Once again Quebec’s going to misuse the alert system, 6 pm Saturday, to remind us all about the curfew.
Update: François Legault posted a solemn statement about the curfew on Saturday morning.
Updates from January, 2021 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Tommy Lasorda has died at 93. He wasn’t born here, but he played here for the Montreal Royals from 1950-1954 and then from 1958 to 1960. After that he became a manager and visited Montreal from time to time with the L.A. Dodgers.
La Presse has that thoughtful piece by Alexandre Pratt, while the Gazette has a brief wire story from Reuters.
CE
Lasorda has another Montreal connection: He’s the only person to get a mascot (Youppi!) kicked out of an MLB game.
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Kate
Some people diagnosed with Covid are suppressing crucial contact information because they’re afraid of getting fined if they admit to social gatherings.
Could someone even be fined if they said they had been at a party or other gathering? Wouldn’t fines depend on being found on the premises by police?
Some information is available on when various groups will be vaccinated.
Inevitably, some covidiots are planning protest marches against the curfew starting Saturday night.
Radio-Canada reports that Dr Mylène Drouin says contagion is mostly due to proximity in private life. Not sure how that squares with the following, which is current on Santé Québec as I write (click to enlarge):
Chris
Why do you deem those against the curfew as ‘covidiots’? Being against a curfew doesn’t mean they don’t believe covid is real or serious. If they are masked and don’t march too closely to one another, seems reasonable. Does merely protesting during the pandemic make you a covidiot? (If so, that applies to all the BLM protesters a few months ago too, right?)
According to this Globe article, in the last paragraph: “Provincial data indicate that nearly half of the active COVID-19 outbreaks in Quebec started in workplaces, and elder care homes and schools accounted for much of the other outbreaks.” In other words, the majority of cases are from things already closed during curfew hours. Yet barely any additional constraints on those places.
I just don’t see the need for name-calling ad hominems just for having honest policy disagreements.
Blork
It’s not the protesting that makes them idiots, it’s WHY they’re protesting. Anyone who can’t accept a minor and temporary inconvenience for a few weeks as a valid drastic attempt to turn around a really bad situations is, well, an idiot.
vasi
Kate, I think most transmissions at home don’t reach the threshold for an “outbreak”. Even the existing “milieux” listed in that chart aren’t comparable if I recall correctly, there’s a different definition for each of them.
I’m still not sure I really believe that most infections come from the home though.
Kate
vasi, I admit to a kind of low-grade suspicion that the CAQ wants us to feel that transmissions are the result of individual social decisions and not the fault of industry or commerce. We’ll see.
dhomas
What is there to do passed 20h nowadays anyway? Restaurants and bars are already closed. Where are you going? Most people I’ve heard complaining are just tired of the pandemic and looking for reasons to be upset. They’re already not leaving their houses at night, but are upset at the prospect of not being allowed to if they wanted to. Reminds me a bit of those folks complaining about voie Camillien-Houde being closed… from their homes in Rosemère. This will affect most people a total of zero percent, but it’s the perceived curtailing of “freedoms” that is bothersome to them.
John B
The thing people do after 20h is… go home from parties or family gatherings. That’s what I think the curfew is designed to stop.
su
It feels like has been almost no coverage of workplace transmission compared to individual and social transmission . This is odd when considering those stats .
Kevin
As far as I can determine there are a couple of large sources of transmission.
Almost half are happening at work of whatever kind. The only way that stops is by locking everything down or creating safety inspectors with extraordinary powers such as walking into every workplace in the province, unannounced, and fining or close workplaces in the spot. (I wouldn’t trust any govt to do that without it being abused.)The second worrisome source is the lying/uncaring superspreader, who doesn’t know or doesn’t care if they are sick, and who sees dozens or hundreds of people while contagious.
And yes, there aren’t many of these people, but it only takes one.
This is who the curfew targets.Chris
Blork, and you claim to know *why* all those people are protesting? Perhaps many of them think covid could be better reduced with different “minor and temporary inconveniences”, like closing schools or workplaces. I think reasonable people can disagree on the pros and cons of such tradeoffs.
dhomas, I previously did all my grocery shopping after 20h00.
su, it’s not odd. Money talks. Freedom of assembly, freedom of movement, and freedom of religion are less important that the freedom to make profit and keep the economy going.
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Kate
Philippe Pichet, who used to be chief of the SPVM, is threatening to sue the city if they don’t reinstate him in the police service. He’s been working in Fermont, which is Quebec’s version of exile to Siberia.
Ephraim
We never do seem able to get rid of the bad cops… do we? To quote CTV from a few years ago… “Philippe Pichet was suspended with pay as the city’s top cop in December 2017 after an external investigation uncovered a climate of warring clans, mistrust and vengeance within the police force.”
In other words, he wasn’t doing his job properly. But the city couldn’t get rid of him because of the union. We are stuck with this incompetent man… do we have filing to do?
Bill Binns
This problem of being unable to get rid of incompetent employees has a lot more to do with unions than with the cops. Rest assured that anywhere there is a union there are some terrible or useless employees perfectly secure in their jobs.
DavidH
He is brass and not even part of the union… The union represents cops until the sergent grade, he hasn’t been a sergent since 2013. The management has a an ‘association des cadres’ which is not even close to what a union is. Even then, he was director so they can’t represent him. They will if he does go back to inspecteur-chef grade as he asks. All his legal filings are in his name exactly BECAUSE this is not a union thing. He was a city executive, the opposite of union ranks. This would be like blaming golden parachute for CEOs and executives in the private sector on unions, it’s ridiculous.
Bert
I seem to understand from the article that he was lent / placed with the force? If so, sort of like putting him in purgatory?
That said, on a personal note, having been t Wabush / Lab-City a handful of times, and visited Fremont a couple, its a nice corner of the world.I certainly felt out-of-place a few times.
Ephraim
From my understanding, they paid Montreal and Montreal paid him his salary.
Kate
Ephraim, it reads that way to me too. Which is why I mentioned Siberia: “You can go on working as a cop, but only if you’re willing to work in Fermont.” Only he can’t even work there any more.
Bert, I have never been to Fermont, but what little I know didn’t suggest it was nice. More like the setting for a postapocalyptic sci-fi series.
Ephraim
@Kate – I’m sure they can use an ineffective police manager somewhere? Can’t we put him out to direct traffic on Sherbrooke and University from 9PM to 5AM for the next 4 weeks?
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Kate
Thursday saw the first homicide of the year, a young man shot dead behind Joliette metro. As the formula goes, he was known to police – Walid Meddane did time for beating up an Uber driver in 2016.
I’ve started the tote board for 2021 in the sidebar, and have also started a new map with separate layers to show locations of homicides and of pedestrian deaths in traffic. I’ll leave the 2020 tote board up for a little while longer, and its Google maps won’t go away.
david455
What’s the over/under for exceeding 2020 murders?
On the one hand, you have more people out and about in 2021, surely. On the other hand, most of North America saw spikes in murders, and there’s a good argument that the places that didn’t would have seen even bigger drops but for the whole covid thing.
What do we think? Higher or lower?
Kate
I’m guessing it will remain around the same. We had 32 homicides in 2018, 25 in 2019, and 25 again in 2020. Item on this. So the various lockdowns and measures we lived through in most of 2020 made no appreciable difference, and I don’t think that will change for 2021.
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Kate
Groups are making plans to help the indigenous homeless. This item says 80% of the indigenous homeless tested have been positive for Covid. More spaces have been arranged for their use at the old Vic.
Before I start another squabble about the homeless, let’s keep this in mind: the homeless are not a separate species. Even if you’re entirely dismissive of their existence, you need to remember that unless homeless folks – indigenous or otherwise – are looked after, they will remain a pool of Covid contagion, and thus a risk to wider society. If nothing else matters to you, this ought to.
In related news, the plan to create a “wet shelter” at the old Vic for people with long-term chronic alcohol problems has been put on hold to make room for Covid cases.
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Kate
A quick peek at weekend driving hazards.
Work will soon start on the long process of renovating the Ville-Marie.
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Kate
Ste-Justine is to open some ICU beds for adult Covid patients soon.
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Kate
A lot of kids have been turning up in the ER with injuries from sledding. Doctors want kids to wear helmets for tobogganing now.
steph
there’s a “Legault wants everyone to wear helmets to prevent covid” joke here somewhere.
Tim S.
I’ve wondered since the beginning of this thing what proportion of adult ER visits are caused by workplace or skiing accidents. Anyone know?
Michael Black
One thing, when you’re a kid, parents don’t take chances. Bang my head, stitches. Fall off my bike, stitches in the knee. Slice my finger in woodshop (I was helping a teacher move a big metal cabinet into the bench, and he slid the sharp edge over my finger), somebody “playfully” pushing me against a locker, fractured elbow. That was all before I was sixteen. Some of it because I was a kid, but as an adult I’d not fuss with stitches.
Except for those last two emergencies, I’d have gone almost fifty years with no emergency.
Bill Binns
Helmets? Some things are fun specifically because they are dangerous. Take away the danger, take away the fun. A total of 45 injuries represents “an alarming increase” in a city of 2 million people?
DeWolf
I’d wager the increase in injuries is directly proportionate to the massive increase in tobogganing. I don’t remember seeing so many kids out in previous years.
Meezly
For sure. The first real snowfall over the holiday was barely covering the hill when I saw tons of parents & kids at Parc Mont-Royal, desperate to be outside. I saw how quickly the snow got packed down. Then it warmed up and got cold again, making the hills extra icy.
I myself started off the new year with injury as a result of slamming against a hay bale with my leg at the bottom of that hill!
Kate
Meezly, I hope you weren’t too badly injured!
Chris
Children are antifragile. Eliminating minor injuries is likely detrimental overall, in the long term.
Kate
In theory it’s great to let kids hurt themselves and eat dirt and poke each other in the eye.
I’m not sure how one feels about this, if one’s a parent.
Chris
Yup, it requires parents to use their frontal lobes and not their gut.
Uatu 22:38 on 2021-01-08 Permalink
My friend joked that it’ll sound like this: https://youtu.be/us_0aLWOa8E