Montreal City Weblog

Kate 11:54 on 2023-09-08 Permalink Reply  

• carswell 12:57 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  Am pretty sure that, barring a total breakdown of the health care system, Dubé is never going to impose another mask mandate (let alone a lockdown) but what are the chances he’ll suggest people start masking again?

  I’ve been going maskless in indoor public places, including buses and metros, since early July and have begun going back to the gym. My plan is to start masking again in a few weeks, get the new vax ASAP and maintain my current activities except, in all likelihood, eating indoors in restaurants. If the masking situation remains like it is now, I’ll be the only person doing so — I almost never see masks in public transit or stores and never at the gym.

• Kate 14:01 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  If I have to take the metro I’ll be masking. I had to take the orange line for a few stops the other day and it was like being in a consumptives’ ward. Once it gets cold enough for the bus to be closed up, I’ll do the same. But luckily, my life doesn’t involve a commute these days.

  I haven’t eaten indoors in a restaurant since the pandemic, except for two occasions when I was obliged to by a client. The rise in prices has admittedly also been a deterrent.

• MarcG 14:20 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  The first Gazette article contains a lie: “None of the patients are in intensive care”. There are currently 16 people in ICU for/with Covid (source).

• walkerp 15:22 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  I think we’ll see more masking as the weather gets colder. I’m planning on it in places where there isn’t good air flow and I’ll be there for a while.

  Odds are most of if we do get covid it will just be like a shitty, weird flu that doesn’t go away, but personally I would like to avoid that if I can.

• CE 16:01 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  My girlfriend got it a couple weeks ago. Somehow, I managed to not get it despite living in the same house and not really changing contact (and my last booster was about a year ago). I just figured I’d come down with it at some point. It was indeed like a weird flu except for her cough which is slowly going away but is really taking its time.

• CE 16:07 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  Regarding tests, I tried to get her some at the pharmacy. They asked me some questions which I answered honestly, then declared her ineligible. I asked where I could get some and they said I’d have to go to a testing centre. The closest one was quite far away and didn’t seem worth the effort at that point. A neighbour gave us a couple dusty old ones from a while ago but, by then, the test just confirmed what she already knew.

• jeather 17:00 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  I hear that the updated vaccines are expected next week in the US, so hopefully we will get them for the combined flu/covid timing. You can be fired for wearing a mask at work, so they’re not going to mandate them again.

• MarcG 17:08 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  Judging a virus based on its acute symptoms alone (“it will just be like a shitty, weird flu”) is a mistake. We’ve known about long Covid since 2020 and more and more studies are being published which illustrate very unsettling, often invisible, damage.

• Tofu va Vohu 18:00 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  I personally know someone who was in the ICU for two nights earlier this week due to covid. I went searching for covid tests and had a hard time finding any. Pharmacies didn’t have them in stock. However, there’s a popup inoculation center off Rue Wellington where they gave me a few.

• Tofu va Vohu 18:04 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  As for masking, I always wear an n95 or better elastomeric mask indoors, on buses, or in the metro. I occasionally get stares, and very rarely comments. I often get a nod from other mask wearers in the metro. There aren’t many of us, but the number does seem to be growing as the summer winds down.

• Mozai 18:06 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  What about wearing a mask because the air-pollution in the Metro is like a bad smoggy day? https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2023/10/01/une-mauvaise-qualite-de-lair-dans-le-metro-de-montreal

• Kevin 18:59 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  I was in Halifax last weekend and saw about 50 people wearing masks– about a dozen store staff and the rest were shopping. My local provigo has a few staff who wear N95s all the time.

• carswell 19:27 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  Thanks for the link, Mozai. Unfortunately, the article is subscription-walled and I ain’t about to give Quebecor (which, irony of ironies, is spelled sans accents, even in French) any personal info. Care to summarize?

• MarcG 20:14 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  carswell: It’s ugly, but you can read the text using this tool: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tvanouvelles.ca%2F2023%2F10%2F01%2Fune-mauvaise-qualite-de-lair-dans-le-metro-de-montreal

• H. John 20:14 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  @carswell, Paul Arcand mentioned the Journal de Montreal article during his morning press review earlier this week. The article points out a major problem in at least 4 stations. It concerns the same “fine particles” found in smog. It does not refer to CO2 levels.

  Translated from that article:

  The air breathed by metro users and employees in some stations is so bad that it was recently compared to the smog caused by last summer’s forest fires in Montreal. It’s the equivalent of the concentration levels recorded in several Montreal neighbourhoods when the city was suffocated by smoke from forest fires at the end of June.

  The Lionel-Groulx metro station is the one with the worst concentration of fine particles since the STM began taking measurements in 2019. Also readings at Snowdon in 2021 and Berri-UQAM in 2022 were 5 times and 13 times more than in the outside air on those days.

  “These numbers are really high, you can’t see it any other way,” says Scott Weichenthal, an associate professor at McGill University in environmental epidemiology who has studied air quality in several public transportation systems.

  The particles found in the Montreal network contain, among other things, copper, iron, chromium, manganese and nickel, according to a scientific article from 2017.

  The same study estimated that 70 minutes spent in the Montreal metro accounted for more than half of daily allowable exposure to these heavy metals.

• Kate 20:26 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  carswell, someone posted the whole text to reddit.

  https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/16alyt9/anyone_get_congested_and_stuffed_when_going_down/jz96qe0/

• carswell 20:35 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  @MarcG and @H. John – Thanks to both of you. Had no idea it was a problem, let alone that bad. This is a workplace hazard. If I were someone working in the metro, I’d be pushing my union to raise a stink, goad the STM and governments into action, involve the CNESST and other workplace health bodies. If 70 minutes exposes you to half the daily allowable exposure, the exposure during an entire workday must be well into the red zone.

• carswell 20:36 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  Gratitude, Kate.

• Kate 20:44 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  De nada.

  I was waiting for some other news media to cover the story without a paywall, because it’s a pretty important bit of news – but nothing.

• mare 22:44 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  @carswell
  If 70 minutes exposes you to half the daily allowable exposure, the exposure during an entire workday must be well into the red zone.

  It’s 5% of daily allowance, not 50%. Still not very good.

• carswell 22:55 on 2023-09-08 Permalink

  @mare From the article (emphasis mine):

  La même étude estimait que 70 minutes passées dans le métro de Montréal, soit 5% d’une journée, comptaient pour plus de la moitié de l’exposition quotidienne à ces métaux lourds.

  As I read this, the 5% refers to the fraction of the day, not the daily allowable exposure. But, as you note, not good either way.

• mare 01:22 on 2023-09-09 Permalink

  @carswell You’re right, my bad. I couldn’t believe the ‘half of daily allowance’ so I fast-read the article and saw 5% and that was more plausible. Should have been more attentive.

  (Weird of the writer to use ‘5% of a day’ to describe a 70 minute time period. Nobody intuitively thinks of a day as being 24 hours, so 5% of a day actually ‘feels’ shorter than 70 minutes. And nobody is 24 hrs in the metro so it doesn’t even make )

• dhomas 08:59 on 2023-09-09 Permalink

  @CE we had a similar situation to yours. My wife caught it on/around July 29th, most likely on our plane ride home from vacation. Strangely, I didn’t get it and neither did our 3 kids. We shared the same bed and I didn’t try to avoid it because I thought it was inevitable that I would get it. Never happened. We have plenty of tests because the kids school were still giving them out regularly until June. My wife tested positive for nearly 3 weeks, much longer this time around. Also, we had both gotten booster shots about 3 or 4 weeks prior to her getting it (July 2nd).

  Oh, and the newer tests (that come in white boxes, as opposed to the old ones in the green boxes) seemed more reliable somehow. They would almost immediately show the second pink bar whereas the old one took a while. Not sure why.

• MarcG 09:48 on 2023-09-09 Permalink

  @dhomas: Did you and your kids test even though you didn’t have symtoms? People often forget that a large percentage of cases are asymptomatic (e.g. numbers from the latest nursing home outbreak in the UK are 42%)

• walkerp 10:13 on 2023-09-09 Permalink

  Yep, same thing here. I got it, still don’t know where, had symptoms and tested strongly positive (the second line showed up right away, assertive almost bold). Neither my wife nor child caught it. I did mask in the house and ate separately and we kept the doors and windows open because it was summer. But still we had been in close contact for days before I tested. It’s a very weird disease.

• Meezly 10:46 on 2023-09-09 Permalink

  @jeather – when I checked the QC covid vaccine site a couple of weeks ago, it recommended to wait for the new vaccine which is due to arrive in October.

• jeather 13:10 on 2023-09-09 Permalink

  The flu vaccine doesn’t usually start until Oct/Nov, so I’m assuming there will be time to get both at the same time. I’m about 12 months out from my last shot.

• Chris 13:10 on 2023-09-09 Permalink

  >Strangely, I didn’t get it and neither did our 3 kids.

  Unlikely. You probably caught it and just had no symptoms. That is quite common. Covid is usually quite mild after all, especially if you’ve been vaccinated.

  >We have plenty of tests because the kids school were still giving them out regularly until June.

  Those home tests only work if you are symptomatic. You’re just wasting tests.

  >Neither my wife nor child caught it.

  By which you mean they had no symptoms. They probably caught it. Or did you actually have a PCR test?

• MarcG 16:08 on 2023-09-09 Permalink

  According to this meta-analysis 17% of people who have an asymptomatic infection present with at least one long-term symptom down the road. I’ll say it again: judging a virus by the acute phase alone is a mistake.

• dhomas 22:30 on 2023-09-09 Permalink

  @MarcG @Chris we did indeed test (with the home testing kits). Nada. It was very strange. The only explanation I could think of was that we had caught it before my wife and had been asymptomatic.

• MarcG 16:10 on 2023-09-11 Permalink

  A study done between October 2021 and January 2022 showed:

  Two tests within 48 hours catch 92% of symptomatic cases and 39% of asymptomatic cases.
  Three tests 48 hours apart detected 94% of symptomatic and 57% of asymptomatic patients.

  Probably a bit less accurate now.

• MarcG 08:38 on 2023-09-12 Permalink

  Also note that a single RAT done on the same day that PCR returned positive caught only 60% of symptomatic cases and 9.3% asymptomatic.