As you can see by going to stm.info, the STM’s website is still down as of midafternoon Sunday. Just learned a new expression: rançongiciel (ransomware). Bus and metro service isn’t affected, but users of adapted transit can’t reserve online till it’s fixed.
Updates from October, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Researchers from the Polytechnique hope to test Montreal sewage for coronavirus, in emulation of Ottawa scientists doing this at their treatment plant.
Raymond Lutz
Geez, about time… In mid-April I wrote ¨We’ll have to implement NPIs: non-pharmaceutical interventions, ie social distancing, mandatory masks wearing, soft lockdowns, hard lockdowns. All this but at a finer level: municipalities should decide actions rather than provincial governments. At a finer time scale, too. And periodically everything most stop or slow down LOCALLY. How to know when and how hard? Constant sewage monitoring for viral detection in each community. ¨ Yes, I’m citing myself, ce n’est pas très élégant, je sais… 😎
Blork
Asking sincerely: what’s the benefit? We know the virus is here, and lots of it. So what’s the big advantage of having sewage testing confirm what we already know?
Kate
Raymond Lutz may have a better answer than this, but I imagine if they discovered a large discrepancy between the number of cases based on reported test results vs. the detected virus load in sewage, it might reveal something useful about the level of unsymptomatic contagion in the populace. Also, do we even know how much of this virus exits down the pipes?
Information on this thing can’t hurt, and this disease is so new, you never know what piece of data might turn out to be important.
dmdiem
Viral count in sewage can give a better picture of the infection rate in a neighbourhood because its includes people who are asymptomatic, presymptomatic, have mild symptoms and don’t get tested, as well as people who can’t or won’t get tested.
So if regular testing shows only a few case, but the sewage count shows a massive increase, officials know that things are about to get bad and can prepare accordingly. Everything from warning the hospitals to prepare so they can adjust staffing and supplies, to issuing a full shelter in place lockdown.
It also arms regular folk with better information so they can live their lives as normally as possible within their own personal risk tolerance.
dmdiem
yeah… what kate said. damn my slow typing sausage fingers.
Kate
No, you put it well, I wasn’t even thinking about the people who might refuse to be tested.
Meezly
Sewage can really tell a lot about what’s going on, esp. if you’ve been collecting samples before the pandemic. This has already been trending in Europe and Australia! It’s good we’re finally wading in. https://globalnews.ca/news/7119856/coronavirus-sewage-barcelona-march-2019/
Kate
finally wading in.
Ew.
Meezly
So pleased you noticed my pun 🙂
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Kate
People got stabby in an Ahuntsic apartment on Sunday morning, and three of them were injured, not fatally.
In an unrelated incident overnight, a young man turned up at a hospital after getting stabbed, and police don’t even know where it happened.
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Kate
A Black Montrealer is leading walking tours to reveal the hidden and forgotten threads of Black history in Montreal. Adding a later piece from Urbania on the same topic.
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Kate
Quebec cracked 100,000 cases of Covid (cumulative total, not all of them current) on Sunday, although the number of new cases is down to 879 over the last day.
Brett
We should see the number come down as the Government phases out testing of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic people who are not directly involved in health care.
Tim S.
I think most of us have figured out by now that case numbers don’t necessarily mean people who are sick but people who are potentially infectious.
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Kate
Radio-Canada asks and answers: Has Valérie Plante kept her promises? and goes through them one by one. Short take: many have been kept, or kept in some modified form. Out of 64 promises made, only 11 have definitely not been kept.
Meezly
Don’t know how that compares to her predecessors, or other mayors, but that sounds pretty damn good for an elected leader and she has been in term for how long…?
Chris
First elected to council November 2013; party leader since December 2016; mayor since November 2017.
Kate
Plante is reaching the end of her third year of a four-year term. The next municipal election is a little more than a year away.
I think she’s done well, given that she was handed the completely unexpected shock of a worldwide pandemic during her third year.
Some of the unkept promises were blue-skying, like the pink line and the bain portuaire idea: sketches of ideas rather than necessarily achievable plans.
Once the city faced the expenses involved in realizing the bain portuaire I think it was far more responsible to spike it, than to stick to a project that would bleed money and possibly collapse anyway. Compare to Denis Coderre’s forging ahead with Formula E, even after he must have known it was going to be both expensive and unpopular, and not something either residents or tourists wanted.
As for the pink line, it was a statement of an intention to improve transit, and – once again – a plan that may yet be achieved in some form. It’s when you look back at the maps from the prehistory of the Metro, you realize that the original idea had to evolve and adapt until the plans, the political will and the money were all harmonizing for the project to go ahead.
Maxim Baru
This piece strikes me as the publication equivalent of a clip show. Without including feedback about whether a particular promise was kept – in what quality and measure – as well as feedback about the overall balance of promises kept / delayed / broken with respect to what matters more and what matters less from the civil society organizations that are best equipped to do so, this assessment list is at most of very limit value. And at worst quite misleading.
Kate
Maxim, Radio-Canada wasn’t writing a book so you can’t criticize them for not producing a lengthy, researched piece about how different segments of society rate Projet’s success.
The article is a good rundown of what the party intended vs. what it’s been able to do. It’s more than simply a checklist. I’ll be referring back to it, come the election campaign next year.
Meezly
Thanks for the data, Kate and Chris. Feeling lazy on Sunday 😉
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Kate
A St-Léonard bakery owner and the owner of a restaurant in RDP are pleading with Quebec not to continue an OQLF crackdown through the pandemic. If true, a demand to translate “espresso” and “granita” is pretty extreme, even in OQLF terms, reminiscent of the Pastagate incident in 2013.
But these business owners simply need to comply. The OQLF is not going away, and in fact has recently been strengthened.
dhomas
Looks like Sugar Sammy was right…
John B
“Espresso” is a “terme priviligé” by the OQLF. Not sure what there is to translate there. They don’t seem to like granita much, though, suggesting granité or barbotine.
From the article, I doubt the St-Léonard one would have had a complaint if the rest of her signs were in French. The RDP one seems frivolous: He’s got a trademarked name, (that includes an English word), with appropriate french descriptors. If the government didn’t want the English trademarked name on a sign they shouldn’t have granted the trademark. When naming a business in Quebec you have to get the name approved. If this made it through the approval it should be ok.
Douglas
It is important to make the lives of OQLF as difficult as possible.
Contest. Take the fines to the newspapers to make a story. Contest the fines. Get public support. Do it all.
Kate
Douglas, Douglas. I thought you despised people who protested things they don’t like.
Jack
I know this sounds awful but as the pandemic’s second wave takes off. people are going to start asking some pretty hard questions about the CAQ’s lack of consistent responses to the pandemic. i.e Karaoke. This issue is the perfect way to distract the population. So I think we all know that “strengthening” the french language in 2020 isn’t about strengthening the language it’s about demonstrating dominance, “espresso” in Saint Leonard case in point.
The idea that a city which was once a majority english speaking city has a few pockets of english speakers doesn’t seem very odd to me but is treated as something that needs correction by conservative nationalist’s, which is the CAQ brand. I hope I am wrong.Blork
Giggling over the OQLF’s page linked to by John B, where it’s listed as “expresso” (although they do list “espresso” as a variant). In Italian, that’s a flat-out mistake, as it is in English, which uses the Italian word. It’s like spelling “perscription” instead of “prescription” or “nukuler” instead of “nuclear.” 🙂
John B
That was my reaction too Blork. “Expresso” in English = you’re probably from a really small town.
dhomas
Most Italians I know will see the word “expresso” and walk out the door, knowing that this establishment doesn’t know what they’re doing and probably serves terrible coffee.
Meezly
Defund the OQLF!
Max 15:09 on 2020-10-25 Permalink
My Transit app hasn’t been showing real-time info these last few days.
Kate 15:25 on 2020-10-25 Permalink
Seems likely the API is not working either, then.
dwgs 18:14 on 2020-10-25 Permalink
Down for going on a week? That’s nuts.
DeWolf 18:36 on 2020-10-25 Permalink
Rançongiciel is a fun word.
I’m surprised this hasn’t been getting more coverage. How are they dealing with this? Finding a workaround? I hope they aren’t going to pay the ransom, although apparently in most ransomware cases, that’s exactly what happens.
Kate 10:53 on 2020-10-26 Permalink
DeWolf, I think if this had happened before the pandemic, it would have been much bigger news. The STM is probably finding its reduced ridership something of a cursed blessing right now.
JP 13:19 on 2020-10-26 Permalink
I hope they don’t have to end up paying the ransom. I really don’t want to see this sort of behaviour be rewarded.