Comment by GuB-42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GuB-42 | Hacker News Reader

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None of these are contradictions, they are reactions to a disease we don't know much about.

- The population is panicking for only a few cases, people are even avoiding Chinese restaurants even when the owners have never been in China. The government wants people to stop panicking, the risks are still extremely low.

- Cases rise exponentially, faster than expected (possibly due to a new variant), hospitals are filling up, now we need to take it seriously

- That one is actually subtle, they told that surgical masks are for the sick and FFP2 (N95) masks are for health professionals, there was a shortage of masks and we didn't have enough for the general public. But they try to say it in a way that would limit fighting over masks, people still fought and stole masks, leaving people who really needed them without protection, I guess saying that masks are vital would have made things worse.

- Masks are back in stock

- Blocking borders is indeed mostly useless when covid is here in large numbers, it is only useful when you have a strict eradication policy and your country is not well connected, not the case of France.

- The point of a lockdown is to limit movement in general, blocking borders is part of it

- In May the situation was improving, vaccination was extremely successful, we were on our way to being mostly covid-free in the summer. There was no reason for such restrictions.

- Delta variant

- Vaccine is the right thing, it has always been the right thing, just look at the data if you don't trust the government. Even a less effective vaccine protects you.

- It is an emergency situation, no time to waste in lawyering, and I am glad they did, delta breakouts in unvaccinated areas are deadly (see DOM/TOM). It doesn't mean safety wasn't taken seriously, all vaccines available in France passed the trials.

- off topic

I am not a fan of Macron, or any political party for that matter, but without the benefit of hindsight everything looks reasonable considering the information available at that time and the specificities of the country. If you think it is bad what would you have done differently? Remember: you have no crystal ball, an unruly population, and a budget.

The budget is as large as the (perceived) danger. And there was no excuse for being ill informed, after China locked down the whole province.

And there's no better way to help the virus than lying to people about the masks. Even the Chinese government didn't lie about masks, while all the western governments did. If masks became a strategic product, then there are enough laws to regulate them (and France did so).

Let me tell you about the situation with masks in France in the early days of the pandemic.

- All mask shaped objects were quickly taken off the shelves. Including snorkeling masks that could be adapted!

- Health professionals received a limited number of masks. For example nurses had 2 FFP2 masks a day, in practice, except for those who worked with covid patients, most had only surgical masks. Pharmacists sometimes didn't have any mask at all (they should have had surgical masks)

- A lot of the masks were in poor condition and of dubious quality, they really tried everything they had. Some came from the stockpile intended for the 2009 flu pandemic.

- Masks regularly "disappeared". As an anecdote from a nurse, she worked in a psychiatric hospital and they didn't have masks (again, a mysteriously lost package). A guy came in, the leader of a big company and was appalled by the situation. He came back with 3 boxes, full of masks and told the personnel "this is for you, these will not got to the director's office, I will come back in a few days and if I don't see the masks, someone is going to have problems!".

- A friend of mine, a pharmacist, was constantly harassed for masks by random people. She had (not enough) masks available for doctors, but she was lucky when he could have one herself. And people had the nerve to ask for her own mask. And on a side note, at one point, they didn't even have enough ethanol for hand sanitizers!

Internationally, China kept most of the masks for themselves, and the ones foe export were sold to the highest bidder on the airport ground. Some countries had local factories, but were lacking in material, especially meltblown fabric, but sometimes even the metal nose strip.

It was bad, really bad. Things started to improve when volunteers started to make fabric masks. Initially, we were dubious about the efficiency of fabric masks, there was a fear that they would make droplets finer and more airborne, we still are, but it seems that they are better than nothing.

I want to think that the deception was a bad thing and that people deserved the whole truth, but I am glad I wasn't part of the government during that time.

It doesn't matter if masks were hard to source at the beginning, every single country found itself in the same situation. Korea is one of the biggest producers of what you call FFP2 masks in the world yet we had a severe domestic shortage here too (the reason for the shortage, after a government investigation, was that suppliers exported most of their production because China was ready to pay x10times the regular price; old dear capitalism at work), forcing the government to nationalize the supply (basically buy all the production) and take over distribution under a strict rationing scheme, until supply stabilized. Nowadays a KF95 (FFP2 equivalent) mask costs less than KRW 500 and supply is plentiful. In early March last year, I had to line up once a week for the chance to buy a maximum of three masks for KRW 2500 each. Sure, the government should have anticipated all of this and establish an export ban early, after all "gouverner c'est prevoir". But what's more important is to be honest with the people who elected you and fix things as soon as possible.

None of what you mention can excuse or justify the blatant lies of the French government. A democratically elected government should not lie to its population, under no circumstances. You don't send a spokesperson on national TV to tell the population that masks are useless, and that the general population wouldn't even know how to use one(!!!).

I suspect the French population will be far more forgiving of a government fuckup followed by an apology and visible and effective efforts to fix the situation, than an outright lie that was only necessary in the first place because of arrogance, complacency and incompetence.

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