Winning The War.. From Home

Paris Diary Koël Purie Rinchet

When did hand-sanitisers become weapons of war? Yesterday, the biggest luxury conglomerate, LVMH, announced that its perfume factories are manufacturing sanitisers in bulk and giving it to the government and hospitals for free. That’s when it sunk in – the country, nay the privileged Western world, is at war and everyone, especially the big old bastions of that privilege, have to do their part, or we won’t make it through to the other side.

It started with a cancelled dinner party and a witty joke about serving toilet paper as a delicacy. President Emmanuel Macron addressed the nation that evening and announced the closure of schools indefinitely. He sounded grave, but kids across France leapt for joy, imagining the fun they were about to have. It’s Day 2 of the official lockdown here in France and I am sure, those same kids (and their parents) are desperate to go back to school.

Unless you live it, you have no understanding of what confinement can do to you. I don’t mean the kind where you use your discretion to self-isolate, still go meet friends when bored and get your personal trainer to come home instead of going to the gym. I’m talking about the kind when your President addresses the nation a second time, in as many days and declares, “Nous sommes en guerre” (We are at war). And that war is not being fought by trained men at a safely distant frontier, but right outside (or perhaps even inside) your four walls. An invisible enemy, armed with its own conspiracy theories and racist jargon, that only you and I can defeat, but you and I could be hosting it without even knowing.