The French battle over masks
France is a strange country. It is full of contradictions. Even though I was born here and have spent a large part of my life living in this country, I’ve never completely grasped the way its people’s brain works, and as a result, I often feel that I just don’t understand. Over the years I’ve learnt to live with this, to the point that I no longer care. Nevertheless, I still consider it to be a strange country.
The past few months have been a real challenge for many Frenchmen, as it has been in many countries all over the world. Back in late February and the beginning of March, the main preoccupation of my fellow citizens was to find a piece of cloth to wrap over one’s nose and mouth in order to protect oneself against…. everybody now knows who and what: our common enemy, covid-19.
The problem was that neither hospitals nor chemists had any stock of masks. Within a few days, the whole country ran out of them, both “PP2” and “chirurgical”. Scandalous! And we French people like scandals. There is nothing we enjoy more than shouting our anger and indignation as loud as we can.
Orders at national, regional and local levels were taken in a completely disorganized and chaotic atmosphere. Stocks that were foreseen for Southern France were hijacked to resupply the North-Eastern regions, which were especially badly hit by the pandemic. Outrageous! Again, anger and indignation!
And this kept going on for some time.
“We are at war!” declared French president Emmanuel Macron by mid-March in one of his dramatic 8:00 pm one-man-show speeches on TV. But masks were our battle shields and we did not have any.
“They are not useful if people do not know how to wear them”, warned the government’s spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye. The self-esteem of the arrogant French people was badly hit. The French do not like to be taken as fools, even by their own countrymen. Anger and indignation!
Masks became a scarce commodity, and this almost immediately gave birth to all kinds of trafficking. Deliveries were stolen and resold on various websites. Ads with insane prices started to flourish. For example, my father ordered five masks, at a price of more than 100 euros. He eventually came to his senses and started to sew his own supply.
This leads us to another side of the story: sewing became a highly sought after skill. Old sewing machines left attics and dusty cupboards to produce again. Neophytes were trained by connoisseurs. Youtube tutorials were posted online. Sewing groups sprouted on social networks like mushrooms after a rain.
I too gave into the fashion. I bought a Bernina during the lockdown. It was 50 years old. “It’s still running!” the seller I had found on a website assured me. I managed to sew exactly one mask with it before the motor suddenly blew up. Coronavirus was not its war. I tried to find another machine, but this turned out to be a wasted effort, so I gave up.
In the meantime stocks began to replenish. At the end of the lockdown, masks were on sale almost everywhere, sometimes for less than 50 cents.
Surprisingly, at the same time as the country finally happened not to be running out of masks, people started not wearing them. By early June, as restaurants and cafés were reopening after a three-month closure, many people seemed to have forgotten about masks.
I heard testimonies from all over the country, by people who had entered shops and supermarkets and hardly saw anyone masked.
Late February: anger and indignation because there were not enough masks. Early June, enough masks for the entire public, but people were no longer wearing them.
As I told you, France is a country that likes contradictions.
A few days ago, the newly appointed Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that masks will be obligatory in all enclosed public places from August 1st on. He then changed his mind to make it obligatory from… today on. What? So fast? But we ain’t ready!
Will the sensitive nerve of the Frenchman be stung again, as someone tries to impose something upon him?
To be continued… Hopefully not for too long.
