On Tuesday, Prime Minister François Legault announced his long-awaited deconfinement plan. “We will have to learn to live with the virus,” he said, presenting his timetable for the gradual end of health restrictions. ” What does it mean ? This means that you will have to yourself, each person, assess their risks. »
Of course, you have to learn to live with the virus. We have already been doing this for two years, moreover, at the cost of certain sacrifices for individuals. But “living with the virus” is certainly not just an individual matter of personal risk assessment. It remains to be seen how the government of Quebec, as an institution, intends to live with the virus.
A government living with the virus should immediately launch a public infrastructure renovation project, which includes schools as a priority, with the aim of improving air quality there. It is neither normal nor acceptable that in a rich country like ours, we are reduced to opening the windows during very cold weather to prevent the children from breathing too stale air. Many others before me have insisted on this point in Quebec. Who knows, by dint of repeating oneself, someone will perhaps move?
A government living with the virus would also take note of the significant number of workplace outbreaks throughout the pandemic: so-called “essential” workers, and not just in the healthcare sector, have been disproportionately exposed to COVID-19. I am thinking in particular of workers in food processing plants, those in large warehouses. Living with the virus means revising occupational safety and health standards – particularly on the issue, again, of air quality. But also ensuring that each person has access to enough sick leave so that they do not have to choose between infecting their colleagues or losing pay they cannot do without. Quebec labor standards only require employers to take two paid sick days per year. When we compare ourselves to several European countries, we see that it would be possible and realistic to do much better.
Living with the virus also means committing to increasing our hospital capacity. After all, it is essentially because our hospitals are overflowing and we are understaffed that the most restrictive measures have been justified. People will tell me that we need to increase federal health transfers to reinvest in the Quebec system. Certainly. Still, federal funds must truly go to public services, rather than being used to balance the provincial budget. And of course, we must also better invest the funds that already exist, remunerate each profession at its fair value, and not only doctors; avoid management styles that demotivate employees, make them flee to the private sector, and disinterest the next generation; better recruit abroad, and recognize the skills of people trained elsewhere. The list of necessary changes is long, and I am not the first to enumerate them.
A government living with the virus also recognizes that a new variant that would challenge, for example, the protection offered by the first generation of vaccines, would still endanger our elders. Not only should the government stop protecting itself to the point of harming the coroner’s inquest work on CHSLDs, but we must completely rethink elder care for the future – and the role of the private sector in this care. Even today, we hear horror stories coming from RPAs and CHSLDs, where triple-vaccinated residents are placed in preventive isolation in their rooms for days, to the detriment of their physical and mental health. Obviously, we have not yet learned to “live with the virus” in these institutions.
Finally, living with the virus requires paying attention to the World Health Organization, which has been shouting in vain for more than a year on the importance of vaccinating the entire planet. The virus will continue to spread, and most likely mutate, until large swaths of the population are immunized. By refusing to think of everyone, we also harm ourselves. Living with the virus means looking up and thinking about what is happening beyond your own borders.
We can understand that when an unforeseen catastrophe falls on our heads, it is quicker to ask individuals to radically change their way of life than to undertake institutional transformations, which are heavy, complex and slow by nature. We could not, for example, solve overnight all the problems in our health system, which have prevented us from effectively treating both people with COVID-19 and all other patients. But one could easily limit the social life of individuals, create a vaccine passport, prohibit certain activities.
However, if in the medium term, our governments have still not worked to improve their ability to deal with COVID-19 and perhaps also with a future pandemic, they will no longer be able to invoke surprise and urgency to clear customs again.
For better or for worse, “living with the virus” certainly doesn’t mean getting back to normal. It means rolling up our sleeves and undertaking the necessary institutional reforms so that the burden of adapting to the virus ceases to fall disproportionately on individuals.
When I hear the Prime Minister give his definition of “living with the virus”, I am not yet reassured for the future.