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Comment by 0x_rs | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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