August 18, 2020
I was warned of the culture shock I would experience upon returning home to the U.S. I had spent a year in France, and it was undeniable that I would be coming back to a Colorado that was different from the one I had left. I was expecting my homecoming to feel odd—international travel in the midst of a global pandemic is bound to feel odd—and I braced myself for the mental indigestion that would set in once I made it home. Despite my preparation, I was confronted with something completely unexpected.
I didn’t realize I’d be utterly baffled and angered by the country I was returning to. I wasn’t expecting to feel as though I had traveled back in time to the onset of the pandemic in France. Everything I was taught to do for the last four months became invalid. There, I had been handed a completely separate set of facts by the government than those given to my loved ones in the United States. My expectations and behaviors related to the pandemic were completely different from those of my family, and I struggled to express how my experience living in France played a role in how I chose to interact with the pandemic.
This was something deeper and more profound than culture shock. I felt I was experiencing the after-effects of time travel and altitude sickness in a parallel universe. Nothing about the United States’ response to the pandemic made sense to me. Why were restaurants and bars not closed? Why were masks not mandatory? Why was interstate travel not banned? Why was there not increased testing? I had been led to expect these things because I experienced the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak in France, and because these are all reasonable expectations. None of the measures enacted by France (and many other countries) are unreasonable; that’s what was most-mind boggling to me. The United States has the resources to respond to this pandemic, but it has simply allowed gross mismanagement and negligence to make it seem like a measured response is impossible.
For a mere moment in March, I was living at the epicenter of the pandemic. I spent lockdown in Menton, a town on the Franco-Italian border, only a three-hour train ride from Milan. As soon as cases were being reported in Italy, we knew it was only a matter of days until cases would start appearing in Menton. Adding to the seriousness of the situation, the city has the highest population of retirees in all of France, meaning we were a town largely composed of people at especially high risk. We were in the eye of the storm. Things were going to get bad. I so distinctly remember the phone calls from my parents pleading for me to come home, finding it ridiculous that I would even entertain the idea of staying. At the time, the idea of boarding a grossly overpriced and crowded flight seemed far riskier than staying put. So I stayed, despite the overwhelming recommendations I was receiving from friends and family to return, and the citizens of Menton and I experienced something terrifying: a police-enforced mandatory lockdown and curfew that would last 56 days.
I will never forget the moment that Emmanuel Macron declared war on the coronavirus. I had curled myself into a ball on my bed, alone in my apartment, staring at a TV I had only turned on a handful of times in the previous nine months. I remember the night seeming especially dark and malicious outside my window as I listened to the president of the republic declare a national emergency. I have never understood the French language so clearly as I did in that moment. I have never been more afraid. There was something so unsettling about hearing the president utter those words, and it was strangely evocative of a World War II newsreel. After Macron’s declaration, the country had less than 24 hours to make arrangements for what was first announced as a mandatory two-week confinement. I frantically made plans to move in with a friend so I wouldn’t be living alone, and at 12:00 p.m. on March 17th, 2020, the streets of France went quiet.
The French government fed us quarantine in two-week chunks, maybe with the intention of making it easier for people to swallow. In some sense it did; it gave us false hope. We were thrice disappointed as the shelter-in-place measures were extended again and again. Every time I left my home, I had a nagging fear that I would be stopped and fined by the police. The patrols combing the streets were constant. A fine was worth anywhere between 150 to 300 Euros—about the cost of a plane ticket back to Colorado in normal times. We were required to have an attestation form and ID anytime we left our homes to prove that we were doing so for a “valid” reason, including exercising within a one-kilometer (a little over half a mile) radius of our residence once a day for an hour. Almost every day, I would flee to the foothills of the Alps on my daily runs to go to the quiet creek I had found in the first couple of weeks of quarantine. I lived a quarter of a mile from the sea but would go weeks without even seeing the beach. It was even prohibited to walk along the winding promenade that wraps around the bay where the town meets the sea.
There was a crushing social pressure to abide by these protocols. Any violation of quarantine was met with intense judgment from all community members. If you happened to encounter someone on the sidewalk, it was an awkward interaction made up of culpable glances and a vague notion that neither party should be out and about. We all felt guilty about our occasional trips outside. Amongst my friends who chose to stay in Menton, the pressure was even more intense: if we chose to take part in an activity that could potentially spread the virus, we were putting someone’s life at risk. If we chose to be selfish and gather, we could be responsible for someone’s death. Meeting up with groups of friends was completely unessential, yet we felt that some form of socialization was important for our wellbeing. Early on, I was able to form a pod with my three closest friends. This was our moral compromise. These were the only people I spent time with for the duration of confinement. We hatched elaborate plans to sneak between each other’s apartments, carefully choosing the hour of day and route we would take in order to avoid the police. We found solace in sleepovers spent playing French Scrabble and preparing decadent breakfasts. Our gatherings were a necessary retreat from the isolation that we were finding harder and harder to cope with.
As the weeks passed and I receded into the world that existed solely within my apartment, the only tangible difference in my days was the growth of the plants on my balcony. I no longer called friends back home on a daily basis and I stopped participating in Zoom game nights. Interacting with the outside world became exhausting. I felt I was able to better appreciate this strange distortion of reality from the confines of my own balcony. I would watch the undisturbed shadows on the street below, waiting for someone to walk through them. I would listen as the seagulls grew bolder and louder, completely overrunning our little seaside town. By April, it seemed as though they were Menton’s sole inhabitants. When their wings caught the light, they looked like tiny UFOs darting through the streets. I was greeted by the sweet fragrance of jasmine flowers, whose vines covered every available surface of Menton, and whose scent climbed up to my balcony on warm spring nights.
On the evening of our 55th—and last—day of confinement, I began to worry that it had all been a dream, that lockdown would start over again when I woke up the next morning. But my doubts were placated, when, on May 11th, we were once again allowed to leave our homes without a permission slip. France’s transition back to post-lockdown life was very gradual. The bakeries and cafes were the first to open, bringing sweet scents and strong coffee back into our lives. It took time for the beaches to reopen. Many weeks passed before the border with Italy could be crossed. Reusable masks were distributed to all citizens for free. It was mid-June when people were allowed to travel more than 100 km from their residence. Despite initial concerns over the proximity to Italy, the PACA region (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur) emerged from the virus relatively unscathed, possibly due to a combination of warm weather and smaller population centers, and maybe just luck. Paris and the region of Alsace experienced the highest infection and death rates in the country. Though much of France was designated as a green zone, both Alsace and Paris remained in the red through the end of June. In Menton, my friends and I were able to welcome summer when she greeted us, and it was truly a privilege to bask in the summer sun as so much of the world was still shuttered. We all felt a brief moment of repose. A repose that was short-lived, because at the end of June, I returned to the United States.
The other day, while on a long drive with my mom, we were both feeling particularly disheartened and fell into a rabbit hole of coronavirus gloom. We began tracing the parallel timelines of our lives during the initial weeks of the pandemic, back when we were still separated by an ocean. Throughout the months of confinement, my mom had constantly reminded me that the U.S. was a “month behind” France, so it wasn’t fair to compare the timelines of the two countries. But we realized that lockdown in France and lockdown in Colorado began within a couple of days of each other. The response to the pandemic in these two regions started at the same time, so what’s the excuse for where the U.S. is now? I still feel the same panic and uncertainty about the virus that I did at the beginning of March. Why is there a lack of leadership and protocol six months into this crisis? Why have people been dying at such astounding rates? There is no excuse. The summer has come and gone, and the pandemic remains. This virus doesn’t deserve to see the continual changing of the seasons.
Throughout the pandemic, I have been incredibly fortunate to have a certain level of choice in how I live. I realize the immense amount of privilege I exercised by staying in France and being able to work and take classes from home in the U.S. From this position, it is incredibly frustrating to be back in the United States where there is no unified policy, a mounting death toll, and no consensus on what is actually happening. CC continues to change its protocol every week, and I can’t help but think about my classmates in France who are returning to a relatively normal school year.
There are so many things missing from the United States’ response to the pandemic, but one of them is more inexplicable than the rest—a lack of public will. Though the lockdown in France was somewhat militaristic in nature, there was an element that felt completely personal. We all seemed to trust one another, to accept that we were all in the same shitty situation and that these circumstances would not change unless we protected one another. I may have broken the rules by sneaking around, but I wasn’t violating the premise for which those rules stood. I ensured that every action I took would not intentionally harm the wellbeing of another, and so did almost every other citizen of Menton. Some may attribute this behavior to an underlying fear of the police, others may say that it is a derivative of the French doctrine of fraternité. Whatever the cause, this mutual trust made a difference. It also made it painfully clear how lacking we are of this characteristic in the United States. I complied with what was considered to be one of the strictest lockdowns in the world because I felt as though I was fulfilling my duty to my fellow humans. Why is there such a lack of this sentiment among many in the U.S.? Why have we decided that some human lives are more valuable than others by forcing the most vulnerable to go to work? Why have those in positions of privilege not done more to safeguard the health of essential workers, elderly people, BIPOC, immunocompromised individuals, and everyone impacted by the intersections of COVID-19 and systemic oppression? It’s as simple as choosing to wear a mask and to wear it correctly.
During confinement, I read Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway.” The book was a perfect accompaniment to the distortion of reality I was facing. There was one line that stuck in my thoughts like tar. It comes in a passage when the legacies of WWI are being discussed, and the characters are at a point of reflection, much like we are today. The quote is simple: “What we owe to the dead.” What do we owe to the dead? The 745,000 global deaths (as of this writing). Do we owe them a vaccine or a strong economy? Do we owe them acknowledgement and remembrance? Or, could it be that we owe the dead fewer deaths? The possibility of being responsible for someone else’s death is a fear that has guided my—and many others’—actions since the start of the pandemic. So, I ask again, what do we owe the dead? Maybe it’s the possibility to not have died.
October 20, 2020
It's October. The President of the United States has contracted COVID-19. There are now over one million global deaths. The skies have been choked with smoke for months. I dream of being in France—a France in which I have no impending election anxiety, where there is universal mask-wearing, in-person classes, and fresh, salty sea air. But, as much as I want to believe that my problems would disappear on the other side of the Atlantic, I'm not that naïve. My time in France was a fantasy made up of days spent lounging on the beach and impromptu train rides to Italy; this is no longer the case.
My friends in France are back in quarantine—there was an outbreak on their campus. The Alpes-Maritime are in a state of emergency. A few weeks ago, Tempete Alex, an extratropical cyclone, destroyed many of the mountain towns of the region, displacing thousands and wrecking a precious portion of cultural heritage. The death toll from COVID-19 is mounting across Europe as winter approaches. The catastrophes our world faces are inescapable, no matter which corner of the planet you may try to hide in.
I am no longer shocked by the state of this country. Instead, a thin film of disillusionment coats my thoughts. However, I stand by my initial analysis of the U.S. COVID-19 response. The difference now is that I realize that the solution is not as simple as I wanted it to be. I wanted the U.S. to magically transform into a hyper-centralized state with a more robust social safety net (like France). It is clear that the United States will not adopt the French system of governance, or for that matter, a universal mentality of collective responsibility. In fact, any solution, or progress towards one, seems to be buried under piles of partisanship and distrust. As the president so compassionately said, we’re all tired of this pandemic, but death cannot be exhausted. It continues to churn long after we have all grown weary. American lives are being used as political pawns, and the clock just keeps ticking away. It’s been eight months.
Pandemics | October 2020