Montreal City Weblog

Kate 20:40 on 2021-08-04 Permalink Reply  

• Faiz Imam 23:51 on 2021-08-04 Permalink

  Isn’t the entire point of the proof of vaccination system to take the place of restrictions on public activities? Seems to me the only thing the announcement could be is that various businesses must start asking for proof of vaccination to enter.

• Kate 09:25 on 2021-08-05 Permalink

  If enough cases of Covid transmission despite vaccination turn up, we may be looking at social distancing measures carrying on much longer than we’d hoped.

• DeWolf 09:49 on 2021-08-05 Permalink

  The Provincetown outbreak was proof enough that vaccines do exactly what they are supposed to do: they keep you from getting very sick. A weekend of packed house parties and nightclubs with no masks and no social distancing led to 965 cases, most of them in fully vaccinated people. But of that 965, only 7 were hospitalized and nobody died. Now the outbreak is over, unlike what’s happening in unvaccinated party places like the Ozarks.

  The UK’s Delta wave is declining almost as quickly as it surged. Cases and hospitalizations are both on the decline despite the abolition of all restrictions in England. And once again, although there was an unfortunate uptick in deaths, mostly among the unvaccinated, it was a small fraction of what was seen in previous waves.

  Quebec clearly isn’t about to drop all restrictions, and thank god for that. I really hope the indoor mask mandate lasts until the end of the year at least. But we’ve reached the point in our vaccination campaign where harsh measures like lockdowns, curfews and sweeping business closures are completely unjustified.

• MarcG 11:06 on 2021-08-05 Permalink

  It’s great that the vaccines are cutting back on extreme reactions and preventing our hospital system from collapsing, but what about a few years from now after a lot of people have had asymptomatic or mild cases of covid and develop long-haul symptoms? My wife has a friend who had mild covid last year and cancelled an online class recently because she couldn’t concentrate. These are things which aren’t very dramatic at the moment but something to ask yourself the next time you’re doing risk analysis.

• DeWolf 12:32 on 2021-08-05 Permalink

  It’s not just severe illness and death. There’s clear evidence vaccines also reduce the risk of transmission and infection even if they don’t eliminate it. The numbers are pretty clear here in Quebec: in the eight weeks leading up to July 24, fully vaccinated people represented just 4% of new Covid cases.

  Scientists are also saying that vaccinated people who get Covid have a very low risk of developing long-haul symptoms. Even among the unvaccinated, long-haul Covid represents a minority. So as vaccination rates increase, we’re dealing with successively smaller minorities: a minority of vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections, and a minority of that minority who suffer from long-haul symptoms.

  So I’m not really sure what you’re suggesting. Indefinite rolling lockdowns so that an increasingly small group of people can be protected from long-haul symptoms that may or may not occur?

• MarcG 14:15 on 2021-08-05 Permalink

  I’m not suggesting any type of public policy. I’m trying to figure things out as a cautious person who would prefer not to have any more problems than I already do, and suggesting that in a few years, after the crisis has passed, we’re probably going to be dealing with the impact of long-covid. It’s clear that the odds are becoming slimmer and slimmer for fully vaccinated people in Quebec but when I see people casually browsing at Jean Coutu, I can’t help but wonder if they’ve considered it might lead, however unlikely, to permanent brain fog. Using your 4% number, say there were around 1000 new cases in the past week, that’s 40 fully vaccinated people who got covid, and if 30% of those have long-haul symptoms, that’s 12 human beings whose lives in the past single week have become really weird, in a bad way.

• JaneyB 08:16 on 2021-08-06 Permalink

  @MarcG – some unfortunate vaccinated people will have long-haul symptoms but there are always risks to leaving one’s house. There are risks to staying on the couch. Generally speaking, very few people in this society take care of their health at all, as we can see from any comparison pictures of street life today with that of 1960. It is likely that the vast majority of brain fog in society now and post-pandemic will not be from long-haul covid but from poor nutrition, excess isolation and inactivity. Some of it will be side effects from medication.