 | 3,553 | 18,200 | |
Cumulative cases | 48,753 | 32,530 | 49,290 | 52,156 | 36,524 | 39,807 | 58,017 | 58,017 |
Deaths | 531 | 223 | 231 | 411 | 854 | 386 | 363 | 2,999 |
What can one say about this detailed daily focus on the Covid 19 impact? Not a lot – it just feels so sad, so avoidable, so wrong.
As expected for week 1 of lockdown, just more new cases and more deaths, with another three thousand new families left reeling, having to say goodbye from a distance, what a horrible way to begin the mourning process. There needs to be a day of judgement once the pandemic is over.
And meanwhile the new school masks programme
Child has had no problems, no complaints on their use, only comments are on design – ‘This one is boring, I like that one, no, I am not wearing THAT’ Dad is sure these fashion statements are Child copying her mum, but that’s OK as long as she was wearing the darn things as instructed.
Mum and dad are now concentrating hard on maintaining and refining the new daily lockdown schedule and incorporating the new ‘Schoolbag’ programme in the light of the latest school risk assessment.
The immunity programme, as laid out in previous issues, continues unchanged for now, until we settle in to the new routine, and work through the implications of the self-imposed home lockdown extension period, into the new year.
Finally, after 67 days of exposure to school, what about Mum and Dad – are they coping?:
Comparing the experience of the first lockdown with this second one, mum and dad definitely prefer the first. It was much better policed and people behaviour was monitored more closely. Second time around, not so nice, therefore more stressful, but not dramatically so.
The worst example is the absolute failure of the authorities to specify the confinement behaviour of joggers (whose numbers seem to multiply exponentially each day!). They delight in jogging anywhere that takes their fancy, whizzing past as close as possible, no social distancing at all, panting hard and pumping out a slipstream laden with their exhaled secretions. The jogger’s message? ‘I really don’t care about you at all, not one little bit.’
On the positive side, there are more stringent conditions for the big supermarkets that sell everything. The vast majority of non-food products have been cordoned off. This has substantially reduced the footfall, (great!) making the experience quicker and simpler.
Not surprisingly though, a number of small shops are remaining open in defiance of the order for all non-essential shops to close. The best example in mum and dad’s neighbourhood is the local chocolate shop – maybe that is deemed essential in the French psyche, and yes, I suppose it is uplifting and indulgent to have a perfect hot chocolate on a cold day! Maybe they are authorised to stay open to raise the mood of the oppressed citizenry?
By John Saunders
World Health Communication Associates (WHCA) & INSPIRIT Creatives UG NGO,
MediaWise and MediaFocusUK
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