Covid: more measures coming
Early Monday I saw a few items saying François Legault would be giving a press conference Tuesday afternoon, then it was rescheduled for Wednesday. Articles in various media are warning us that Covid numbers are rising and hospital ICUs are already overwhelmed, so it’s likely we’re facing more lockdown measures.
Daniel 11:04 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
I am asking from a position of genuine ignorance and asking to be kindly educated:
Where is is that people are going now after 8pm? Aside from a curfew, is the difference of a stricter confinement that people wouldn’t be going to offices/schools/manufacturing jobs? I read most of the links and didn’t really see this addressed.
I admit being detached from (some people’s) reality! I have lost track of the meaning of various levels of confinement because we have no children and have always worked from home. (In this pandemic, that represents a privilege in many senses, I know.)
walkerp 11:22 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
It looks like it is going to be the curfew that everybody is talking about. I am guessing that it will give the cops much more leeway in breaking up gatherings. But if people are outside anyways, isn`t that a low-risk activity?
Kate 11:22 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
Honestly? I think if they do a curfew they’re emulating France. I’ve learned over the years that whenever any Quebec government does something a bit odd, look and see what France is doing. Bill 21? France. Curfew? Also France.
They won’t announce it, but France is often a clue to where they got an idea. Or an ideal.
Mark 11:44 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
I would suspect that a curfew is aimed at stopping all indoor private nighttime gatherings, which by all accounts are still going on. It’s much easier for police to pull people over on the roads than to enter houses to break up parties (ie. that video of the cops entering the home in Gatineau went around the world and I’m sure the police unions are behind this decision as well).
Whether or not the schools close again is the big unknown here, but it’s clear that at the provincial level, they are running out of options in the areas they can control. I would love to see the Feds step in and stop air travel for the next month.
jeather 11:57 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
I think it just makes life easier in catching people who are breaking the rules. I wonder if there will also be a restriction in how far from your home you can go, something which was fairly common in Europe.
walkerp 12:28 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
Also seeing that the government is deliberately floating rumours to test the waters and that support for a curfew is divided in the CAQ. So more likely they will ‘recommend’ that people don’t go out after a certain hour with the threat of a potential curfew if necessary.
DeWolf 14:04 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
There were articles in Le Devoir and Radio-Canada yesterday that both interviewed the same public health experts, one of whom recommended that “all businesses” be shut down, without specifying exactly what that meant. I’m not sure what is left to close? Restaurant takeout?
Bill Binns 15:06 on 2021-01-05 Permalink
@DeWolf – You’re not sure what is left to close? Have you been outside? What exactly is closed?
Canadian Tire is open. Home Depot is open. All SAQ’s and SQDC outlets are open. Best Buy is open. For some unfathomable reason Quebec handed an exemption to all florists. Florists! Flowers are ESSENTIAL when we are supposedly in a bare fisted fight with Death himself.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to take these rules and the people who dream them up seriously.
JP 01:15 on 2021-01-06 Permalink
To be fair, if florists do remain open, how crowded could their shops possibly get? I feel like it’s probably easy to have only a client at a time. People can also easily order flowers online for pickup or via phone or the flowers can safely be delivered. It’s not the same as eating at a restaurant or crowding into a Costco….
Tim S. 11:53 on 2021-01-06 Permalink
About florists – if you can’t go to a funeral (or a wedding, or see a new baby, but mostly funerals these days) it’s nice to at least be able to send flowers. Not sure where that ranks priority-wise “in the bare fisted fight with Death himself” but it is a socially useful function.