Quebec bans unvaccinated from buying groceries at Walmart, Costco | Hacker News Reader

Quebec bans unvaccinated from buying groceries at Walmart, Costco

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117 pointssteelstraw163 comments

This is a state fighting its own citizens for a political act of ignorance. 90% of eligible individuals have received at least one dose in Quebec.[0] What's the point of additional marginalization of a very stubborn group of people? It's playing with fire and with no responsibilities, as I severely doubt anyone will be convinced to get vaccinated because they can't go to Walmart after one year of restrictions, but it will certainly make them madder.

[0]. https://covid19tracker.ca/provincevac.html?p=QC

Not sure if you're from Quebec so this wouldn't be news to you, but our healthcare is BAD. Like comically bad. Nurses are routinely forced to do doubles because they don't have enough staff, hell we don't even have enough beds either! Because of COVID a lot of non-critical but still pretty important procedures were cancelled for lack of workers.

So in that context the government is legitimately scared of it all crashing down so we get these policies.

For the more data driven among us here is a chart showing what I mean: https://i.redd.it/l76rbcvkl0e81.jpg (In french but you will probably still understand)

That sounds like a problem with health infrastructure. So because leaders did not put in the needed health infrastructure to serve the population, basic rights(buying food) are violated for some.

Yes, that's what I wrote. Health infrastructure does not exist in a vacuum and between non-vaccinated having to shop at a regular grocery store and people literally dying because we don't have beds in hospital I'll take the lesser evil.

FWIW I agree that after 2 years of the pandemic I see it as a failure of leadership.

> Basic rights(buying food) are violated for some

Let's not resort to hyperbole here. They can shop at Loblaws/Provigo/IGA/Metro/Maxi/Traditions like most people. They don't have a right to shop at Walmart.

They can shop at alternatives (if they exist in the specific town in Quebec), for now.

It's not really hyperbole, I think. The basic right is at the very least being threatened, if not explicitly violated (yet).

Quebec is not like the US in that regard, you won't find a town here that only has a Walmart/Costco. Those are limited to more developed urban centers that have plenty of alternatives.

In this region, there aren't many food/goods deserts.

Even the nowhereville my mom lives in has an H-E-B, Homeless Despot home improvement palace, pharmacy, and greasy spoon restaurants.

I have seen grocery store "deserts" in tiny towns (<2k people) populated by dollar stores while grocery stores are 10-40 miles away. That's the price of living in rural areas. There are other areas in the US where Walmart came in, destroyed local independent businesses, and left.

> basic rights(buying food) are violated for some.

vaccines are free.

I don't understand why people believe choosing to put their lives and the lives of others at risk is somehow "noble", "courageous", "convenient", or "smarter that scientists." Maybe I didn't do enough "research" (i.e., check gossip on Facebook and green ink underground blogs) on the latest conspiracies.

Edit: Plus, my rights and the rights of the majority of people were violated by quarantining for a year because idiots, ignorant, and reckless individuals caused community spread. If the rights of everyone had been uniformly violated with a strict quarantine for a month at the outset, it would've been contained in the US like China did. When the US stops wanting to be so "Great" it might be able to check its own ego and do what's vital for the survival of its people. It's another item that could form the basis of a sequel to "Where to Invade Next?" that showed how the US doubles-down on failure when other countries are far better in particular systems.

Have you lived in major cities in America? ;-)

In ATX, there's a deficit of 200+ police, 50+ EMTs, and who-knows-how-many nurses. Finding a decent doctor haphazardly is like playing Russian roulette with 5 bullets in a 6 wheel. (Obligatory firearms metaphor for Texas.)

I've already been through a couple of psychiatrists since their misanthropic lack of BSM and acceptable human behaviors like listening were insurmountable. Found a good otolaryngologist and a gastroent. PCP also needs to be changed.

They had almost 2 years to prepare for this.

Further, hasnt the "lack of workers" been exacerbated from vaccine mandates on workers?

So, you have a system that cannot competently do its work prior to crisis cannot plan with enough time and *further chooses to shoot itself of the foot by limiting their labor

None of these seem to indicate that those in charge care about taxpayers in the process.

What is the government scared of? - incompetence? - lack of planning? - labor practices?

No. None of these. They are scared of doing something different because "no one got fired for buying ibm". Nothing scares them more than doing something different from what is coming from the top.

> Further, hasnt the "lack of workers" been exacerbated from vaccine mandates on workers?

There is no vaccine mandate for workers. They tried to push for it initially but they realized that they couldn't deal with the unvaccinated workers leaving, especially in long term care homes.

So nurses & doctors are banned from buying groceries then? (Putting the article and your comment together)

Unvaccinated nurses and doctors are banned from shopping in non-essential stores which include superstores (Walmart/Costco) with a grocery section.

They are allowed to go to regular grocery stores.

Doesn't that imply LTC needs to pay more and forbid unvaccinated conspiracy nuts from watching grandma?

Well yes and no. The thing is we have an aging population that we have to take care of and it's been growing for a while now. Consequently we don't have replacement for those unvaccinated workers, they are literally all we have.

The government offered a $15k bonus to nurses if they agreed to be full-time and it barely changed anything.

Supply & demand. Pay more, and it attracts more and better employees. Care facilities rake in tens of millions, they can afford to pay more.

I think the US needs massively better immigration customer service and expanded visa programs to attract more medical workers, especially caregivers and nurses.

During the previous coronavirus pandemic, which we think started in 1889, there was basically no healthcare at all.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026240792...

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/JVI.79.3.1595-1604.2005

Are you saying that is fine for the healthcare system to come crashing down because we’ve ‘been there before?

I know I should find the most charitable interpretation, but I genuinely don’t see it.

As someone who live in Quebec this make sense to me and apparently the vast majority of the population. There is more opposition to vaccine mandate to access retail store than taxing the unvaccinated.

I don't think anybody would be surprise to hear that smokers pay a tobacco surcharge for their health insurance in the US.

High pressure from covid patient is causing healthcare system cost to skyrocket. You have the 10% of unvaccinated who are causing for 45% of that load increase.

In a system with universal healthcare system, where everyone pay for the system with taxation, surcharge have to happen with taxes. If a few decide to get vaccinated great but I don't think it's the point. Honestly, they haven't announced the specific but I doubt the tax will be high enough to account for the real healthcare cost of population vaccinated.

Remember this is the province that effectively made English illegal and has a well-staffed language police

I originally thought you were kidding. But dang, you were not!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois_d...

> Citing a Montreal restaurant for having a small "recommended on Tripadvisor" sticker in the bottom corner of a window. The complaint was that the sticker was in English and there was no French version displayed.

> Issuing a letter of complaint to the owner of a board game store for mostly selling board games with English packaging, though French versions did not exist for the majority of the games in question

> Demanding the town of St. Lazare remove "Welcome" from the town's welcome signs, leaving only the French version, "Vous accueille", though one-third of the town's residents were native English speakers. The town instead opted to remove all words from the welcome sign.

> Citing a small business in Chelsea for replying in English to English comments on the store's Facebook page without writing a second, French version of the response

> Citing a restaurant that specializes in grilled cheese for having "Grilled cheese" on their sign rather than the French version "sandwich au fromage fondu

I'm amazed such a thing legally exists in 2022 in a Western, developed country like Canada.

Thank you poster, I learned something new today.

Edit: This too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastagate

> Pastagate is the informal name of an incident that began in 2013 in Quebec, when, on 14 February, an inspector of the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) sent a letter of warning to an upscale restaurant, Buonanotte, for using Italian words such as "pasta", "antipasti", "calamari", etc. on its menu instead of their French equivalents

Yeah in my original comment I was a bit careless in dropping the nuance of the situation. Even as a anglophone Québecer I'm actually in favor of laws to protect the French culture (look at Louisiana which only has a small handful of native French speakers as an example of what can happen without such protections)

But, I think it's a good example of showing Québec does things different than the US, and their libertarian notions (for good and for ill) do not totally apply for the province

Why? US and Anglo-Canadian corporations will not spend a penny more than they need to advertise and serve a largely bilingual population. Not protecting the French language will lead to its quick marginalisation, as has happened to approximately all minority languages surrounded by much bigger cultural and economic entities, with few exceptions. If you think preserving a different culture is important, the law is logical and required.

My grandmother was forced to shop in English through the mail-order catalogue, even though she did not know a word of it. She managed to do it, but collectively we decided we would no longer allow anglophones to force English-only services on a francophone community. That's it.

https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coron...

The most recent data on the evolution of COVID-19, in the last 24 hours, in Québec show:

    4,150 new cases, bringing the total number of people infected to 845,564*;
    73 new deaths, for a total of 13,009 deaths;
    3,270 hospitalizations, for a decrease of 8 compared to the previous day;
        297 new entries,
        305 new discharges;
    252 people in intensive care, for a decrease of 11 compared to the previous day;
        31 new entries,
        42 new discharges;
    38,734 samples conducted on January 24.

I wonder how this action will improve on these numbers.

PCR tests are only done on essential workers so the real case number is WAY higher.

rt RT-qPCR (faster, gene identification) or RT-PCR (slower, complete sequencing)? Where are we talking about?

Creating a competitive advantage for non-big box stores? This is an incredibly odd policy.

Most of the provinces have been engaged in pandemic response theater. The core issue is hospital capacity, and the provinces across the board have failed to improve or address the issues in their healthcare systems.

Quebec has adopted a particularly theatrical set of of responses (curfews, this latest insistence on vaccine "passports" for stores), but I don't think anyone really expects these to be anything more than theater and moves for public appeasement.

I agree. Hospital capacity is critical. One of the biggest mistakes of the pandemic is leaders not being clear on exactly what problem they're trying to solve and laying out how a manageable list of mitigations address the specific problems.

Assuming that you're a software engineer in some kind of capacity because it's HN. If we put it into Big-O terms, reducing transmission via whatever means affects the exponent of the spread, whereas adding hospital capacity is a linear response. At a certain quantity adding hospital capacity makes sense, but at some point you can't beat the dynamics of the situation and the required hospital capacity can quickly grow hundreds of times beyond what exists, if, that is, you don't contain the spread.

> Creating a competitive advantage for non-big box stores?

Sometimes the law of unintended consequences works in a positive manner :)

I'd probably cry if I couldn't shop at Costco.

The price differential between corporate chain grocery stores and big box stores reminds me of that between convenience stores and said grocery stores.

I'm wondering if a big box store went completely delivery-only (close all stores) with a minimum order of say $300, would profits go up or down. I'm wondering if it would be possible to guesstimate P&L close enough in each scenario to find the overall more likely capital-efficient business model.

A major criticism of the first wave of lockdowns was how it advantaged the big box stores. Walmart, because it sold groceries, was allowed to stay open, while smaller Walmart competitors were restricted to curbside shopping. I suspect this policy is largely a response to that criticism.

The public policy responses to this pandemic would make a whole lot more sense if intramuscular (humoral) vaccination actually prevented (or even significantly mitigated) the spread of sars-cov-2. Unfortunately humoral vaccination only starts the B cell to plasma cells training and generation of igG antibodies in the body serum to protect internal organs. Other immune compartments like the upper respiratory mucosa are not protected by serum igG antibodies. And the T cells trained by intramuscular vaccination are not tissue resident in the upper respiratory where they are needed to stop infection. They just do a pretty darn good job at preventing serious disease.

I wish governments of the world would heavily invest in the current and future intranasal sars-cov-2 boosters to prevent spread and follow up on the strong base of intramuscular body protection. I might not even be opposed to mandating intranasal vaccinations since they would stop spread. But this? This doesn't make a lot of scientific sense.

Quebec has a heavily socialized medical system.

10% of the population is unvaccinated, but make up >50% of COVID beds in hopitals, a significant fraction of the *entire medical system*.

At some point the other 90% of taxpayers shouldn't subsidized the stupid decisions of the remaining 10%.

I'm not saying banning grocery store access is necessarily it, but something needs to be done

This comment is red meat for M4A opponents. Socialized healthcare should not be an excuse for increasing invasive government mandates or restrictions.

The “unvaccinated hospitalisations” statistic is often somewhat fraudulent it seems. Please see this example here: https://metatron.substack.com/p/alberta-just-inadvertently-c...

It is caused by three factors primarily: (1) extreme asymmetric testing rates between the two groups of all patients; (2) inclusion of <14 day or even <21 day post-vaccination into the “unvaccinated” column; and (3) in some cases even the “unknown vaccination status” is amazingly included into the “unvaccinated” column.

The article above gives an example of 2. An example of 3 is here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=af76uwdGCM0

Number 2 essentially uses a proximal increase in vulnerability facilitated by the vaccination in order to sell more vaccinations. I am at a loss for words as to describing just how scandalous this is.

And overweight people make up to 65% of those. See a dark pattern here ?

It would be comparable if we had a vaccine for obesity. I see no dark pattern.

Diet and exercise. I’ve made efforts my whole life to eat well.

I did not fear Covid for that precise reason (I’m under 40)

Diet and exercise doesn't work for everyone, and it's not close to comparable to a 15 minute vaccine appointment. You are being dishonest.

Obesity is a multifactorial societal problem with possible environmental and chemical factors, while covid can be vaccinated against with a simple jab.

If you look in to the mechanics of why people are refusing the simple jab, you'll find just as many complex societal factors, or maybe even more. Being unrelated to environmental or chemical factors if anything makes it more intractable.

Just to be more precise, unvaccinated people represent 26% of new hospitalizations in quebec, and 40% in ICU according to the official dashboard [1].

The efficiency against omicron is very limited, thus the huge deprivations we see here are politically motivated. I feel like I’m living a scary dystopia.

1 - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJt95WHXMAEHzyp?format=jpg&name=...

The current vaccinations are actually reasonably good at preventing Omicron hospitalizations, enough so to be worthwhile on an individual level anyway. The problem is that they're not 100% effective and if Quebec is anything like the UK, almost all the people who're actually at risk of being hospitalized are already vaccinated - there just aren't enough left that vaccinating the remainder will do much about hospitals being overwhelmed. From a social standpoint they aren't a problem. The only purpose of measures like these seems to be giving the voting public an enemy to blame when the hospital system is overwhelmed anyway, and making sure that enemy isn't the politicians who decided how the hospitals were funeded and run.

> The current vaccinations are actually reasonably good at preventing Omicron hospitalizations, enough so to be worthwhile on an individual level.

It’s at most halving them. For fit people under 50 the risk low enough to make this vaccine useless.

Thus broad measures like this one are absolutely and insanely disproportionate.

The vaccination rate of the vulnerable population is significantly higher than the vaccination rate in the general population. Your data helps prove that vaccines are quite effective.

It’s effective for people over 50.

Thus for most of the victims of this discrimination, vaccine is marginally useful.

26% of all new hospitalizations or "Covid" hospitalizations? In the States Covid is at most 30% of ICU and unvaccinated would be a small portion of that number.

In France Covid is roughly 5 to get 10% of all emergency services patients.

So 26% percent of Covid hospitalizations it is.

What about the integrity of clinical trials - that's a multifactorial societal problem too, right? E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2GKPYzL_JQ

I'd greatly appreciate or urge people watch the full ~10 minute testimony of Maddie De Garay's mother before commenting or downvoting.

People make a lot of decisions that increase their hospitalization odds. Drinking too much, eating too much, smoking too much, texting while driving, skateboarding...

How are you going to draw the line exactly? It's also contrary to the goal of healthcare being a human right.

>At some point the other 90% of taxpayers shouldn't subsidized the stupid decisions of the remaining 10%.

The idea that vaccinated people are an island unconcerned with the fate of the un-vaccinated or the spread of the disease breaks down in two places:

1. You can still die from it if you have the shot, you're just substantially less likely to.

2. Eventually, unless they're stopped, random mutations will create a virus that the vaccine doesn't help with at all.

Honestly, the fact that the virus is running around replicating in a way that's constantly exposed to anti-vaccination selection pressure (both from trying to jump out of the un-vaccinated reservoir to vaccinated people and replicating to a limited extent in the presence of vaccine-primed immune systems) is in some ways a worst-case-scenario. It would be hard to intentionally design a vaccine escape guided evolution experiment more effective than what we've created in the world today.

There are literally billions of unvaccinated people on the planet still, and there are unvaccinated wildlife hosts for Covid as well. It was naive to think that anything but this scenario would emerge.

Yet we have many people who want to attempt to vaccinate the entire world 4-5 times over in order to defeat a common cold. Crazy times.

This is a really difficult question:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pandemic-covid-vaccine-tria...

So why not un-socialize the medical system. Charge a premium for unvaccinated individuals. If I follow this train correctly the process is to declare health a right and therefore something run by the government, and then to declare that because of that right your other rights can be taken away by the government.

> This doesn't make a lot of scientific sense.

This policy is the most flagrant targeted political attack. It has nothing to do with science. If you start restricting people’s ability to feed and clothe themselves you’ve crossed a very dark line.

The Quebec government's major concern is protecting their health care system. The Canadian health care system was quite stretched pre-pandemic, and it wouldn't take much to break it.

The goal at this point is less about preventing the spread than it is about increasing the vaccination rate to keep people out of hospitals.

Why are hospitals stretched thin? Nurses have quit, have been fired due to mandates, and have been prevented from returning to work due to infection. You need a passport to eat in a restaurant here. There are 30,000 pissed off truckers headed to Ottawa right now. They lost their jobs due to mandates. Your argument is that these things are smart decisions?

The needs of the many. Get the vaccine. It's safe and allows you to be part of society again.

Covid vaccines did do a decent job at preventing spread in the original variants, and actually even now (unless I'm mistaken, it's hard to entirely keep up) the vaccines still cut the probability of you being infected at any point in time

Citation needed; just like how I can't claim without criticism that the vaccines may have lead to Omicron and other variants - where there is evidence that vaccinated people catch certain variants more than others, and there's also building evidence that you're more likely to catch COVID if vaccinated.

Edit to add [I'm rate limited from commenting further for the time being]: Look into the Great Barrington Declaration for reference to evidence for "you're more likely to catch COVID if vaccinated."

I almost didn't reply because an argument where being vaccinated makes it more likely to catch covid isn't really worth engaging in, but by the time you posted there was already a number of sources backing up my claim. For example: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597 or for less scientific evidence. https://sf.gov/data/covid-19-cases-and-deaths where the second set of graphs breaks case rates out by vaccination status. I think you've been taken in by a conspiracy theory. It's an easy thing to do especially when people on the other side overplay their hands sometimes, but while one can reasonable argue about the usefulness of vaccinations for reducing spread. I think it's probably more marginal, but there. The idea that vaccination increased the risks of catching covid is pretty crazy. The Great Barrington Declaration appears to have been an alternative argument for managing the pandemic released well before vaccines existed. I can't find any reference to "you're more likely to catch COVID if vaccinated." and again every element of research and common sense I have points to the opposite being true.

This is false.

I challenge anyone to find any statement, from any of the mRNA vaccine manufacturers, from any point in time, that claims the vaccines reduce transmission even a tiny bit.

https://twitter.com/JohnsHopkinsSPH/status/14816875061481185...

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/vaccinated-people-can...

It is well known that vaccination helps to reduce spread. It isn't perfect, but it is better than being unvaccinated.

The data is clear but you can also reason about this and feel like it is intuitively true - those that are vaccinated face better outcomes and are sick for shorter periods of time, the shorter period of time they are infected leads to them being unable to infect others for as long. It's pretty simple, really.

edit: multiple studies by scientists in different countries is more reliable than marketing text from any specific manufacturer. The data is available, just read the studies mentioned in the article I linked, or research on your own.

Shouldn't people be isolating regardless of vaccination status, so the argument that they're sick for shorter amount of time is redundant?

Why do we care about the virus spreading, it's always going to spread.. the concern should be giving the vaccine to the vulnerable that need it; the main benefit is reducing severity for them. For everyone else, its main benefit is securing revenue for the leading drug manufacturers.

If I'm unvaccinated and testing negative, then what is the problem?

This feels a bit like moving the goal post like a few different times. This is about the claim that vaccines don't reduce spread, that appears to be false. You're reacting like this is about if people have at least a moral obligation to get vaccinated. While I do think that's true, I think it's more productive to stay strictly to the facts.

Ok though if we're going to move the goal post.

> Shouldn't people be isolating regardless of vaccination status, so the argument that they're sick for shorter amount of time is redundant?

Maybe, but we all know that people aren't isolating every time they have cold symptoms, certainly not universally and probably not the people who aren't current vaccinated.

> Why do we care about the virus spreading, it's always going to spread.

That is only true now that we've given it time to become one of the most infectious viruses ever. A quick rollout of vaccines combined with a few common since interventions did (perhaps) have the potential to achieve herd immunity, but regardless the speed at which it spreads is of literally deadly importance. Overwhelming hospitals kills people (and kills people well before they are literally out of beds).

One of the single most important things we can do to slow the spread, is isolate when we're sick or in contact with someone that tests positive. If we did this one step effectively, it would reduce infection significantly. It's something done extremely well in countries like SK, Japan, China.

People who need to isolate should be sent care packages so they don't need to go out to the shop, they should update their status regularly and be given what they need to pay bills.

Well sure, but vaccination helps too, we can and should do both and not throw up our hands and do nothing because we aren't doing the optimal thing

If the vaccines reduce spread, the manufacturers would say so. I asked for such a claim from any one of them.

Edit:

>multiple studies by scientists in different countries is more reliable than marketing text from any specific manufacturer.

I agree. The problem is, no such marketing text exists.

First google result: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597

If you recover quicker, cough less, it'll obviously reduce transmission.

A completely asymptomatic person isn’t coughing or sneezing up droplets, so there’s that.

I’ll take a shot in the arm, but my nose? Eehhhh…

Not a shot, an intranasal spray. The leading candidates on clinicaltrials.gov are adenovirus carried spike protein based versions (I would rather have mRNA) but it should still do the job of getting upper respiratory resident T cells trained on sars-cov-2 epitopes.

It might work, who knows.

But how comes there are 4 endemic coronaviruses ? Do you think a sterilizing vaccine is even possible ?

Wouldn’t immunity also wane ?

The igA antibodies produced by trained mucosal resident B->plasma cells would stick around for an even shorter time than the igG antibodies do in the body serum. But the trained and resident T cells would be there to kill off infected cells right at the start instead of after days. So yeah, I think a sterilizing intranasal vaccine is possible but it likely won't depend on the igA antibodies generated. This follows with the studies of "super" immunity in rare special medical workers who never get sick with covid-19 and also never show antibodies for it. The nature paper seemed to show it was their upper respiratory mucosal T cells doing the job; having already been trained and cross reactive with other coronaviruses. But we can't all be lucky mutants and most of our upper respiratory systems will need some training.

ref: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6553/397 (paywall bypass full pdf: http://erewhon.superkuh.com/library/Biology/Coronavirus/Intr...)

It happened with Polio.

I thought polio was oral (and IM).

The UK, Denmark and others moving to get rid of ALL restrictions. Meanwhile Canada, Australia and others devolving into police states...

Edit - forgot some other countries. Netherlands, Ireland also ditching restrictions...

As someone who lived in Canada, lives next to Australia, and lives in New Zealand, I wouldn't suggest any of these places are 'devolving into police states'.

Having people do stuff to protect the safety of themselves and others is part of the social contract of these countries. We wear seatbelts. We wear helmets on Motorbikes. All things that restrict our freedom to damage ourselves.

Because who incurs the cost of when you hurt yourself or others? The government! Like a lot of advanced countries we have a single payer government operated healthcare system that needs to ration care since nothing in life is infinite. So governments are motivated to protect systems that protect everyone like healthcare.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.BEDS.ZS?location...

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS?location...

Yes, I'm ecstatic we pay a ton of taxes to have one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world. Well behind the EU and OECD averages. We've got 1/3 the doctors per capita of France FFS...

Now we get to continue to pay a ton of taxes to have a shitty healthcare system AND have business and travel restrictions. Good deal.

Know what else was part of the social contract? Things like freedom of travel, the ability to run a business without government interference... Now Canada's whole economy is a housing ponzi scheme and everyone I know is selling their businesses and/or leaving the country.

What bugs me about the "we can't overwhelm the health care system" argument is that when/if this is all over, NOTHING will be done to improve the health care system to help prevent that from happening in the future. We'll all just continue to be told to be mad at each other, and no one in charge will be held accountable.

AFAICT, Quebec was probably the only province to do the most effective thing to improve the health care system: increasing the wages of nurses. Only half-heartedly because it was a bonus not a raise, but it's a lot better than Ontario which is effectively reducing the wages of their nurses after inflation by legislatively capping raises to 1%.

Here's hoping it's a major election issue in Ontario this summer.

I hope it is, but sadly people have short memories. I worry Ford will announce an end to all restrictions come election time so people focus on that instead of all the cuts.

Meanwhile..

"There is not a single example of a country with less than 40% of the population overweight that has high death rates (over 10 per 100 000). Similarly, no country with a death rate over 100 per 100 000 had less than 50% of their population overweight.

When are we going to start banning overweight from consuming alcohol and eating fast food? They're putting tremendous pressure on our universal healthcare system!

Yes we have a social contract. Yes people take measures such as seatbelts and helmets. No, neither of those are the same as mandating individuals to take a vaccine that has limited benefit for the majority of people. Following a year long media campaign of fear, after accepting lockdowns, the only supposed solution is taking a vaccine that has been sped through clinical trials and at best serves to reduce the severity for those most at risk from Covid.

I see pure coercion. How long before access to the majority of vital services will be dependant on 'up to date' vaccination status, checked and logged in via your app whenever you travel, shop, work. How long before this turns into a social credit system?

https://denisrancourt.ca/entries.php?id=107&name=2021_10_25_...

As an Australian who was concerned enough to emigrate, i'd suggest learning about the security laws passed over the last 10 years and considering how it matches the opportunistic actions taken during the pandemic. Maybe you like the police state and it is somewhat democratic so far but that doesnt mean isn't quite literally a police state.

> Having people do stuff to protect the safety of themselves and others is part of the social contract of these countries.

Are smokers and alcohol consumers also targeted by these social credit type measures in those states ?

https://participate.melbourne.vic.gov.au/smoke-free-melbourn...

https://www.smokefree.org.nz/smokefree-in-action/smokefree-a...

Less drastically, a lot of places are putting heavy restrictions on smoking, and there are heavy taxes on tobacco and alcohol (arguably those taxes contribute to paying for tobacco and alcohol related health problems.)

Yes, cigarettes and alcohol are taxed specifically by the state.

We are talking about much more alienating restrictions here.

Seat belts and helmets do not require chemicals to be injected into your bloodstream in order to freely associate with other humans. These measures change free association by making it illegal to exist naturally around others. There is a huge difference.

Yeah, but cars don't hitch rides in your lungs and jump into nearby people's mouths, occasionally injuring them.

Based on that reasoning we should ban free association because people randomly assault others occasionally too.

Well, no, which is why we don't mandate vaccines against viruses which don't cause once-in-a-century pandemics. But that's separate from what I wanted to respond to, which was the false equivalence between seatbelts/helmets and vaccines.

The new authoritarian infrastructure that we put in place in order to "combat the pandemic" will live long after the pandemic, and negatively affect the lives of everyone going forward. Governments do not have a track record of giving up power.

Telling people to stay indoors if they're scared is much more preferable to injecting government into every aspect of our lives.

Also I'm not sure why you're mentioning false equivalence to me, since I am also highlighting the false equivalence between vaccines and seat belts.

Sorry, you're right, and in that sense we're on the same side: I shouldn't have written "false equivalence." I meant to point out that your objection of "well, seatbelts don't require you to inject chemicals into your body, so there's a huge difference" is irrelevant precisely because there is a huge difference between the bad outcome that seatbelts prevent the bad outcome that vaccines prevent.

Australia is not a police state. Its a state with a complex federal structure which has concerns about broad-brush legislative change, but thats about boil-the-frog-slowly changes, which are being resisted in the senate.

We are not under martial law, or required to register with the police, or subject to wide-ranging arbitrary constraints.

We have temporary, government moderated, revokable restrictions under public health orders which have existed for decades. It is true that some lazy states sought to increase minister-directed powers but this didn't just slip through parliament.

Would you accept people being able to shop if they can demonstrate they have anti-bodies / natural immunity?

>I wouldn't suggest any of these places are 'devolving into police states'. [...]

>Because who incurs the cost of when you hurt yourself or others? The government!

Are you saying that a given regulation/policy doesn't contribute to a police state as long it's justified by "harm"?

Denmark is moving to getting rid of ALL restrictions.

We'll see. They did that in September of course, only to re-introduce them 2 months later.

Keep in mind they're only able to do this (if it ends up working) because they have the highest vaccination rate in Europe. What Quebec's rates are, I don't know.

BoJo is also trying that in the UK to save his office.

People being "tired" of something (pandemic fatigue) doesn't matter if loosened collective hygiene standards would kill too many people.

And yet their case rates are booming (top 3 in the world) and their deaths curve looks very similar to the 1st wave.

Hey I'm not the one making the policy change.

I'm just saying, at least they have that (partial) justification. And that they say they "expect" rates to go down.

Article that really reinforces your point about Australia, can it even be called a democracy anymore?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...

Not a police state to put in more restrictions after the bare minimum hasn't worked or been followed.

Grocery stores are barely a vector of transmission. There's no real data to back this decision up.

Whether you agree with the policies or not doesn't change the fact that it's a police state.

False. Individual liberty must be protected. Denying food shopping is a special kind of cruel and unusual punishment. It’s a personal choice, full stop.

Why should it be a personal choice? Living through this pandemic without getting vaccinated is at least as dangerous to public health as driving a car without wearing a seatbelt, and that is illegal.

Even if the vaccine did nothing to stop the spread of COVID (it does much more than nothing), it is still of vital importance to keeping ICUs free, which in turn is important for everyone.

Since your choice has an outsize effect on society, and since we have ample, overwhelming, incontrovertible evidence that the vaccine is safe and certainly hundreds of times safer than the disease, I see no reason why it shouldn't be considered mandatory.

Where exactly do we draw the line?

I'm young, slim, healthy, unvaccinated, not tested positive for Covid once even after my housemates had it.

"There is not a single example of a country with less than 40% of the population overweight that has high death rates (over 10 per 100,000). Similarly, no country with a death rate over 100 per 100,000 had less than 50% of their population overweight"

Are we going to start banning overweight from consuming alcohol and eating fast food? They're putting tremendous pressure on our universal healthcare system, their choice to be unhealthy has an outsized effect on society; specifically the health systems that we are using as a reason to push vaccination on everyone, regardless of their risk category.

Can't you see where this mindset leads us?

Do you wear a seatbelt?

Why do you refuse to get vaccinated? There are plenty of young, slim, healthy, unvaccinated people who also died. Your "choice" is inconsiderate to others in society who may catch it from you, that it may mutate in you and cause a worse variant, to people who care about you, and to the EMS and healthcare workers who you feel entitled to lean on when they're already overworked. This isn't about self-righteous entitlement to your "rights", this is about your duties to others to be a respectable member of a functional community and society.

Sure I wear a seatbelt. It's not invasive in any way and wearing it poses no risk to my health. Not comparable to vaccination in the slightest, that has numerous risks and is still undergoing trials and studies related to safety and efficacy. Let me remind you that these therapies, have been approved for emergency use.

The young, slim, healthy unvaccinated that you're talking about are such a tiny amount of people that I do not consider myself at any real risk. Like I said, I've not tested positive once the entire pandemic and I suspect that's largely to do with having a good immune system, so will clear the virus naturally, plus taking other sensible measures like wearing masks and avoiding large indoor gatherings.

I take other measures to limit the spread. The vaccine is not a panacea, it helps reduce severity for the most vulnerable so let them take it. The virus can also mutate in vaccinated people, in other mammals, it is hyperbole to suggest unvaccinated are largely responsible for all the negative aspects of Covid, completely politicised. The people that care for me respect my decision and quite honestly at this point agree, the majority of vaccinated people that I know will not be getting boosters.

Regarding health workers, I have 3 cousins and an aunt that all work in healthcare (plus some friends). From a renal nurse, ICU nurse to doctors and radiologist. I don't want to put words in their mouth, but our healthcare system has been at critical levels for years prior to the pandemic. This can only be solved by improving our infrastructure. They all respect peoples right to choose what medical treatment they want to receive. If you want to talk about duty to be respectable, when you do not know me or my contributions, then perhaps you should think about your attitude and moral grandstanding?

As my previous comment highlighted, my country has 63% of adults overweight. America is 68%. Their burden on the health system is immense, far greater than the unvaccinated. Should we ostracise them and limit their access to parts of society for everyone elses benefit? If the population was <40% overweight, we would not be facing the crisis in hospitals.

So let's suppose there were an airborne, easily-transmissible hemorrhagic fever pandemic. Do you want "muh freedoms", or everyone following clear rules and not endangering the lives of others? When people aren't being reasonable enough to do what's essential for safety of others, force and consequences are needed to make them learn the lesson. Rule of law.

Yes, such a cruel and unusual punishment to have your groceries delivered directly to your door.

Not everyone is able to do that, for a number of reasons:

- not capable of using a mobile app or website for ordering

- low language proficiency

- not able to be at home to accept delivery during the day

- don’t have a means of payment compatible with online ordering

- live paycheck to paycheck and depend on going to the store “on demand” to make essential purchases (such as on payday). Often after normal delivery hours.

What does "worked" mean? Illness and risk lower, or simply people following orders? People have lost sight of the former after unrelenting emphasis on the latter.

It's time to turn critical thinking skills back on.

Vaccinations prevent deaths and reduce stress on the healthcare system. They work, but they only work when people get them.

Read: When Did Mandatory Vaccinations Become Common? (article from 2015) https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/158827

There were 1282 cases of measles in 2019. Around 90% were caused by anti-vaxx hermit communities who freeload off the protections of the police, military, healthcare system, and other services, but live here and put others at risk because magical beliefs makes them "special". If you reject vaccinations, then I suggest you should sign a waiver that you also reject healthcare. Can't have it both ways. "Ounce of prevention."

The UK is only doing that because the PM has been so fragile because he's screwed up covid related things for so long he needs the backbenchers. They're also super desperate because they left the European Union and that is also having a terrible effect on the economy. Copying the UK is not a clever idea.

From UK. Can confirm. If you can’t serve as a exemplar, serve as an example. Well that’s how it feels living here anyway.

The news coverage here seems to treat anything the government does as the wrong thing just because they've done it though. For example, healthcare workers in England will be required to be vaccinated soon unless the government changes its mind, and the whole media has been on a push against it, including the BBC making their top headline on the news front page an article about how terrible it was and uncritically regurgitating the Welsh government's claims that it's pointless and counterproductive (they have no such mandate, but required vaccinations for nightclubs when England didn't). Now, this makes no scientific sense - healthcare is basically the one place where Covid vaccination to protect others is actually justifiable, given that they're interacting with high-risk patients who can't be fully protected by vaccination. It makes perfect political sense though, and based on past form the moment the government abandons this the media will immediately flip to supporting it.

The new agencies are selling attention and contrarianism is the cheapest form of attention.

So why is Denmark opening up completely? Like no vaccine passport, nothing?

The argument is that since the vaccination rate is so high and the effect of omicron is considered mild, the outcomes are not no longer considered server enough to qualify for general restrictions.

There will still be targeted restrictions, such as in the elder care. Time will tell if that will be enough and if the health care system will manage.

> Although it no longer believes Covid-19 should be classed a critical threat to society, some measures to limit transmission are still beneficial, it said.

Is quote I found while looking into this. It seems like they're not opening up completely, they're just removing a bunch of rules. There is still talk of large events possibly needing proof of vacination.

This information is super new and what actually happens and how they actually do it is yet to be fully confirmed as far as I can tell.

Edit: Also important they have 77 people in ICU in the entire country. Where as Berlin alone has 186.

The PM announced a total opening on February 1st in Denmark.

There might be mandated face masks for guests at hospitals and elder care in addition to proof of vaccination or negative tests. At these places only.

All other restrictions are being lifted.

The tyranny of having these items delivered directly to your doorstep...

> … As directed by the Government of Quebec, we will implement the vaccine passport at our stores in Quebec. We ask for our customer’s patience and understanding as we continue to ensure a safe and efficient customer experience.

6:35 PM · Jan 24, 2022·@WalmartCanada

…

> Yesterday we implemented the vaccine passports at our stores in Quebec. Some pictures on social media wrongly suggest that plexiglass dividers at some stores are to isolate non vaccinated customers. This is false. The dividers are for associates when they scan vaccine passports.

7:44 AM · Jan 25, 2022·@WalmartCanada

https://twitter.com/WalmartCanada/status/1485971856138158089

Quebec is a test ground because they've got a language barrier, so it's not like any resistance will register or trend online or make mainstream media. This has nothing to do with safety either. Knowing some people who work in Walmart corporate, I interpret it as pure cynical and radical politics. The Waltons have shown they are very much on board with the WEF/ESG agenda, and they are as out of touch with us as Bentonville is to the rest of Arkansas.

It's an abomination, but if I were to make a prediction, judging by the size of the truck convoy crossing the country, this will be the least interesting news about this topic over the next couple of weeks.

Some great images here of how people are fed up with the anti-vaxxers and truckers who are a vocal minority about the vaccines.

https://imgur.com/gallery/8el1Jj5

How are these stores gonna fill their shelves with the trucker response?!

This is unquestionably good, as long as pickups and dropoffs are available.

What makes it unquestionable? There's no data or science to back this up, it's the definition of questionable.

There is a lot of data showing unvaccinated are at higher risk of severe illness and spread disease more than vaccinated folks. You are wrong.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/vaccinated-people-can...

https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/2021112...

The data is clear.

They're not banned from buying groceries, they're banned from entering the stores - which unquestionably would lead to them spreading the virus more than vaccinated people entering stores.

They're still allowed to do pickup and delivery orders. Or better yet, get vaccinated.

edit: in the information I linked it is made clear that vaccinated folks _can_ spread the virus. That is true and I never said otherwise. The fact is they spread the virus at much lower rates, for shorter periods of time, than unvaccinated folks. For this reason people should wear N95s when interacting with folks outside of their bubble. In my experience vaccinated folks are more likely to wear their masks, and properly, as well, but I've got no data on that.

I thought it's been established that the vaccinated spread the virus just as vaccinated do [1]. The vaccines might help the person taking it, but that isn't even clear anymore since the vaccines were not engineered for this variant.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-director-covid-...

This article [1] has some good info regarding transmission in the context of the quote in your source.

  While mRNA vaccines – produced by Pfizer and Moderna – continue to offer some level of protection against transmission of omicron, other vaccines – such as Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm and AstraZeneca – offer “almost no defense,"

  “It gets very easy to misconstrue,” Dowdy said. “If someone asks, do vaccines prevent infection, and you have to give a yes or no answer, then the answer is no, they’re not a perfect blockade. But do the vaccines offer some protection against infection? The answer is yes.”

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/01/21/fac...

I'm talking about banning unvaccinated people from buying groceries, specifically. Which is what this is about.

Nobody is banned from buying groceries. Good god.

>A statement on Costco’s website states that as per their Code of Ethics, they are required to comply with the law wherever they operate.

Either support it or don't, but this lukewarm response of "I'm just obeying orders" is cowardly.

Companies just need to follow laws, they don't need an opinion on everything.

Hopefully then the companies are just as willing to pay fines for following illegal rules put in place without following the parliamentary process.

What does an illegal rule (law) even mean? I'm an American so maybe I'm missing something from another country, but the two are one and the same as far as I know. If I needed to start making judgement calls on every law on whether it's illegal or not, that would be a wild way to live.

Our parliament was closed for most of the pandemic, so 1) opposition wasn't possible, and 2) our Charter of Rights is being violated - due process isn't being followed.

Jordan Peterson just released an interview with a now retired First Minister who is last living politician who helped craft our Charter of Rights in 1981/1982, where they go into detail about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdhFuMDLBDM - they include the initial and post interview "behind the scenes" as part of transparency - so there's background noise initially while they're getting setup.

An elected government going through a process wrongly and putting it forward as truth, as legal, would be an illegal law.

Indeed, that would be a wild way to live - which is why we generally blindly trust our government, which is a huge problem - but when it's as important and critical as moments like this, people start standing up and protesting.

There's also the https://FreeNorthDeclaration.ca with 500+ Canadian lawyers who have signed - their petition and hope is to educate Canadians that laws are being broken and that due process isn't being followed.

[I would have replied almost immediately to you but HN's rate limiting number of comments]

Even if the rule were found illegal, it wouldn't be illegal for any company to refuse access based on vaccination status, so no chance the company would be forced to pay a fine.

I'm not so certain that'd be legal. The idea maybe would have a footing if wanting to prevent those who are actually infectious, e.g. requiring proof of a negative COVID test, and because these vaccines don't prevent infection - and may actually lead to it being easier to catch [and therefore spread] COVID - it isn't akin to a negative COVID test result.

Will you maintain that position when you find that a company upholds a horrifying law?

If they follow and law because it's the law, yes. My anger would be toward the government or my peers. I live in a democratic society last time I checked, even if it doesn't always move how I would like.

There's a difference between the statement "don't need an opinion on everything" and "don't need an opinion on anything". Your criticism would only apply to the latter statement.

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