Briefing The pandemic TheEconomistMarch21st2020^15
The lockdown and the long haul
IEUING, IERLIN, MADRID, PARIS AND SEOUL
European countries are being dosed down in response to the covid-i,g pandemic.
That cannot last for ever
S
OMBTIMl!S PBOPLBcanbea bit of a disap-
pointment to their politicians. On
March nth Emmanuel Macron, addressing
the French nation on the fight against oo-
vid-t9, appealed to their sense of "national
solidarity". In asking them to follow basic
health advice and stay at home as much as
possible, the president said, he was count-
ing on their •individual and collective dis-
dpllne·. Individually and collectively,
much of the country went on to spend a
rather sunny early spring weekend w.m-
derlng around parks with friends and
shopping in crowded street markets. Mr
Macron returned to their television
screens on Man:h 16th singularly unim-
pressed. •Not only are you not protecting
yourselves,u he admonished the nation:
"You are not protecting others.·
And so the state stepped in. From mid-
day on March t?tb onwards, everyone leav-
ing home required a signed attestation-
hancl-written, or printed out from the inte-
rlor ministry's website-that they were on
essential business: shopping for food or
basic necessities, attending medical ap-
pointments, or going to a job that cannot be
done from home. ca~. restaurants, cine-
mas, nightdubs, museums and sports cen-
tres are all closed. Ooly food shops, phar-
macies, banks, newsagents, petrol stations
and-the irony-tobacco shops remain
open. There are 100,000 police officers and
gendarmes on the streets keep.Ing an eye on
things: on March 18th they issued 4,
fines. Mr Macron has also mobilised the
anny. It is not a lockdown on the scale ofit·
aly's (see Europe section); but it was a step
change in the country's response.
A couple of hours before Mr .Macron
spoke, Boris Johnson, the British prime7 Also in this section
19 The economic emergencyminister, took a newly tough line, too,
though from a more lax starting point. No
self-printed papers, or for that matter, en-
fon:ed closures-but a directive to stay
away from both the office and the pub, and
a clear steer that further restrictions could
be coming Jn pretty short order. On the
same day AngelaMerkel, the German chan-
cellor, issued a series of Mguidelines» that
aimed to level up the various limits on
physl.cal interaction that had been Im-
posed by the country's different states.
Spain had moved more quickly. At a seven-
hourcabinetmeeting on March 14th. its co-
alition government approved a decree put-
ting the whole country into a is-day state of
emergency.
It seemed that over the weekend-the
Ides of March, as fate would have it-Eu-
rope had woken up to the sheer scale of the
crisis which it faced: so, to some extent, did
President Donald Trump's administration
(see United States). In part, this was anoth-
er sample of a cognitive phenomenon
that SARS-cov-2, the virus which causes co-
vid-t9, bas been provoking around the
world: exponential whiplash. Knowing in
principle that something may take only a
few clays to double in size does little to pre-
pare you for the experience of being
continually behind the ever-steepening
curve such doubling creates.
on the clay of Mr Macron's first speech, ~