“They told me that I had to learn to live with it, because life goes on. But I, my life, stopped.” It was when her youngest son came home sick from kindergarten that Floriane Vauquoy, 44, contracted Covid-19 in early 2022. This Moselle resident has suffered for 14 months, like several hundred thousand French people, a long Covid that has existed “in support“Forcing her to be more alert to the virus so as not to see her condition worsen.
For her, the syndrome manifests itself markedly in the form of severe chronic fatigue and noise intolerance. Every little virus gets to “catch” these symptoms and takes several weeks each time to recover. So much so that her doctor had to give her sick leave:
“I tried to go back to work in part-time therapy but after four days I was completely disoriented, I had to go home.”
Thus, hoping to one day resume a normal life, the Mosellane rigorously applies all sanitary precautions: recurrent hand washing, systematic use of masks in closed places or in the middle of a crowd, delivery of all food that can be and , above all Everything, great isolation. “My circle of friends has narrowed a lot,” she confesses resignedly: “but given the non-life I already have, I don’t want to take any risks.”
“Exhausted from this endless state”
Floriane Vauquoy is not an isolated case. Many continue to fear or suffer from Covid-19: former Covid patients who have retained the sequelae or painful memories of their infection, people with poor immune systems, relatives of so-called “at risk” patients, or even people who simply want to avoid transmitting the virus to others, develop a long Covid or circulate a Covid conducive to mutating…
This is the case of Natacha, who prefers not to communicate her last name, and who has contracted Covid three times and is doing everything possible to stop the counter there. Her multiple infections have also left her with a long Covid that has exhausted her for three years. At 54, this Parisian woman says she lives “in slow motion, between parentheses, in the body of an older person.”
“I have a sword of Damocles over my head, because a fourth infection would be terrible, even without recovering from the previous ones,” he confesses.
Therefore, it is also obliged to limit the risk of exposure to the maximum, having already been vaccinated to try to avoid serious forms. Especially since this “single mom” whose daughter was “16 when it all started”, she has to cover her household expenses alone:
“I’m lucky to be working after a year of therapeutic part-time work, so with all my energy going into my professional life, I absolutely want to keep my job.”
With no way out, she says she is “exhausted from this endless state.”
But the situation is not just a case of long covid: Solenn, who prefers to be called only by her first name, was a professor of economics and social sciences before in 2019 she began to suffer from a chronic pulmonary embolism, a health situation that This 42-year-old Brestoise took her to isolate herself so as not to contract a Covid that would put her on the ground.
Successful so far, but at the cost of great precariousness: “I had to stop [de travailler] due to illness, then my contracts ended. When I got a little better, I wanted to go back to work part-time, but the health protection measures fell one after another… too risky for me.” Since then, his attempts to return to work have been unsuccessful.
“I had job interviews but if you come to FFP2 the job offer ‘disappears’ by magic,” he jokes.
“We have been confined for 3 years”
Florent, a computer developer who helped develop the “ViteMaDose” site, fears the virus not for himself, but for his partner. Living in Paris and both 30 years old today, they contracted Covid in the middle of the first wave, in March 2020. He “recovered in a few weeks, but for her, the ordeal has only just begun.” The diagnosis was made: again a long Covid. He lists: “Her body weakened from him, her immune system also weakened, the unknown in case of reinfection and the near-death experience felt during the first infection make her a person at risk.”
“It is unthinkable that she could cross paths with the virus again,” he decides.
And this decision changed his life: “I put the FFP2 mask inside, I ventilate the spaces as soon as possible. (…) I changed jobs to be able to telework more often, among other reasons, although I hardly see my family or friends anymore in winter, when it’s impossible to see each other outside. (…) In total, we have been confined for 3 years, ”he sums up.
Others did not wait for Covid to severely affect their health or that of their loved ones to take drastic precautions. This is the case of Anaïs who did not want to communicate her last name either. At the age of 18, it was not until September 2022 that this student of a literary preparatory class in the Paris region, who does not know of any risk factors, began to “systematically wear an FFP2 mask in closed or high-density places.” and ventilate when possible.
It has also invested in a CO2 sensor to monitor the level of this gas in the air, “correlated in theory with what is exhaled by people, and with the possible presence of viruses in the room air.”
The click: admonishment of a masked professor before “any [une] sick class, without a mask, and who was justified by the myth of the ‘cold wave'”. Then he began to read studies and data on the pandemic. transmit it at all costs and no longer risk the lives of high-risk people, then I understood that I myself was at risk of contagion throughout the COVID”, she explains.
“I also want us to continue living”
Whether they have chosen to defend themselves against Covid or have been forced to do so to preserve their health or that of a loved one, everyone sees that they are much fewer than in the past. And in the reactions of those who have “forgotten” the pandemic, at best there is surprise, at worst there is contempt.
Solenn’s son, mentioned earlier in this article, is only six years old, but he is already suffering from comments from these school friends because he wears the mask to avoid bringing the virus to his at-risk mother. . “What is difficult for him to bear are the incessant questions from others, seeing the peremptory phrases ‘Covid is over, the mask is not good, it disgusts you’ or the ridicule,” laments his mother.
“Just as before we looked at those who did not wear a mask, now we look at those who do,” sums up Floriane Vauquoy, whose testimony formed the beginning of this article.
“Then I look down, I feel like a curious beast and I am a little embarrassed when I go out now. The hospital is the only place where I feel almost normal, because many people still wear the mask ”, shares the forty-year-old, who he knows, however, that he will never skimp on the precautions for all this.
But for the shame, some anger replaces it: “I refuse that selfish people and scammers have such a strong chance of killing me,” Najat, 38, a resident of Nanterre and immunocompromised because of the treatment. “I also want us to continue living but not without having a maximum reduction in risk.”
The mask, “we shot it for years”
A testimony of exclusion to which is often added that of neglect by public authorities, in particular on the issue of sanitary restrictions and in particular the mask, without investing in palliatives such as air purifiers, but promised by the President-candidate Emmanuel Macron. . For the epidemiologist Dominique Costagliola, “what is really harmful is that we sold the use of the mask as a restriction and not as a tool that can be effective. We shot him for years and years.
He believes that this speech generated a reaction of relief when all the health sanctions were lifted, to the detriment of those who still needed protection: “It is as if we erased all the people who died. We make the disabled invisible”. The fact that many people have lost job skills, are no longer able to keep a job in the same way, that is not taken into account”, she laments.
And to outline a way out for people at risk, who retain the consequences of a first infection or who simply seek to protect themselves from it: “Only through public health measures could these people recover their social life, coming out of prolonged confinement.”
Source: BFM TV
