World News: Viva La France, The Second Wave, Resilience and The Future

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Category: World News - Europe

Published on Tuesday, 17 November 2020 11:05

Written by Olivier Longhi

The second wave of the coronavirus has captured France, with confinements, weariness, anger, and the testing of everyone's capacity for resilience, as each day the awareness of new society norms inclusive of the unwelcomed guest become clearer.

While the measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus are hardening a little more every day, rebellion movements are beginning to erupt here and there that some would consider understandable in view of the situation endured. The latest, that of the French Catholics who appeal to the Government so that it again authorizes masses. 

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But, like many demonstrations or gatherings, religious services, whatever they are, are purely prohibited. Risk of contamination requires. Certainly. Then emerges, in parallel with the anger denouncing the deprivation of individual and fundamental liberty, a most sensitive question, which echoes the spread of the virus. To what extent will we accept the constraints imposed by containment?

Resilience and Gravity

The question refers to the resistance capacity of an individual when faced with an essentially vertical obligation, that is to say imposed in a Jacobin and pyramidal manner by the Government. This resilience, put to the test for several months now, could however find its limits.

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First, because the human being is not naturally programmed to live locked or constrained. Then, because, accustomed to a social comfort which has long allowed us to move around and act as we please, today we are gradually unable to assume this deprivation of our usual freedoms.

If the case of the Catholic faithful having paraded in the streets of the Parisian capital can make you smile, it also remains symptomatic of a society, and more broadly of societies, which neither understand nor apprehend the seriousness of the health situation.

No stupidity or stupidity, but in a world generally marked with ease and ease, the suddenness and violence of Covid-19 have jostled and surprised a humanity still in shock from the effects of the measures announced. And proof both of the fatigue experienced in the face of the pandemic and the annoyance at the location of health protocols hampering all non-essential outings, it appears that the French move more during this second phase of confinement than during the first one.

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Gravedigger and Reflection

If the pandemic will leave health and psychological traces, it seems, not to say certain, that containment and the associated measures will also leave some and for many years. Does this mean that the Covid has shaken up our lives so much that it turns out to be the gravedigger of the world before and the corridor leading to the new world, so much vaunted after the first confinement?

Nothing is less sure. However, the reality seems darker. The pandemic has above all revealed the organic fragilities of our societies, whatever they may be, developed or emerging, the limits of our health systems which are overwhelmed because they are plagued by budget constraints, incapacity, whatever may be said about it, to propose new societal orientations, to generate a global reflection on what another world could be.

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It suffices for this to note the silence of the organized bodies (political parties, unions, associations, etc.) in the face of the awareness imposed by the pandemic. Ultimately, this much praised resilience, above all, risks giving birth to a society equal to that which prevailed before covid-19, at the expense of a few changes but oh so marginal.

Bio: Olivier Longhi has extensive experience in European history. A seasoned journalist with fifteen years of experience, he is currently professor of history and geography in the Toulouse region of France. He has held a variety of publishing positions, including Head of Agency and Chief of Publishing. A journalist, recognized blogger, editor, and editorial project manager, he has trained and managed editorial teams, worked as a journalist for various local radio stations, a press and publishing consultant, and a communications consultant.