Is Quebec’s Curfew a Cover for Inept COVID-19 Measures?
What is causing the spike in daily COVID-19 cases in Quebec? According to Quebec’s Ministry of Health, the majority of outbreaks are in workplaces (46.5% active and 55.1% completed), followed by long-term care homes (37.8% active and 10.3% completed), educational settings (6% active and 23.4% completed), childcare (4.4% active and 6.8% completed), activities and events (1.5% active and 2.6% completed), and ‘other’ (3.6% active and 1.6% completed). Workplaces are the worst. How will a curfew help?
Quebec’s CAQ Party Premier Legault likens the curfew to “shock therapy”. He posted on Facebook: “The principal reason for a curfew is to prevent gatherings, even the smallest ones. It is the addition of small infringements that feed the (COVID-19) virus”.
Many things do not make sense with this statement. First, if he wanted to curb social gatherings why didn’t he impose a curfew before the holidays? Second, social gatherings are already prohibited and the data shows that social gatherings are not the main drivers of the rising case numbers. Third, people can gather during the day and propagate the virus just as they would in the evening.
The data is out on whether curfews actually work for curbing COVID-19 numbers. Infectious disease specialist Dr. Vinh states curfews are effective when used “in conjunction with other restrictions, including shutting non-essential businesses and schools”. In France, the curfew appeared to help with the spread in the 60 and older population, but it was the closing of bars and restaurants that did the trick for younger age groups; Quebec has already done that.
Seemingly, workplaces and manufacturing are what really need to be addressed in Quebec. A few days ago, Quebec’s manufacturing association warned the government that the sector would suffer “major damage” if a strict lockdown were imposed. I guess the government listened, as nothing was changed in this regard.
It is hard to swallow a curfew without a clear reason for it or evidence that it will work in this particular situation. Is the curfew an attempt for the CAQ government to show that they are trying to do something about the climbing cases when they aren’t doing much at all? The CAQ has been dropping the ball for months now.
First, the CAQ government’s messaging has been unclear. An article from CBC News brings up the following inconsistencies:
“Stay home, but don’t forget to support bars, restaurants and local businesses.
You’ll have to wear a mask to go into a store or dentist’s office, but if you’re one of 25 to 30 students in a classroom, you can take it off.
Please avoid gatherings, but if you’re having members of one other household over, it’s probably OK.”
Second, they allowed students to go back to school with lax protocols — why not mask everyone up or at the very least physically distance desks as many countries have done? In South Korea, children went back to school when cases were at 1 per million and even then they had to wear masks and had plastic screens at their desks which were distanced. Quebec’s active cases as of January 9th, 2021 stand at over 4000 per million. Yet, it’s back to school again.
Third, why is the government not focusing on improving indoor ventilation in places like schools, hospitals, and workplaces? They are refusing to put air purifiers in schools even though the CDC recommends them and a German study “found that putting air purifiers in classrooms made students six times less likely to contract COVID-19”. The CAQ government says it could cause a false sense of security and lead to people relaxing other measures. This sounds a lot like the reasoning behind Sweden not recommending facemask use. Apparently, improving messaging is still not seen as important.
Fourth, why isn’t the CAQ developing better measures for the manufacturing sector if that’s where the majority of cases are? Why not try this before imposing a curfew? The president and CEO of Quebec’s largest employer group, the Conseil du patonat du Quebec, Karl Blackburn would like to see the government:
“take a more targeted approach [and] (…) identify specific problem areas and use a “surgical’’ approach to deal with the spread of COVID-19 in those sectors. (…) Blackburn said he’d also like to see stricter sanctions for people and organizations that don’t follow public health rules”.
But, instead, a curfew is imposed.
Local Montreal-based writer, researcher, and community organizer, Jaggi Singh, calls the curfew measure an authoritarian approach, saying it will lead to increased policing while encouraging snitching. He states that curfews:
“are not necessarily rooted in actually improving public health. Moreover, these measures, like increased ticketing and police surveillance, can actually undermine necessary pandemic mitigation measures like contact tracing.
Authoritarian and paternalistic approaches backfire in working class communities, where we don’t like being condescended to, particularly by cops and discredited politicians (or petty neighbourhood snitches). These cop-centred approaches are antithetical to collective solidarity and health, and end up promoting communities that turn on each other, rather than identifying and attacking structural reasons for the failure of our pandemic response. Those structural reasons include the gross underfunding of the health care sector over the past 30 years by successive Quebec governments that have pursued a neo-liberal capitalist economic model”
Singh and others are worried that the curfew, while being of little merit, will be particularly hard on “the homeless, for people in distress, for people in abusive relationships and for the undocumented”.
So, is Quebec’s curfew a cover for inept COVID-19 measures? Is it an authoritarian measure that will be used to scapegoat transgressors as the primary reason for climbing numbers instead of looking at and properly dealing with the root causes of the problem?
You be the judge.