PARIS – At the Montparnasse train station in Paris, the contrast could not be greater.
About a year ago, facing the first national blockade against a coronavirus epidemic, Parisians desperately packed trains in an exodus that turned Montparnasse into a place of fear and anxiety, and the capital into a ghost town.
But on Friday morning, the day before the start of the third national blockade, pedestrian traffic was relatively light inside Montparnasse and other stations in Paris. The mood was one of profound fatigue in the face of restrictions that, again, will severely limit travel across France, confine people’s movements in their communities, and close schools.
“There is a bit of tiredness,” said Muriel Sallandre, who was taking a train to visit his parents in western France, but planned to return to Paris in a few days. “The lack of perspective, being dependent on government messages – all of this is a little depressing.”
Many French people rushed to buy train tickets immediately after the announcement of a new block on Wednesday night. Therefore, the capital’s stations are likely to get fuller over the weekend, as travelers planning to spend the last block outside Paris mix with those traveling to visit relatives at Easter. Some Parisians also left the capital after restrictions were imposed in the capital region a few weeks ago.
But nothing like last year’s exodus was expected, as the panic gave way mainly to the resignation. Although President Emmanuel Macron promised that this would be France’s last national confinement before life returned to normal, there was no clear light at the end of the tunnel: infections are increasing as the total number of deaths in France from the epidemic has increased. approaching 100,000 and, as in the rest of the European Union, progress on the vaccination campaign remains painfully slow.
“The way things are going, I feel that in a month, we will be placed under an even tougher block,” said Marie-Yvonne Bougrel, 53, adding that she did not “feel that the measures implemented are really effective”.
Like many others at the train station, Bougrel said she was disappointed by the slow implementation of the vaccine that has plagued France since late December, adding that she knew only one person who had been vaccinated.
In a speech broadcast on national television watched live on Wednesday by about half of France’s population of 67 million, President Emmanuel Macron announced yet another national blockade after months of resisting the advice of epidemiologists and pressure from political rivals. Macron bet unsuccessfully that, despite the increase in infections and new powerful variants, a national blockade could be avoided if enough people were vaccinated at a steady rate.
But the logistical and other problems aggravated the difficulties of a campaign that depended on vaccines that did not materialize as expected, especially the Swedish-British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which had production problems and said that its contracts required fulfillment of orders for Britain first.
His vaccine, in which France and other European countries have bet heavily to get them out of the pandemic, has also been plagued by concerns about rare, but sometimes fatal, side effects that prompted them to halt its use briefly. Some nations are not yet distributing or restricting who receives them.
Among the French, the climate has become darker as other nations, especially Britain and the United States, have recovered from a disastrous treatment of the epidemic with successful vaccination campaigns. Only 13 percent of France’s population has ever had at least one vaccine injection, compared with 47 percent of Britons and 30 percent of Americans.
At the train station, Brigitte Bidaut, a retired pharmacist, said she was “horrified by what is happening in France”.
“The United States was a complete mess and is now receiving 2 million vaccines a day. The British were in a complete mess and are now better off, ”she said, adding,“ Well, what can we do? We have no dose. Even after four weeks of blocking, I still don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. ”
A poll released on Thursday showed that most French people were skeptical about the final effects of the new blockade. In findings that reflect the tiredness of the population, 70% of French respondents said they approved the new national blockade, but 46% said they plan to disregard the measures.
Among young people, hard hit by a crisis that opened psychological wounds and left them in deep economic uncertainty, two-thirds of respondents said they would break the new rules.
In a country that is extremely sensitive to its position in the global hierarchy, the frequent mismanagement of the epidemic and France’s subsequent vaccination campaign have caused great anxiety. Last year, France found itself dependent on China and other nations for masks, test kits and other basic tools to fight the outbreak.
This time, the country is totally dependent on foreign aid for its vaccines – a crushing blow to the nation that produced Louis Pasteur and has a long history of medical advances.
Antoine Levy, a French economist and a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said France has invested heavily in applying its blockages, putting millions of workers on paid leave and gradually restricting people’s movements, but very little in developing vaccines. .
“There has been very little investment in what appears to be the only way out of the crisis, while accepting huge sacrifices in terms of public freedom and the economy for a year,” he said.
As countries continue to compare in the initial treatment of the outbreak, in vaccination campaigns and in plans for economic recovery, the French “felt that we failed a little on all fronts,” said Levy.
The third national blockade, said Levy, gives the impression that France is back to the first blockade in March 2020 and “that nothing has changed”.
“This is what creates this sense of decline,” he said.
France, others pointed out, is the only permanent member of the United Nations Security Council where a vaccine has not been developed: while the United States and Britain have recovered some of the damage to their reputation thanks to their vaccines, and like China and Russia implanted its own vaccines in its search for global influence, France was relegated to the position of spectator.
In late January, the Pasteur Institute announced that it would abandon research on its candidate vaccine after disappointing test results, just a month after Sanofi, France’s largest pharmaceutical company, said that its own vaccine would probably not be ready before the end of 2021, at best.
“It is a sign of the country’s decline and that decline is unacceptable,” said François Bayrou, Macron’s recently appointed commissioner for long-term government planning, in a radio interview in January.
Vaccine problems have left many French people of all ages deeply skeptical and pessimistic.
“I’m still waiting to see it, but I think that believing in a return to normal is an illusion,” said Victor Cormier, 22, a student.
Andrée Girard, 61, a retiree, said she was unable to make an appointment to get vaccinated. She did not believe that the new restrictions would curb the epidemic forever and feared that France would be stuck in a “stop and go” pattern for the foreseeable future.
Referring to Macron’s promise in his announcement on Wednesday that France would begin reopening in mid-May, Girard said: “I am skeptical about a light at the end of the tunnel. They have made promises in the past year that have not been kept. ”
“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it anymore,” she said. “I don’t know if we’re going to go back to our old life. ”
Gaëlle Fournier contributed reporting.