A large renovation area still announced on its awning, last Saturday “It’s going to be fine”. Obviously, the poster attendant had not come to work since March 2020. In these first days of April 2022, the government slogan changed and became: “We must learn to live with the virus”.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
The advertising nonchalance of the orange renovator makes it possible to measure the world that exists between the two mantras. 2020: the government is watching, paternal. Nothing bad will happen to you. 2022: “Ah, it’s your business! From we to I. From now on, it’s up to everyone to play, to take control of their COVID-19. From collective to individualism, as in most Western countries. What is this privatization of COVID-19 the name of?
The time of the first phase of the pandemic is well over, marked in Quebec by a clear tendency towards the infantilization of the population on the part of the government, the bad side of a care that is nevertheless responsible.
The whole world was inventing protocols and in Quebec, the desire to protect the population drifted towards abandonment at the hands of the health trio. The Deputy Prime Minister asked us to be docile; we were. Even with the evidence of the disaster in the management of COVID-19 in CHSLDs, we continued to trust, when we know today that there has been a solid slippage and deplorable administration in the care of the elderly. .
This infantilization will leave deep scars. But hey, it’s April 2022, the weather is nice and from now on, it will be up to the Head of Public Health to have the unsightly task of talking about the angry subject, since the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health are incidentally in the pre-election campaign. , and that COVID-19 is so 2021. We want to dissociate ourselves from this pandemic that never ends.
So yes, we choose our political camp. From now on, everyone is responsible for their own COVID-19, for their illness. So, of his health. We delocalize the virus. We privatize the symptoms. Be responsible! Manage your treatment! Become adults!
Certainly, with the contagiousness of BA.2, we will all catch it, but if it is normal to act responsibly, isn’t the State washing its hands of some of its responsibilities, having gone way too far in micromanaging our pandemic lives? When Minister Dubé is questioned about the increase in hospitalizations and he replies that Quebecers have been told that they have to learn to live with the virus, he shows that he does not understand all that this implies, or while he has a penchant for a certain vision of health. Vision where the most vulnerable, citizens with fragile health, the elderly should accept to be marginalized. We want to live with it, but on condition that society is adequately prepared, that we provide access to PCR tests, that we ventilate schools, that we support and maintain clear and precise minimum protective measures, that we push on the third dose of the vaccine. I had COVID-19 recently, and the isolation required varied, depending on the source, from 5 to 14 days. However, COVID-19 is not an à la carte menu…
With the “live with”, we have just privatized the consequences on the organization of the whole of society. We know the dramatic consequences for workers in the healthcare system, but what about the effects on companies, large or small? Cascading absenteeism, breaks in production lines, cancellations, closures, pressure on able-bodied employees. Entrepreneurs are alone with their problems and the resulting costs. Levels of government contradict each other, experts walk on eggshells. Figure it out ; COVID-19 has become a private matter.
“We will live with it”. Clearly, there is no other solution. But does living with inevitably mean living without collective support? What does it say about our way of doing society, of considering, for the future, our health care, our relationship to illness? Are the most vulnerable, will they be individually responsible for their condition? What about the socio-economic, class conditions that predispose them to fragility? Is being old an individual defect? Or do we all have to be there for them, now and in the future?
Everyone is tired of this pandemic. The priorities are now elsewhere. The best way to get back to normal would be to repatriate the virus and its consequences to our personal backyard and close the door. But individualism will not triumph over the virus alone. Between the soothing “It’s going to be fine” and the hyperliberalist “Dbrouilles-toi”, an in-between must exist…