Resto owners bang on pots
Restaurant owners in Old Montreal banged on pots and pans Wednesday morning in a protest demanding to be allowed to open their dining rooms again.
The people shown in the photos all have face shields on. They could stop and think a bit, it seems to me.
Chris 18:05 on 2020-05-27 Permalink
>…in a protest demanding to be allowed to open their dining rooms again.
Hmmm, that’s not really what the story says. They are demanding to know *when and how* they can eventually reopen, not that they be allowed to reopen immediately or uncontitionally.
>The people shown in the photos all have face shields on.
If they didn’t, they’d be accused of being irresponsible protestors.
Kate 18:09 on 2020-05-27 Permalink
My point is, if you need a face shield in public, you can’t eat. So who are they kidding?
Chris 20:03 on 2020-05-27 Permalink
But you don’t need a face shield outdoors. They were wearing them for PR, not for actual safety, is my bet.
With some extra distancing and cleaning, reopening restos seems quite reasonable. Especially outdoor terasses, the risk is extremely low there.
CDC’s newest best estimate is that only 0.4% of *symptomatic* people will die. And of course some people have it with no symptoms (and they don’t die). That’s quite low, if true. It’s not much higher than case fatality rate of seasonal influenza (0.1%).
Brett 20:55 on 2020-05-27 Permalink
The restaurant owners are upset that they’re not being included in the return to work plan presented by the Government. It’s a moot point, because the only restaurants that are going to be left are the big chains and their franchises, plus a few cheap burger joints.
The daily ‘opening the economy’ announcements are a farce and a distraction from the real problem – namely that the Government didn’t adequately prepare the most vulnerable population and instead let them die in their soiled underwear. Smh.
Michael Black 21:12 on 2020-05-27 Permalink
But lots of people are vulnerable, it’s not age specific. It skews towards older, and being in an old age home probably mafe things worse. Until last year I would never have thought I’d be vulnerable, so I suspect there could be more like me, vulnerable without knowing.
Staying home does limit that. Ironically people in old age homes weren’t isolated.
Meanwhile the nurses had a protest today about being dead tired. They don’t want to be overloaded even more.
On the other hand, I was at the Montreal General on Monday for a blood test. The CLSC wouldn’t send someone to get the blood. The nurse, who took my blood last summer, was in good shape on Monday. A bit of a surprise, but it’s way better to have happy nurses.
CE 21:21 on 2020-05-27 Permalink
I don’t work in a restaurant but my business is completely dependant on draught beer being consumed which requires dining rooms/terrasses be open. I don’t want them to open before it’s safe but I would like to know when they might reopen so I can make plans.
david666 08:06 on 2020-05-28 Permalink
I recently listened to this great podcast about London’s reaction to the Blitz. Essentially, the stories about them hiding in the Underground are apocryphal and largely untrue, at least for a colossal majority of Londoners. The reality was significantly more amazing – they simply went about their daily lives, with only minor changes.
The book author (he was there discussing his new biography of Churchill) underlined something he pulled from a record back then, which was that death from above was both certain and utterly improbable. All Londoners knew that someone would die on each night of the raids, but the possibility that it was any single given person was not statistically probable in any way that could induce significant changes in behavior.
There are, of course, differences between London during the Blitz and Montreal under this Covid-19 threat. Most importantly, we won’t starve if we don’t work. However, there’s also a lesson in perspective there. Michael, you say that “lots of people are vulnerable” beyond senior citizens, but that’s just not true, or it’s an issue of semantics and the definition of “lots.” In reality, likely every single person reading this could simply return to normal life, and there would be no impact at all on their health.
I like the simple peasant thought of “well, there’s a virus, we had better stay home” as much as anyone. But it’s month three, like, if it hasn’t already worked, it won’t work. And I don’t think the reality of the scale of economic ruin has really set in for people who aren’t in a position to look behind the curtain. A forest fire is an important ecological event, an atom bomb isn’t.
Back on New Orleans – after Hurricane Katrina, the city was just not the same, and never will be. We’re talking about that level of economic disruption. Can’t continue, just can’t.
Kate 09:05 on 2020-05-28 Permalink
david, how and where do you work? Will your work or your commute put you or others at risk? Even if you’re willing to get sick – are you? – remember you’re likely to be wandering around without symptoms for days before you feel ill, possibly passing it to anyone you encounter.
Right now, 93 city workers are down with Covid. Not retirees, not frail old people, but people in their prime working for the city. Anywhere you have people congregating, you will have contagion, and that includes transit and any workplaces where proximity can’t be avoided.
Alison Cummins 09:06 on 2020-05-28 Permalink
David,
You say that if it hasn’t worked yet, then it won’t.
But it *has* worked.
Many countries have gotten their fatalities down to almost zero. Quebec’s fatalities dropped steadily for 17 days straight but started rising again last week.
Sophisticated and effective public health plans are not « simple peasant thoughts ».
Walking outside during an air raid is a completely irrelevant analogy to gathering in groups during a pandemic because it doesn’t endanger other people. More relevant would be blackouts during air raids. Cities would turn off all the lights so bombers would have trouble targeting them. An individual might have thought that making a bonfire in their back yard would be unlikely to result in their own death, but their neighbours would quickly have put an end to any bonfire shenanigans because of the increased risk to everyone in the area.
Alison Cummins 09:23 on 2020-05-28 Permalink
Chris,
0.4% is not low if everyone gets it.
0.1% is only low because we have annual vaccination campaigns to reduce the number of people who get flu in the first place. In a bad flu season when the vaccine is not a good match for the virus, our healthcare systems get quite stressed.
People who are completely asymptomatic are rare. There’s a long period of being contagious but asymptomatic before developing symptoms, but never developing symptoms at all is rare.
Covid is not all-or-nothing. You can get scarred lungs, a stroke and kidney damage and not die. Getting sick will still be life-changing and costly and have a huge impact.
Alison Cummins 12:34 on 2020-05-28 Permalink
Further to “it’s not that bad compared to other things we take for granted”:
StatsCan has been gutted, so I can’t seem to get recent granular detail by province, so this is based on rates from 2018, Canada-wide. Ignoring seasonality and correcting for the increase in crude population since then, I’ve calculated the number of deaths expected in 80 days (the number of days since Canada’s first covid death) in a year.
+++ +++ +++
2020 expected deaths in 80 days from:
∙ pneumonia + influenza combined: 1,935
∙ pneumonia, influenza + anything else related to lungs including TB, inhaling irritating chemicals or aspirating food or water: 6,221 (note that “anything else” kills over twice as many people as pneumonia + influenza combined)
∙ everything above + HIV and diabetes: 7,798
Canada’s covid-19 deaths to date: 6,873
+++ +++ +++
We have had 3.55x the deaths from covid-19 in 80 days than we would expect from influenza + pneumonia, and 1.1x the deaths from all respiratory causes combined. So yes, it is that bad. In Canada. If I find the numbers for Quebec specifically, I can post those too.
Alison Cummins 13:26 on 2020-05-28 Permalink
David:
See also the « free rider problem ».
Chris 15:11 on 2020-05-28 Permalink
>Right now, 93 city workers are down with Covid
Is that supposed to sound like a lot? Article also says “Montréal compte 28 000 employés.” So 0.3%. And “down with” could be anything from the sniffles to intubation, so sill not a helpful metric.
>0.1% is only low because we have annual vaccination campaigns
And even *without* any covid vaccine, the covid CFR is (apparently, now) only 4x worse than seasonal flu. Yet our reaction to covid has been 10000x our reaction to flu. Arguably justifiably so with initial data indicting a much high CFR, but now that the CFR is looking to be on the same order of magnitude as flu, the justification is questionable.
Alison, do you acknowledge that the lockdown has serious downsides? We can debate where the balance is, but do you concede that there is a point where the lockdown is worse than what it’s trying to solve? Would you advocate for this same lockdown every winter for seasonal flu for example?
>People who are completely asymptomatic are rare
Not according to the CDC article I linked yesterday: fully 1/3 of infections are asymptomatic. Hardly rare.
>Canada’s covid-19 deaths to date: 6,873
How many of these are ‘excess deaths’ though? Probably many/most, but not all. ex:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Kate 16:20 on 2020-05-28 Permalink
Chris, you’re right. We’ve all overreacted. Will you come downtown with me so I can take your photo as you lick a lamp post?
Chris 21:48 on 2020-05-28 Permalink
Kate, I did *not* say we overreacted. The best data *at the time* said the CFR was *much* higher. That calls for one kind of response. Now the *newest data* says the CFR is probably quite a bit lower. New data means we should reconsider the plan. The CFR for under 50s is now thought to be 0.05%! If true, that’s great news! Maybe it won’t be true, the data is constantly changing, but that’s CDC’s current best estimate.
Alison Cummins 22:15 on 2020-05-28 Permalink
Chris,
> even *without* any covid vaccine, the covid CFR is (apparently, now) only 4x worse than seasonal flu. Yet our reaction to covid has been 10000x our reaction to flu.
Well, yes. Because CFR is not the measure of health care burden. Ebola has a CFR of 50% but represents 0 health care burden in Canada.
> according to the CDC article I linked yesterday: fully 1/3 of infections are asymptomatic
I read the table differently from you. In the gloss they refer to « presymptomatic and asymptomatic » but the table makes no reference to « presymptomatic » individuals. It uses « asymptomatic » to refer to both cases because if someone tests positive for Covid but has no symptoms, you can’t tell if they are asymptomatic or presymptomatic except by hanging out with them for two weeks. Most data we have can tell us whether someone who tests positive has symptoms or not; very little of our data tells us whether they will develop symptoms in the future.
Regarding a cost/benefit analysis: you aren’t special in thinking about that. People at all levels of government, advised by epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists, in all countries in the world, are making that calculation.
If there is no benefit, then any cost at all is too much. An inadequate lockdown not based on appropriate infection control measures and not backed up by contact tracking is of limited benefit. I’d prefer to do it right and get numbers down to, say, whooping cough levels. (CFR of about 2% but not a significant health care burden in Canada today.) To me that makes more sense than wittering about aimlessly and blaming the media.
Doing nothing costs too, in disruptions and lost productivity. It’s not a case of “is it worse to spend a trillion dollars or to feel like shit for two to six weeks?” It’s more, “Is it better to have a short, planned disruption costing trillions of dollars and preserve our health care system and human assets, or to have ongoing disruptions costing trillions of dollars and permanently reducing everyone’s access to health care?”