The vaccine passport will no longer be. A little taken aback to learn so early of the gradual shelving of this tool that we were recently presented as a supreme necessity, we are now uncertain. Disbelief is perhaps the price to pay when checkered governance has made people suspicious. When the train of good news passes, we hesitate to jump on it.
The morale of Quebecers has not yet fully recovered from the change of course of the holiday season, when, let us remember, a promise of reunions and family outpourings has turned into extra-severe confinement. Just last week, Quebec said it was not considering withdrawing the vaccine passport before mid-March. However, as of today, to enter a branch of the SAQ or the SQDC or even a big box store, it will no longer be necessary to show your credentials. Places of worship will follow a week later, and March 14 will be liberation day: the passport will be used by travelers, but to go about their social business, it will no longer be useful.
Until he becomes one again? We are not immune to another unforeseen turnaround signed COVID-19. Omicron wasn’t on any screens and then, in the space of a few weeks, it changed the face of the world, literally. Moreover, we must never forget that in Quebec, the health care system is like a veritable house of cards. We are still 400 beds away from a disaster. When asked by a reporter on Tuesday if he felt that his team was going to pay the political price for “many changes of course”, the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, replied that the health of Quebecers had always guided the actions of his government. Let us add a slight complement to this answer: the occupation of intensive care beds is the real barometer. The one that takes us in less than two months from the imposition of a curfew to the extinction of the vaccine passport.
Public Health rubbed shoulders with politics on Tuesday at the press briefing, because it is the data now available to the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ) that allowed Minister Dubé to announce his “crisis exit” plan. No, the singing of truck horns and the threat of additional demonstrations planned for this weekend in Quebec have nothing to do with it, at least that’s what we are assured. The improvement in hospitalizations, the assurance that 25% of the population of Quebec has contracted the disease in the last two months, the vaccination rates, the lower virulence of Omicron despite higher contagion: all of this contributes to reassure the authorities, who have given the green light for a demotion of the vaccine passport. This one has gone through its “useful” life. Thank you for the services rendered, we will call you back if necessary.
For a few weeks now, we have been quietly preparing for this stage where we will “live” with the virus. It is that the endemic, that is to rub shoulders with a disease and tolerate its presence like that of a usual phenomenon, no longer commands extraordinary actions. But you don’t deprogram the human psyche into a schedule that lasts a few days. It may take some people longer before they feel reassured when entering a place where the vaccine passport is no longer required, even if it is well understood that having two doses of vaccine in no way exempts us from contracting the disease.
Moreover, how will the cultural community react to this announcement – performance halls will be freed from the passport on March 14, after having been among the circles hardest hit by health restrictions over the months? Just two weeks ago, The duty revealed that the four largest museums in Quebec implored the Minister of Culture, Nathalie Roy, to allow them to also require the vaccine passport to filter visitors. Raison ? Visitors asked for it, and some, disappointed not to benefit from this protection, turned back the same way, dissatisfied at not finding a better feeling of security. Some audiences may find it harder to revert to old habits without the protections they’ve clung to.
When will we be able to say “drop the mask”? This remains mandatory, but if by chance the health improvement continues, it could also fall in the spring, and become an individual protection measure chosen by citizens, without being mandatory. Two years of confinement, constraints dictated by the authorities and disconcerting reversals of the situation have left scars in this sociology of the pandemic, which it will be fascinating to examine later. When the time comes to break their chains, the incredulous hesitate, suddenly uncertain of wanting to plunge back into a great bath of freedom.