History repeats itself but it is not told in the same words. Thursday March 18, 2021, Jean Castex gave a press conference to announce the new health measures decided by the government in order to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. While the resuscitation support figures are still not encouraging, the Prime Minister has decided to re-define the inhabitants of Hauts-de-France, Île-de-France, Eure, or even the Alpes-Maritimes, to “curb the virus without locking us in”. During his announcement, the head of government did not hide that soon, other departments could be affected by these re-containment measures: “These measures that we are taking today in the most affected regions could be extended, if necessary, to other parts of the territory”, he had warned.
The other name of containment
On the Elysee side, this decision to re-define certain regions of France was taken with a grain of salt. As our colleagues from the Parisian, Monday March 22, 2021, the President of the Republic tried not to worsen the moral state of the French, very affected by the pandemic for more than a year. This is how he would have paid particular attention to the language used by his Ministers in recent weeks, Rosalie Lucas analyzes in the columns of the daily. Certain words would henceforth be prohibited: “The President made sure to ban certain terms, considered poorly adapted, too anxiety-provoking or clumsy“, writes the journalist, who indicates that the word”re-containment“No longer suits Brigitte Macron’s husband who sees it as the best way to maintain the bad memory of the year 2020.”The Ministers have the order, as Olivier Véran did, to find more suitable terms to talk about new restrictions“, she further details, asserting that the notion of”non-essential businesses“is also to be avoided, because it is dangerously annoying for those who are trying to survive despite the crisis. Unfortunately, the adaptation of the lexical field used by the Ministers does not seem to have entirely changed the mood of the French …
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