Spoke to @DebraArbecCBC tonight about the loosening of covid restrictions in #Quebec - way too early to be letting our guard down, esp w/ new variant

we need to think long-term, and stop with these yo-yo restrictions; no healthy economy without a healthy population #qcpoli

2/ if, as @francoislegault says, we're using hospitals as a metric - and they're STILL struggling to keepup/catchup despite our restrictions, then how does that argument hold to reopen non-essential businesses, indoor dining/gyms in orange gyms? #qcpoli

3/ our priorities rn should be 1) keep kids in school and yet outbreaks in schools/daycares are consistently creeped up over the past few weeks - loosening restrictions now continues to introduce additional risk to school/daycare workers and all our essential workers

4/ our second priority rn, and we cannot be reactive about this, is to ensure that we limit the spread of B117 variant - 50% more transmissibility - this can quickly take away the fragile progress we've made since the introduction of the curfew/restrictions of the last few weeks

5/ can we please for once not to do the same thing we've done previously, when we now know what works/what doesn't? opening too early doesn't work. ~1000 cases/day, while a remarkable improvement from where we were a few weeks ago, is still ~1000 cases/day

6/ I'd have liked the restrictions to hold for a few additional weeks, and reassess in the spring. until then, we should be supporting daycares/schools, small businesses, and preparing for the eventual mass vaccination so that we avoid additional logistics hiccup

7/ Rough time to be an epidemiologist. Seeing governments make decisions that will ofc give "oxygen" to businesses in the short-term - but not thinking through what this means for economy and public health in the long term (also econ vs public health dichotomy is false)

8/ Also, I understand it's a difficult time for everyone - retailers very much included in this category - so maybe let's think through how we can quickly get out of this mess instead of prolonging it with an open/close/open/close approach? Rant over. #qcpoli

9/ (Unrelated, as a Montrealer, I grew up watching @DebraArbecCBC every night - so it really was an honour and a real star-struck moment for me to be speaking with her. I only wish it was under different circumstances.)