It is a column for people of good faith. We recognize each other, we know each other. It is a chronicle for the vast majority of Quebecers, who have not fallen into the quicksand of disinformation for 21 months.
My gang, what.
I too am tired. I am tanned in the sacrament, to speak like Pierre Lambert.
It is a chronicle for Quebeckers in good faith. My gang, which has been following the rules for 21 months. Who makes an effort, not always perfectly, because no one is perfect, but who understands the goal of the game.
I’ve been reading you, for two days now, I know that you are about to give up, to say “Fuck all!” “, To say” There, I do not care, I pick up! “, I know you are about to make a party to 21 people, just because …
Look, I have absolutely nothing to sell. We are in the same gang: you know that I am not paid by Bill Gates, you know that this pandemic is not a big plot. I’m just a guy who writes in the diary. My opinion is not worth a pound more than yours …
And if you do a party to 21 people, I promise not to condemn you. I said recently: we have passed the stage of state directives. Everyone must govern themselves as they see fit.
I just want to tell you a few things from the bottom of my heart, which have come from tens of hours over the past 21 months listening to far too many microbiologists-infectiologists, doctors, epidemiologists, nurses, relatives of the sick, the sick and , yes, also, sometimes, politicians …
I listened to these people for chronicles in Press. I listened to them on the radio, 98.5 FM.
And sometimes I listened to them just to listen to them in a dynamic that no longer had anything to do with journalism, in a dynamic that was closer to therapy: just because they needed to be listened to. I have listened to these people, for 21 months, tell me what they are going through, what they are seeing …
What they see, I insist: they see what we do not see. To talk about COVID-19, we often invoke the war metaphor, it is a war against COVID-19, we say …
Yeah. Yes and no.
The war, we see it. We see the effects, the victims, we see the blood and the torn limbs. The damage.
The pandemic is different: we can experience the pandemic without ever seeing the dead, the crippled, the burnout, the caregivers who bawl their lives in the locker room, the patients who die alone, out of breath.
Wednesday: 2,700 cases. Thursday: 3700.
I’ve been thinking of lots of people, for 48 hours. To people at the front. These people deal every day with death. Nurses, doctors, managers, attendants. For them, this pandemic is not a surge of milk on social media, it is not performative. When cases rise, they are really, really overwhelmed …
They suffer.
I think of caregivers. They hold the hand of those who are intubated. Whisper a good word to them, without knowing if these patients hear them. Without asking if these patients took their precautions, if they were vaccinated …
I think of them. It is for them that I will limit my contacts. It is for them that I will take care. If we all relax, if too many of us quit, we’re going to lose them.
I hear you, good faith reader. I hear you curse, say that this time it’s too much, that too much is being asked of you, that you no longer believe it. I hear you screaming that the government does not know what it is doing, what it is saying, a hen no head: yesterday, the PM was talking about parties at 20-25 for Christmas, and there, at nine days of Christmas, bang, Omicron obliges, he asks us to reduce that to 10. Heille, wô, minute…
I understand you.
And you are probably (a little) right.
Me too, the government’s back-and-forth, the magical thought of the PM, Horacio who gets bogged down in his explanations, cristie that exasperates me …
You can criticize them until New Year’s Day, until New Year’s Day 2023.
They made mistakes. They will do more. I mostly think they are doing what they can.
The truth of the matter is, we are facing an enemy as old as the world. A virus. Those bastards of viruses existed before us. They will undoubtedly exist after us. This virus knows how to adapt – Hello, Darwin! – better than us humans. The truth of the matter is, this enemy is cunning, efficient, unpredictable.
The truth of the matter is that it forces us to live not so much with it, the virus, but with uncertainty. I think uncertainty bugs us more than the virus.
It is to you that I am addressing myself, reader of good faith. I will understand you to throw in the towel, to say “Fuck everything!” », To resign…
But I invite you all the same not to give in to the resignation.
Resignation, of course. Black humor, of course. Fatality… maybe.
Corn to abandon ?
If we stick to the warlike metaphor, to throw in the towel at this point in the battle would be to lay down arms before the enemy. Me, I say: Fuck the enemy. The enemy is not my government. The enemy is the virus. I’m not going to accommodate him, the enemy. I’m not going to make his life any easier. If he pierces my defenses, it will be defending myself. He will take me triply dosed, masked, distanced, very small-partyized …
Allow me an access of bombast, reader of good faith: I will be Jean Moulin, not Philippe Pétain.
And I invoke Leonard Cohen, in one of his most beautiful songs, fable of resistance: Freedom soon will come.
I know you, bona fide reader.
You have been writing to me for almost 20 years.
I know you still have reserves in you.
I know you know that on a scale of 1 to on-close-everything-and-it’s-curfew-at-eight-in-the-evening, you know what we’re going through, that is still manageable.
I know you know, unlike your cousin who only believes in YouTube, only the third dose, yeah, has to be taken.
I know you know that for the love of our caregivers, we have to limit contact.
I make you a fist bump accomplice, reader in good faith. We know each other, we recognize each other, we know that beyond our exasperation, our bloodshed, beyond what our government says – or not – it’s not the time to let go.