Montreal City Weblog

Kate 09:28 on 2020-09-29 Permalink Reply  

• jeather 10:21 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  So if you live alone, you can have one visitor at a time? This is nice for people who live alone but rather absurd for transmission purposes.

• Spi 10:24 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  Actually, you shouldn’t be having anyone over, you’re allowed to have 1 person if it’s a necessity. Like an emergency plumber, health care provider etc.

• jeather 10:29 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  No, it’s made very clear, you are allowed a visitor from another address if you live alone.

• Tim S. 10:34 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  From what I got from yesterday’s press conference, I think Spi’s interpretation was the intention. How it’s written or enforced is another thing.

• Michael Black 11:03 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  From the government page, “a single visitor from another address for single individuals”. I’m thinking that means the same person each time. I thought I read an interpretation that it’s about a couple that doesn’t live together, but if someone is alone, it’s clearly about having one visitor.

  “Libraries are closed”, but does that mean completely, or not even pickups? I guess we’ll see when libraries update their pages, hopefully soon. Wait, the Atwater Library already changed their page, “back to phase 1” which they say means staff will collect selections and you pick up at the door. It was only two weeks ago that they started letting people in.

• Joey 11:25 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  Seems pretty clear the intention was to not drive people who live alone (again) into total isolation. If you live alone and your human contact is going to be severely diminished, the benefit of allowing you to have a single visitor over to your home outweighs the (low) risk that you will make each other sick. While I think many of us may extrapolate that we can have plumbers, housecleaners, etc., over if we are home alone (or maybe if we are out of the house while they are working), I don’t think that was the intention of this particular exception.

  Also hopeful that libraries are allowed to offer the reserve-and-pick-up service that has been the norm for the last few months…

• CE 11:36 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  A couple of my friends who live alone are interpreting this rule as allowing them to be able to choose a friend who is allowed to come over for a visit. If I lived alone, I would do the same.

• DeWolf 11:47 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  1+1 for people living alone is a good exception to the rules. It would be perverse to be so single-minded in the fight against Covid that you end up causing an epidemic of health issues related to social isolation, which include depression, low immune function, heart problems, dementia, alcohol abuse and suicide.

• jeather 12:04 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  I think that the “you can have one person who you allow over, and who in turn allows you over” is the intended interpretation. We’ll see.

  They also carve out exceptions for individuals providing services and labour for planned work, aka housekeepers and electricians etc, unrelated to the single visitor.

• Michael Black 12:21 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  It’s a balance. Even in the spring, some things went on. We have to get food if nothing else. Anything can be abused, but one person visiting isn’t the same as a crowd.

  One problem is that I don’t think the resurgence is just from “we don’t care”. Things get shut down, and then people want “normal”. So a month will stop the virus, hopefully, but then I figure the same thing will happen again. And the cooler it gets, the harder it may be, since things will have to be indoors. At least during the summer much if the crowding was outdoors.

• jeather 12:28 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  It isn’t that I think the rules are bad, necessarily, but I no longer have faith in the government — they are obviously interested in keeping businesses etc running, and does that mean they are allowing gyms and hair stylists and bookstores and office buildings because they are safe, or because they want the economy to keep going? I have been very careful, and I will continue to be very careful, and I will follow the rules, but that doesn’t mean I believe that the rules are well justified on public health grounds.

• dwgs 12:32 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  jeather, I had the same response when it comes to schools. What reason is there to leave them open other than to allow parents to keep working? Close them for 28 days as well, see if transmission drops, then open one thing at a time staggered by 3 week intervals.

• Joey 18:43 on 2020-09-29 Permalink

  @dwgs The reason is that in-person learning is, by and large, better than distance learning (especially since most public schools are unlikely to be able to offer excellent distance learning, or to handle the transitions). Keeping kids home has a real, largely negative impact on kids – not just their pedagogical development, but their need for socializing, for maintaining a “normal” routine, for keeping close with their friends, etc.

  Given this, and given that public health authorities have concluded that, to date, the cases that have been observed in schools have not led to significant outbreaks and are not a major factor in the recent spike, it makes sense to try and keep them open and see if the situation improves, rather than close them when the evidence suggests doing so is unlikely to bring the number of new cases down.

• dwgs 09:08 on 2020-09-30 Permalink

  I’m largely in agreement Joey, I have a very active 14 year old and this has not been easy on him, I’m worried about his mental state but… Restaurants and bars open in late June and things stay relatively stable. Schools go back the first week of September and three weeks later we’re spiking. I’m not saying that’s the sole reason but it’s enough to ask questions. See also, https://twitter.com/Aaron_Derfel/status/1311134498491371521

• Ian 17:57 on 2020-09-30 Permalink

  One thing nobody seems to talk about much is co-parenting families.

  The vast majority of kids in my daughters’ classes have divorced parents with co-parenting plans. So if those families are allowed one “visitor” in each household and the kids travel between each household, that basically exposes them to not only their parents but also their parents’ new partners, and one visitor per household. Now, if those partners also have kids from previous relationship and are also co-parenting, suddenly we are talking about exponential exposure.

  This is no made up for argument scenario, I literally know a few people who in exactly this situation, only seeing their own kids, their ex, their partner and their partner’s kids… basically being exposed to upwards of 6 households all the time, just by simply having their kids over every other night and alternate weekends. Add one allowed outsider into the mix and now it’s 12 households automatically plus whatever exposure those individuals might have through their parenting arrangements, easily another 6 each – so we go from 6 to 36 easily.