On Tuesday, the Minister of Health, with a look of dark days, warned that due to the numerous load shedding of operations, our hospitals were “very close to a point of no return”. Thursday, the Prime Minister, resolutely optimistic, announced to us that “thanks to our efforts, we see the light at the end of the tunnel” and began to relax the sanitary measures.
Posted on January 16
So what happened in 48 hours? The prime minister says “expert forecasts” suggested the peak of COVID-19 infections had been reached or was about to be.
It depends on the experts. On Thursday, the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec published forecasts to say the least mixed.
“In half of the simulations, cases and new hospitalizations may have already peaked or peak within days. For the other half of the simulations, cases and new hospitalizations could continue to increase for a few more days or weeks. As a forecast, we have already seen more conclusive.
On the same day, the National Institute of Excellence in Health and Social Services said it was unable to make reliable forecasts. “Since last week, INESSS has no longer been able to reliably produce the prediction report on the risks of hospitalization since it is based on the number of positive cases declared. However, the changes made in screening strategies to take into account the very rapid evolution of new cases lead to a significant underestimation of the number of real cases. »
So one of the organizations that advises the government says that we have half the chance of having reached the peak. The other says that it is impossible to make reliable predictions due to the significant underestimation of the number of cases. As for the Federal Public Health, it predicts a significant peak by the end of February.
And faced with this, what does the Prime Minister do? He says he sees light at the end of the tunnel and, now optimistic, he is starting to lift restrictions. The unpopular curfew is over. The equally unpopular decision to close grocery stores on Sundays too. And, a quick drive on the other side, we will ask for the vaccination passport at the door of the big box stores.
Note a contradiction here. We are removing restrictions, but we are adding one. Why ? The reasons are eminently and obviously political. The idea of taxing the unvaccinated is popular, so we present it with other measures that will be popular. That’s how a populist government works.
Let’s see it in detail. First, the “health contribution” of non-vaccinated. Here is a measure of which we do not know the terms and which will be inapplicable. For example, how would the government know or be able to verify who is unvaccinated? The only data on this subject belong to the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ).
However, the RAMQ is bound by the confidentiality of health records. In practice, there can be no exchange of data such as a vaccination file between the RAMQ and Revenu Québec. Which shows that we are talking about a political balloon here.
But it is popular and it risks embarrassing the opposition parties who oppose it, which explains why Mr. Legault is already saying that there will be a debate in the National Assembly at the start of the school year.
The curfew is not only unpopular, it is also seen by many citizens as having been unnecessary. In fact, one might believe that it was imposed on New Year’s Eve much more to show that the government was doing something about the explosion in the number of cases due to the Omicron variant. In short, for political reasons, and we will abandon it… for political reasons.
As for grocery stores closing on Sundays, it was a measure that was denounced by both grocery store owners and consumers.
Why act now on these files? Because there are polls that indicate greater disapproval of health measures and, possibly, a shift in support from the CAQ to the new Conservative Party of Quebec, the party that opposes health measures the most. And if public polls say that, the government needs to have even more accurate ones that say the same thing.
Over the next few weeks, we will mainly monitor the situation in the schools that will open on Monday, as Mr. Legault wants. And, on this question, we cannot talk about politics, it is a deep conviction of the Prime Minister, who had also insisted on reopening the schools from the spring of 2020.
But the risk of outbreaks in schools is real and could percolate to more vulnerable groups, many health experts say. Nobody wants that to happen, but if it did, Mr. Legault’s optimism could quickly turn against him.