Covid: A lot of folks are bent out of shape
A lot of Wednesday’s stories are on the theme of the unfairness or inconsistencies in the government’s October lockdown rules. It will be bad for mental health. People running arts facilities find their closure, while retail stays open, is not fair, and restaurant owners are in shock. It’s going to be rough on tourism in Charlevoix. François Legault is being urged to explain his rationales and anti-maskers are preparing to demonstrate in Lafontaine Park on Wednesday evening to defy the mayor’s request not to hold gatherings.
It feels in some ways like a lot of folks have turned into angry, defiant teenagers. How do you explain to presumably rational adults that this is not an unfair act against them but a measure against a force that has no will nor agenda, but only its own internal viral logic?
Update: 838 new cases over the last 24 hours.
Ephraim 09:34 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
Hard on tourism? Lost almost every reservation in a day…
Kate 09:56 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
You mean this time around? Or during the first wave?
The only thing that’s been surprising me is how lax everything got over the summer and into September. There was never an “all clear” and reports kept emphasizing how most people who could work from home were still doing so, but it seems like a lot of people went back to business as usual. And now look where we are.
jeather 10:02 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
They hide the data, make rules that don’t seem to make sense other than “keep as much business running as possible”, and then are surprised they get pushback? They obviously learned nothing from the “We’ll stop sharing daily numbers” fiasco.
I think a lot of people would be much more willing if the rules felt like they were based on actual public health concerns and not that mixed with a lot of politics (in both the economy and masking in schools), where politics mostly wins over public health. (Again, it’s the exceptions which are weird, not the closures so much.)
DeWolf 12:02 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
I don’t think restaurant owners are being petulant by arguing they are being scapegoated. It’s fair to ask why restaurants, theatres and libraries are closed, for example, but not gyms, offices and shopping malls. And none of these places have been linked to major outbreaks in Quebec – unlike schools and workplaces, which along with private parties and weddings seem to be the real culprits.
As jeather said, this government has begun to very quickly squander any trust it had because its decisions do not seem to be rooted in any transparent public health data. The leaked public health recommendations associated with the new colour codes were quite different than what has actually been implemented, which once again suggests that the government is letting political concerns override advice from doctors.
You can blame people for loosening up over the summer, but the government has arguably more blame for sending out the message that things were pretty much over. There wasn’t an “all clear” but there might has well have been. Allowing bars and restaurants to open their indoor areas at the same time as terrasses was a strange decision to make when other places like Toronto and New York held off on indoor dining for several more months. 250-person gatherings was just insane. That doesn’t even touch on the mystifying decision to allow kids and teachers to sit in crowded classrooms together without masks. If people have no clear leadership, you can’t blame them for improvising their response to a situation.
Now we have a 28-day confinement in which people are allow (expected!) to go out to work and school, but prohibited from doing anything fun. It’s like a zombie version of life. It all makes me worry that, if we get to the end of this 28-day confinement and the government announces that, actually, it needs to be extended again for another few weeks, and then another few weeks—and oh, by the way, libraries are still unsafe to use, so buy all your books from Costco—even responsible people are going to start behaving badly. It’s one thing to ask people to follow clear rules for a specific period of time, but quite another to ask everyone to follow rules that don’t make sense for who knows how long.
DeWolf 12:38 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
I see in the news today that libraries will be allowed to operate contactless borrowing services, so I guess even the government saw how absurd it is to close libraries while keeping shops open.
Michael Black 12:46 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
I’m thinking someone slipped, maybe because libraries are a foreign thing to them.
As I mentioned, the Atwater Library changed their page pretty fast to show it was back to pickups only. The Westmount Library didn’t change, but they never went back to letting people browse the stacks, so there was nothing to change.
So either they were premature or the “rules” just weren’t clear. Had many libraries gone back to letting people browse? It’s more like someone just didn’t put a clarification in abiut libraries closed.
Em 14:03 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
The message is that we need to avoid social gatherings, since too many people have showed they can’t and won’t keep it small and do it safely.
It sucks for the many bars and restaurants that were being careful and following rules, as well as the cultural sector and all the people who have been very careful. I wish they’d just enforced the rules instead of shutting them.
But the government did try a softer approach to see if people would adjust their behaviour, and last weekend showed once again that people won’t get it. I was genuinely frustrated to see so many massive parties, including two where people had tied a bunch of boats together and were singing/screaming/blasting music as dozens of people crowded on the decks.
They don’t want to hear it and they don’t care.
Michael Black 14:16 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
Was that your letter in the Gazette this morning, about the boats in St Anne’s?
Kate 14:22 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
jeather, DeWolf, Michael Black: you all make good points. Thank you for thinking about this and writing about it on my blog.
Em 14:28 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
@Michael If you’re referring to me, it was not me who wrote the letter. The parties I witnessed were in Boucherville by the nature park.
Ian 17:49 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
So I can go to a “massage” parlour because it’s a “personal care” business, but I can’t go to the Musée des Beaux-Arts to see the post-impressionist show. My youngest daughter is in class with 25 disease vectors all day with no mask, but we can’t send her to the home of a friend from the same class after school so I can take her older sister to a doctor’s appointment. Gatherings in parks are ok, but not backyards.
Makes perfect sense, of course. /rolleyes
It’s no wonder people are ignoring these edicts, and I say this as someone who has been faithfully trying to follow the edicts and then some… clear, consistent signalling would really help here. I question this government’s efforts to inspire confidence.
Kevin 18:08 on 2020-09-30 Permalink
Don’t forget: the government told schools they *weren’t allowed* to force kids to wear masks in a classroom.
Ephraim 05:55 on 2020-10-01 Permalink
@Kate – The first time, it took time for people to cancel, they had hope. This time, all cancelled quickly. Not that it’s really much in the way of reservations… so little that even with them, I qualify for CERB/CRB.
JaneyB 10:14 on 2020-10-03 Permalink
@Ian – Good points. If the govt wants people to follow the protocols, they have to make sense eg: max 5 people outside, distanced, both parks and backyards. That is doable. They should make all the school classes 12 kids only and make them and their families into a bubble. We have tons of empty commercial space and all of that could be commandeered for these tiny classes. The emerging hodge-podge is too messy to follow or even enforce.