Do Americans Understand How Badly They’re Doing?
In France, where I live, the virus is under control. I can hardly believe the news coming out of the United States.
By Thomas Chatterton Williams
I returned to Paris with my family three months after President Emmanuel Macron had ordered one of the world’s most aggressive national quarantines, and one month after France had begun to ease itself out of it. When we exited the Gare Montparnasse into the late-spring glare, after a season tucked away in a rural village with more cows than people as neighbors, it was jarring to be thrust back into the world as we’d previously known it, to see those café terraces overflowing again with smiling faces.
My first reaction was one of confused frustration as we drove north across the river to our apartment. The city had been culled of its tourists, though it was bustling with inhabitants basking in their reclaimed freedom. Half at most wore masks; the other half evinced indifference. We were in the midst of a crisis, I complained to my wife. Why were so many people unable to maintain even minimal discipline?
Glued as I am to the news from the U.S. — where I was born and grew up and travel frequently — I couldn’t shake the feeling that France was also opening up recklessly…
