Once action was forced on the government, the means chosen were private sector organisations not public sector ones. Hear from leading global experts and commentators on what the new president and Congress must do to stem the flood of dark money and misinformation that is warping politics around the world. Certainly, one of the great disappointments of the 20th century has been what followed in Vietnam after the defeat of the US in 1975. "Sorry to hear my friend @EmmanuelMacron has tested positive for coronavirus. President Emmanuel Macron is to hold a meeting about the country’s vaccination campaign today - as health experts defend the strategy to stagger vaccinations slowly. They have shown that it is possible to stop the virus rather than just run after it. But it can only make sense… if the leeway it offers is used to deliver a crash programme creating the means to defeat the virus. There is also now a growing body of specialist literature from sociologists, epidemiologists and others supporting these indictments. He will self-isolate for seven days but 'will continue to work and carry out his activities remotely', the brief statement added. Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF. He would have to redirect public subsidies from the world of business to that of public and co-operative enterprise. New Zealand is there in the list of exempted states for entry into France as it is for Britain, but not Vietnam. Yet the French vaccination programme is in worse shape than most, taking much longer to get off the ground. This has been, and remains, the case in every instance where that choice could be made – from mask production, the operation of telephone advice lines all the way to the use of private consultancies to advise on policy rather than relying on open debate through the accountable structures of French democracy. You have to look hard across the French media to find any discussion of these two experiences. Emmanuel Macron has said France will remain an ally of the UK despite a Brexit decision that he says was built from "many lies and false promises". But the decision to do so has been taken by private enterprise because there is profit in doing so. January 12, 2021. There is little point in exploring for deeper explanations if we do not start from the assertion that it would have been possible to cut the epidemic off at the beginning. Anyone in government with half a conscience should take a daily glance at this site so that they keep at the forefront of their minds the fact that some have succeeded and saved lives (and their economy) while others have failed and, as a consequence, killed. Join us on Thursday 21 January, 5pm UK time/12pm EST. In the France of today, it would mean democratising the response to the virus, not imprisoning it in the closed corridors of power. Why has Macron rejected the joint enterprise that defeats COVID-19? Joe Biden has promised to revive it – but can his new administration stem the flow of online disinformation and shady political financing that has eroded the trust of many US voters? President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for COVID-19, the Elysée Palace has revealed. We celebrated the epidemic’s birthday by notching up the highest daily totals yet of infections and deaths. Is the poverty and youthfulness of Vietnam an “advantage” that explains these different totals? Macron posted a self-shot video on Friday in … The committee also called for more travel restrictions from the UK. But Macron’s government spokesperson Gabriel Attal pushed back any idea that the President might follow Rubirola’s call: “At this stage, we are not proposing a new lockdown.” To which Prime Minister Jean Castex added that it would be “a last resort” to go for a lockdown and that “The situation must really be at its worst to close the schools.”. [1] Corinne Lhaïk, President cambrioleur, Fayard, 2020. They cite a key colleague: “He likes to keep all options open, persuaded that, in the end, he will sort things out.”. French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for Covid-19, the presidential Elysee Palace announced. Here we enter the real argument: it is not Macron’s personality that explains why France is grappling with an epidemic seemingly without end, though it, and the particular foibles of the multiple layers of public administration in the country, do help explain some of the specifics of the French failure as opposed to those of other European countries. Since early summer, experts have been pointing out that, if the rate of daily recorded infections is running at over 5,000, then the resources put into tracing could not cope. They have tested, traced and isolated with determination and so kept that work manageable. The testing system has neither the public willingness to be involved nor the technical capacity to deliver both an adequate level of tests across a whole community or quick enough results. When a killer virus is on the loose, lockdown is the first step, not the last, a government should take. When France emerged from its second lockdown last month, the president ordered restaurants, bars, cinemas, theatres, museums and sports. No government in Europe or the Americas heeded that advice. The political decisions and administrative practices behind these failures have been pilloried in a series of internal unpublished, but leaked reports and by inquiries carried out by parliamentarians. Europe must recognise the vital contributions of vulnerable migrants, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. Please, The subscription details associated with this account need to be updated. The tracing system has also never got off the ground. We hear daily radio slots urging us to use the tracing app on our phones, but they still tell us that no more than 10 million have so far downloaded it, that is 10 million out of 65. Mr Macron is the latest world leader to contract the virus, following UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US president Donald Trump. That was clear from the outset, both in his work as an advisor to, and minister for, his predecessor as president, François Hollande, and in the programme he published during his campaign to get elected. It believes this work should be left up to the private sector, large or small, to get on with. Will you add your name? The Spanish prime minister’s office said he would be tested. It said in a brief statement that the president had a test 'as soon as the first symptoms appeared'. In the France of today, it would mean democratising the response to the virus, not imprisoning it in the closed corridors of power. His is the state that seeks not to administer things, not to help organise services, to foresee needs and to provide the means to meet them. Mr Macron’s wife Brigitte, who is 67, is also self-isolating, but has no symptoms. It seeks to administer people in the interest of things and not the reverse. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sent Macron his best wishes. France has recorded over … Nothing was put in place or planned before the virus surged in late February and March. In a video on Twitter, French President Emmanuel Macron said: "When, in one of the world's oldest democracies, supporters of an outgoing president take up arms to … Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, SE1 9GF. The weekend just gone marked the anniversary of the news of the first registered Covid-19 death, of the publication of the DNA code for SARS-Cov-2 and of the warning from the World Health Organisation to governments around the world that they needed to review their systems for dealing with epidemics making sure that they could test people for the virus and trace the contacts of those infected so they could be isolated and the chain of contagion cut. Thursday January 14 2021, 12.01am, The Times President Macron’s government is expected to impose tighter restrictions today after being warned that a … Mr macron will now isolate for seven days - but the palace said he will continue to work remotely. That is to say, a hard lockdown must not be used as the sole means of beating the epidemic, but as a measure brought in to give time to build the defensive system required. They will only secure public support when they are clearly used as a key step on the way to bringing the epidemic to an end. Government officials vowed to … When travelling now from France to Britain, the relevant pages of the British government website giving you the rules to follow include an alphabetical list of those places from which you can arrive without immediately going into quarantine. ... 16 January 2021. Sánchez has had many coronavirus tests during the course of the pandemic and they have all come back negative, even though many of his close contacts, including his wife, have tested positive for the virus. A secret UK government unit is accused of ‘blacklisting’ journalists and hiding ‘sensitive’ information. A better argument for the success of Vietnam or New Zealand is that the authorities and the population there have learned from the dangerous experience of earlier potential epidemics or have seen what was happening to others and acted with authority, public involvement and official determination. Macron bolsters Johnson’s Covid credibility Despite bitter divisions over a Brexit deal, the two leaders have a warm relationship and a shared approach to the virus James Forsyth Thirty-five deaths in total in a poor country of 95 million as against 67,000 in France, a rich country of 65 million, takes some explaining. Mr Macron held a Covid-19 defence council meeting yesterday to discuss further restrictions, which are due to be made public by Jean Castex, the prime minister, today. He could not deliver such a programme without the involvement of people and their organisations from the bottom up. Experience shows this is not at all what Macron and his ministers have in mind. It said the president took a test “as soon as the first symptoms appeared”. Macron is trying to re-engineer France more fully in line with the needs of private finance and large-scale enterprise. Violence, corruption and cynicism threaten America's flagging democracy. French Prime Minister Jean Castex would also go into quarantine as he had been in contact with Macron, French media reported. 2021/01/18 06:53:12 The Prime Minister underwent a diagnostic test this morning which came back negative, and will take another test before the end of his self-isolation, according to his office. 894646. By Bill McLoughlin PUBLISHED: 10:55, Sat, Jan 9, 2021 Join the conversation: get our weekly email, We encourage anyone to comment, please consult. That is to say a virus present, but controllable, as opposed to a virus rampant everywhere. Michèle Rubirola, the councillor responsible for health in Marseille where the new variant has now surfaced, asked: “Why not a new lockdown?” As she spoke, test evidence revealed that the variant was being found elsewhere across the country. Or has past exposure to other coronavirus infections developed some degree of immunity? Castex and Attal show how little the Macronie understands what is needed to deal with an epidemic in the modern world. President Macron will meet with Prime Minister Jean Castex and Health Minister Olivier Véran and other relevant ministers at … Macron joined all but two of the European Union's 27 leaders at a summit in Brussels late last week to discuss climate change, the EU budget and Turkey. Three remarks made as this anniversary slipped by take us to the heart of the country’s problem. Emily Bell Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism and director, Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia Journalism School, Anoa Changa Journalist focusing on electoral justice, social movements and culture, Peter Geoghegan openDemocracy investigations editor and author of 'Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics', Josh Rudolph Fellow for Malign Finance at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, Chair: Mary Fitzgerald Editor-in-chief, openDemocracy. French President Emmanuel Macron is the latest world leader to test positive for Covid-19. The author is a journalist who for some years was the head of the political desk at the right wing weekly L’Express and currently writes for the business daily L’Opinion. The very latest of the legion of books on Macron gives just such an argument. France can still not deliver on that simple call from the WHO a year ago. With the variant now present in schools in the Paris suburbs it faces an impossible task because the government failed to use the last year to put in place sufficient resources. New Zealand has only some 5 million inhabitants and cannot compare on size, but it has fewer deaths, though somewhat more recorded cases, than Vietnam. How can one not ask such a question as the toll of Covid-19 deaths continues and lockdowns tighten across Europe a year after governments let the virus in through the continent’s front door and while a punch-drunk public begins to realise that the current vaccination programme is far from meaning an early end to our pain? Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron speak during a bilateral meeting in Biarritz, France, Aug. 26, 2019, on the third day of the annual G7 Summit. EMMANUEL MACRON admitted 'the EU was embroiled in civil war' as anti-bloc sentiments took a grip of the European Parliament, unearthed accounts reveal. Jean-François Delfraissy, the chairman of the scientific committee, the French equivalent of Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said that action was needed to stop the mutant coronavirus strain first identified in Britain swamping the country and leaving French hospitals in crisis. On the anniversary day there were four new cases in New Zealand, and one in Vietnam as against 20,034 in France and 59,937 in Britain. Unlike Hollande, elected on the back of rhetorical flourishes against high finance, or François Mitterrand, elected in 1981 with a programme of nationalisations and major social reforms, Macron has not needed a U-turn moment. French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his New Year wishes to the military forces at Prefecture Maritime de l'Atlantique in Brest, France, January 19, 2021. He met with Macron on Monday of this week. Arnaud Fontanet, a member of President Macron’s special Covid era Scientific Council, warned that the new “British” variant was “almost a new epidemic in the epidemic” against which vaccinating even just the most vulnerable would be “a race against the clock”. Those voices that suggested the time to act was before, not after, the epidemic accelerated were silenced and ignored. So far, Castex hadn’t … The upsurge of popular concern, solidarity and activity… was left to fade away. We have noticed that there is an issue with your subscription billing details. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said he will self-isolate until December 24. [i] The author writes of his “taste for domination” and of how he “wants to work on issues himself”. President Macron’s government is expected to impose tighter restrictions today after being warned that a failure to act would plunge France into British-style chaos by April. There will be vaccines produced in France later this year. The upsurge of popular concern, solidarity and activity during the first lockdown in March and April – not just the balcony applause for health workers, but the volunteers turning out masks in their living rooms, arranging food supplies for those in need, looking after elderly, isolated neighbours – that was left to fade away. TV images showed the leaders wearing masks, generally keeping good distance and preferring elbow bumps to the usual handshakes, kisses and hugs – and occasionally using handgel dispensers in the room. And its failures in the face of the epidemic are in line with these policy options imposed since Macron was elected. That is a level way, way below the rate of recorded infections for the past months. Unlike them, he has not had to abandon a left programme in favour of one of austerity in public spending and tax cuts for firms and the rich. The restrictions must not there just to string out the pain. The cruelty of this contrasts nastily with the public image of a courteous and caring president, but is apparent in all aspects of the Paris government’s response to the virus. As one recent French academic author puts it in the title of his book, this is a “fake state”, one that organises its own powerlessness in response to public needs, compensating for that by its organised powerfulness when it comes to public order.[i]. Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa, 59, cancelled official trips and is isolating after meeting Mr Macron for a working lunch at the palace on Wednesday. Aides have said Mr Macron is not seriously ill, reports say, but Prime Minister Jean Castex is self-isolating … If you have any queries about republishing please contact us. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have also tested positive for the virus. The Prime Minister has said he has 'just spoken' to French President Emmanuel Macron about transport delays. When going in the other direction, from Britain into France, the equivalent list of exempted countries does not include Vietnam, the former colony whose people booted out their French would-be rulers in 1954 after a bloody attempt by successive governments in Paris to overturn the Vietnamese declaration of independence in 1945. To understand what is possible is a necessary condition for having the capacity to act and to see why such a capacity was put on one side. Coronavirus Pandemic. The more immediate question is the way this approach reveals itself in the choices it has made around the epidemic. The favoured comparisons are with other failures in other European countries. The French president marked the historic timing of his annual New Years Address, as the transition period finally came to a … [The French state] seeks to administer people in the interest of things and not the reverse. Astonishingly, the French health service is still proceeding with plans to reduce its number of beds. He did that from the very beginning. French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for COVID-19 and will self-isolate for the next week, as virus cases surge in Europe. [1] Frédéric Farah, Fake State : L’impuissance organisée de l’Etat en France, H&O, 2020. It has tried and failed, securing less than 20 per cent participation rates early in December. From keystroke to brushstroke: where’s the art in modern work? Please, President Macron is likely to extend a 6pm curfew to most or all of France. The argument is that you are so unlikely to pick up the virus there that there is no need for you to go into isolation for the time that any infection by SARS-Cov-2 might take to reveal itself. The last one on the list is Vietnam. Victoria Craw Victoria_Craw news.com.au December 17, … Mr Macron had lunch with European Council President Charles Michel, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Organisation for Economic Co … Macron tested positive for Covid-19 on last week, showing symptoms of fatigue, headache, dry cough and muscle aches. EMMANUEL MACRON has been accused of destroying French business after the lockdown measures were extended this week. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. For both countries, the WHO tabulation speaks of “clusters of cases” rather than the “community transmission” it records for France or Britain. French President Emmanuel Macron at ArianeGroup site in Vernon, France. Accept Terms & Conditions All their eggs are currently in the basket of the vaccines. We can just look at the limited numbers French ministers claim will be vaccinated. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is self-isolating after meeting Mr Macron (Michel Euler/AP) EU leaders met in person in Brussels on December 10-11, for the first time since October. Inaction then, and failure to respond properly since, means that the virus continues to spread amid chaotic and half-hearted attempts to control it, alongside accumulating economic difficulties and growing poverty. When I stood at the edge of a ditch in My Lai in May that year, the ditch where reputedly many of the corpses of the victims of Lt. Calley’s platoon had been photographed in 1968 – a cartridge casing from an M16 rifle that my sandal scuffed up from the dusty ground is still on a shelf beside my desk as I write – or when I wandered with late night crowds of women in Danang out and about for the first time in their lives, they told me, free from the fear of rape, the last thing I imagined was a government that would, 45 years later, be jailing some of its milder critics. It is not personality, but political philosophy that lies behind the current murderous inability to deal with the virus. Mr Macron also held the French government’s weekly Cabinet meeting on Wednesday in the presence of Prime Minister Jean Castex and other ministers. We do not need the WHO to warn us that there will be no “herd immunity” this year. Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Giuseppe Conte and others were seen initially mingling in the summit room with their face masks on. Or is it because the country has an authoritarian political regime, one that can impose choices from above and demand obedience from those below? The figures are as of 11 January 2021 and come from the WHO website at https://covid19.who.int/table. Mr Castex’s office said the prime minister is also self-isolating for seven days. Mr Macron and Prime Minister Jean Castex have come under criticism for the slow start to vaccinations since they began on Dec 27. It has not come back and Macron does not want it to. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sent Macron his best wishes. What stands out is the refusal to engage in a simple process of foresight linked to an aversion to taking decisive, over-arching action. The problem from Macron’s point of view is two-fold. We are all … But it can only make sense to a bored, exhausted, sidelined and frustrated public if the leeway it offers is used to deliver a crash programme creating the means to defeat the virus, one driven by the involvement of the population at all levels and fuelled by openness of information and decision-taking. We need a huge public outcry. Macron is the third leader of a Group of Seven nation to contract the virus, after U.S. President Donald Trump and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson -- who wished the French leader a “speedy recovery” in a Tweet. No one in France has yet challenged Jacinda Ardern’s democratic credentials. The prime minister of Portugal, António Costa, who had lunch with Macron on Wednesday, has taken a Covid-19 test, has shown no symptoms and is in self-isolation awaiting the result, his office said. Even on the prime policy option of vaccination, he did not pick up the option of establishing a publicly-supported, not-for-profit production line in France –indeed it may never even have occurred to him to think that way – so the country is currently reliant on Pfizer’s Belgian facility. All that, just to endure this?