But It Was Such A Great Crisis!

Don't let it fade away!:

With B.C.’s announcement last week that it would be phasing out mask and vaccine mandates, all 10 provinces have now set an effective end-date to their treatment of COVID-19 as a public health emergency. By April 27 — the date when Ontario’s pandemic restrictions become the last to expire — mask, vaccine and physical distancing mandates will effectively cease to exist in Canadian daily life.

Except according to Ottawa. Even as each week yields the end of another provincial COVID mandate, the federal government is continuing to hold fast to virtually every restriction it has imposed over the course of the now two-year pandemic.

Vaccination remains mandatory for any Canadian over the age of 12 looking to board an aircraft, even if it’s a domestic flight. Transport Canada is also continuing to mandate masking aboard flights and in airports.

Government employment remains barred to anyone who can’t provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination — even to employees who are “teleworking” or “working remotely,” according to official guidelines.

While the federal government dropped the requirement for vaccinated travellers to arrange a $150 PCR test in order to enter Canada, crossing the border still remains subject to a raft of pandemic restrictions.

Vaccinated travellers must still arrange a supervised antigen test (home rapid tests aren’t allowed), and they may be randomly selected for another test at the border. Unvaccinated travellers, meanwhile, are still required to undergo mandatory 14-day quarantine, even if they provide a negative test result and aren’t showing symptoms.

In all cases, federal officials have not announced any eventual end-date to these restrictions — or even the metrics by which they would entertain such a thing.

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The Quebec government has issued tens of thousands of fines to residents who did not comply with its pandemic restrictions, but a new report finds that this “punitive” approach does not necessarily slow the spread of COVID-19.

“Québec chose to turn the public health crisis into a public safety crisis, managed with 46,563 police interventions,” concluded the report, conducted by four researchers from the University of Montreal’s Profiling Observatory (l’Observatoire des profilages) and released on March 10.

“Our report shows that 46,563 statements of offence were issued with regard to the health measures between September 21, 2020, and October 3, 2021. This means that on average, more than 123 statements of offence were issued per day in Québec by police forces during this period.”

Specifically, the report analyzed infractions related to COVID-19 measures, including gathering limits, curfews, mask mandates, and proof of vaccination.

The authors noted that the number of infractions jumped in the winter and spring months of 2021. From an average of 206 per week between Sept. 21, 2020, and Jan. 3, 2021, the number rose to 1,093 in January, February and March, and peaked at 2,232 in April and May that year.

Quebec’s first curfew was in effect between Jan. 9, 2021, and May 28, 2021.

To put the infraction numbers into context, the authors juxtaposed the figures with the weekly new COVID-19 cases reported. Their analysis showed that the two datasets do not correlate.

“We found that the pattern of changes in the number of statements of offence does not necessarily follow the pattern of changes in the epidemiological situation,” they wrote.

For example, the number of new COVID-19 cases peaked at 17,827 during the week of Dec. 28, 2020, but the number of tickets issued per week was “quite low at that time” at 271.

 

 

Never under-estimate the power of judicial spite:

Two days after being sued by a Roman Catholic nun who provides free medical services to the poor, the District of Columbia seemed to capitulate on March 11 by granting the nun a religious exemption to the district’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers. But Sister Deirdre Byrne’s attorney said on March 12 that the lawsuit isn’t going away—at least not for the time being—because the exemption may be revoked by the D.C. government at any time.

 

Did the lockdowns make people @$$holes or were they already that way?

Discuss:

Two years of living through the COVID-19 pandemic has left Canadians in a dour mood, with the majority saying the ordeal has significantly disrupted their lives, pulled Canadians further apart, brought out the worst in people and weakened their compassion for one another.