Updates from May, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 20:46 on 2020-05-13 Permalink | Reply  

    It wouldn’t be Quebec if a major story didn’t eventually get entangled with language politics. The Quebec Community Groups Network did a poll that suggested anglos are more “afraid” of COVID-19 than francophones, then François Legault waded in during Wednesday’s presser to blame the Gazette, and specifically Aaron Derfel. I’m not sure what he can pin on Derfel except that he’s been diligently conveying information and analyzing it. Derfel has tweeted that he’ll be responding sometime soon.

    Update: Aaron Derfel’s response.

     

    • jeather 21:10 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

      I don’t read the Gazette and I don’t even follow Aaron Derfel, what do I win?

      https://twitter.com/nick_kapur/status/1260645957651185665

    • Faiz imam 21:41 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

      Everyone should follow Aaron. his tweets are fantastic.

    • Uatu 23:30 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

      His articles are the only reason I read the Gazette. Good no nonsense reporting and the only journalist who wasn’t impressed by dr. Porter unlike other members of the media.

    • Uatu 23:36 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

      Also I’m an anglo but I don’t recall asking Geoffrey chambers and the qcgn to speak on my behalf. I mean, who is this guy anyways…

    • qatzelok 23:37 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

      I tried reading the Gazette a few times, but I got insomnia and chewed the fur off my tail and had to wear a transparent cone for a few months and take antibiotics. Now I stick to less hair-raising news sources.

    • jeather 06:45 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      Someone always retweets him, I do fine.

    • Kate 09:34 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      I don’t know whether it occurs to Legault that anglos might be slightly more likely to read US or UK media too, getting information from these other sources.

    • Chris 09:49 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      Was just going to say what Kate said: the difference will be the US media, not the Gazoo. As is typical with US corporate media, there has been a lot of fear mongering and hype. They aren’t in the news business, they are in the ad business. And scary headlines generate clicks. 🙁

    • Tim S. 10:26 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      I agree with Uatu on Geoffrey Chambers – I really wish he would stop this ‘speaking on behalf of anglos’ stick. The glory years of Alliance Quebec are done and most of us have moved on.

    • Tim S. 10:35 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      Actually, my comment above still stands for other reasons, but can anyone point to where Chambers got involved in this story? I just see Jack Jedwab quoted.

    • Uatu 10:41 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      I just mentioned chambers because he’s appeared on the news as the head of the qcgn in the past. I’m sure he’ll appear on TV for another interview speaking for the anglo community and I’ll be asking myself who are you again?

    • Meezly 11:40 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      I hope there will be a follow up piece analyzing why anglos fear covid-19 more than francophones. Perhaps there are valid reasons related to education, critical thinking, ability to process reliable updated information, an interest in reading up on global media sources (as Kate pointed out), following current events, and a healthy skepticism of incompetent government leadership, which is warranted seeing that Legault is trying to pin blame on a single journalist!

    • JaneyB 12:37 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      Hmmm. Francophones here get plenty of news from France, also a global media source (and perhaps the centre of technocratic govt itself). Also, the most volatile, protest-prone society on this continent is right here in Montreal.

    • Meezly 13:04 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      Sorry I did not mean to offend francophones by implying they are less cognizant than anglos when that is evidently not the case. More like why this click bait study to divide people unnecessarily – only providing data without any context so that readers have to infer something negative, or reinforce bias against anglos? like anglos are more fear-mongering, neurotic, etc. Very frustrating.

    • Kate 15:40 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      Meezly, I don’t think anyone could’ve been offended by what you wrote.

      JaneyB, of course francophones here might read news from France, but France is not an hour from our doorstep, so it’s bound not to have the same impact as reading about e.g. what New York City has gone through.

    • JP 20:42 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

      I definitely think anglophones being more likely to read U.S. or U.K. media is a factor, at least in my case.and that of my friends and family. The first time I really ever began to feel any concern for our safety here in North America was at the end of February when I was out of town and was flipping through American news channels on the hotel TV…CNN, MSNBC… I was out of town, probably for the last time in a long time, and couldn’t wait to get back home after that. I tend to avoid those channels at home because watching them quite frankly can create a lot of anxiety, but I do follow The New York Times and The Guardian, and other American magazines and newspapers. Though that’s not to say i don’t follow any local media.

    • Jack 12:47 on 2020-05-15 Permalink

      With Tim S. and Uatu I am at loss why they would commission that poll?

  • Kate 17:01 on 2020-05-13 Permalink | Reply  

    Quebec is going to allow non-contact, non-team sports as of May 20. Montreal is included, apparently in hopes of dissuading people from leaving town for the regions.

    Jonathan Montpetit looks into those projections released Friday for what Montreal can expect given certain variables.

    CTV has a text-and-infographic piece tracing income levels vs. contagion in different parts of town. TVA simply lays out the numbers by borough and town.

    Mayor Plante is beseeching Quebec for help in buying masks. She’s set to meet the premier Thursday, and I imagine we’ll hear more definite plans for Montreal coming from that discussion.

     

    • Kate 14:20 on 2020-05-13 Permalink | Reply  

      Tracey Lindeman has an article in the Guardian about why Montreal has become a viral hotspot.

       

      • Benoit 15:28 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        The article misses one important factor: Quebec’s “relâche” (March break) happened just at the wrong time, with hundreds of thousands of people returning, with the virus, from cruises and all-inclusive resorts, just as the pandemy was progressing silently all over the world.

      • Ian 15:34 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Lots of European ski trips too, and all the Alpine countries were hotspots. If our March Break was a week later like pretty much everywhere else in North America, an important vector would have been eliminated.

      • Meezly 17:19 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Indeed the March break gave us a bad start, and it was a glaring omission to us locals, but if the Montreal health system was more robust and the Legault government more competent, our infection rate could have been mitigated.
        Since early March, there have been so many other factors that made our city surge to a top COVID-19 epicentres. Yes, the wealthier people who traveled outside the country brought back the virus, but that’s since been old news. The virus has since spread to the more vulnerable and marginalized populations throughout the city.
        It is this latter part that I think this Guardian article was trying to shine a light on.

      • Ian 11:27 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

        Well yes, but that it was the wealthy that were the early superspreaders and the poor who ultimately are suffering the most for it is worth considering.

    • Kate 13:57 on 2020-05-13 Permalink | Reply  

      There was a forest fire in Pointe-aux-Trembles on Tuesday evening. The cause is unknown. I’ve been seeing items suggesting this could be a bad summer for forest fires, since we don’t have enough crises already.

       

      • Kevin 15:31 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        I make it a habit to check SOPFEU, and this is the first time in many years it’s showing Quebec has had more fires than the average.

        But each of this fires has been tiny. At 77 hectares burned so far this year, we’re still below the 10-year-average.

      • DeWolf 19:46 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        It’s been a particularly dry spring and today was actually the driest day ever recorded in Montreal, with 16% humidity. (H/T @YUL_Weather on Twitter for the heads up.)

    • Kate 11:08 on 2020-05-13 Permalink | Reply  

      The Santé Montréal document with all the statistics on the state of the pandemic in the city is out (PDF). People will be analyzing and commenting on this document over the next news cycle.

       

      • EmilyG 11:59 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        I wish the document would say how many people have recovered (unless I missed it?)

      • jeather 12:20 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

      • DeWolf 12:26 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Re. jeather’s link – it annoyed me when people reacted to that recent fax machine story by slamming Quebec, when fax machines are still in use in most Canadian (or even North American) health care systems. Outdated protocols is a systemic issue, not something unique to us.

      • MarcG 12:35 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        There’s tons of outdated technology holding our world together. Upgrading is difficult/time-consuming/expensive and often not a priority because it’s not broken. https://www.inputmag.com/tech/ibm-will-offer-free-cobol-training-to-address-overloaded-unemployment-systems

      • thomas 13:22 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Fax machines are used in hospitals throughout North America for one simple reason. Doctors insist on handwriting down all info on paper. Inputting information on a computer looks too much like data entry and thus is beneath them.

      • Kevin 15:34 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        thomas
        That’s not so. Doctors are just like anyone else and will use electronic tech if it works.

        The medical system uses faxes because they are secure.

        Email is like sending everything via postcard, which is why you should never do stuff like send your passwords, SIN, or anything that requires security using it.

      • Bert 17:27 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Faxes are no more secure than e-mail. Our records are already digital. There are plenty of solutions out there to provide secure, encrypted transmission and storage of any file / instruction.

        In my opinion, the reason that the medical profession insists on fax is to provide a buffer between customers / patients and the profession. “That must be by fax. Oh, you don’t have one? Too bad, find one and get back to us.”

        There is no reason why a doctor needs to fax an Rx slip to a pharmacy when it should be an on-line system anyways.

      • Blork 18:15 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        The actual reason why doctors use fax is because fax is easy to learn, highly stable, and never changes. Software (ANY software) is constantly going through updgrades, feature changes, bugging and debugging, more upgrades, incompatibility issues, learning curves, user error due to new staff and/or software updates that break things or change procedures, etc.

        Key word: stability. As in, it never changes, and anyone can learn how to use it in less than two minutes.

      • mare 21:22 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Two other reason for faxes:

        inefficiency: hundreds of jobs will disappear when nobody has to transfer (re-type) the information on the fax to the internal hospital system.
        plausible deniability: faxing a requisition for a specialist consultation or an imaging request is a black hole. Don’t call us, we call you. If they never call you back they can always claim the fax got misplaced.
        waiting lists: the stack of faxes provides a physical representation of the waiting lists for a specialist. 10 centimetres of faxes? Hmm, maybe we should triage them some more and throw away the ones that are so old they can’t be urgent anymore.

        Unfortunately I’m not completely sure the above is completely nonsense…

      • mare 21:24 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Sorry, my dashes were eaten by the comment system.

      • Bert 22:22 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Doctors don’t send faxes, their secretaries send faxes.

        Software is fairly stable. In a business and particularly in an enterprise, regulated environment is tightly controlled and slow to evolve. I am sure that there full fledged doctors that are younger than email as we know it.

        Insisting on fax is simply to impose an artificial control and roadblock.

      • Blork 00:03 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

        Yeah, I feel like most of you folks don’t have much direct experience with institutional institutionalism and its unique blend of simultaneous inertia and momentum. There is no nefarious decision making behind the endurance of the fax in the medical community. It’s just too hard to stop and to start something new. Too many balls in the air, not enough concrete reason at the individual level (multiplied by millions) to change.

      • Alison Cummins 00:53 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

        Legal system too. When I was negotiating contracts with property managers, contracts had to be faxed, not emailed.

        The thing is we usually did both. Contracts were emailed back and forth, agreed to, signed, entered in a database and faxed. Faxed were parallel to electronic communication, not instead of it.

      • Michael Black 08:43 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

        I was surprised to get email about something, but it was from a third party that is somehow involved. I’m still trying to figure oit how that helps me (I can see why it helps the drug company, and the email wasn’t random).

        But there were computers all over the Royal Vic last year, even in an emergency room. And computers in examining rooms at the Montreal General. One was so tiny I said something to the young doctor and then she said something that indicated she wasn’t reluctant about computers.

        When I was in the Royal Vic for three months last year, my file, which came with me every time I visited a department, got huge. Yet in a few appointments after I got out, the doctors all used computers. They all seemed to plug in a USB flash drive, so I assume it’s a security system. I also suspect the computers had to be used more as terminals, the data kept on a server since these offices weren’t specific to the doctor.

        The nurses certainly use computers.

        Oddly, one time a nurse said the fax machine wasn’t working. I actually wondered, after seeing so many computers, if there really were physical fax machines or if the documents were scanned into a computer and then sent via a modem over the phone line.

      • Blork 08:49 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

        There’s no shortage of computers in the medical system. The problem is user access and account management.

        Every application, email account, and service requires a login, which means every doctor, nurse, assistant, (etc.) requires multiple login names and passwords, and that’s just for any given hospital. Now start crossing systems (hospital to hospital, hospital to pharmacy, doctor to hospital, doctor to pharmacy, pharmacy to gov’t service, doctor to gov’t service, hospital to gov’t service, etc. etc.) and you start to see how gargantuan and unmanageable it is, because all of these systems grew up independently.

        More complications; you don’t just need a username and password: every account has multiple layers of user access to deal with. Does the nurse have the same access as the doctor? (Yes here, no there, no there, yes here, no there, etc.) Does the doctor have the same access at one hospital as they do at another hospital?

        Bear in mind that these are all different systems with different programming behind them.

        They are somewhat connected by a mishmash of yet more systems that do nothing other than try to connect the systems. It’s like a three-dimensional array of three-dimensional chess games that is constantly moving in and out of a fourth dimension.

        I know this because I briefly worked for a company that was trying to manage all those user accesses. It’s one of the only jobs I’ve ever quit, and I quit because I just. could. not. (Brain exploding over and over. Total sense of hopelessness and futility on the job, etc.)

        Compare that to sending a fax.

      • Joey 10:28 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

        This Atul Gawande article (“Why Doctors Hate Their Computers”) is fascinating reading: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-hate-their-computers

        There are slow, frustrating processes in place to bring electronic health records to Canada’s many health systems. PrescribeIT, for instance, is focusing on electronic prescription management – you go to the doctor, you get a diagnosis, the doctor sends your script to the pharmacy, no paper/fax necessary, changes/questions are all managed via the system. Quebec’s Carnet Sante hosts all your lab results and can schedule appointments – if your doctor is participating.

        My sense is the gatekeepers – doctors – have two major concerns: one, excessive bureaucratization of ad hoc systems that work well enough, which is likely a major drain on their time and mental energy. Two, “democratization” of access to health information. Old school docs aren’t keen on patients having all the information in their files at their fingertips.

        @Alison, I think lawyers have moved to a secure email system in the last year and a half, but I can’t find a source for that…

      • MarcG 11:48 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

        @Blork I imagine you’ve read this funny article before but in case you haven’t: https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/29/the-internet-is-held-together-with-bubble-gum-and-baling-wire/

      • Blork 12:19 on 2020-05-14 Permalink

        Let’s not even start on the banking system, behind which is an archaic “network” of geriatric mainframes strung together with pipe cleaners and bent coat hangers, and whose programming is so obscure and arcane that nobody even knows how to do maintenance on half of it. (Only slightly exaggerating.)

    • Kate 10:30 on 2020-05-13 Permalink | Reply  

      Public transit commissions in the urban agglom are coming up $165 million short so far in the pandemic, with drops from 80% to 90% in ridership, so they’re looking toward Quebec for a hand.

      The Journal shows us how STM bus drivers will be protected with plexi panels. These have been proposed in the pre-COVID past to keep drivers safer – there are yahoos who’ll spit on drivers, and worse – but I wonder at the same time, will some drivers suffer from a feeling of isolation? I’ve taken the bus a handful of times since the lockdown, and it feels colder not to say hello and thank you to the driver. But we’re going into a socially colder time generally.

       

      • Chris 11:01 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        This sucks for climate change if it continues. Many people are already disproportionately afraid of covid, I’d wager the drop in public transit usage will not be only short term. Likewise car pooling. Car sales will increase. Transit funding will fall. Consequently, pollution and congestion will increase. A vicious cycle.

      • Bert 11:06 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Increased car sales will contribute to transit funding, though the special levies on licenses, registration and fuel. It will also help government coffers as each car sale, new or used, is taxed.

        All this will reduced ridership, which means more having to provide less service, plan for less capacity, employ less people, etc.

      • Joey 12:49 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        @Bert if ridership is down beyond the short-term crisis period, governments will decrease funding over and above whatever “gains” are made from automatic revenue generated by increased car sales. This being said, I wonder how much of the current work-from-home situation will become permanently. I would imagine that hardly anyone still working who’s not in an office misses their commute, whether they get on the metro at Mt-Royal at 8:30 am or have a self-driving Tesla…

      • Michael Black 13:00 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Employment is like an iceberg, we can talk about working from home but many jobs can’t be done remotely. And many of those are lower paying. So now’s not the time to measure public transit in terms of the environment, but as a necessity to some. The collective mind dismisses those who don’t fit in, but it’s a very different view from those outside.

      • Chris 13:37 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        >So now’s not the time to measure public transit in terms of the environment, but as a necessity to some.

        Those aren’t mutually exclusive at all.

      • GC 19:32 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Joey, I think some of us with a relatively short commute–myself included–do miss it because it gives a psychological separation between work and home. However, I can’t imagine anyone with a really long one misses it the time drain or inconvenience.

        For sure there will be some people who will just keep working from home, even when it’s not necessary, just because they realize it suits them and their employer doesn’t mind. I wonder if it will be that significant a number, however.

        I also wonder if there will be a lot of people changing jobs by choice once things settle down. Major events like this tend to shift people’s perspectives on things.

    • Kate 10:21 on 2020-05-13 Permalink | Reply  

      Tuesday’s hints that Montreal may see a delay in the supposed May 25 reopening comes through a fog here. Are the public health people in a backstage squabble with the board of trade people, trying to resist the pressure to go back to “business as usual” despite the risk?

      Is it that there’s a psychological barrier about pushing the date into a new month? If we’re confined into June, does it feel different? I think the premier thinks it does.

      TVA has a rather dramatic photo on its version of this story.

       

      • mare 10:58 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        I had to pick something up for work, and saw my first traffic jam in months, on the 40E near St-Denis. There weren’t as many cars as usual but it felt like the lockdown had already been lifted. Part of the traffic was construction industry related (and its many layers: small contractors, fancy bathroom showrooms to raw materials), but there was probably also a lot of traffic going from one region of Quebec to another region. People are—understandingly, it was a long winter—relieved their region is opening up and start moving around again. I hope they don’t stop in Montreal to get coffee and export the virus to those regions again. Re-introduction is going to be a big problem now different regions have a very different infection rate. To and from Quebec, but also from other provinces and countries when border restrictions are eased.

    • Kate 09:50 on 2020-05-13 Permalink | Reply  

      Police broke up several spontaneous street parties in the Hasidic parts of Outremont on Tuesday evening. Google tells me this was Lag B’Omer, which commemorates, among other things, the end of a plague nearly 2000 years ago.

       

      • Chris 10:13 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        The same happened in Williamsburg.

        Such behaviour is probably a big reason why 70% of Israel’s covid cases are Haredim, even though they are 10% of the population.

      • DavidH 13:43 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Love that teen skateboarding in a Rudolph the reindeer outfit in that Journal video.

      • Ian 13:57 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Mile End, too. everyone was out on the street in my block, physical distancing totally out the window.
        I didn’t call the cops (apparently it was a noise complaint) but I’m kind of relieved everyone dispersed.

        I can’t be the only one that gets anxious when I see completely unnecessary crowds thee days.

    • Kate 09:47 on 2020-05-13 Permalink | Reply  

      Mobile testing clinics are coming to the following neighbourhoods, that I’ve been able to find data on: Lasalle, St-Laurent, Little Burgundy, Ahuntsic-Cartierville, and areas in the east end of the city. There’s also a testing clinic in Montreal North that’s already been closed and reopened once.

      CBC lists other non-mobile testing clinics.

      But the phrasing is still: “if they have COVID-19 symptoms or have been in contact with someone who has the disease.” We already know it’s easy to have this virus and not know it for days, so we all need to assume we’ve been in contact with someone who has it, and that every time we go outside to do any errand – or even to walk around – we could touch something or breathe the air from someone infected. Even if most of the deaths have been in old-age homes, that doesn’t mean the virus is contained: the only reason we’re not seeing more widespread illness is because of the lockdown.

      It’s like the flu shot. You’re not supposed to get one for free unless you’re in certain health categories or in contact with someone who is. But the minute you go into a store or board a bus – back in the old days of crowded stores and buses – you’re in contact with people of all ages and levels of health. A nurse told me this at the CLSC when I was getting the shot a couple of years ago. “We all are, ma chère” she said, and stuck a needle in my arm.

       

      • denpanosekai 09:48 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Verdun had one Monday-Tuesday

      • walkerp 10:58 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        I hate the lack of honesty around testing criteria. Just tell us we don’t have enough testing and so we have to limit. They keep making arbitrary criteria such as having symptoms, which make no sense in several contexts and everybody knows it. This undermines confidence.

      • Chris 11:09 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        walkerp, where has any official said there are enough testing kits to test everyone?

        >It’s like the flu shot. You’re not supposed to get one for free unless you’re in certain health categories…

        Money is not unlimited. Flu shots cost money. Every government dollar spent on flu shots is a dollar not spent on surgeries, equipment upgrades, building new hospitals, buying more ambulances, hiring more nurses, etc. There is modelling on risk/reward on how to most efficiently spend healthcare money. Having x additional people sick for a few days with flu is perhaps a good tradeoff for reducing surgery times by x months.

      • Kate 11:14 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Chris, you’re not an epidemiologist, and I bet you’ve never even played one on TV. Flu shots also mean not giving over hospital beds to people with pneumonia. Influenza does kill people. Here’s a pile of stats from Canada up till COVID-19 overtook flu as news (although the recurring mention of an “influenza-like illness” is interesting).

      • Tee Owe 12:00 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Jumping in here a bit short of data but anyway – flu shots are attempted vaccines, based on best guesses on which influenza will come along this year. Kate is right flu kills many people. Preventing flu-related problems would save lots more than it costs. Influenza mutates a lot so we don’t always get it right. Corona? We don’t know yet – a vaccine would be great but we have to wait and see.

      • Tee Owe 12:05 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Have to add, modeling Covid-19’on flu turned out to be a mistake – it doesn’t play by flu-rules. Testing allows isolation of positives which allows the rest of us to get on with our lives – test test test!

      • jeather 12:10 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Having x additional people sick for a few days with flu is perhaps a good tradeoff for reducing surgery times by x months.

        Perhaps! Who can know if flu shots, like other preventative care, is worth it! It is a shame there are absolutely no studies on the cost-effectiveness of flu vaccines, so all we can do is wonder.

      • Chris 13:27 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        jeather, “perhaps” indeed; measuring all these tradeoffs is a full time job, and I make no claim to have done so. I’m sure such studies have been done.

        Kate, yes, your point about beds is indeed part of the tradeoffs. My point is that rationing free flu vaccines to certain people is not necessarily the wrong choice.

      • Kate 13:38 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Chris, somehow Ontario manages to do free flu vaccines every year. I don’t know how their budgeting works, but they do.

      • Tee Owe 13:49 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Regarding cost-effectiveness of flu vaccines, I browsed for exactly that and got this – it seems a useful link (they are cost-effective, even f they don’t always hit their target exactly ). Maybe worth mentioning that hand-washing and social distancing also work well against the flu –
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine

      • Chris 13:57 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        Kate, yes, I know. OTOH, Quebec “manages” to have a public prescription drug plan, Ontario doesn’t. People die if they can’t afford their needed drugs. Does that save more lives than die of flu? Tradeoffs. I’m not saying Quebec is making the right ones, I’m saying these tradeoffs exist, and that one shouldn’t assume they haven’t been thought through.

        Tee, indeed flu is way down since the covid lockdown.

      • walkerp 14:58 on 2020-05-13 Permalink

        @Chris, every time somebody tries to get a test and is refused. How many stories do we have to hear about a frontline worker who can’t get a test because “they don’t have symptoms”? How about just say, we are really fucking short on tests, so we have to triage them as best we can.
        The bigger issue, of course, is their mistaken criteria in the first place.

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