0:00Hello and welcome to the HelloFrench press review. The podcast that immerses you
0:04in the news of the week to help you improve your French.
0:10Featured for this week, from March 15 to 21, 2020. A first track to treat the coronavirus?
0:17Chloroquine. Symptom of Covid-19, loss of smell is added to the list.
0:25The situation is becoming more and more
0:27dramatic in Italy, with 800 deaths in 24 hours this Saturday. Coronavirus epidemic,
0:33an update on sporting and cultural events postponed or canceled.
0:38What if chloroquine, a drug commonly used to fight malaria, was the solution to treating Covid-19?
0:46This is in any case what a Marseille doctor, Didier Raoult, says
0:50in the study he conducted on 24 patients. 75% of them saw the virus
0:56completely disappear after six days. In a second group of patients who did
1:00not take the drug, only 10% no longer carry the virus. This treatment must now be tested
1:06on a larger scale, announced the French government.
1:10The French pharmaceutical company Sanofi has announced that it will offer
1:14doses of Plaquenil, an antimalarial drug that could treat up to 300,000 patients.
1:21Caution remains in the face of this miracle cure. Indeed, Chinese doctors had
1:26already considered this track before dropping it. Only trials on a larger scale will
1:31make it possible to truly attest to its effectiveness. Fever, dry cough, and difficulty breathing.
1:38These three symptoms have so far been the main signs of a Covid-19 infection.
1:44Doctors have added a new symptom to this list: loss of smell.
1:49A momentary disappearance of the sense of smell
1:52would have been observed in particular in younger patients between 23
1:56and 45 years old, without these patients having a blocked nose.
2:01A situation that is becoming more and more dramatic in Italy, despite total confinement.
2:07Every day, the number of deaths from the coronavirus continues to increase,
2:11with 430 deaths on Thursday, 600 on Friday and 800 deaths on Saturday.
2:18An even more radical decision was therefore taken by the Italian government
2:23this Saturday evening to try to reduce the spread of the virus.
2:28The country now closes all its factories from March 22 to April 3.
2:33A very difficult decision to make from an economic point of view.
2:36For Giuseppe Conte, the Italian Prime Minister,
2:40the latter described the current situation as the most serious crisis experienced
2:45by the country since the Second World War. Only the factories essential
2:49to the supply of essential goods for the population are now open.
2:54Pharmacies, supermarkets, banks and public transport remain
2:58open for the moment since the start of the epidemic. Over a thousand Italians have lost their lives
3:03and 3,000 people are currently in intensive care.
3:09Following the coronavirus epidemic, many events have been
3:13preventively canceled around the world. The world of sport and culture are
3:17particularly affected by these cancellations. In football, the 2020 European Cup will
3:23finally take place from June 11 to July 11, 2021.
3:27As expected, the competition will be held in 11 different countries.
3:30The Champions League and the Europa League are suspended. For the moment,
3:35however, UEFA plans to have teams play matches on weekends
3:39to close the championship by June 30, 2020. National championships are also
3:45suspended for the moment in many countries, such as France, Italy,
3:49Spain, Germany, Portugal, Brazil and Mexico.
3:55In tennis, the season is currently suspended until June 7.
4:00Roland-Garros has already been postponed to the fall.
4:03In basketball, the LNB has also been suspended until further notice. For now,
4:09the Tokyo Olympics are being held, although many athletes,
4:13including the American Athletics Federation, are asking for a postponement. The Tour de France,
4:18which should start on June 27, also remains in place despite the threat
4:22of a cancellation. In the world of cinema, the Cannes Film Festival, which usually takes place in
4:29May, has already announced its postponement, probably to June or July. A first.
4:34Eurovision, which was due to take place in Rotterdam in May as well, has been canceled.
4:40No postponement date has yet been brought forward.
4:43Many films have also postponed their release due to the epidemic,
4:47the last of a bunch: Mulan or even Fast and Furious 9.
4:52Many museums or monuments also remain closed to enforce
4:55confinement in the countries where it has been imposed.
4:58This is particularly the case with the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall
5:02of China or even Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. Thanks for listening to the podcast.
5:07Hope you liked it. I will now explain the key words, the important words of the week.
5:15We first talked about malaria. Malaria is a tropical disease that is transmitted by an insect.
5:23Specifically, it's going to be transmitted by certain types of mosquitoes when they bite us.
5:29You may find that you have this disease if you have high fevers after
5:35being bitten. Then we used the word "solution", therefore a solution. It is an answer to a problem.
5:42It is an idea or something that will allow us to overcome a difficulty.
5:48We used the verb "to treat". When treating someone, we provide care, we help them heal.
5:56We are trying to make a disease disappear. We have used the adverb "completely".
6:04We can also say "totally" or "entirely". We are going to talk about a drug. A drug is a substance,
6:15something that we will take to cure ourselves.
6:18It's a remedy that's going to be used to try and cure a disease. We also talked about treatment.
6:26A treatment is not just a medicine, but it is the set
6:30of medicines, treatments, or what a patient will do to cure themselves.
6:36So that's all that is going to help heal someone.
6:40We talked about a dose, to talk about doses of antimalarial drugs.
6:46It's the amount of a medicine, it's the required portion of something.
6:54We spoke of prudence, by saying that we had to be careful. Prudence is an attitude,
7:00it is the fact of being careful, of thinking about what could happen.
7:06We talked about a miracle cure. A cure is a medicine or something that will be used to cure.
7:14When we talk about a miracle cure, we are talking about a drug that would be magic.
7:19It would be extraordinary, almost divine, and could directly heal the sick.
7:27We talked about large-scale testing. When doing something on a large scale,
7:32we can say that we do it in a bigger way, more broadly. Here,
7:35we are going to test this drug on more people.
7:40One could for example say: this drug worked on two patients.
7:45Now let's do a large-scale test on 1,000 patients.
7:50We used the verb "to attest" to say that it was necessary to certify that this
7:54drug works. It means to assure, to certify something by means of proof or by testimony.
8:02To say something is valid, that's for sure. It's true. We talked about efficiency, and
8:10efficiency is very good performance. When we say that something is
8:15effective, or has been shown to be effective, it means that it has worked very well.
8:21It can also be used for a person. When someone is said to have acted effectively,
8:26she acted without wasting time. She quickly achieved the result that was expected. On the symptoms
8:32of the coronavirus, we talked about fever. It's when someone's temperature is higher than normal.
8:41For example, you could say: he has a high fever. His temperature rose to 39 degrees.
8:49We also talked about the cough. When you cough,
8:52you expel air from your lungs while making a lot of noise. It's when our airways,
8:58our lungs are a little irritated, congested, and therefore we breathe out.
9:04Breathing out is the opposite of breathing, so we breathe out making a lot of noise.
9:09Usually, it happens if you have swallowed wrong or if you are sick.
9:15We have just talked about symptoms, so a symptom is the way in which a disease will show itself.
9:22The way it will manifest itself is thanks to a symptom that we will discover that we have a disease.
9:31For example, we could also say vomiting in the morning can be a symptom of
9:36pregnancy - we could mean that you are pregnant.
9:40It is thanks to this that we are going to have the flea in the ear, and we did not talk about smell.
9:45To smell is the fact of smelling odors with one's nose. We talked about a stuffy nose.
9:54This is when something is preventing the passage. You could say: my nose is stuffy, I can't breathe.
10:00I have to blow my nose. We talked about decreasing,
10:07to say that the Italian government is trying to decrease the epidemic.
10:12It means to lower, to make smaller, so that there are fewer cases. So, we will also talk
10:18about the spread of the virus. The act of spreading, spreading, or reaching more and more people.
10:28The Italian government was going to shut down factories,
10:32factories and industries where people work to build things, food, for example. It could be a car
10:39building factory, a chocolate factory, or a canned vegetables factory, for example.
10:47We talked about the people, the people, the population, and the locals.
10:50It can be the inhabitants of a country or the world population. The people of the whole earth.
11:00We also talked about intensive care. It's a part of the hospital
11:06where the doctors care for patients who are in a coma or who have to be
11:11watched all the time, so their condition is very, very bad.
11:15In this case, we also talked about cancellation.
11:19The cancellation of an event means that it is deleted.
11:24For example, you could also say: my train was canceled again this morning.
11:28I keep having cancellations lately.
11:32So an event had to happen, and in this case, if a train was to come, ultimately, it does not.
11:39We spoke of a championship. A championship is a generally sporting
11:43competition where there are different events, where competitors will compete.
11:53We have used the adverb "preventively" to mean that events have been canceled preventively.
12:00It means in advance, in a preventive way. So, we made this decision now
12:06to be sure that the situation when the event is supposed to take place
12:12is not as it is today, or is not getting worse.
12:14Imagine what can happen if you decide to make the decision now.
12:21We also used the verb to suspend - to stop, interrupt something for a while.
12:28If we were talking about sports competitions,
12:31they are stopped over a given period, but a priori, they will resume later.
12:38We talked about postponement: when an event is postponed, it is not canceled.
12:44It's just postponed until later. It will take place at a different time than the one planned.