Living with Covid in Nice

In France they kiss on Mainstreet. Still.

I am currently living in Nice, France, and this is based on my experience of settling in there.

The main thing you notice in a city ‘living with Covid’ is that there are a lot of rules arbitrarily applied. Everywhere you go, you see signs like this outside restaurants, cafes, bars, often along with a hand-sanitiser dispenser.

But you often find it isn’t ‘obgligatoire’ at all.

I’d say half the places we have been to didn’t ask for the pass sanitaire, or equivalent, at all, though my impression is that you are more likely to be asked if you sit inside rather than outside.

I said in the previous post that border security at the airport accepted our Medicare vaccination certificate, but the same is not true of restaurants and the like.

If they bother to ask, you either have a pass sanitaire or a document showing a negative test result from the last three days. Nothing else will do, and they will turn you away.

Note, the obligation to provide either only applies to restaurants, bars, clubs, theatres, and the like. It doesn’t apply in shops, shopping centres, supermarkets, and other such places.

Tanya and I have chased up our application for the pass sanitaire and have been told it will be at least another two weeks, which is a real shame.

In the absence of that, we therefore need to have a test, and that is what we have done. There are lots of places like this around the city, and you can generally just walk in––sans rendez vous––and get the rapid antigen test that gives you a result in about fifteen minutes.

I think it is mainly tourists like us who use these, and it is a nice little earner for someone, at about 30 Euro a pop.

You have to register your name and email and phone number, then when they send you the result, you have to upload it to the AntiCovid app, which generates a QR code.

All wait staff have a reader/app on their phone and they check you in, and voila, that’s the end of that. Eat, drink and be merry.

There is a hard distinction made between indoors and outdoors.

Almost no-one wears a mask outside, either walking along the rue or sitting at a cafe.

But inside, mask-wearing is almost universally observed. This is true in shops and on public transport. You rarely see anyone, including staff, without a mask, though, inevitably, there is the odd dick-nose.

A few things to note.

According to the AntiCovid app, over 80% of French people are fully vaccinated and this has obviously been influenced by the pass sanitaire obgligatoire ruling, even if, in practice, it isn’t that obgligatoire. Even now, there are about 2000 new cases a day, nationwide. There have been about 115k deaths.

After the lockdowns in Australia, it feels like an incredible difference to be able to walk around freely, but there is certainly a lot of bureaucracy, and for a foreigner, expense, associated with that ‘freedom’. I’m also not sure how safe I feel. Certainly, if the vax rate were lower, I would be far less confident about gadding about.

One final observation, and I’ll probably get grief for this, but it is striking.

When we left Australia, there had been constant pressure from business and their lickspittles in various governments to ‘open up, now!’, so I am sure that such types would be thrilled to wander around Nice and see a major city buzzing along in a normal fashion.

But here’s the thing: there is far less of a sense here that ‘opening up’ and ‘living with Covid’ is first and foremost about commerce. What is striking is that, despite being able to open at any time, many businesses choose not to. On Sunday in particular, many stores, including big department stores were closed. Many bars and restaurants only open a few days a week. Don’t get me wrong, the place is jumping, but a certain desperation is lacking.

Somehow in Australia, over the last few decades, extended retail opening hours has become de rigeur and it has combined with a casualisation of the workforce that leads to a relentless commercialisation of public space and free time. The air of desperation from business to ‘open up’ so we can spend, spend, spend is palpable, and I have to say, it doesn’t feel the same here.

Covid has not only laid bare many divisions within Australia society, it has also highlighted the extent to which governments have become beholden to business interests, and not just the fossil-fuel lobby.

By all means, let’s open up as soon as we safely can, but we really need to reassess the way in which mindless commercialisation has come to dominate what we even mean by free time. Opening up should be about much more than shopping, as lovely as shopping can be.