Sometimes doing the blog I spot reactions or oblique references before I land on the original news story. For example, I saw this Côté cartoon then Martineau sleazing on the story first. So it turns out a young woman in Quebec City decided to sun herself in a park without a top on – which is not, technically, illegal, but caused a fuss.
On June 19, there will be a Libérez les seins demonstration in Mount Royal park.
A regular reader has alerted me to this study on the prevalence of Covid in Montreal. If you’ve been curious whether you’ve had Covid and not experienced symptoms, it’s one way to find out.
It was me! It didn’t take long to get the kit, it was almost painless to use the lancet and very easy to follow the directions. I’m very curious about the results, though I never had any symptoms that made me think covid, and I’m pretty low risk.
I never want to call people out by name when I get sent a link or a piece of news!
As I’ve mentioned, I had some sort of viral cough thing in February 2020, before the wave really hit here, and I’ve wondered since whether that was an early hit of Covid. So maybe I will find out.
Oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t think there was a way to tell if antibodies are in someone’s system from a previous infection or from a vaccination. (Not that I’m particularly knowledgeable in this…) But, I suppose there is a way?
@Kate Didn’t you pick up something that you presumed was Covid last year as well? I had a brutal flu in Feb 2020 as well.
@GC I had the same thoughts. The only explanation on their site is a mention of “specific antibodies” and I’m loo tazy (leaving the typo) to look into it.
I was tested in early 2021 after feeling a kind of nonspecific deep winter ickiness, but it was not Covid. I haven’t actually caught anything since that brief but nasty spell of coughing in February 2020. Masks and distancing really work!
There are antibodies unique to having been infected (nucleocapsid), but I’m not sure how long they last — last I saw was about a year detectable, but it’s not something I particularly follow up on. I’ve been really healthy for 2 years — physically healthy, anyhow, my constant nagging cough has been gone and it’s lovely.
I was asked the brand and date of all my vaccines, though it only left room for 1 booster and I’ve had 2.
FYI I am told that if you live with another adult, you will still only get ONE kit for testing.
What I heard was that the vaccines get your body to make antibodies for one set of proteins, but the virus itself has a whole pile of other proteins as well. A real infection will have antibodies for all of those, not just the ones in that the vaccine targets. There was an article in the Winter shortly after omicron first hit mentioning the statistics of vaccine/infection/nothing antibodies found in teenagers at one hospital. I can’t find the article now, of course!
Interesting, jaddle. Thanks.
Bixi is having a big start to the season with May 2022 usage up 92% compared to a year ago. We might be seeing where some of the conventional public transit trips have gone.
So that’s why I’m always having trouble finding a bike in my neighbourhood. It seems like all the closest stations to me are always empty, and as soon as somebody arrives with a bike, it’s gone within minutes.
As far as the impact on transit trips go – the electric bikes have been a game changer. A lot of people would have been unlikely to venture across town or uphill on a regular Bixi, but now the electric bikes make those kinds of journeys effortless, and they usually end up being cheaper than or roughly the same as a single metro fare.
Waiting on the corner of Bellechasse and Saint Denis waiting at the lights to turn my Bixi into the new REV the other morning, the number of cyclists flying south was something to behold. Seemed almost Amsterdam level of critical mass for a moment.
Yeah that explains why now I can see much more people riding bixi in proportion to riders on their own bikes than last year.
Awesome.
A publicity campaign has been launched against prostitution during the Grand Prix. I’m not sure that the image of cash hanging out of a man’s fly is saying what they want it to say.
I wonder if anyone has actually paid attention to the fact that just about 10% of the sex workers arrested are female…
So are there fewer female prostitutes, or is it that police focus more on the gay action?
I’m not sure I see the point, Ephraim. The campaign is aimed towards clients of sex workers.
@Kate – I don’t think that the police focus more on the Gay action, because if they did, the numbers wouldn’t be so skewed. Gay men are small minority of the population. My guess is two-fold… first that it attracts those who are DL or closeted as a safer way of doing it than a random person who isn’t paid. And that there is much less of a stigma than with women/men where there is an implied power imbalance.
@Jonathan – In Canada, as with most Nordic countries, policing is always aimed at the clients and resellers rather than the sex workers themselves. Statistics in Quebec say that almost 70% of them are entirely independent. My guess is that it’s even higher. For example, people who are on OnlyFans might do escort work covertly… the same way that dancers do, selling their time, not promising anything more than that. Remember, what is illegal is selling sex for money, so escorting is fully legal as long as their are no promises of sex and everything is 100% consensual (which it should always be.)
But the whole campaign misses the mark entirely… there is nothing wrong with sex work. There is something wrong with pimping, sexual exploitation and coercion. Frankly, it would be better off being 100% legal and regulated. It’s the illicit nature of it that allows for exploitation. Especially of those underage.
Ephraim, does DL = down low, i.e. men who don’t admit to having sex with men?
Yes, generally men who identify as heterosexual, often married to women, who have sex with men. Rental boys are often seen as safe since they are paid for their discretion.
I wonder if business will be slower because of Monkeypox.
The SPVM annual report is in, and they say the numbers of crimes against individuals is up – “une flambée de violence.” TVA says shots have been fired every 2.5 days.
The city says it’s still very safe despite the “forte hausse du nombre d’homicides” and shots fired.
The Gazette continues its series on violence among youth with pieces on the murders of Jannai Dopwell‑Bailey following an alleged turf war among teenage gangs that largely played out online, and Thomas Trudel, pondering the strong political response to the murder of an apparently innocent white kid after the killings of several nonwhite kids had been largely taken as read.
A man was shot dead in Lachine late Monday, the 11th homicide of the year. TVA says he was well known to police.
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