[Today I have another guest post. Rick Scott is an American who has lived in France for many years. In response to Joyce’s virus story, Rick provided his update on leaving the US to get back to Paris before he was stranded away from home, and what it has been like since his return.]

What a subject we suddenly have!  Never thought I would see what we long-protected boomers are seeing now. Here are a few high points of the last few days —
I was just in the U.S. for 6 weeks (New York, Philadelphia, Washington) and was getting ready to go to Richmond/Charlotte/Charleston/Florida, but started to get uneasy about all the talk about travel disruptions in the Far East and how that may spread. So I bought a ticket on Feb. 23 from Washington to Paris – and back to familiar local cafes and familiar health insurance until this virus thing sorts itself out.

3 days ago, Thursday, March 12  (two days before french lockdown)–

Life in Paris seemed totally normal.   Hardly any masks on the street. I stopped in for awhile at the local library and was thinking about going to a movie.  All cinemas were open.  Also would have been a good time to visit uncrowded museums.

That night, a reading of online international press made me realize that a lot of the world was already in lockdown mentality if not fact, and with good reason. You can be healthy as a horse but not even know – or never know – that you are/were a carrier and be endangering other people.    We’re all going to be walking in the dark for awhile with this virus.
What would Dr. Spock do?

So I decided – with the luxury of a retired person living alone – to then and there start self-quarantining or semi-self-quarantining.  No handshakes, no extended dinners with people, avoiding crowds, and spending a lot of time at home doing homework/research/errands online. I don’t have tv, but I have lots to do with a piano and the internet – and last month I spent a day at the Library of Congress in Washington getting instruction on how to access their online collection.

Yesterday, Saturday March 14 (the day of the french lockdown)–

My new rules still allowed me to take the metro and to have coffee on terraces outside. It was sunny and the terraces in my neighborhood were doing a booming business at 5 p.m. – every single  seat taken, but that night I heard from a niece in faraway Nebraska that she had just heard that France had declared a lockdown.       

I went to the French papers online, and sure enough, Edouard Philippe [Prime Minister of France] had spoken and  the police were making rounds to kick people out of bars and restaurants at midnight. (That didn’t even happen with the imminent German invasion in 1940, did it? Humphrey Bogart was still schmoozing well after midnight by the piano with Ingrid Bergman – and they seemed to have plenty of time to make further plans).

Today – Sunday March 15 (the day after lockdown)–

Out of curiosity, i went to the local supermarket this morning. Quite a few people were doing bulk shopping, but all the shelves were well stocked except for rice, pasta – and peanut butter (perhaps other things that I don’t notice  – since I don’t know how to cook). There seemed to be plenty of everything else, even toilet paper.

[The 19th and 20th arrondissements of Paris include the Parc Buttes Chaumont, the Pere Lachaise cemetery and lots of residential buildings.]

Then I took a walk through the 19th and 20th arrondissements – a total of 14,095 steps according to my iphone. Restaurants and brasseries indeed dead as a doornail. But – and this is a lifesaver – all the bakeries are open, even on Sunday. Fresh bread, sandwiches, quiche, patisserie  … and takeout COFFEE!  So I’ll be buying the newspapers, getting takeout coffee and reading on park benches for awhile. Not quite a terrace but not bad with proper social distancing. Then some power walking or biking in the park for exercise.

Takeout places are operating as well. Domino’s pizza outlets were all open.   McDonald’s was closed but functioning – via internet orders delivered by Ubereats, Deliveroo, etc. One enterprising brasserie was closed for food but had an outdoor takeaway stand for wine, beer, coffee. All takeaway, and socially distant.

In that walk of several miles, I saw only about a dozen people wearing masks.  

[Thanks, Rick, for giving us a snapshot of Paris at the start of the French response to the global pandemic. If you would like to contribute a Virus Story, please contact me at wcreamer151@gmail.com–Winifred]

This is another guest post by my good friend Joyce Heard, sharing her story of how the COVID-19 virus is affecting her life that moves between Paris and Aix-en-Provence, France and Sidi ifni, Morocco.

By now you probably have your own coronavirus story. Here’s ours. First off, we are well. Jean Marie and I spent the first week of March in Paris. Before the virus seriously hit France, we enjoyed good meals, fine wines, a concert, a movie, a museum and catching up  with old friends. I also ran around to various doctors to prepare for a planned surgery in April. It will now surely be postponed.

Parisians were unusually friendly. Eating lunch alone at a cafe, the man at the table on my left reminded the waiter not to forget my coffee as he could see it was taking a long time. The young couple on my right eyed my chair full of bags (Yes I had been shopping) and asked if I was planning to take the metro. When I said yes, they advised me not to do so as there had been a run of metro thieves at the nearest station. I walked instead. Never before had I benefited from such solicitude from unknown Parisians.

At the Marmottan museum to see a show on how classic Italian painters influenced Cezanne even though he never went to Italy, we used the co-ed bathroom. When Jean Marie came out of the toilet and made to leave without washing his hands, I reminded him to do so. A well-dressed and perfectly made up woman about my age, the sort of Parisian who would normally ignore us, turned to me and said, “Oh they are all alike,” in sisterly commiseration. I said, “Yes, I expect to be a widow soon.” She said, “Me too, perhaps we’ll meet up again as merry widows.” Unbelievable. A friendly upper bourgeois Parisienne? Something in Paris has changed. Indeed, the taxi drivers were all on time and uniformly competent with clean vehicles. I think this is due to competition from Uber and other services, but it is such a pleasant change.

We flew back to Agadir, Morocco on Sunday, March 8 and spent Jean Marie’s birthday at one of our favorite hotels, Dar Zitoune in Taroudant. We had thought it would be nice to enjoy a last few weeks of Spring in Morocco before returning to France on April 6. Now we are stuck here.

So far Morocco only has a handful of confirmed cases of the coronavirus, all brought by Moroccans and tourists arriving from Europe. So the country has shut down all ports and flights to most European countries. 

Even in the best of times, communication is a weak point in Morocco. So of course there were scenes of chaos at all the airports yesterday as stranded tourists tried in vain to get home. Late yesterday Morocco gave permission for France to send some planes to repatriate citizens. We are not going to be on one of those planes. We have decided to hunker down at home in Sidi Ifni rather than join chaotic mobs at the Agadir airport. Since we are legal residents of Morocco, we would probably not be on a priority list to return to France anyway. 

Back in France, two of the friends we saw are showing mild symptoms that could be the coronavirus. One friend went to the hospital to have a stent put in, but as he had a low fever, the stent placement was postponed and they gave him a Covid-19 test. He waited days confined at his apartment. Finally, the hospital told him they had mistakenly sent his test to the wrong lab so it was not analyzed. This is not reassuring. The second friend was simply told to stay at home for seven days and wear a mask when going out today to vote in local elections. France is now only testing people who present with likely serious cases.

So for now, we are taking our chances where we can still go for walks on our uncrowded beach. We have books, television, Internet, Netflix and the calming presence of our cat, Rizu. Since Morocco stocked up on staples in advance of Ramadan which starts April 25, we don’t expect to run out of food here. Our local market supplies fresh local fruit and vegetables and the fishermen are still arriving daily with fish. Before Morocco confined us, we were having a big debate about trying to get back to France or not. In the end, it is perhaps easier to have let King Mohammed VI decide for us.