What is striking is that too many French are convinced the country is in decline - Zemmour is hysterical over this.
There are structural defaults
- high natality rate & defective school system = massive unemployment of the youth
- an impossibility to get unemployement rate below 10% of 25 million working people, so 2.5 million unemployed since 40 years
- the healthcare system is expensive and has some major flaws (the hospitals and E.R are in deep, deep crisis)
- a growing rift between poor countryside and richer cities (yellow jackets came from the former)
But all things considered, for a supposed declining country, struggling with the 3 massive issues above, our answer to COVID has not been that bad.
There is a long lasting trend for France to self humiliate by comparing itself with (in no particular order) G.B, Germany, Scandinavia... as far as COVID crisis went, France did pretty well compared to many countries.
