A COVID-19 Halloween
Today is Halloween. It’s the day when we watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, we set out our jack o’ lanterns for the last night, and our daughter wears her costume all day in high anticipation of trick-or-treating that night. Except that with the global events of this year, especially this month, Halloween is pretty much cancelled in France as far as I can tell.
On Wednesday night, President Macron announced that the nation would be under a new lockdown order until at least December 1 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. France had seen the number of new cases of the disease approach the 50,000 mark, with the total number of total active cases soaring up to and above 1 million. While the number of deaths from the disease is still relatively low, currently just under 300 for the 7-day moving average, that number would continue to increase if no measures were taken.
Another issue in France in recent weeks has been the rising conflict between radical Islamists and the French state, which has not backed down from its support of the guarantee of the freedom of expression, including displaying on its own initiative a caricature of Mohammed, the central figure to the Muslim religion, which has caused an outcry among the more violently-inclined elements of the Islamic world. Macron’s statement that Islam is a religion “in crisis globally” did nothing to please other Muslims, both in France and abroad. This is hardly a new subject, and surely will not be cleanly resolved by the end of the year, but the fact that the issue seems to be flaring up worse than before is in keeping with the way that 2020 has been going, and as things will be going for the foreseeable future.
To be honest, the new quarantine doesn’t bother me all that much. We’ve already been subjected to a long quarantine at the beginning of the year, during which I worked from home, Miriam did not go to school, and we needed to fill out a form every time we left the house. This time, Miriam will still be in school, and I will most likely still be going into the office, though I may end up working from home for a portion of the week. The important difference is that schools will remain open, which will make this new quarantine, however long it lasts, much easier to bear.
It’s during times like these that life in France seems pretty good. In this situation, the centralized government of France has the authority and the willingness to make the tough decisions necessary to allow people’s lives to continue on with as little disruption as possible. I feel for those in the USA or elsewhere whose children have been at home since March, or who have either lost their jobs or don’t know when they will receive another full paycheck. Generally speaking, in a crisis, central leadership has a better chance of producing a favorable result than a system in which fifty individual states decide their policies, or when each of thousands of school system governments determine how they will respond.
Our family has handled the events of 2020 surprisingly well. To start things off, our trip to Wuhan, China was of course cancelled. My long-suffering wife took care of two children mostly by herself for a few months while many French families pawned their children off on the grandparents full-time. COVID-19 might be the best thing that ever happened to Daniel, who enjoys having more people at the house to play with each day. Though I was initially disappointed to lose my position at a small company that could no longer pay my salary, I immedialy found another position as a CTO / Lead Developer of another small company. My commute has been reduced by about half an hour. Miriam has taken the dissapointment of not trick-or-treating in stride.
Though it certainly is a shame that we can’t do much for Halloween this year besides a couple of jack o’ lanterns, we count ourselves lucky that our lifestyle has not been substantially disrupted. In the future, we’ll be doing everything we can to ensure that things stay that way. COVID-19 may eventually cease to be a real concern, but based on the global trends we are seeing now, a year or two or from now, for some of us missing out on Halloween might be the least of our problems.