Montreal City Weblog

Kate 17:12 on 2020-06-07 Permalink Reply  

• Douglas 22:08 on 2020-06-07 Permalink

  Where’s the 6 feet distancing? Where are the city / health officials having a meltdown over crowds gathering?
  Where’s the Montreal Gazette twitter thread about how this is putting lives at risk and how dangerous this is?

  We have just as much infections right now as when the shutdown happened. Shows me yet again this entire shutdown by health officials was a crock of crap. We could have kept everything open and thrown masks and gloves on everyone am I right?

• Kate 22:19 on 2020-06-07 Permalink

  Let’s try again:

  If our social distancing and other lockdown measures work, plenty of people will say we over‑reacted.

• walkerp 22:53 on 2020-06-07 Permalink

  Almost everybody was wearing masks. Social distancing was tough at times but people were generally trying to avoid close contact and would spread out when the street widened.

  Given what we know about outdoor transmission, I don’t think the risks were that high, given the breezy weather as well. We shall see.

  Sometimes when you are in a war, you have to take some risks.

• Douglas 00:28 on 2020-06-08 Permalink

  Gathering in large groups is ok now if we have masks and keep our distance.

  Good to know 10 weeks later.

  10 weeks ago the health experts couldn’t figure that out for us.

• Douglas 00:38 on 2020-06-08 Permalink

  I want to see the same level of concern and outrage at these large gatherings and groups as I heard for 10 weeks straight.

  1) We are being selfish putting health workers lives at risk if we don’t stay home in confinement.
  2) Nothing is more important than saving lives of our elderly.

  If you protested for the right to put food on your table you were met with vitriol and anger by the covid police.

  Where is the covid police now? We could have socially distanced and worn masks and keep the economy open.

• Uatu 07:36 on 2020-06-08 Permalink

  I agree with Kate. Hindsight is always 20/20 and there always will be couldashouldawoulda after every major event. As far as the protests, there’s so much critical mass of outrage built up over time that outlawing them is probably impossible. But in 2 weeks we’ll see if there’s a covid spike…

• Kevin 07:45 on 2020-06-08 Permalink

  Here are health and public authorites being concerned about mass gatherings.
  https://t.co/85blynYfzK

• Tee Owe 11:09 on 2020-06-08 Permalink

  Uatu is correct, we won’t know whether Douglas’s annoyance is appropriate or misplaced for another 2 weeks, whether there comes a spike in cases or not. Meanwhile, this report says that lockdowns in Europe cut infection rates by 80% – that’s 3.1 million dead bodies they didn’t have to deal with
  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2405-7
  (I got the link from an article in the Guardian but that URL is pages long).

• Kate 11:20 on 2020-06-08 Permalink

  Thank you, Tee Owe. I had found an article on TVA summarizing the same report. It’s good to have it in both languages.

• EmilyG 12:09 on 2020-06-08 Permalink

  For what it’s worth, I believe the health authorities have said that people should wear masks in public places when social distancing cannot be observed.
  If the protesters are wearing masks, then this doesn’t contradict that.

• Chris 10:21 on 2020-06-09 Permalink

  I think you all make good points, including Douglas. I think the observation that there’s been less quarantine-shaming for this protest is demonstrably true. There was a lot more criticism of the restaurateurs protesting for example. And there’s definitely a chunk of the population that seems to think every last covid death should/can be prevented, at any cost. Fact is, covid is not the most important thing ever. Other things are important too. Protesting racism is important. Protesting to save your livelihood is important. It’s a risk/reward tradeoff. We all take some risks all the time, crossing the street, not exercising, overeating, skydiving, whatever. And everyone’s risk/reward calculation is different, as it should be. If you’re young and black, covid won’t likely sicked you much, if at all, but you might get harassed by cops often. If your restaurant is going broke and you have no income, your situation is different from an office worker now working at home for full salary. People need to think about being in someone else’s shoes before they get on their high horse with the quarantine-shaming. I think this may finally be happening now with this BLM protest, but it should have happened earlier. For many, the risk of covid is low, and other things sometimes outweigh it. This is too nuanced for government policy of course, which just uses a big hammer of “stay inside”, but we don’t need 100% compliance despite it being stated like we do.

• Mark Côté 12:22 on 2020-06-09 Permalink

  > This is too nuanced for government policy of course, which just uses a big hammer of “stay inside”

  I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently. Clearly there is a range of behaviours right now from those who rarely leave the house and are always masked when they do, to people who are still going to parties and hooking up regularly on Tinder. Most people are somewhere in the middle. As usual enforcement is sparse and arbitrary, so it’s left up to people to figure out their needs and their ethical lines. The blanket statements from the government like what Chris pointed out means that those who are naturally rules followers will be more likely to put the well being of the many over their own needs and even the needs of their family, despite the statistical unlikelihood of occasional infractions (like extending their household bubble slightly) leading to any real consequences. Those who are naturally not inclined to follow rules will take bigger risks. The former are likely to conclude that their actions are even more important in compensation for the latter’s.

  This feels especially relevant to me as a social person who lives alone half the time and has a daughter who is increasingly visibly suffering with every passing day from her lack of proper social contact. I am, for better or worse, also a natural rules follower, so I sit here watching as hair dressers, restaurants, and other parts of the economy open up while we are still told that, even if we have people over to our house, we should keep our distance. Every time I think about how damaging this isolation is to me, let alone my daughter, the ethical quandary comes up of how much I should take this situation into my own hands versus sticking with the rules put down by our government, and how I would feel if someone close to me got sick because I didn’t follow the big-hammer blanket rules that others choose to break. I oscillate between thinking that I’m just living up to my values and others can do whatever they see fit, to feeling like this is pointless martyrdom and that I’m too cowardly to make my own decisions and live with the (unlikely but possible) consequences.