Rick's b.log - entry 2021/03/19

What the hell, Castex?

But sometimes something happens that is so unbelievably dumb that you want to repeatedly beat your head off the table as an act of stimming because, frankly, the blood shattered sinciput would be less painful than the act of thinking about it.

What's so unbelievably dumb? Easy. A big swathe of the central-north of France has been placed into a month long lockdown as of midnight tonight. This encompasses Paris.

Now, I know, it had to happen. The rates of infection there are rising too rapidly, the local hospitals are saturated, so they're having to airlift people out to hospitals in other (less affected) regions. Something had to be done.

But, Castex, the French PM, announced the two measures of placing 16 départements into lockdown, and easing our curfew as the days lengthen. It'll now be from 7pm, not 6pm.
But he overlooked one critical detail. He didn't put any restrictions on public transport or motorways (etc) today. So, quite predictably, all those Parisians with second homes or family members in other parts of France decided that, no, they didn't want to endure a month long lockdown (which in reality is likely to be twice as long). So they left. Loads came this way, to Brittany. To Lyon. To the sunny South (except Alpes-Maritimes). Photos on websites taken at the station of Montparnasse had crowds of people, like it was a beer tent at Hell Fest or something. 73,000 tickets sold, according to LCI. Of course, the automatic ticket pricing system got its exercise today. The more demand there was, the more tickets rose in price. SNCF added carriages to the TGV to help sell as many tickets as possible. Not a surprise when they were going for around €160 each.

So like some sort of super-spreader event, I can imagine that this third wave that was mostly affecting the central-north, will soon spread across the entire country, risking putting all of us into another lockdown.

Marvellous.

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David Boddie, 19th March 2021, 22:36

We're trying to avoid going into a third wave up here in the frozen north, though you'll always find selfish wankers who still manage to behave like there's nothing to worry about.    The weekend is here, so people will try and find a way to gather in spite of restrictions. With Easter coming up, there will be the usual excuses about needing to get out of town for the holidays.    You can't help feeling that it's a repeat of this time last year.

David Pilling, 21st March 2021, 03:23

BBC news showed a queue of cars trying to get out of Paris and the passengers being interviewed by the police.

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