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I am yet to understand why Quebec is doing curfew. How does not going outside after 8pm till 6am somehow make the situation better? Their own health officials s

I am yet to understand why Quebec is doing curfew. How does not going outside after 8pm till 6am somehow make the situation better? Their own health officials said curfew won’t help.

analyst74 5y ago
My understanding is that it's a round about way to reduce partying.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  It's really not. People definitely can and do have parties without the curfew. They just do it during the weekend or overnight. Besides, data shows that Quebecers already followed the measures pretty well, and only a small fraction of overall infections came from unknown causes or illegal gatherings, much dominated by schools and work (healthcare before vaccination). Data from the public health agencies suggested it would not and had not had any impact.
sudosysgen 5y ago
Ah, this requires a bit of knowledge of Quebec politics. The quebec premier is a pro-business populist. So, his leadership method can be accurately summarized as, doing what's best for business, and covering up for the issue this causes using populist issues (law 21, for example) or aesthetics. Well, as cases started increasing in Montréal, he wanted to act though. But he didn't want to implement an actual lockdown, as that would hurt the economy (much like fumbled the first lockdown where cases almost went to zero, but instead of continuing slightly longer and implementing mass tests and tracing, he lifted it right before tracing was up to capacity and cases went to zero, but I digress). For the same reason, he didn't want to close down schools, which are a large driver of infection here according to public health data. So, he implemented somthing he knew would look though to his base outside of Montreal, without actually impacting the economy, which is an 8pm curfew. Obviously, everyone with a bit of knowledge knew this would be useless, but there goes. As the curfew went on, vaccination of the health sector picked up, and the healthcare system went from a large driver of cases to non-existent, allowing Montreal to bring R under 1 and cases to go down. He obviously acted as if the curfew contributed, and pushed the curfew to 9:30. Then, he had the brilliant idea of : putting back schools to full-time learning instead of one-day-on, one-day-off, even as the schoolboards and teachers didn't want to - supercharching a large infection driver, but also, outside of Montreal, opening back up indoors dining for restaurants and indoors gyms (without masks!). Unsurprisingly, this led to an explosion of cases outside of Montreal, while Montreal kept stable amounts of infections despite a delayed curfew and full classrooms. So, he rolled back those measures, and to look though again, he put an 8pm curfew in the high infection periods. Despite the fact that cases weren't increasing much in Montréal, afraid that the lack of increase despite a delayed curfew would show plainly that his curfew, flagship measure, was useless, he put it back to 8pm in Montréal. Nicely, this means that people now only have two hours or so to do their groceries, supercharging the mass of people there, indoors. So there it is, it's really just aesthetics. If it helps or not doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't annoy his base too much and looks flashy, it's good for Mr. Legeault. Also, he added a mandate to wear masks in outdoor parks, while almost no infections at all were recorded outdoors.
- jariel 5y ago
  I live in Quebec and would summarily disagree with this assessment. Your statement about the failure curfew policy and closures is definitely not true. Have a look at the data [1] (Select: Quebec and change the timeframe to include 'all time'. The original closures in January had a radically positive effect in reducing spread, and there were many more measures in place than merely curfew. You directly contradict yourself by indicating 'opening up restos schools was a bad decision' when in the preceding statement you literally said that the policies 'had no effect'. They clearly did. Schools have been opened in many places in the world, and are generally not considered to be superspreading locations - the difference 'now' is not COVID v1, rather, it's COVID v1.1 and v1.2 (i.e. other variants) which seem to be affecting young people at considerably higher rates. The policy here is not hugely different than most places in the world. [1] https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/coronavirustracker/ https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/coronavirustracker/
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Please don't put words in my mouth. I didn't ever say that any policy had no effects except the curfew. >Schools have been opened in many places in the world, and are generally not considered to be superspreading locations You are simply wrong on this point. Quebec contact tracing data shows "Education" to be the #2 category for source of infection in the last two months : https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coronavirus/situation-coronavirus-in-quebec https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coron... >The original closures in January had a radically positive effect in reducing spread, and there were many more measures in place than merely curfew. I never disputed the good effects of the closures in January. I disputed the impact of the curfew solely. You will alos notice in the data after January that the category of infection sources that fell the most is actually "Living and care environemnts", which is where healthcare is placed - a major driver of infection that was eliminated via vaccination.
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    Except you could see cases went down in a very similar way in places with no curfew around that same time period. It's asinine to credit the curfews for that. Unless you also don't mind blaming the current uptrend on... Curfews too? Because otherwise it's just an unfalsifiable hypothesis : 1) if cases go down it's thanks to Legault and his "audacious measures" like curfews 2) if cases go up the population is to blame but the measures still work and we just need more of them
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jariel 5y ago
It's partly a social signal. I live in Quebec and the notion of 'curfew' has a very eerie and ominous 'feel' like nothing ever in my life. I feel it's more powerful than the time we were seeing NYC hospitals blow up in COVID disaster. It's 'over there' when it's on TV ... but when you 'have to get home by 8' it a visceral effect. To the point wherein never before have I truly contemplated the authoritarian nature of the order - though I'm fully sympathetic to the Provincial Leaders trying to stop mass death, it's pretty scary that this can happen and the Supreme Court ruling on the case that was brought before them was really scant. Basically, the Judges said 'it's for the good of the people and proportional so it's ok' - but there's basically zero in the way of parameterized logic, precedence, or specific legality to all of it. As far as the Health Officers supposedly miscommunication information, I suggest that these are intelligent people, and that obviously there's still not as much consensus as the comment implies. 'Gaslight of Science' I think is better exemplified by those denying COVID or vaccines.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  >'Gaslight of Science' I think is better exemplified by those denying COVID or vaccines. The Quebec governmnent's refusal to publish public health guidance on decisions that experts think are ineffective while insisting that they are based on evidence definitely qualifies as gaslighting science. >It's partly a social signal. I live in Quebec and the notion of 'curfew' has a very eerie and ominous 'feel' like nothing ever in my life. It was also a strong social signal to everyone I know that the handling of the crisis was aestheticized and politicized as there was no evidence of it's efficacy. Certainly for some it had a chilling effect, for many it led to a complete loss of trust in a government that was already playing fast and loose with rigor and trustworthiness.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  The government of Québec mismanaged the crisis to a phenomenonal level. Literally thousands of deaths were directly caused by that mismanagement (from the catastrophic handling of nursing homes) even with a population that was (and still is) one the most compliant to the restrictions.in the world . But we still are blamed and pusnished by the government for "slipping up" and not being responsible while we all know no one in the government will be held accountable for the CHSLDs collapsing and Quebec having some of the worst outcomes in the world. That's who's gas lighting here, not a very tiny group of fringe weirdos with almost 0 impact denying covid.
graeme 5y ago
> Their own health officials said curfew won’t help. I’m no longer following quebec public health’s announcements closely, but did they seem credible? They’ve been wrong on most everything so I’d need their reasoning rather than their authority to believe them here. A curfew makes gatherings substantially harder. You have to buy food and drink in advance, and people have to be able to sleep over and be comfortable doing so. Contact tracing won’t detect many clusters at private gatherings if people don’t say they were violating rules. Public health’s data may not be accurate here. If I were in charge I wouldn’t use a curfew mind you. I would instead fix public health’s rules: emphasize ventilation, mandate open windows, require masks at work while seated, etc. But I suspect the curfew actually achieves its purpose. Quebec is doing better relative to other provinces than it did pre curfew, iirc.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  >inhibit parties and gatherings [citation needed] - anecdotally all of the people I heard of that partied before still party after, either on the weekends eariler or they stay over. >another major cause of spread. [citation needed] - The "activities and events", which includes legal events, is 285 out of 11 158 in the sum of outbreaks collected by Quebec public health. "Other environments", which is where they put clusters that they can't identify is even lower at 46 out of 11 158. All other categories are verified using hard data, and one couldn't lie to classify the cluster somewhere else. So no, this isn't a data issue : https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coronavirus/situation-coronavirus-in-quebec https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coron... By far the dominating sources of infection are work and school, and it's not even close. Followed then are places of commerce. What curfews actually do though, is force much higher concentrations of people indoors and in public transit, which strongly contributes to the infections in work, "other establishments", and legal "activities and events". Which has a big impact on infection, unlike the other factors. Politicians had many other tools they chose to relax or not to use right as they enforced the curfew. For example, restrictions on schools were relaxed, a major driver of infection - places like gyms and so on were opened, which already infected hundreds of people, rapid tests were not used in outbreak environments, schools were not outfited with basic ventilation (even just an air purifier would help!), contact tracing is in a horrible state, etc... Most of all, the politicians could actually release the data behind their decisions, going a long way to increase goodwill and compliance, but chose not to. They chose the curfew because it would placate those who asked for stricter restrictions and get people to disagree with them, because it would be flashy and hard to ignore, because once restricted to Montreal it wouldn't cause issues to their voterbase, and because it's very easy to implement and doesn't hurt businesses with which the current government is incredibly cozy.

I am yet to understand why Quebec is doing curfew. How does not going outside after 8pm till 6am somehow make the situation better? Their own health officials said curfew won’t help.

analyst74 5y ago

My understanding is that it's a round about way to reduce partying.

sudosysgen 5y ago
It's really not. People definitely can and do have parties without the curfew. They just do it during the weekend or overnight. Besides, data shows that Quebecers already followed the measures pretty well, and only a small fraction of overall infections came from unknown causes or illegal gatherings, much dominated by schools and work (healthcare before vaccination). Data from the public health agencies suggested it would not and had not had any impact.

sudosysgen 5y ago

Ah, this requires a bit of knowledge of Quebec politics. The quebec premier is a pro-business populist. So, his leadership method can be accurately summarized as, doing what's best for business, and covering up for the issue this causes using populist issues (law 21, for example) or aesthetics. Well, as cases started increasing in Montréal, he wanted to act though. But he didn't want to implement an actual lockdown, as that would hurt the economy (much like fumbled the first lockdown where cases almost went to zero, but instead of continuing slightly longer and implementing mass tests and tracing, he lifted it right before tracing was up to capacity and cases went to zero, but I digress). For the same reason, he didn't want to close down schools, which are a large driver of infection here according to public health data. So, he implemented somthing he knew would look though to his base outside of Montreal, without actually impacting the economy, which is an 8pm curfew. Obviously, everyone with a bit of knowledge knew this would be useless, but there goes. As the curfew went on, vaccination of the health sector picked up, and the healthcare system went from a large driver of cases to non-existent, allowing Montreal to bring R under 1 and cases to go down. He obviously acted as if the curfew contributed, and pushed the curfew to 9:30. Then, he had the brilliant idea of : putting back schools to full-time learning instead of one-day-on, one-day-off, even as the schoolboards and teachers didn't want to - supercharching a large infection driver, but also, outside of Montreal, opening back up indoors dining for restaurants and indoors gyms (without masks!). Unsurprisingly, this led to an explosion of cases outside of Montreal, while Montreal kept stable amounts of infections despite a delayed curfew and full classrooms. So, he rolled back those measures, and to look though again, he put an 8pm curfew in the high infection periods. Despite the fact that cases weren't increasing much in Montréal, afraid that the lack of increase despite a delayed curfew would show plainly that his curfew, flagship measure, was useless, he put it back to 8pm in Montréal. Nicely, this means that people now only have two hours or so to do their groceries, supercharging the mass of people there, indoors. So there it is, it's really just aesthetics. If it helps or not doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't annoy his base too much and looks flashy, it's good for Mr. Legeault. Also, he added a mandate to wear masks in outdoor parks, while almost no infections at all were recorded outdoors.

jariel 5y ago
I live in Quebec and would summarily disagree with this assessment. Your statement about the failure curfew policy and closures is definitely not true. Have a look at the data [1] (Select: Quebec and change the timeframe to include 'all time'. The original closures in January had a radically positive effect in reducing spread, and there were many more measures in place than merely curfew. You directly contradict yourself by indicating 'opening up restos schools was a bad decision' when in the preceding statement you literally said that the policies 'had no effect'. They clearly did. Schools have been opened in many places in the world, and are generally not considered to be superspreading locations - the difference 'now' is not COVID v1, rather, it's COVID v1.1 and v1.2 (i.e. other variants) which seem to be affecting young people at considerably higher rates. The policy here is not hugely different than most places in the world. [1] https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/coronavirustracker/ https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/coronavirustracker/
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Please don't put words in my mouth. I didn't ever say that any policy had no effects except the curfew. >Schools have been opened in many places in the world, and are generally not considered to be superspreading locations You are simply wrong on this point. Quebec contact tracing data shows "Education" to be the #2 category for source of infection in the last two months : https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coronavirus/situation-coronavirus-in-quebec https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coron... >The original closures in January had a radically positive effect in reducing spread, and there were many more measures in place than merely curfew. I never disputed the good effects of the closures in January. I disputed the impact of the curfew solely. You will alos notice in the data after January that the category of infection sources that fell the most is actually "Living and care environemnts", which is where healthcare is placed - a major driver of infection that was eliminated via vaccination.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Except you could see cases went down in a very similar way in places with no curfew around that same time period. It's asinine to credit the curfews for that. Unless you also don't mind blaming the current uptrend on... Curfews too? Because otherwise it's just an unfalsifiable hypothesis : 1) if cases go down it's thanks to Legault and his "audacious measures" like curfews 2) if cases go up the population is to blame but the measures still work and we just need more of them

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jariel 5y ago

It's partly a social signal. I live in Quebec and the notion of 'curfew' has a very eerie and ominous 'feel' like nothing ever in my life. I feel it's more powerful than the time we were seeing NYC hospitals blow up in COVID disaster. It's 'over there' when it's on TV ... but when you 'have to get home by 8' it a visceral effect. To the point wherein never before have I truly contemplated the authoritarian nature of the order - though I'm fully sympathetic to the Provincial Leaders trying to stop mass death, it's pretty scary that this can happen and the Supreme Court ruling on the case that was brought before them was really scant. Basically, the Judges said 'it's for the good of the people and proportional so it's ok' - but there's basically zero in the way of parameterized logic, precedence, or specific legality to all of it. As far as the Health Officers supposedly miscommunication information, I suggest that these are intelligent people, and that obviously there's still not as much consensus as the comment implies. 'Gaslight of Science' I think is better exemplified by those denying COVID or vaccines.

sudosysgen 5y ago
>'Gaslight of Science' I think is better exemplified by those denying COVID or vaccines. The Quebec governmnent's refusal to publish public health guidance on decisions that experts think are ineffective while insisting that they are based on evidence definitely qualifies as gaslighting science. >It's partly a social signal. I live in Quebec and the notion of 'curfew' has a very eerie and ominous 'feel' like nothing ever in my life. It was also a strong social signal to everyone I know that the handling of the crisis was aestheticized and politicized as there was no evidence of it's efficacy. Certainly for some it had a chilling effect, for many it led to a complete loss of trust in a government that was already playing fast and loose with rigor and trustworthiness.
mardifoufs 5y ago
The government of Québec mismanaged the crisis to a phenomenonal level. Literally thousands of deaths were directly caused by that mismanagement (from the catastrophic handling of nursing homes) even with a population that was (and still is) one the most compliant to the restrictions.in the world . But we still are blamed and pusnished by the government for "slipping up" and not being responsible while we all know no one in the government will be held accountable for the CHSLDs collapsing and Quebec having some of the worst outcomes in the world. That's who's gas lighting here, not a very tiny group of fringe weirdos with almost 0 impact denying covid.

graeme 5y ago

> Their own health officials said curfew won’t help. I’m no longer following quebec public health’s announcements closely, but did they seem credible? They’ve been wrong on most everything so I’d need their reasoning rather than their authority to believe them here. A curfew makes gatherings substantially harder. You have to buy food and drink in advance, and people have to be able to sleep over and be comfortable doing so. Contact tracing won’t detect many clusters at private gatherings if people don’t say they were violating rules. Public health’s data may not be accurate here. If I were in charge I wouldn’t use a curfew mind you. I would instead fix public health’s rules: emphasize ventilation, mandate open windows, require masks at work while seated, etc. But I suspect the curfew actually achieves its purpose. Quebec is doing better relative to other provinces than it did pre curfew, iirc.

sudosysgen 5y ago
>inhibit parties and gatherings [citation needed] - anecdotally all of the people I heard of that partied before still party after, either on the weekends eariler or they stay over. >another major cause of spread. [citation needed] - The "activities and events", which includes legal events, is 285 out of 11 158 in the sum of outbreaks collected by Quebec public health. "Other environments", which is where they put clusters that they can't identify is even lower at 46 out of 11 158. All other categories are verified using hard data, and one couldn't lie to classify the cluster somewhere else. So no, this isn't a data issue : https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coronavirus/situation-coronavirus-in-quebec https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coron... By far the dominating sources of infection are work and school, and it's not even close. Followed then are places of commerce. What curfews actually do though, is force much higher concentrations of people indoors and in public transit, which strongly contributes to the infections in work, "other establishments", and legal "activities and events". Which has a big impact on infection, unlike the other factors. Politicians had many other tools they chose to relax or not to use right as they enforced the curfew. For example, restrictions on schools were relaxed, a major driver of infection - places like gyms and so on were opened, which already infected hundreds of people, rapid tests were not used in outbreak environments, schools were not outfited with basic ventilation (even just an air purifier would help!), contact tracing is in a horrible state, etc... Most of all, the politicians could actually release the data behind their decisions, going a long way to increase goodwill and compliance, but chose not to. They chose the curfew because it would placate those who asked for stricter restrictions and get people to disagree with them, because it would be flashy and hard to ignore, because once restricted to Montreal it wouldn't cause issues to their voterbase, and because it's very easy to implement and doesn't hurt businesses with which the current government is incredibly cozy.