Bytagand the publication "Mood: the second wave"
The specter of the second wave of the Covid-19 epidemic hangs over our heads and shows that the virus is still circulating. Only responsible behavior can limit its spread, and in particular social distancing measures. This is obvious. However, many cyclists anticipated the total end of lockdown, without taking the slightest precaution despite government instructions. A defiant attitudetestable and ultimately commensurate with French selfishness.
By Guillaume Peephole – Photo: Pixabay.com, Flickr.com
The appearance of the virus. The first sick people. The first quarantines. The announcement of the first deaths. The overcrowding of hospitals. The confusion of the authorities on the necessity or not of wearing a mask to protect oneself. The cancellation of gatherings, especially sports. The postponement of calendars. The confinement. The crisis. It is a real shock that we have all experienced in this spring of 2020 which will definitely not be like the others. And yet, there are still people who believe that we are making too much of it, that Covid-19 is nothing more than an infectious disease like any other and barely more dangerous than the flu.
Beyond the anxiety-provoking announcements that reported every day the number of people hospitalized or deceased from a virus that we are not yet under control, radical measures were taken from mid-March, the only ones likely to limit its spread with confinement. This obligation to stay at home and limit outings to what is strictly necessary has been more or less well supported depending on living conditions. The economy has been slowed down and some activities have even been completely stopped for two months or more, with inevitable medium-term consequences for the survival of businesses and the associated risks of job losses.

Under these conditions, the strict limitation of physical activities (1 hour within a radius of one kilometer around home) was of secondary importance. This is also the message relayed by many French professional cyclists, themselves cloistered at home and unable to do their job properly, but who had the wisdom to put this inconvenience into perspective given the general health situation. And yet, in other European countries, professional cyclists could train. Cyclists could ride (provided they rode alone), and because governments considered that maintaining good physical condition was essential to strengthening immune defenses and maintaining good mental health. This is the position that we would have spontaneously defended.
But in France, it was different, firstly because the excesses observed demonstrated that many citizens were incapable of following common rules without fear of the police., or more precisely that of checks and fines for non-compliance with confinement. This has not prevented some amateur cyclists or runners from regularly defying the bans, going out as soon as they know they have little chance of being checked. This says a lot about their sense of civic-mindedness, especially when they boasted about it on social media.
The wild beasts released
After this first wave of inveterate egoists, which was admittedly limited, the second was no less shocking because it was of a completely different importance. And we sincerely hope that it does not herald the real second wave of the virus in our country, even though the first is not over elsewhere in the world.
May 11 marked the time for a gradual easing of lockdown, essential for the economy but also for the well-being of all. And with it the authorization to resume individual sporting activity, initially limited to a radius of 100 kilometers, then extended from June 2. For many, being able to ride outdoors again, alone, was experienced as a real liberation. With the sole objective of finding sensations again, before even being able to consider resuming a specific program, since it was still too early to know to what extent events would be able to be organized in 2020.

Although the spread of the virus was under control, it was not yet over. It is for this reason that this deconfinement, progressive once again, was high risk for the health situation and in particular the congestion of hospitals. For sports, the rules were clear: no team sports, gatherings limited to 10 people, and physical distancing of ten meters. For cycling, this meant riding alone, since there is no advantagetagand to pedal at such a distance from each other.

However, this did not prevent, from the first weekend after May 11, seeing many groups and pelotons of cyclists riding as if nothing was happening. And even to boast about it, with photos to back it up, again on social networks. In the Paris region, the pelotons of Longchamp, Vincennes and Rungis have resumed their habits. The fast cyclists began to take turns at the front of the group again, blowing their noses and spitting as one sometimes does during an effort, with the usual batch of leeches stuck to their coattails to inflate their average. In the countryside, we found informal groups or even entire clubs, with all their bad habits which, in these particular circumstances, revealed even more deviant behaviorstestable. Packs of cyclists riding in herds of three or four abreast, shouting at motorists or pedestrians as they pass through villages, and with their eternal wheel-suckers, incapable of doing a few dozen kilometers alone to face the wind. A bit as if we were witnessing the release of wild animals that had been caged for two months and who were not aware of the seriousness of the situation and the risks they were taking for themselves and for society as a whole..
No one is safe
If I hope that this second wave is inversely proportional to the more serious one that threatens us if the virus resumes its ease in the coming weeks because of the lack of caution of our fellow citizens, I was all the more struck by this collective unconsciousness because I myself was affected quite severely by this disease. I thought I was not a person at risk, and yet it was from the depths of my hospital bed that I was able to read and see these excesses and bravado while passing the time on my smartphone, while some of my neighbors in the next room did not spend the night. No, this virus is not a simple "flu", even if fortunately most infected people present mild symptoms. No one knows the long-term consequences or the after-effects that may be caused to the body.
And if I too railed against the strict rules of confinement and what I considered to be a deprivation of liberty, I tell myself that we would have been collectively incapable of restraining ourselves from certain excesses if the rules had been more flexible. I also confess that for the first time since I started cycling, that is, since my adolescence, I was ashamed of the behavior of part of what I have always considered my community.
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Bytagand the publication "Mood: the second wave"