"Two relations must therefore be carefully separated here: the citizenry’s attachment to the public service, and healthcare in particular, in no way suggests adherence to public authority or public power in its various forms, but rather suggests an attachment to services whose essential function is to meet the public's need. Far from disclosing an underlying identification with the nation, this attachment gestures toward a sense of a universal that crosses borders, and accordingly renders us sensitive to the trials our "pandemic co-citizens" are enduring, whether they are Italian, Spanish, or live beyond European borders. We are extremely skeptical of Macron's promise to be the first leader to question "our developmental model" after the crisis is over, and there are plenty of reasons to think that the drastic economic measures currently in place will eventually share the same fate as those enacted during the 2008 economic crisis: we will likely see a concerted effort to "return to normal" — i.e., return to our otherwise uninterrupted destruction of the planet amidst increasingly conditions of social inequality. And we fear the enormous stimulus packages designed to "save the economy" will once again be borne on the backs of the lowest-paid workers and taxpayers."

“Second observation: we equally depend on the state to help businesses of all sizes endure this trial by providing them with the financial assistance and guaranteed loans they require in order to avoid bankruptcy and retain as much of their as possible. States no longer have any qualms about spending without limits in order to save the economy ⁠— "whatever it takes!" ⁠— while just weeks ago states opposed any request to increase hospital staff, hospital beds, ors, out of its obsessive concern for budgetary constraint and limiting the public debt. States have since rediscovered the virtues of interventionism, at least when it comes to funding and shoring up the. One of the most ambitious stimulus plans to date has been implemented by Germany. Their plan constitutes an abrupt break with the dogmas that have been the norm since the beginning of the.”

“The pandemic has demonstrated the bankruptcy of national sovereignty. The major threats to humanity are global in character, so mutual aid, cooperation and solidarity must be too.”

“It is also worth recalling that French officials adopted this very same approach until March 14. Macron initially refused to adopt strict containment measures because, as he stated on March 6, "restrictive measures are not sustainable over time." As he exited the theater he had attended that very same day with his wife, he declared "Life goes on. There is no reason, save for vulnerable populations, to change our social behaviors." Lurking beneath these words, which seem utterly irresponsible today, one cannot help but detect a tactic in which this libertarian paternalism allowed governments to defer the measures they knew would necessarily disrupt their economies. Nonetheless, the eventual failure of libertarian paternalism to contain the virus compelled the political authorities to radically change course. In France, our first glimpse of this shift was Macron's Presidential Speech on March 12, in which he appealed to national unity, to our sacred union, and to the French people's "strength of character." Macron’s next speech on March 16 was even more explicit in its martial posture and rhetoric: it is time for general mobilization, for "patriotic self-restraint," because "we are now at war." The figure of the sovereign state now manifests itself in its most extreme but also its most classic form: that of the sword that strikes the enemy, "who is there, invisible, elusive and advancing.”

“Nonetheless, during the same press conference, Macron declared that "delegating our food, our protection, or our ability to take care for our living environment to others is madness. We must take back control." This invocation of state sovereignty has been welcomed by many, especially the neo-fascists of the Rassemblement National . The defense of public services would thus seem perfectly aligned with the prerogatives of the sovereign state: removing healthcare from the logic of the market is an act of sovereignty that is now in the process of reversing the many concessions France granted to the European Union in the past. But is it so obvious that the notion of the public service is in fact aligned with the concept of state sovereignty? Does the former depend on the latter? Is the public service indissolubly linked to state sovereignty? This question deserves particularly careful consideration because it is one of the central arguments deployed by the proponents of state sovereignty.”

“It is important to keep this last point in mind, for it is crucial in terms of understanding the public character of the so-called "public" service. The precise meaning of the word "public" demands our full attention here, because it is too rarely recognized that the concept of "public" is absolutely irreducible to the "state." The term "publicum" designates not merely the state administration, but the entire community as constituted by all citizens: public services are not state services, in the sense that the state can dispense these services as it pleases, nor are they merely an extension of the state: they are public in the sense that they exist "in the service of the public." It is in this sense that they constitute a of the state toward its citizens.”

“Why have states placed so little confidence in the WHO, and why have they not accorded the WHO a central role in coordinating the global response to the pandemic? In China, the epidemic effectively paralyzed the country both politically and economically. Freezing economic production and trade has never been practiced on such a scale, and the outcome has been a very serious economic and financial crisis in China. Germany, France and the United States most of all, thus largely hesitated in order to keep their economies running as long as possible — or, more precisely, to balance off economic and imperatives based on how the situation unfolds from "day to day," rather than heeding the more dire, long-term forecasts.”