Much like the rest of Europe at the time and now the whole of the world, France responded to the growing threat of the pandemic by closing schools and urging citizens to stay indoors unless they had essential errands to complete.Here, in the United States, this was a large inconvenience at best and a reason to claim unemployment at worst. But, in France, there is a wholly different issue.
His address to the nation was made on Thursday March 12, the eve of the seventieth consecutive weekend of protests for the yellow vests. This was a significant problem because the government had banned gatherings of more than 100 people. Whether this was a use of the pandemic to attempt to ruin the protesters momentum them had built up in the past year and a half, I cannot say, but that is how they interpreted it. Major roadways and cultural centers were blocked off from public use and lined with armored police units. That was nothing new at this point considering this weekend would have been the anniversary of the worst violence of the entire movement, performed in Paris on the now closed Champs-Elysees. It seemed to the demonstrators that the president was attempting to use both the social pressure of being discouraged from close gatherings and the threat of heavy police measures to finally end the longest protest in French history. Yeah…didn’t work.
The protests, albeit much smaller, continued against government mandates. In Paris, they congregated outside the Montparnasse train station to chant their anti-Macron slogans. Most wore protective masks, as recommended in the United States now. But these demonstrators had been enduring tear gas attacks for more than a year now so many already used this gear during protest times to begin with. Honestly, the amount of protective gear the yellow vests wore, it would be a difficult argument to say their gatherings furthered much of any disease spread.
France on Fire 