The French president has decided that somehow he has been sitting back for a long time, preferring official events, and mostly at international venues, and so tonight he will address the nation
The details of the address have not yet been made public, but leaks have appeared: France Info public radio reported that the date of General de Gaulle’s death on 9 November was not accidental, and since the pilgrimage of politicians to the tomb of the founder of the Fifth Republic will this time be an almost public event, the current holder of the Elysée Palace will thereby try to take media space away from his opponents and become the newsmaker of the day.
The question is what kind of news the French leader intends to tell his audience.
Will he, for example, confirm WHO forecasts, which paint a rather scary picture of the coming months in terms of the pandemic?
Experts of this international organisation, taking into account the rate of spread of infection, say with certainty that Europe (which comprises 53 states, half of which belong to the EU) is waiting for the fifth wave of infections. They add that at least half a million people could become victims (if the same inputs for both vaccination rates and hospital beds are maintained).
Even if the WHO figures, like any mathematical modelling, are to be taken with a grain of salt, it is worth asking why the continent is once again so alarmist.
The system of European hospitals, since the introduction of compulsory vaccination for health workers in countries such as Italy and France, for example, is ready to leak under the influx of infected people at every second. Three weeks ago the newspaper Le Parisien reported that 16,000 people, including doctors, nurses and paramedics, had been suspended for refusing to vaccinate. But that is not all – there are also those who have refused to vaccinate but have taken time off or paid leave.
There are at least 120,000 of them.
This has led to about a fifth of all hospital beds being cut. Exactly at the moment when the number of people infected began to rise.
To these figures of reduced beds should be added the number of inpatient beds that had been cut even earlier – as part of the budgetary discipline once imposed by Brussels. Up until the height of the pandemic, eurozone countries could not afford to exceed expenditure by more than three per cent over income. The European Commission later repealed this rule, but it was too late: health budgets in almost every EU member state had already been cut by then.
The WHO thus has every reason to predict that continental (and island) Europe, once so proud of its health care system, will continue to suffer hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Those who become infected and transmit COVID-19 in a severe form requiring hospitalization and nursing may not only have nowhere to go, but no one to look after them. The doctors are also leaving the intensive care units – even when they are vaccinated – because they cannot cope with the pressure and because they believe that all the promises of pay rises were nothing but hot air and that the authorities have done nothing to support the industry.
The European hospital system, as they say now, without fear of accusations of “migrantphobia”, was not designed for a massive and multimillion influx of illegal immigrants.
The laws do not allow the denial of medical care to undocumented people, but the capacity of emergency departments has not been expanded. Instead, the budget for medical care for illegal immigrants has increased all the time – in France the figure is more than one billion euros a year.
It is impossible to reallocate funds within the institution itself, so where a nurse previously treated five, six or seven patients, her workload (for the same salary) has increased several times over.
An attempt to attract interns and senior medical students to help ended in failure: not only did they fail, but many students have decided not to continue training in the medical field.
It is worth noting, of course, that, although with the help of a whip (a health pass), the European authorities have managed to drive the population to vaccination sites and achieve the level of collective immunity that epidemiologists consider necessary for a controlled course of the fifth wave of infection.
But antibody production is weakening, and it is weakening quite rapidly.
Whereas previously it was thought that two doses of vaccine would suffice for at least nine months, the period has now been reduced to six months.
Today, in the absence of the necessary number of hospital staff, how do the European authorities and France intend to campaign for a third shot?
It is said that Macron also intends to address the nation to inform that from now on vaccinated people will only receive three injections of the anticoronavirus drug, thus making the booster dose compulsory if they want to continue with their usual way of life.
If we consider that the fifth wave (according to the same mathematical model) should peak at the end of January or the beginning of February next year, which is exactly when Macron officially starts his election campaign, this assumption looks quite plausible.
As well as plausible looks the fact that without a sanitary pass (its validity in France is extended until July 31 next year), citizens might not be allowed to enter the polling stations (the president of the country has an opportunity to use this prerogative).
Of course, Macron, who is aware of the latest polls that in the second round he is expected to face not Le Pen but Zemmour, is aware that he is now playing with his political fate, and to a tune determined not by himself but by events and, most importantly, by people. The French. His fellow citizens.
Who, summing up the results of a rather inglorious presidency (much promised but not much done, not to mention mistakes in the international sphere), are slowly beginning to realise that they are also being left alone with the impending fifth wave of infections (PCR test for the unvaccinated and without a doctor’s prescription will cost around 44 euros), and the rise in fuel prices (hello to the “green agenda” that Macron advocated) and the flow of illegals, which nobody even formally tries to control anymore (because there are no resources for it, and one could be reprimanded by Brussels).
If Macron, apart from his charm, telegenicism and oratorical skills, had a conscience, he would have said it all outright today.
But he would be talking about something else.
The contrast with the way General de Gaulle, who died exactly 51 years ago, behaved under far more difficult circumstances could not and could not be more stark and therefore – for Macron – more humiliating.
Elena Karayeva, RIA