2020, March 12. Two years ago, an eternity. I met people who said to me “you know, with the Covid, I lost track of time a bit”. Back to this particular Thursday, then. In the afternoon, it starts to leak: the President will announce the closure of nurseries and schools for two weeks. I warn my colleagues who have been holding a live for a month and a half already. “At least like that, it’s clear. »
I had to find my choir friends in the evening, I cancel. With a few colleagues, we stay in the editorial office. And during Macron’s speech, we switch to a science fiction film. How are the caregivers, already exhausted, going to do? After a stunned evening watching BFM, trying to reach epidemiologists who don’t know what’s going to happen any more than we do, I go home around midnight.
Friday, first day of telework and anxiety. Eyes riveted on the lives of the newspapers, on the declarations of the doctors, one has the impression that every minute a new information contradicts the last. My boss tells me “you’ll have to save yourself, it’s not a sprint, but a marathon. »
This Friday is also the last day of small section for my 6 year old daughter. On leaving school, a mother quips: “Between the strikes and now the coronavirus, they will believe that school is optional! “. At the park, we look at each other between parents, wondering how we are going to work with toddlers in the legs. We didn’t know yet that they were going to spend two months without a boyfriend, without a park, without grandparents…
The alert of French journalists in Italy
That weekend, I couldn’t really turn off the radio. Nor let go of Twitter. Alerts come from everywhere. I read French journalists in Italy who warn: think again, the health system in northern Italy is very good. And yet, people are dying in front of hospitals. You are much more threatened than you think.
Saturday evening, we are at the neighbors’ in the middle of a drink when I receive the alert from 20 minutes : Edouard Philippe speaks. We turn on the TV. The Prime Minister at the time warns that all non-essential businesses will close: restaurants, bars, cinemas, nightclubs, bookshops… An impression of the last evening before the end of the world.
Yet, below, the streets are teeming with people. On Sundays, we see pictures of crowded parks. We decide to stay home. For my daughter, it’s the beginning of the great passion for Disney… And we say to ourselves that our principles of education (“screens are bad”) risk taking a big hit if we can’t go out any more…
Monday March 16, 2020, at 8 p.m., Emmanuel Macron announces the third stage: confinement, the real thing. His “we are at war” which will go down in the history books. And that resonates strangely today.