This Saturday marks the end of the mandatory mask in public places such as businesses, restaurants and performance halls in Quebec. Face coverings are now only required on public transport and healthcare facilities.
Posted yesterday at 9:00 a.m.
With the mask that falls, it is the last of the major mandatory health measures against COVID-19 that disappears. Apart from the vaccination passport to travel, there is almost nothing left.
It’s far from trivial when you think that these restrictions have ruled our lives for 26 months!
From travel bans to gathering bans, curfews, vaccination passports and the shutdown of entire swaths of the economy, we can say that we have seen all kinds of things (including green, yellow and red on the cards).
Not many people will be bored by these constraints and the often lively debates they have provoked.
But while the lifting of health measures is welcome, it comes with two problems.
The first is that the authorities make us believe that this shelving is final. “We no longer want population measures,” said Minister of Health Christian Dubé in mid-March, in the midst of the sixth wave.
It’s terribly irresponsible. After six waves, if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. It is very likely that a seventh wave will be waiting for us in the detour next fall. And smart who can predict how the virus will have evolved in virulence and contagiousness by then, and how effective our vaccines will be against it.
Will we be able to protect our hospitals and avoid load shedding without the tools that have served us until now? It is impossible to say.
Yet the government is well aware that telegraphing things too far in advance often forces it to practice the triple backflip. We starred in this film at Christmas 2020. Then at Christmas 2021. And let’s remember that the end of the mandatory mask that is now happening was announced well in advance… before being postponed.
The other problem with the end of sanitary measures is that there is nothing to replace them.
Nothing like in: no education and awareness program to take over from coercion.
No public health campaign to remind us that even if the mask is no longer mandatory, wearing one when you cough or have a fever is elementary good citizenship.
No message to encourage us to take special precautions when we rub shoulders with the most vulnerable, such as the elderly or those with compromised immune systems. For them, the lifting of sanitary measures makes society much more dangerous.
Nothing to remind us that besides the metro, there are other closed places where the mask is useful to protect yourself and others, including some workplaces.
It is as if public health had forgotten that before issuing recommendations to the government, the essence of its mission was precisely to educate and raise awareness. With the wearing of the mask, we have taken good habits which have benefits not only against the spread of COVID-19, but also on that of many other respiratory diseases. These habits, it would be a shame to lose them all at once.
It’s easy today to believe that COVID-19 is over.
The disease no longer makes the headlines. The government no longer talks about it, only too happy to turn the page before the election campaign.
On Wednesday, announcing that the press briefings will become fewer, the director of public health Luc Boileau even thanked the journalists for their many questions over the months, as if we were closing the books and we were all going on vacation.
However, the same day, no less than 23 deaths had been announced that had occurred the day before. Thursday, we added 25 to the balance sheet. Friday, 30 more deaths. Figures like that, we didn’t even see them at the worst of the first wave, when the CHSLDs were on the rise.
Over seven days, the moving average is 21 deaths per day. If suicides, firearms and traffic accidents put together killed at the same rate, we would talk about carnage and we would cry out for action.
It is therefore clear that even if the sixth wave is in decline, COVID-19 is still with us. We would do well to keep the virus in mind. And a mask in our back pocket.