If in doubt; jump out and jump up
It’s been a while since I have tuned into Quebec news stories about the pandemic. I deleted my news channels in October last year when it was clear with all of the back and forth between the health minister and the politicians, that the politicians were going to overrule the data in science. Debates both public and private were broadcasted and the constant vacillation between the actions of the government and its use of media raised my anxiety levels.
It became more and more apparent that the government here is focused on the economy at the expense of our community health. And that they have a very rigid idea of what they want, which leaves out whole communities from access and help. However, I have had to look at Canadian media as part of my work, so for the past few weeks I have been going into research. It has brought up all sorts of reactions from me and these are some of my thoughts.
Minorities have had it pretty bad here, with a lack of communication in multiple languages and lack of services. Nursing and residential care has also been negatively impacted. The government of Quebec said they would begin collecting data to help focus on under-served communities; they are still not doing that over a year later. This has been well documented since the beginning of the crisis and there are some examples below. A quote from the Washington Post:
“The data is particularly shocking in Montreal, where communities with a Black population of 25 percent or more had mortality rates of 149.3 per 100,000 people, compared to 88.1 per 100,000 in communities with a population that was less than 1 percent Black residents.”
For me this was really worrying, I’m from Africa and throughout my adolescence we had epidemics on and off pretty much every year. If it wasn’t cholera it was malaria and if it wasn’t malaria it was dengue. There was always something that we had to be watchful of. The governments would vacillate between heavy-handed fear-mongering and useful advice. Other media, less controlled by the state, in the country would capitulate on whatever messages were being sent by the government and amplify them either correctly or using misinformation and propaganda techniques. It was clear that the government was using its powers to misinform and divide the public.
If you wanted to protect yourself, you had to jump out of the system and jump up. For me this usually meant looking at World Health Organization guidelines, data and science and using these to protect me and my family.
So when I began an international career and left Zimbabwe I remembered this when the epidemics struck overseas. Living in China and moving to Thailand was a really exciting adventure for me but again it came with several epidemics. SARS, MERS and H1N1 all seem to be precursors and relatives of the same family of viruses that took over large areas of Asia. China really surprised me with its pragmatic response to the epidemic, there was a lot of information and a lot of resources but again not much in English. So I jumped out of the system and jumped up into a bigger system looking for information that could help me. Again the information given by the WHO was really easy to understand and accessible and published as they completed research.
The reactions here show that there is a group of people who have never managed an epidemic and are very slow at adapting. There is a low interest in engaging in civic communication. There’s a lot of outward communication and little way for dialogue. Research is high but concrete action seems low and slow.
When I went for my first Covid vaccine, I asked the nurse to sign my vaccine passport document. The nurse refused to sign it. She said that I would be given a QR code that would act as a vaccine passport. I informed her that there was no way that a border security official between the border of Zimbabwe and say, Namibia or Mozambique would have any clue of what I was showing them. Nor would they have a handheld device to scan the code.
Again she refused to sign it and said the provincial documentation was all I needed. This documentation isn’t even adequate to travel into many countries right now. It is in no way a “passport” if you are allowed to leave your home country but the rest of the world is still undecided about mixing shots, and which are adequate for travel. Additionally, we are only getting information about the safety of mixing vaccines from third party tests now.
I shared the facts with her and for a third time was told that an international vaccine passport was not going to be signed here in Quebec. I pressed again, saying that as an immigrant, I still have to travel to other developing countries and they will request this document every time I am at their border control. Nothing. So I had to insist and say if she was not going to comply with international guidelines and a document I have had to show every time I have had to take out my poassport, then she wouldn’t be giving me the vaccine… She signed the doc. I got the vaccine. It took half an hour of hard bargaining for a signature and every point I made fell on deaf ears.
Since then, I’ve tried getting representatives on the phone a few times however there is no contact with anyone and no way to speak to a health practitioner. I’ve sent emails that still months later I have not received replies to. The information on the Quebec health websites are sometimes contradictory to what the message that is given on social media. Finally I approached a friend to ask his uncle in France for the info on the second vaccines, which I got!
All of these signs are worrying for me. When the system works harder to misinform you, to remove information or to manipulate the information in some way, where does that place the minority?
If the small system is full of holes and doesn’t allow a space for you; either to give you basic information, or for you to ask questions, what do you do then?
If the current training doesn’t take into account the health of many thousands of minorities in the province, how can we trust the government will reach out? Especially as their signs for the last year have been to ignore and push aside?
If every contact with the local government is complicated by all of these aspects, what can you do?
My reaction is “If in doubt; jump out and jump up.”
COVID-19 Effect on Black Communities in Quebec | The Royal Society of Canada
Opinion | Canada’s covid-19 crisis needs a targeted response. When will its leaders learn?
Community groups frustrated Quebec won’t collect race-based coronavirus data.
Visible minorities in Canada most likely to know someone diagnosed with Covid-19: survey
COVID-19 mortality rates in Canada’s ethno-cultural neighbourhoods
this has knock-on effects on the livelihoods of immigrants, visible minorities, our aged communities etc:
Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in nursing and residential care facilities in Canada
COVID-19 deaths among immigrants: Evidence from the early months of the pandemic
and misinformation ran rife, which also complicated matters:
StatCan COVID-19: Data to Insights for a Better Canada Misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic
