Some of the latest news from the european front ( covid-19 evolution in france )
Last edited Sun Mar 29, 2020, 06:09 PM - Edit history (1)
Hi everyone,
The wave is inexorably coming in France from Spain and Italy.
Some clusters especially in the east are now saturated. Transfers of Patients to the west started via High-Speed Train with mobile emergency room, along with the launch of a military operation called resilience.
Those are actually the same resources used to fight the Ebola pandemic in Africa ! Multiple air bridge are being set up with both designed military planes and "medicalized" regular airbus. A military hospital has also been deployed in the East.
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In view of the latest data from Spain and Italy next week is going to be a nightmare.
- Our age pyramid structure is pretty similar. Basically, the older the population is, the worst it is. Paradoxically the higher the life expectancy the higher the risk of a high mortality rate ( if the epidemic is not contained at an early stage).
Nb. In Europe , France Italy and Spain have the highest number of "4th age people" and centenarians.
Many other similarity between our countries do not bode well for next couple of weeks.
- The density of the population in major city and the quality of the means of transport are rather high in France which is similar to the web of cities of the north of Italy.
Paradoxically, the more efficient & cheaper it is to move from a city to the next via public transport the higher the probability of having multiple major clusters festering.
- One of the main concern like in many countries is the sustainability of our test (and equipment) supply ( and their reliability )..
Systematic testing seems to be the only alternative to quarantine. In Europe, most countries did not have enough tests or masks & materials to equip everyone from the start. This is in large part due to the austerity policy championed by Germany & the Netherlands over the last 15 to 20 years in the euro-zone. Supply was streamlined and became increasingly reliant on import from china.
In France after the Sars crisis France had 1.3 billion mask in stocks. In 2011 President Nicolas Sarkozy (right wing) decided to allow the decrease of the national stock & transferred the responsibility to the hospitals. The stocks rapidly decreased to a couple hundred millions and the policy was confirmed by president Holland (center left) in 2013 due to budgetary constraints.
When Macron ( "center" ) was elected there was probably north of a hundred million masks left. Unable to loosen the yoke of Maastricht criteria the current majority kept the same line trying to patch and preserve the hospital system while avoiding increasing the debt.
Regarding tests, France was able to acquire enough of them at the very beginning, but got stuck due to the inability of medical analysis laboratory to processed the increased stream. It appears they were lacking chemical revealers used in the process. This is why they chose to proceed with a confinement/quarantine style policy despite its staggering economic cost.
Nb. The situation was probably similar in many euro zone countries with the noticeable exception of Germany
A more systemic use of new manufactured tests will be possible in April. Beyond that, a long term objective is to have test available in order to detect antibodies & immune people. Once the peak is reached, as an increasing number of recovered people come back home, a prolonged confinement will become difficult.
It will be necessary to size the full scope of the pandemic. This require us to identify both the "healthy carrier" population and monitor the immune one ( if we want to be able to progressively loosen the confinement).
Obviously those thing will take time, clearly no Easter eggs for the French ;o).
One of the thing this crisis exposed is the excessive reliance on imports and the systematic de-localization of what now appears to be critical industrial assets. The capacity of a few countries ( like Germany ) to maintain some of those production locally was not necessarily the result of better insights or preparedness but simply a by-product of a stronger overall industrial position.
I hope the USA as a major economic power is now prepared to face those issues and will learn from the experience of medical personnel in Europe. You may have a clown at the white house, but many states seems to do what needs to be done on the costs and the sheer size and relative youth of the country should make it easier to deal with this pandemic
Cheers from Paris
Edit / update : while there are currently less monitored cases in France ( non life threatening cases ), there is unfortunately more ( critical ) patients in intensive care units (4600) than in Italy ( 3900 ) or Spain (4200 ).