Five years ago, on 17 March 2020, France went into lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of a new virus that came to be known as Covid-19. President Emmanuel Macron on Monday hailed France's solidarity during this period, which he and others say is crucial to remember in order to face future crises.
“France was confined, but it never stopped,” Macron wrote on X Sunday to mark the fifth anniversary of his televised announcement that French people would be confined to their homes as of the next day, 17 March 2020.
France came together “in the face of the unknown, in the face of a challenge,” he wrote in the long post in which he praised France’s courage and solidarity, and paid homage to healthcare workers, teachers who kept schools open, and other essential workers who continued to go to work.
For many in France, 17 March is a key date, according to anthropologist Laëtitia Atlani-Duault who has been gathering memories of Covid, and published them in a book, Fragments de memoires (Fragments of memories).
“It comes back, like when we talk about September 11,” she told RFI. “People say ‘I remember where I was, I remember what I was doing, I remember how I found out.”
Lockdown experiences
The accounts fall into two distinct groups: those who suffered and those who managed to enjoy the confinements.
“Some wanted to talk about how much it had been, effectively, a blessed moment,” Atlani-Duault said of people who were able to use the confinements to reexamine their lives and priorities, and who were able to spend more time with their kids, for example.
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But the majority of experiences were less positive, with real suffering from healthcare workers in particular.
“There was real suffering in the accounts from nurses and doctors,” she said. “Accounts also from the partners of healthcare workers. There were also people who spoke of not being able to say goodbye, and accompany those who died in retirement homes, for example, or in hospital, and be able to bury them with dignity.”
Some 69,000 people died from Covid-19 in 2020, according to the French health authority, Santé publique France, the third cause of death that year, after tumours and neuro-cardiovascular diseases.
The confinement hit young people particularly hard, and the pandemic shone a light on, and increased, incidences of depression, anxiety and other mental health problems, particularly among university students.
“The particular circumstances weakened students, isolated them and so perhaps anticipated this degradation of their mental health,” Mélissa Macali, a mental health researcher at the French national health and medical research institute, Inserm, told RFI.
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“And on top of that, it’s true that there are probably multiple causes: increased precariousness, the feeling of isolation, the impact of social media, but also other environmental and collective impacts, and international conflicts and the global political situation worries them a lot.”
Anthropologist Atlani-Duault and others have been calling for 17 March to be officially commemorated in France, to recognise the long-term impact of Covid and also to retain lessons learned, “for future crises”.
She highlights local solidarity, from individuals and local governments, as well as community groups.
“The Covid crisis showed what the state could do, but also the flaws in the state’s response, what it could not do, and what, for example, local solidarity could bring,” she said.
Macron, in his message said the solidarity shown during the Covid pandemic should be recalled to “inspire and guide us”.
