French Nobel Winners: Lockdown In December To Save Xmas

Story By: Ernest Bio BogoreSub-EditorJoseph Golder, Agency:  Newsflash

Two Nobel Prize winners say France needs to go back into lockdown to “save Christmas” and their recommendation echoes Boris Johnson’s plan to ensure families will be able to be together in December.

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2019, predict a spike in deaths after Christmas if France does not implement a new lockdown in December.

According to French newspaper Le Monde, the Nobel Prize winners are recommending the implementation of a lockdown for the whole country, to allow the French to be reunited with their families during the festive season.

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This proposal comes in response to the fact that France is currently facing a resurgence of the epidemic. This increase could see the government forced to decree a lockdown earlier and maybe even to “ban travelling and family gatherings” at Christmas.

According to the two Nobel laureates, “it is necessary to decree confinement from 1st to 20th December to avoid a catastrophic increase of COVID-19 among the elderly after Christmas.”

The two economists fear that the traditional end-of-year gatherings in France could be catalysts for spreading the coronavirus among the elderly.

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They said: “In the United States, the long weekends of Memorial Day at the end of May and Independence Day on 4th July were followed by peaks of infection.”

They fear there will be “a catastrophic resurgence of the disease – and thus hospitalisations and deaths – among the elderly after Christmas. Unfortunately, their children and grandchildren are at risk of infecting them”.

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo wish to avoid widespread confinement when it is already too late. They are asking for a “collective effort to save Christmas”.

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According to them, the cost to the economy would be significant, but less than having to cancel Christmas, because if these measures were announced now, it would allow families to organise themselves as much as possible and the shops to stay open to fill online orders.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he will do whatever he can to ensure that families will be able to be together for Christmas this year.

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