Photo: ReutersFrance’s President Emmanuel Macron showed civic responsibility and style can go together when he wore a cloth face mask matching his suit, and with a ribbon in the colours of the French flag, during a visit to a school in Poissy, France. To stem the coronavirus outbreak, European nations and even the United States are starting to adopt the wearing of masks in public, a practice long established in Asia.PARIS — Until a few weeks ago, Asian tourists were the only Four days into a national lockdown to stem the outbreak, the French government spokeswoman, Sibeth Ndiaye, warned that face masks were so unfamiliar that wearing them was too difficult technically and could even be “counterproductive.” Even on Thursday morning, when asked whether she wore a mask or made her children wear one, she said, “Oh, no, not at all.”This taboo is falling fast, not only in France but across Western countries, after mounting cries from experts who say the practice is effective in curbing the coronavirus pandemic.The shift for Western nations is profound and has had to overcome not merely the logistical challenges of securing enough masks, which are significant enough, but also a deep cultural resistance and even stigma associated with mask-wearing, which some Western leaders described flatly as “alien.”Seemingly, it won’t be for much longer.
In fact, so ingrained was the cultural resistance to masks that, as a security measure, France became in 2011 the first European nation to Jean-François Mattéi, a former health minister and the current president of France’s National Academy of Medicine, said that because of the cultural reluctance and budgetary problems, maintaining the national stockpile might have been pushed down the list of government priorities.In 2009, in face of the H1N1 pandemic, France had amassed 1.7 billion masks, but stocks had fallen to 150 million at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a recent “This decision was absurd, and we’re seeing the consequences now,” said Philippe Juvin, the head of the emergency department at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris.Faced with shortages, which it first denied, the French government discouraged people from wearing masks, saying only the sick should wear them in public and that they were otherwise not useful.But the recommendations not only failed to convince French people who thronged pharmacies in search of masks, but they also conflicted with images of President Emmanuel Macron wearing a mask when he visited a military field hospital in eastern France on March 25.Though the French government has yet to make masks mandatory, powerful groups, like the Academy of Medicine, have Mr. Mattéi said that wearing masks during epidemics was likely to “become the norm” in Western countries after the end of the pandemic, adding, “I’m convinced that pretty soon everyone in a family will have their two or three reusable face masks.”Daniel Illouz, a pharmacist in eastern Paris, said that he had been skeptical of the government’s repeated message that widespread mask-wearing was not helpful in fighting the epidemic.“I don’t see why in all the Asian countries, where they have masks, it would work, but it wouldn’t work for us,” he said.Reporting was contributed by Aurélien Breeden and Eva Mbengue from Paris; Miroslava Germanova from Bratislava, Slovakia; Hana de Goeji from Prague; Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin; and Boryana Dzhambazova in Sofia, Bulgaria.Mask-Wearing Is a Very New Fashion in Paris (and a Lot of Other Places)Outside the Louvre in Paris before the national lockdown started in March.Christian Montgomery wearing a surgical mask to prevent contracting the coronavirus while taking out money at an ATM in the East Village in New York. AFP Comparée à Macron, la militante anti-corruption de 45 ans a obtenu 58,38% des voix selon des résultats partiels.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said that the change would require a “big adjustment” because “masks are alien to our culture.”But masks were also alien to Asia until it was struck by the SARS pandemic in 2003.In Japan, after people got used to masks, they continued to wear them against seasonal allergies or to protect one another from germs. After discouraging people from wearing face masks, France, like the United States, has begun urging its citizens to wear basic or homemade ones outside. A post shared by Zuzana Čaputová (@zuzana_caputova) on Mar 20, 2020 at 1:50pm PDT À lire aussi : ⋙ Photos – Brigitte Macron, sa passion pour les manteaux. Si tous portaient des masques basiques de couleurs blanc ou bleu, la Présidente Zuzana Caputova elle avait pris soin d'assortir son masque à sa robe, couleur framboise. The president of the Slovak Zuzana Caputova became viral on Twitter for wearing masks matching her outfits at press conferences and his swearing-in ceremony in march. In the past decade, France’s formidable national stockpile of masks shrank from 1.7 billion to 150 million at the outset of the current pandemic.The debate over the simple face mask has sometimes evolved into a larger discussion over the role of the individual in society, pitting the West’s individualism against Asia’s collectivism.President Trump appeared to embody that ambivalence when, even as he announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now endorsed widespread mask-wearing, he said Frédéric Keck, a French anthropologist specializing in pandemics, said that, in the West, mask-wearing was seen through an individual’s perspective.“‘There’s a virus outside, so I wear a mask only to protect myself,’” Mr. Keck said, “whereas collective reasoning, in Asian societies, is to say, ‘I wear a mask to protect others.’”The difference in mind-set is a crucial one given the nature of all but the highest-grade masks: Masks are believed to have some effectiveness at protecting the wearer, especially in crowded spaces, but are most effective at reducing the risks that the virus will be spread through coughing or talking.The French government initially said that the vast majority of people need not wear face masks because they didn’t guarantee the wearer protection. Unlike in other Asian nations, where many wear masks against air pollution, mask-wearing became widespread despite the absence of immediate threats.Mask-wearing has become such a part of daily life that it now plays a role in maintaining an overall feeling of being “reassured” in Japanese society, said Yukiko Iida, an expert on masks at the Environmental Control Center, an environmental consulting company based in Tokyo.“When you put on a mask, you’re not inconveniencing others when you cough,” Ms. Iida said. Zuzana Caputova dans son QG de campagne à Bratislava le 30 mars.