Quebec vs Montreal during Covid
Does running Montreal public health from Quebec City make sense during a pandemic? The Journal tells us about Quebec being oblivious to outbreaks in Montreal bars in July.
Movie theatres and swimming pools are to reopen in red zones for the March break , March 1 to 8. Cinemas will have to close by 8 for the curfew (unchanged) and can’t sell food or drink.
The Olympic stadium will become a vaccination centre, whenever those get started.
Groups want information to be collected on the racial background and economic status of Covid occurrences, which they have not been doing.
Meezly 10:16 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
Has anything they’ve done in regards to public health made any sense recently? I’m trying to think of a single one.
Kate 10:21 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
I’m even feeling discouraged about posting to the blog, really for the first time. Most of the news is about the pandemic, and none of the decisions are coherent.
Joey 10:29 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
Given that public school kids basically missed 1/4 of last year and chunks of this one (beyond the extra week of vacation in January, loads of kids have had their classes switched to online due to 14-day quarantines restricted to their classroom and the province added three ped days this year) and that the primary factor in decision-making seems to be “helping” parents find activities for their kids during spring break… why not just cancel spring break? The kids could use as much “catch-up” time as possible and it wouldn’t put the positive trend of diminishing new cases in jeopardy. I suppose the little kid in me would vehemently oppose losing the week off, but it seems justified in this case. The CSSDM had a ped day last Friday and a snow day yesterday (really?!?) without even considering having some online learning, and the next ped day is… tomorrow. If school about learning or is it just babysitting so mom and dad can work?
Anyway, if the premier is so keen on giving the province’s kids a week off, couldn’t we just send kids outdoors en masse rather than opening up movie theatres, pools, etc?
Kevin 11:25 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
Watching Legault and Arruda yesterday I felt like they’ve given up and they can’t imagine what is going to happen next.
I think that throughout this they’ve never been able to conceive of what *could* happen, or the difference between a best-case/worst-case/mid-case scenario presentation. It’s like when Donald Rumsfeld launched the post 9/11 Iraq war despite generals who knew better saying his scenario wasn’t realistic.
Ephraim 11:42 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
What is the point of collecting racial data for COVID cases? Do they somehow think that COVID chooses people by colour? National origin? Language spoken at home? Or to actually point at the Ultra-Orthodox?
Myles 11:55 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
It provides concrete evidence of the social inequalities that exacerbate health risks for certain groups. Poverty and working in service sector jobs with no sick pay or option to work form home are major risk factors for COVID. Because of racism, they’re more common in people of racial minorities. Generally, you’d want to collect both economic and social information to get a fuller picture of at-risk groups.
Meezly 12:00 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
Yes, it’s important to have Covid-related race-based data, assuming that data will actually be used to direct resources accordingly to adversely affected communities.
From what I understand, municipal councillors are trying to push for this data collecting. My discouragement was directed at the lack of leadership from our provincial government.
Mark Côté 12:03 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
The province’s lack of interest in gathering such statistics fits perfectly with their view that there’s no systemic racism here. Admitting there might be differences would create cognitive dissonance that they wouldn’t be able to handle.
MarcG 12:48 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
What’s the first rule of fight club? Don’t collect incriminating statistics about fight club.
Meezly 14:04 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
@marcg – you nailed it.
Here is yet another example for an article I just came across: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/b-c-experts-model-predicts-over-4-000-daily-cases-in-quebec-in-april-if-variants-not-checked-1.5311649?fbclid=IwAR2Z4lp8yp-nlP8PMFlPLOUv4wI5HZmMUTHQi-mNVEBJSA2r0z5BG6OhJ7U
Assuming the QC govt will average out the best and worst case scenarios, here is something that really stuck out:
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“He” is our QC Health Minister Dubé. So is it me, or is our Health Minister putting all his eggs in the vaccination basket way too prematurely ? And this is assuming QC has access to the vaccinations that cover the new variants… all this in time for spring break?
Currently, 3% of the Quebec population has been vaccinated.
I have no scientific or medical training, but my layman’s understanding is that even if you have received the correct vaccine, you should still exercise caution since a community won’t be truly safe from Covid-19 until herd immunity is actually achieved… through proper vaccinations.
Meezly 14:05 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
The quote I was referring to got omitted because I used the wrong tags:
‘When asked if he thought any kind of reopening is poorly timed, considering the variants, he said vaccination is a “significant element” that should be remembered.
“I think yes, it’s a risk, but we must undrestand that vaccination is coming soon… we have to take that into consideration,” he said.’
qatzelok 14:06 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
“What is the point of collecting racial data for COVID cases?”
I have to agree that this is not helpful at all. It encourages people to think in terms of “racial outcomes” rather than “economic outcomes.” As if Obama should be more worried about his health than some poor white hillbilly.
Economic data (regarding health outcomes) would be very useful in demonstrating any disparity of life potential between different socio-economic classes.
I noticed that USA media posts exclusively Racial data regarding COVID, and virtually zero stats regarding the relationship between income and health outcomes. It almost looks like USA media wants everyone to obsess about race and not think at all about income inequality.
Kate 14:12 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
qatzelok, that’s naive. Socioeconomic analysis isn’t possible if we pretend we’re all on a level playing field coping with the pandemic. We are not.
Meezly 16:49 on 2021-02-17 Permalink
@qatzelok, how odd that U.S media sources tend to post exclusively racial data as it they want people to obsess about race, as if they want the general population to draw divisions instead of relationships between race, gender and socio-economic status. How odd indeed!
JaneyB 20:23 on 2021-02-18 Permalink
I can see that collecting race data could make racist people target minorities but haters are gonna hate. Those haters are already avoiding/harassing people of colour. On the other hand, people of colour are clearly disproportionately affected by covid so why pretend it isn’t so? Fear of being seen as racist? Really, just get the most vulnerable people the extra services they need and stop worrying how it looks.