French Language Fanatics Humiliate Quebec Again

In the midst of a deadly pandemic exacerbated by poor planning by the government which has and continues to lead to the wholesale slaughter of seniors in Quebec-run nursing homes, some French language fanatics are complaining about the lack of French on emergency protective equipment being brought in on an urgent and ad hoc basis by a desperate government.

I'm not kidding.
If not so sad, it would be amusing, another humorous incident of language excess like "Pastagate."

But it's not amusing on any level, it's a disgusting display of the out-of-touch fantasy world in which they live where scoring cheap political points trumps public safety.

"I think this information should have been communicated to Quebecers. A government that says it is concerned about the linguistic situation in Quebec authorizes the purchase of equipment that does not respect the Charter of the French language. An explanation by Minister Simon Jolin-Barette is essential."
Christine St. Pierre, Liberal party MNA

"It makes no sense! It is contempt for French speakers and a real danger to public health. Ottawa must correct the situation," Alexandre Boulerice- NDP MP Link{fr}

 "Nothing justifies the non-respect of our two official languages". "It is a public health and safety issue," - Senator René Cormier.

"If we accept it, we open the door to the fact that once the crisis has passed, the authorities tell us that ultimately bilingual labelling is not that necessary. The COVID-19 crisis should not be used as an excuse to throw our values on the back burner..."- Jean Johnson (president, Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne (FCFA)  Link{fr}

Writing in the Canadian Journal of Political Science,
Talk COVID to Me: Language Rights and Canadian Government Responses to the Pandemic

"Since the COVID-19 outbreak, a gradual loosening of linguistic obligations in public institutions and governments has been observed in various jurisdictions in Canada. This paper argues that in addition to legal requirements to provide minority language services, it is not justifiable for governments to suspend or curtail such services in an emergency situation, for reasons pertaining to public safety and public health."
by  Professor Stéphanie Chouinard and Martin Normand

Now I've combed through the comment sections under the various articles that did have one and was a bit surprised to find that about one-third of the commenters shared the above views that the situation whereby emergency personal protective equipment is allowed into Quebec (even under a temporary and emergency basis) is unacceptable.

Wow!

I guess this comment which I found summed it up best.

"So do you prefer to face a Covid positive patient without a mask rather than  wear an English-language N95 mask?"

I would ask all of those language fanatics above the same question.

If a partner, parent or child of yours was in the intensive care unit stricken with Covid-19 and the only ventilator available was a loaner from Alberta with English only labelling, would you refuse service?

Quebec Virus Death Rate Twice as Bad as the USA

A snapshot of the situation around the world yesterday shows a shocking state of affairs in Quebec where deaths attributed to the coronavirus is among the highest rate in the world.

Because Quebec is a province and not a country, the dire situation here is largely understated and unpublicized on the world scale, but there's no hiding the level of the disaster.
When Quebec's mortality rate is compared against other countries in the world, only Belgium is worse off.
That's right, if Quebec was a country, it would be the second worse off out of the 195 countries that make up the world.

If one was also to include New York state as a separate entity as well, Quebec would slide to third place, cold comfort indeed.

The table above compares Quebec to the rest of the world and includes the USA as a whole and the USA minus New York state, as well as Canada as a whole and Canada minus Quebec.

You might question whether making a comparison based on just one day is valid, but it does represent the here and now, and even comparing numbers over the last week or so hold up Quebec as a world-class disaster.

As the world bemoans the huge amount of virus deaths in the United States, it is largely based on the brute numbers because of America's size.
But the rate at which Quebecers are dying is actually twice as bad as that in the USA, 12.5 deaths per million in Quebec and 6.0 in the USA.

When Quebec is compared to Rest of Canada, the death rate due to the virus here is a shocking 5.7 times as large, which means that a Quebecer is almost six times more likely to die of the virus compared to someone living in the ROC!

And sadly, we are nowhere in sight of the end because the virus has implanted itself firmly in over 300 nursing homes and senior residences where seniors are being slaughtered at a rate of close to 100 a day.

Premier Legault has described the situation in Quebec as two solitudes, whereby the situation in the senior homes is ruinous, while the situation in the general population (where citizens have dutifully isolated themselves in their homes) quite manageable.

In his latest news briefings, the Premier's frustration and indeed panic was palpable, describing the uncontrollable out-of-control reality.

As the virus rips through the senior homes, the nursing staff is either out sick with the virus or have abandoned the job themselves in fear of getting sick.

The skeleton staff remaining are unable to properly tend to residents, who are in many cases left for days without food or water, something unimaginable in our modern age.
Hospitals have complained that many patients transferred are not virus-positive, but rather dangerously dehydrated and malnourished.

What is worse in all this that attempts to remediate the situation by calling for altruistic Quebecers to volunteer to go into the homes to lend a hand have failed miserably and considering Quebecers' reputation as Canadians who do the least amount of voluntary charity service, it's no surprise.

Incredibly, Quebec has actually shanghaied workers on the provincial payroll to work in these homes, forcing them against their will under threat of dismissal.
The situation is so desperate that the Premier has been forced to play his very last card, which is asking for help from Ottawa in the form of the Canadian army.

For a desperate Francois Legault and his government, begging Justin Trudeau for help is as Ayatollah Khomeini described signing a ceasefire with hated enemy Iraq, 'like drinking a cup of poison."

For Quebec, the end to the ongoing disaster is not yet in sight as the virus fire rages through our tinderbox senior homes unabated.
And so when you see the Quebec media doing sleight-of-hand and misdirection, emphasizing President Trump's virus disaster in America, remember that we are sadly in twice as bad shape.

No End in Sight to Quebec's Virus Catastrophe

Quebec's Covid-19 catastrophe has gone from bad to worse to nightmarish proportions, with no end in sight as the killer virus rips through nursing homes and senior residences with the speed and deadly effect of an out-of-control runaway steamroller.

The calm, confident and measured daily briefings by Quebec Premier Francois Legault have degenerated into a panic-filled pleas for help from any and all, including the Canadian army which represents a humiliating last choice for a nationalist government hitherto vaunting Quebec's autonomous and independent nation-like status.

How bad is it all?

Well, I don't think I'm exaggerating in saying that Quebec is living a dark moment in its history, second only to the Spanish Flu pandemic which swept through Canada in 1918-19 leaving 14,000 Quebecers dead.

The premier at the time, Liberal Lomer Gouin, replied: “Nothing was overlooked in this painful circumstance. The province is doing everything it can to fight the Spanish flu.
“The population must be grateful, they must rejoice when they see the results. This was possible mainly thanks to the cooperation of doctors, especially doctors and nurses, who showed the greatest dedication and the most admirable zeal to fight the epidemic,” he continued.

Sound familiar?
It seems nothing has changed in a hundred years.


How bad are things now? I'm not sure it can get worse.
The virus has spread into 300 senior residences and even though the Premier has told us that it's not that bad considering the other 2,300 senior residences don't have any cases of the virus, it is of cold comfort to the families of those living in these hellholes.

It's easy to get lost in the statistics so I'll just describe the situation of the last six days where about 500 seniors living in residences were killed by the virus or virus-related causes.

 During those six days, new cases in senior residences rose from 3,500 to 4,800. If you include those who died over these six days and who have been removed from the stats, it means that there were actually 2,100 new cases or about 350 new cases each day. With a mortality rate of about 20%, it means that over these last six days 500 new residents who contracted the virus are doomed to die. Those presumed deaths cannot be avoided or mitigated. They will happen.

What is more distressing is that the situation is deteriorating, not improving. 10,000 health care workers have left their jobs, mostly in these senior residences.
While 4,000 of them are themselves out with the virus, the other 6,000 have abandoned the job, fearful of catching the virus.
They should not be condemned too harshly, they are underpaid and poorly equipped with personal protective equipment. With a family to support on $15 an hour, would you risk working in these conditions?

And so, many seniors are dying of neglect because there are not enough workers to offer even the basest level of service, with no food, water or sanitation provided over days.
The Jewish General Hospital of Montreal reports that some patients they received from the nursing homes suffer from starvation or dehydration, and not the virus.
How's that for our modern, autonomous and capable Quebec?

Now the senior homes that did lockdown are not out of the woods. Family and friends are barred from visiting, which means that many who come on an ongoing basis to provide their loved one with baths, exercise and other services can no longer do so, further straining the already burdened system.

I get the feeling that we are watching our family home ablaze, totally engulfed in flames with firefighters trying to stem the damage to the adjacent homes because ours is a lost cause.
The fire will burn until there's nothing left to consume.

With plenty of still healthy residents literally trapped in senior homes ablaze with Covid and without a viable way out, the die is cast.

What puzzles me is Quebec's media's desperate attempt to downplay Quebec's dire situation.
On every newscast, Quebec's situation is minimized by displays of America's stricken and dead.
The numbers tower over Quebec, but if the proper math is applied Quebec's situation is 95% as bad as that in the USA and that difference is narrowing each day where soon we'll be worse off.
 
At any rate, Quebec's Covid catastrophe will play itself out and the only thing that is sure is that the body count will rise dramatically and that when it is over, the government will pat itself on the back and tell us what a wonderful job they've done.

That part, I guarantee.

Has Covid Doomed our Seniors?

For the elderly, there's no rainbow in the offing, just death

It's a bit hard to stand back and take stock of the situation in the middle of an epidemic, especially with so much misinformation and fake news being bandied about, most of which comes not from Facebook or the internet, but rather from our government and established media.

They keep telling us that the virus affects all of society, not just the elderly. Our televisions are flooded with images of young people dying or battling the virus.
Recovered teens are recruited to remind other young people that they too are imperilled.

It's a horrifically distorted view, perhaps meant to frighten young people into blindly following confinement orders based on fear.
Or it could just be the media looking for the 'man-bites-dog' story because seeing old people die of the virus is just not as interesting to a strapping young teen in the flower of youth.
It's about as honest as showing a teen-age car accident fatality as proof kids should not drive.
It's gratuitous and dishonest.

All that fake news belies the fact that Covid-19 is a deadly menace to the nursing home set and not much of a threat to others.

In fact, emerging evidence is showing that up to one-third of society has already been infected with the virus with nary a symptom, giving us hope that herd immunity is achievable.
Our mainstream media and government overstate the threat to the majority and understate the threat to the elderly.
In fact, Covid-19 is so deadly to the elderly that I wonder if they can survive the future without sheltering in place forever.

Let's examine our Covid-19 reality
These numbers were taken a few days ago and so the death rate you're probably reading about today is higher, but that doesn't change the awful reality of how and who Covid-19 affects.

Hmmm....
Of the 887 Quebec deaths resulting from Covid-19, only 20 occurred in those under 60 years old and in about half of those deaths, prior underlying health problems were a major contributor.

Before we go on to the second chart let us consider that for fully half our Quebec population, those under the mean average of 42 years old, there were just 6 Covid deaths for 4.25 million Quebecers.
And of those six deaths, at least three had compromised health issues.

When I crunched those numbers, I re-checked and re-checked, shocked to see a reality that our media and government hide in order to frighten us into submission.

I'm starting to believe that the idiot spring breakers in Florida who scoffed at the concept of social distancing were actually right about getting the virus. It's clearly no big deal when getting the virus at a young and virile age, preferable to waiting it out and taking your chance later on in life.
Most of those healthy young beach goers will never know that they were positive, some will have a headache for a day or two and a tiny minority will have symptoms and be laid up, but almost none will die.
In fact, if every healthy citizen under 60 got the virus in a slow and controlled manner, keeping hospitalizations at a tolerable rate, we'd be better off as a society.
There would certainly be some deaths, but if we isolated the health-compromised during this burn-off, that rate would be minuscule and represent a risk to reward ratio that is more than acceptable on a societal level.
If as the emerging studies indicate that one-third of people have the virus and don't even feel any symptoms, then pushing the other healthy two-thirds of society who are under sixty years old won't even stretch the health system very far.

Now the argument is offered that young people who are not affected will serve as vectors to the elderly and immuno-compromised also doesn't hold water because the covid virus is already out of the bottle and trying to smother it through isolation and quarantine is a case of a day late and a dollar short, in other words, a futile effort.

When the Ebola virus struck Africa, it did so in a relatively small and remote geographic area and was contained through quarantine and isolation of entire villages. But these areas were relatively small and affected relatively few people. Nobody was travelling from these remote African villages to the four corners of the Earth as in the case of Covid-19.
In our case, isolation and quarantine may help slow down the spread and flatten the curve, but it won't stop the virus dead in its tracks. Even if we are successful to any extent, scientists tell us it is likely that the virus is to become seasonal, another frightening scenario for the elderly.

Given that grim reality, let us consider the utter and complete disaster that Covid-19 represents to the elderly, especially those in communal homes.
Of all the Covid deaths in Quebec so far, 75% occurred in nursing homes or senior residences, not really a surprise because of the close living conditions in these establishments, coupled with staff interaction between residents and indeed homes, a perfect recipe for transmission.

In Quebec being a member of the 1% doesn't denote privileged wealth, it is a frightening demographic of those over 90 years old who suffer 30% of the covid fatalities.
It's a hard number to get our head around.
Yes, 1% of our society, that is those over 90 years old, continues to bear the brunt of the disease, suffering  30% of the covid deaths.
Consider that grim statistic for a while....

The second part of the chart above shows just how deadly Covid-19 is to the elderly who make up 26% of the general population and who suffer 97% of the covid fatalities.

Even if our self-isolation flattens the curve and the numbers come down, the evil genie that covid-19 represents is out of the bottle and will haunt and hunt seniors for the rest of their lives.

Presently hundreds of our senior residences and nursing homes have the virus burning through the ranks with reckless abandon. Some 4,000 residents are already infected and more are being stricken each day with some homes registering 75% infection rates.
It's only going to get worse and with a fatality rate up to 50% and higher, the body bags will pile up.

The big question that I consider here is that for other senior homes that did lockdown in time (commendably so) and who have kept the virus out, what will the future bring?

I'm sadly afraid that they will never, ever, ever be able to unlock the doors and return to normal, or at least what we considered normal two months ago.
While society will get over the virus, because the vast majority of us can and will beat the virus, not so for the elderly. ...they are doomed.

Covid-19 isn't going to be eliminated or contained as Ebola is in Africa. We are being told that this virus looks to be seasonal, just like the flu.
Given the lethality, the elderly and health-compromised will never, ever be able to resume a normal life, doomed to hide and shelter.

The only hope is a vaccine, but I'm not holding my breath, after forty-five there's still none for Ebola haemorrhagic fever.

Quebec's Colossal Covid-19 Disaster

The Quebec government has been steadfast in its promise to provide open, accurate and timely statistics and information in regards to the coronavirus epidemic in Quebec.
In fact, so much information and statistics are being provided that it's becoming a bit of overkill, with few media or press organizations able to sift through the vast amounts of data provided.

It makes me think of those legal dramas on TV or the movies where EVIL CORP provides hundreds and hundreds of boxes of discovery material, hoping to overwhelm the modest team of opposing lawyers, in an effort, to stop them from discovering the 'smoking gun' buried within.

And so, because of my confinement and with nothing but time on my hands, I decided to sift through the data and see what perhaps the government does not want us to see.

Now I'm not condemning the Quebec government for the circumstances of the unfolding disaster.

The early March school break in Quebec is a traditional family getaway where many week-long vacations overseas take place. Many schools organize educational trips to Europe during this break.  The returning virus-laden travellers coupled with the onslaught of returning retiree snowbirds (quick to visit mom and dad in the nursing homes upon their return), Quebec faced a perfect storm of circumstances.

The real fault lies in the utter failure of Health Canada to understand, predict and advise Canadians to avoid travel and to quarantine upon return.
In fact, Quebec's Premier Legault was so alarmed that Prime Minister Trudeau refused to follow America's closure of the border to Europe, that he raised holy hell, prompting the PM to reluctantly follow suit, but too late to stave off the coming disaster.

At any rate, for the first two or three weeks, it seemed that Quebec had the virus matter well in hand, but that all when to shit recently when cases in senior residences and nursing homes blew up.
While the Quebec government concentrated on building up capacity in the hospitals, it totally ignored the danger in senior residences and nursing homes, a decision that led us to the present disaster.

So much for good planning and as the great poet Robert Burns told us...

"The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

And so the explosion of cases in these senior residences has caught everyone by surprise,  the reaction of the government has been anemic, but understandable because pivoting and reacting quickly to a changing situation is not what governments do well.

While we are told a lot about the situation, we are not told how bad we are really doing in comparison to the rest of the world. In fact, Quebec is right up there with the worst.

I've taken the liberty of presenting Quebec virus statistics separately as if Quebec was its own country, divorced from Canada.
Suddenly Canada looks to have a minor epidemic while Quebec looks like a disaster,

The table on the left below of selected major countries (plus Quebec alone and Canada minus Quebec) describes the number of cases per million population and as you can see, Quebec is right up there with the USA in the number of cases, while Canada is way down the list.
In fact, Quebec alone has relatively four times the cases reported in the rest of Canada (ROC.)

The same goes for deaths (the below right chart) where Quebec has reported relatively four times the numbers than the ROC.

What is worse is that the situation is pretty much out of control in Quebec's nursing homes and residences.
Staff is either out sick themselves or have abandoned their posts, understandable because facing a deadly virus for $15 an hour without appropriate personal safety equipment isn't the dream job and nobility only goes so far.

The bewildered Quebec government's desperate reaction is to demand that these senior residence health workers stay on the job even if they are symptomatic, a travesty considering everyone else in society is told to isolate themselves on the slightest chance they are positive, even without symptoms.
One Verdun home was so short of staff that it locked the doors at shift-change, imprisoning workers, something that in normal times would be considered criminal.

A desperate Premier Legault is begging anyone he can for help, calling for the army to jump into homes that are bereft of employees. He chastised idle Quebec specialist doctors for not helping as well, demanding that they go into the homes to change diapers and serve meals.
Panic is certainly the keyword and certainly justified.
Read a chilling account of the situation;

"50% increase in all CHSLD Covid victims in three days manifests an institutional failure of the system."   Link The Suburban

How bad the situation is and how badly the Quebec government is reacting is underplayed by the continuous Quebec media exposure of what President Trump is doing and how bad the situation is in the USA, a brilliant effort of sleight-of-hand.

Yesterday 1,900 people died of the virus in the USA and 117 deaths were reported in Quebec.
Because Quebec's population is 40 times smaller than the USA (335 million versus 8.5 million) the effective overnight death rate in Quebec is double that of the US.
I bet nobody in the media is pointing that out!

While Quebecers are told to shelter in place, a measure that is no longer necessary because of the few cases outside the senior residences and hospitals, the virus is ripping through these homes with reckless abandon.

As we move forward we can expect that deaths will continue to skyrocket in Quebec as our seniors are decimated and be prepared, because the worst is yet to come.