“I continue to party despite the pandemic, here’s why”

Sunday April 25, 2021, videos of young people dancing in a park around a large enclosure caused a scandal. Above, my participants kiss, touch each other, completely forgetting the barrier gestures. According to the town hall of the 19th arrondissement, the party was totally improvised. “Everything lasted between half an hour and an hour, it shows how quickly everything can change “, declared on BFMTV the mayor of the 19th arrondissement. The testimonials from participants multiplying to emphasize the spontaneous character of this gathering. Already last year, the music festival 2020 had created the same type of scandal, faced with images of young people who gathered all over France to dance. Each time, we note the same political instrumentalisation of these images, and a stigmatization of the irresponsibility of young people.

France experienced its third confinement from March 2020. Legally, gatherings of more than 6 people were then prohibited in public space. In the private space, on the other hand, the government advised not to be more than 6, but no formal ban is in force. As one Public Senate article, in a pandemic, you can be as many as you want, which in itself is not illegal. And it is on this possibility that the organizers of clandestine evenings play. In a calmer register, some continue to organize theater sessions.

Continue to go out and find each other despite the health context, resistance or recklessness? The penalties are heavy for the organizers of clandestine events who are caught and condemned: up to closed prison. Yes, except that we can party responsibly, hammer those who continue despite the epidemic. What are their motivations for these people who flout the rules, while the testimonies of exhausted and worried caregivers abound?

Read also : “If people only knew …”: this hospital is raising a cry of alarm in the face of a very violent third wave of Coronavirus

“Culture can provide life if it is responsible”

In March 2021, France Culture publishes a report produced during a clandestine stand-up session in Paris. Events follow one another. The organizers empower the participants: “Our goal is to make you laugh, but also to prove that culture can live if it is responsible”. There are two rules for this: “carry out an antigen test within 48 hours before the event (compulsory to be able to enter)” and “wear the mask when you move inside the place”, can we read on the invitation.
Asked by aufeminin, Marie (loan name), one of the organizers at which one of the sessions took place, explains the process: “It was really important for me to do this stand-up event because it’s been a year since we could do something like this, and it was starting to be terribly lacking. makes videos on the internet but it will never be the same as playing directly in front of an audience, having people’s reactions, laughing… Even just remembering that it exists, rediscovering the little stress of the pre-stage, all that. And it went really well, people played the game of doing a test before, there was no case, no contamination during this event, so it was great. “

Not knowing when the venues will reopen, they want to be able to continue to bring live performance and the artists who create it to life. Marie, who is in theater school, also recounts the almost vital need to be surrounded: “I already lived my moment when things were not going at all, following the first confinement. I lost the notion of what was good for me, I got to a really low point and I owed a lot work to go up the slope (…) But I never do something like the first confinement again, I think that’s also why we continue to go out, to see each other, to brave the prohibitions. I can’t go back to the mental point where I was a year ago, I need to be surrounded by people who do me good, to see them, to spend time together. not much else to hold onto, so we take advantage of it. “

Arbitrate between physical health and mental health

And these events are accelerating with the announcements of deconfinement. On social networks, we have since observed that mini-festivals are in preparation. Private parties are multiplying. Often, the requirement for a negative PCR test on entry. The participants and organizers of these evenings all talk about the same dilemma: the balance between public health and individual health, between physiological health and mental health. Lola (first name has been changed) is 27 years old and a doctor. A party girl before the pandemic, she continues to organize and participate in parties, and she says she needs this essential moment of letting go, otherwise she will go nuts. “I keep doing it because otherwise I would be too depressed, I think!, explains the young woman. I reassure myself by telling myself that I do not meet my family very regularly, so I never have to face choices such as ‘party or family’, it greatly facilitates the thing. I regularly do PCRs. And I hope that the people I meet in a row are at least thinking a little like that too… “ However, it recognizes the risk taken: “From my point of view as a doctor, yes, that’s where the world is brewing who should not mix in times of pandemic … It is certain and certain, we increase the risks of infecting our loved ones. I continue to do so. do but I don’t talk about it in my job (at the hospital, editor’s note) because I know that the great majority of my colleagues have a greater sense of responsibility than me and refuse to do so. I also believe that these same people did not party as much before the Covid. So in the end, we all lowered our social slider… Ours might have been pretty high. “

Does Lola fear the virus? Not really : “The Covid doesn’t scare me personally, that’s also why it’s easy to participate in this kind of event. But I had phases, when I was working in intensive care, where almost all people were dying of illness, where when I was in the emergency room, I saw the Covid entrances scrolling. At those moments, I told myself that I was too stupid and that I had to take responsibility a little. But stupidly, I cracks because I’m even more afraid of missing things. “

A question of living together?

In these many half-official, half-clandestine parties organized all over France, a more or less empowering speech on the tests before coming, but also, on self-containment afterwards. Often with the same profiles: young, healthy people who can easily confine themselves to teleworking, who see few elderly people. Results, no great fear of the virus. And this is probably where the divide lies between those who are too afraid and the others. Between those and those who cannot afford contamination, and those who cannot afford to wait for the end of the epidemic.

What about the next few weeks? The arrival of spring and deconfinement combine with announcements about the variants that are multiplying, just like the wild parties. Hopes on vaccines cross curves of rising contamination. “We are still in a very strong moment of the epidemic. We cannot relax the barrier measures on the grounds that we are outside“, adds Isabelle Bonmarin, head of the” prevention of infectious and environmental risks “unit at Public Health France, cited by France Inter. Faced with a very uncertain future, not sure that we will reach a consensus that will reduce the divide between the different groups …