Do you live in France?

[lostinsociallydistancedfrance]

I live in France and was invited over for coffee by an English friend I haven't seen in a while, who said that they have been having play dates and sleep overs for their dc as normal. We have been socially distancing because I thought that that was required here. Are you socially distancing? This isn't a judgement thing, at all, I just want to find out what most other people are doing.

Also the hospitalisations are on a downward trend. So people think things are improving. And the government insists we can still avoid another lockdown. People aren’t really scared here, despite the low vaccination numbers.

France is notoriously vaccine-sceptic. Most of my colleagues don’t want a vaccine. I think if the government tries to insist on teachers being vaccinated there will be a riot!

Re social distancing in schools - yes, but also, no not really. I’ve still got 30 in a classroom with no room to swing a cat. They mix all over the place in the playground. The corridors are jam packed. The only time there’s social distancing is at lunch, where they have to always eat with the same people, and leave an empty chair between. Masks yes, but they fiddle with them. I watched a 14 year old take their mask off to sneeze this week

I haven’t seen anyone do the bise since last March. Apéro after work would be really hard with the curfew.

What happened in France over Christmas? Many restrictions?

I guess the vaccination program could be an issue in France due to speed and uptake?

It has had a bumpy start, that’s for sure. Again it’s apples and oranges - it’s being rolled out in such a different way, with a different set of challenges here... a much higher % of people reluctant to take it. So, eg the govt have insisted that elderly people in nursing homes have to be fully informed of all the risks and then given 5 days to think about it 🙄. Plus we don’t have medical centres here, as such. Most GPs work alone, without even a secretary or a nurse. There’s no way they could organise the kind of “vaccine hubs” that many medical centres in the U.K. have done so successfully. So it has taken time to set up vax clinics in hospitals and other, larger “vaccinnodromes” in sports halls etc. French people like their medical care delivered in a very specific, individualised way - and it doesn’t adapt well to the need to carry out rapid mass vaccinations!

Christmas? No hospitality open. No lockdown though and the curfew was lifted for the evening of the 24th ( french people traditionally have The Meal till very late in the 24th and open gifts after midnight). All hospitality closed.

Everyone I speak to is keen to have the vaccine. France may be slower than the uk with the first jab, but they are sticking to 3-4weeks to the second jab which may mean in the long run more people are fully protected quicker.

I live in France. I disagree that people are not scared. I know plenty of people who are.

We have not been socializing at all. Nothing. Not since the middle of last year. But we go to work and the kids go to school, in masks. All the children are wearing masks, nobody seems to be exempt.
We are super cautious though. But I know others who are similar. We wear masks all the time outside in the street as these are the rules in our town. I do not see people without masks.
Tests are really easy and free. I can get a test two minutes away.
It's not true that the French don't want the vaccine, before it was on offer, many were cautious, but not anymore.
There is nothing to do though, no activities for the kids, at least not mine as they were indoor activities. No restaurants, no cafes, no museums and so on. It's not normal life. And a curfew at 6pm. It's not all fun here. My life is no different to our last lockdown, when I also went to work and didn't do much else.

My mother, in France, will sit on the wall with a coffee a few metres from her neighbour who also has a coffee and they will have a natter.

@Crackerofdoom

We woke up last week and thought we had accidentally moved to the Lake District! Very grateful to live up a hill. Many people we know had some serious water ingress. Seems a long time since the summer drought. Hope you escaped unscathed.

Here everyone is cautious, very little socializing other than having a walk outdoors, the elderly are cautious & staying away from everyone else.
Everyone has worn a mask outdoors for months & months now.
Everyone disinfects their hands & trolley on going into supermarket, & immediately afterwards. All the restaurants & cafés & gyms are closed.
Curfew at 6pm
Kids are in school & their is very little after school interaction.
I think there will be another lockdown as the new variants are taking off

Is there a 6 PM curfew in France ?

@RubyViolet

Yes, there is. 6pm to 6am.

There is, @rubyviolet
Near me the French have definitely cut down massively on socialising, though it isn't cut out completely. Most grandparents are still very involved with their gc, as usual. There are far fewer play dates going on - as in, there would be daily groups of children going off together after school and that doesn't happen at all at the moment. My dc say a few classmates are having playdates or meet ups but not many and if the teacher hears she tells them off It isn't prohibited, but the government has said that not having another "confinement" is only going to be possible if everyone sociallly distances, basically. All inside sport is cancelled at the moment which makes the biggest difference to my dc.

No I don't.

Another difference with UK I think is testing, as we have walk in testing centres, no booking required.

I don’t know if testing is such an issue in the UK at the moment. There are walk-ins set up for asymptotic tests in areas with high infection rates and mass testing campaigns in areas where the SA variant had been identified. Online bookings aren’t as scarce as they were in September (which was a shit show) and in all honesty anyone can book one by just saying they have one of the three symptoms, no one is going to refuse them or check.

That’s probably not helped them identify any change in common symptoms with the new variants though (a sore throat and headache is one that I’ve noticed anecdotally on here). I think we’re possibly too reliant on the ZOE symptom study run by Guy’s hospital to identify new symptoms.

France has more fully vaccinated people than the UK at the moment apparently. It's just a different approach.

@cerisecherries do you have a link of how many vaccines have administrated in France?

By what I could find online France has vaccinated 2.5 million people with first dose and 250k with second, so no where near the same as the UK but i’m not sure how correct that is, does anyone have more upto date links?

@Spiritandwarmth we had no curfew on Christmas Eve but apart from that (including New Year) it's been 6pm.

I'm very rural and life has carried on as usual but with full compliance, IYSWIM. No kissing, strict mask wearing even outdoors. Shops are open but are rarely crowded anyway.

I've been to neighbours for lunch a few times, always maximum of six as advised. We have no limits on distance travelled or reasons for doing so.

I think it's been very well managed but I'll be glad when I can see my kids again. They're both in big cities elsewhere in Europe and have said they are worried by the crowds and the mask avoidance.

Baileys as of 7am today (when I listened to the news) France had first dosed 2,9m and fully vaccinated 600,000.

By what I could find online France has vaccinated 2.5 million people with first dose and 250k with second, so no where near the same as the UK but i’m not sure how correct that is,

First figure is about right, I'm not sure about the figure for the second _ I'll come back to that.

Yes, the initial roll out has been horribly slow for all sorts of reasons (the two main ones probably being the initial insistence by some French politicians on giving primacy to the Sanofi vaccine and agreement to abide by the EU vaccination programme rather than using emergency measure to go it alone ).

Close of play 13th Feb the sante publique/official public health web site was claiming 2,249,685 have been vaccinated...Fortunately it's improving ( hard for it not to). There's one person's overview of it all here, which includes an interesting observation about the UK vs. France when it comes to numbers who have received the second dose.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1360567951057944578.html

So how can that be more than the Uk, 500,000 here have had there 2nd vaccine and 15 million vaccinated?

Oh ok if 600k for 2nd dose that is slightly higher than the UK.

@Baileysforchristmas

So how can that be more than the Uk, 500,000 here have had there 2nd vaccine and 15 million vaccinated?

I think FingontheValiant and the article I provided the link to answer that..the 250K figure you quoted is possibly wrong.

Sources are claiming that in France more than 600k have received the second jab, mainly down to the way the UK have decided to schedule jab 2.

My friends live in France. They are quite a sociable couple, no kids, and have been mixing indoors with other households quite frequently. They went to spend the weekend in a friend's household the other day.