Is it time to let go?

In Quebec, Rambo and his gang have started their little carnival. More modest than in Ottawa, it must be said, but the demands are the same. With blows of horn, they claim the return to the "life of before".

They demand an end to the pandemic.

I hope that the COVID-19 patients at CHUL will hear their message and finally go home. Aren't you sick of dying, you bunch of cavers? I hope Omicron will flee without asking for his rest, terrified by the rumble of libertarian revolt.

I hope, but I have a doubt...

I look like I'm kidding (OK, not just look), but I'll happily admit this: These protesters are the extreme expression of the pandemic fatigue that everyone feels. We all want to get back to normal. We all have, more or less buried within us, a rebellious Rambo.

Of course, we won't put an end to the pandemic by blowing the horn. But these demonstrators do not hold the monopoly of being fed up. Even they are right about one thing: we can't go on like this forever.

It remains to be agreed on when we can return to this famous life before – or, at least, to what will come close to it.

Omicron has changed the game. It is less virulent, but much more contagious than the previous variants. Result: our friends, our colleagues, our relatives have been infected. We tell ourselves that we will end up being one, too. And that it probably won't be so bad: for triply vaccinated people, Omicron poses less of a risk than the flu.

Hence a question, which arises with more and more insistence, and not only in the streets of Ottawa and Quebec: is it time to let go?

This week, Denmark said yes. Copenhagen, which now considers Omicron a "limited health threat", has lifted all its restrictions. Others are tempted to imitate it, although the World Health Organization warns them against the siren song.

We must not declare victory too quickly, warns WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The pandemic is not over. Omicron's even more contagious sub-variant, BA.2, could reignite the wave.

In Quebec, the national director of public health, Luc Boileau, is just as circumspect: the progression of the pandemic, he says, is at a “pivotal moment”.

Nevertheless. The pandemic seems about to enter a new phase. In an interview with the New York Times, Anthony Fauci, the president's chief adviser, expressed cautious optimism.

Yes, this virus is unpredictable. No, we are not immune to a vaccine-resistant variant. But after two years of crisis, we are (perhaps) coming to a turning point.

Something like a still deadly virus but, shall we say, more tolerable. An endemic or, at the very least, more predictable virus: we could see it coming and face it without fear of seeing our hospitals collapse. Without having to put our lives on hold.

Something, basically, like all those other viruses we've had to learn to live with.

We're not there yet.

We don't even know if we'll be there one day.

All we can say with confidence is that SARS-CoV-2 is here to stay. There is no going back to the carefree days of 2019. From now on, this virus will be part of our lives in one form or another.

Over the past two years, health measures have saved thousands of lives in Quebec. But they were also very expensive. Seniors in isolation. To children deprived of school. To artists in forced unemployment. To everybody.

Today, Quebec is among the provinces where these measures are the strictest in Canada, which is itself among the most severe countries, my colleague Suzanne Colpron tells us in an enlightening report.

François Legault has often mentioned the difficult balance to be found between the deprivation of freedoms and the protection of public health.

Have we reached the point where the scales are tilting too much on the side of deprivation? Traumatized by the carnage in CHSLDs, are our leaders erring on the side of caution?

Some opposition parties are starting to hint as much. "People are not well," PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said this week. We feel more and more in the population a dropout, a fatigue which is legitimate, because Quebecers have done everything that was necessary, but remain among the confined, and there is not even an explanation. »

This is all true except for the lack of explanation.

There are a few, fairly obvious ones. First, our health system is connected to the artificial respirator. If you move too much, it will run out of air. It's sad, but that's the reality we live in.

But above all, this pandemic still kills. Massively. Wednesday, 50 dead. Thursday, 42 dead. Friday, 42 dead. We may forget that. Or else we get used to it. The fact remains that in two months, the Omicron wave carried away 1,700 Quebecers.

This is the main explanation for the health restrictions.

The pandemic, we are still in the middle of it.

There is an element of electoralism in the outstretched hand of François Legault to the non-vaccinated. In this sudden empathy towards people whom he treated, not so long ago, as dangerous irresponsible.

With less than a year to go before the elections, the Prime Minister is no doubt afraid of losing support to Éric Duhaime, who is not shy about exploiting pandemic fatigue.

But basically, François Legault is right to say that division does not facilitate our way out of the crisis. By tearing each other apart, we lose sight of the common enemy: the virus.

He is the one who caused thousands of deaths.

It is he who dominates, who crushes our lives for two years.

He is the one to fight.

Contrary to what Rambo and his supporters seem to believe, we will not make this virus disappear by pretending that it no longer exists. He's there. It wreaks havoc. And he can still bounce back.

We have no choice but to hold on. But we can encourage ourselves by telling ourselves that the better we hold on, the better our chances of quickly returning to a (more) normal life.