This is not a blog!

 

Monthly blogs are a nice way to maintain contact with my friends who live in different continents, particularly during this pandemic-induced sedentary period.  My last blog was posted in April and since then I had nothing exciting to write about.  My inspiration has hit rock bottom.  I have been back to the south of France for a whole month and I am been scratching my brain to discover interesting news.  Calvisson is a heaven of peace and the variant Delta still seems far away from the village.  Thus, I have nothing meaningful to report.  I should welcome this pause after the Brazilian rough-and-tumble, but I am a bit bored.

I have been quietly busy doing light domestic chores, driving around, exploring the food novelties in the local supermarkets and the innovations in the many hardware stores.  I greeted friends and cousins (mindful of social distancing) including playing guide to adventurous British visitors.  Although, my time-honored cultural routine has resumed, I feel at loose ends and too often I check my cell phone for WhatsApp messages from Rio.  I guess that I have not been fully weaned from my Brazilian diet, a diet fed of bizarre scandals, chronic corruption, political sleaze and constitutional unpredictability.  Consequently, my life in Calvisson looks dull compared to that in Rio where permanent chaos is a way of life.   I admit missing this increasingly non-functional Brazilian routine.  Cynically, I enjoy the on-going self-destruction under Bolsonaro!  As Tom Jobim once said: “Brazil is not for beginners”.

In France, a fourth wave of the Covid pandemic is feared and the wildfire spreading of the Delta variant risks making my life even duller.  Because, people are increasingly treated differently based on their vaccine status, I feel like an outcast.   I am fully vaccinated with Astra Zeneca, but not the original vaccine used in Europe.  In Brazil, I received the poor-people version, the Indian-made Covishield.  This vaccine, although identical has been approved by neither the European Medicine Agency (EMA), nor France.  Germany accepts it, but I am not planning to travel there!  It is depressing to be fully vaccinated and categorized as non-vaccinated!  I cannot apply to the digital European Green Pass, and to add insult to injury, I may soon be prevented from going to restaurants and other places of leisure without the French Heath Pass, a sort of anti-Covid digital certificate.  Calvisson without culture? How can the culture vulture in me survive?  Spending days on end reading around the pool or watching Netflix, is not my idea of summer in Provence.  This vaccine discrimination will make my life miserable.

Just over 50% of the French population is vaccinated and the government is using a not-so-subtle pressurizing technique (some will say bullying) to force the reluctant populace into getting a jab.  Everyone knows that vaccination is the solution for a stress-free summer holiday but vaccination freeloaders have always a handy excuse for not doing their fair share or pulling their equal weight.  By rejecting their collective duty, they are scuttling the effort of the majority.  Many of these conspiracy-fed antivaxxers come from the ranks of the gilet jaunes, the wildcat yellow vest protest movement which wrecked France in 2018.  The gilets jaunes regarded themselves as a fraternity of the oppressed and duped; they have left an indelible mark on the French psychic.  It is still visible now through the collective lack of trust in the government’s perceived elitist decisions.  Now, the vaccinated lot feel cheated and victimized by the government’s new Covid restrictions and the rapport between the two groups is getting hostile and even contentious. 

The government is ready to further curb individual freedom on the altar of the common good; in a country where herd immunity is a long shot, I may soon need a PCR test to go to the movies!  I feel like flying back to Brazil where the population is eager to get vaccinated at all cost, even with scarce second-class Indian and Chinese vaccines, rather than staying in France where first-class mRNA are plentiful but shunned.  In Rio, I will keep myself busy watching the spirited congress investigation of Bolsonaro’s government mishandling of the pandemic.  My other option is getting “re-jabbed” by a rich man mRNA vaccine, and side effects look like a reasonable price to pay to avoid a holiday in seclusion. 

I have sought medical advice, unfortunately two General Practitioners dissuaded me from getting a new shot as my last one is too recent.  I am in limbo until the government resolves the matter.  The consoling fact is that we are about 2 million people in this situation.  Meanwhile, I will have to get an antigen PCR test (Euro 25) any time I plan to go to a cultural and leisure venue where more than 50 people are gathered.

This situation is really surrealistic. This is not a blog!