Business reopening delayed in town
François Legault has pushed back the general reopening of retail businesses in Montreal from May 11 to May 19. Some say May 18, but that’s Victoria Day/Journée nationale des patriotes, as observed, so in normal times that would be a long weekend.
Uatu 15:33 on 2020-05-04 Permalink
Heh. Plan all you want, but the virus has its own schedule.
Douglas 16:27 on 2020-05-04 Permalink
Legault should just pick a date and go with it. It’s been 8 weeks already.
We are approaching 20% unemployment, municipal and provincial budgets in massive deficits. And we are still worried about “potential” hospital overflows. ER rooms are laying off staff because its been empty right now.
Kate 17:51 on 2020-05-04 Permalink
Douglas, are you of the opinion everything should “return to normal” and that if a percentage of the population has to die, so be it?
Chris 18:26 on 2020-05-04 Permalink
Kate, answering such a question really requires stating the percentage of the population. I think we’d all agree that if 1% were to die, then no; but what about if 0.0000001% were to die (that’s 3 Canadians), then I’d say yes, we should reopen. The difficulty is answering for the range in between. Where is the cutoff? And of course we don’t actually know what the percentage is or will be.
Kate 19:01 on 2020-05-04 Permalink
I wasn’t asking you, Chris, and I wasn’t really asking for numbers. I simply wanted to know, would Douglas accept death – accept seeing many more deaths per capita than Quebec has experienced so far – in order to see businesses reopening? I mean, go full Darwin on this thing? Essentially, either you survive it, or too fucking bad?
Ian 19:45 on 2020-05-04 Permalink
It’s the old streetcar dilemma except that you are only “saving” the economy, not lives, by reopening. Let’s get real here, this is only to get people off UI because Legault is in the pocket of big business.
Kate 22:16 on 2020-05-04 Permalink
I’m going to make a separate post about this, but Monday night, the Gazette’s Aaron Derfel reports in his now daily Twitter thread that, so far from being empty, as Douglas claims above, the city’s ERs are getting crowded – “On Monday night, nine city ERs were overcrowded or close to it. The Jewish General’s ER, which for weeks reported an occupancy rate in the 50% range, was above 100% all day long.”
Brett 22:23 on 2020-05-04 Permalink
This is because the Government is preventing transfers of seniors out of hospitals into CHSLDs. The Government originally screwed up by transferring sick patients early on into nursing homes which were already understaffed and ill-equipped to deal with the virus. Now the Government is requiring hospitals to hold on to these patients instead of discharging them as they normally would, thus filling up their emergency rooms. See https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-quebec-hospitals-struggling-with-influx-of-covid-19-patients-even-as/
Chris 23:50 on 2020-05-04 Permalink
Kate, yes, I know you weren’t asking me. Your elaboration is clearer now though. There’s a big difference between your two phrasings: “seeing many more deaths per capita” vs “a percentage of the population”.
Ian, and it seems most people choose the utilitarian view. One nitpick though: reopening the economy saves lives too*. Think of the people who’ve had vital surgeries cancelled, or the damage caused by depression, unemployment, loneliness, etc. It’s a question of balance. For covid, the potential deaths are so high that the shutdown is a win. Even the capitalists have agreed! OTOH, we go “full Darwin” every year with influenza. Hundreds of Canadians die of flu every year because we don’t shut everything down. That’s a choice we make. Quarantine could (and this year has!) stomp the flu. But they are only hundreds, so the balance favours an open economy there (per the utilitarian view anyway).
*And keeping the economy closed saves lives too. Deaths from pollution will be down due to way less fossil fuel being burned, etc.
Michael Black 00:50 on 2020-05-05 Permalink
Then don’t phrase it as “opening the economy”. There are reasons unrelated to money for getting things “back to normal”, or sort of.
I had an appointment cancelled in March, I guess all is fine but it’s a big drop off from such constant attention for six months last year. I have an IV scheduled for June 8th, that’s the main drug though I’m not sure if I missed it whether things would start shutting down or just dangerous if I catch something.
For most people staying at home isn’t desirable. There’s no reason to invoke medical terms, or even need an explanation.
Kids trained in a schooled society kind of need schools, and too many make learning synonymous with school.
“The economy” isn’t an end for most, it’s a means to other things.
dwgs 09:00 on 2020-05-05 Permalink
Uh, Chris, you know those people who need vital surgeries will also require the use of the rather busy, rather risky ICUs, right? That’s where you go post op.
A good friend of ours is an ICU nurse at the Jewish and one of the main things getting the staff down is the knowledge that even after they have made it through the Covid madness, which is already very taxing fo them, they still won’t get a break for months and months because there will be a huge backlog of surgeries to handle. They’ve all been told to forget about booking a vacation until further notice so imagine working that hard and there is no light at the end of the tunnel to be seen. Imagine if they have to do this for a year or more. People will start to quit, not because they are unhappy but because they will have reached their limit.
jeather 10:33 on 2020-05-05 Permalink
My father is going for surgery soon at the Jewish (current guess is next week, assuming he tests negative on Wed), and I think in the end I’m happier it’s happening now than before everything reopens for everyone.
Kevin 13:48 on 2020-05-05 Permalink
Reopening society is just another way of saying the ICU has room for you if needed…
Yes, people die from injuries and diseases all year round, but we do our best to care for them, and we have built the facilities we need to care for everyone. In a normal year nobody’s dying of flu because they can’t get a ventilator — they’re dying because they’re dying.
Covid-19 broke that. If Quebec hadn’t shut the schools on March 13, if Quebec hadn’t put the province on pause the week after, if Quebec hadn’t cleared the ICUs, there would be tens of thousands dead.
I said it in March and I’ll say it again: flattening the curve means keeping ICUs at 90% occupancy rate for months, so that everyone gets the best care they can get.
Remember: the second wave of the 1918 flu killed 10 times as many people as the first wave. Open everything now, and we’ll have that second wave by the end of the summer.
That’s why ALL medical personnel in the province were told in March that all out-of-Canada trips were forbidden until Sept. 1. And that is likely going to be extended.
Kate 15:24 on 2020-05-05 Permalink
Kevin: thank you for your good sense.
jeather: best of luck to your father.
jeather 18:38 on 2020-05-06 Permalink
The good news is he’s negative for Covid so he’s starting treatment next week. Apparently his doctor pushed to do it ASAP, I believe entirely to get him in before the big rush of everyone going back to the doctor soon.