[graeme]

> Their own health officials said curfew won’t help.

I’m no longer following quebec public health’s announcements closely, but did they seem credible? They’ve been wrong on most everything so I’d need their reasoning rather than their authority to believe them here.

A curfew makes gatherings substantially harder. You have to buy food and drink in advance, and people have to be able to sleep over and be comfortable doing so.

Contact tracing won’t detect many clusters at private gatherings if people don’t say they were violating rules. Public health’s data may not be accurate here.

If I were in charge I wouldn’t use a curfew mind you. I would instead fix public health’s rules: emphasize ventilation, mandate open windows, require masks at work while seated, etc. But I suspect the curfew actually achieves its purpose. Quebec is doing better relative to other provinces than it did pre curfew, iirc.

[sudosysgen]

>inhibit parties and gatherings

[citation needed] - anecdotally all of the people I heard of that partied before still party after, either on the weekends eariler or they stay over.

>another major cause of spread.

[citation needed] - The "activities and events", which includes legal events, is 285 out of 11 158 in the sum of outbreaks collected by Quebec public health. "Other environments", which is where they put clusters that they can't identify is even lower at 46 out of 11 158. All other categories are verified using hard data, and one couldn't lie to classify the cluster somewhere else. So no, this isn't a data issue : https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coron...

By far the dominating sources of infection are work and school, and it's not even close. Followed then are places of commerce.

What curfews actually do though, is force much higher concentrations of people indoors and in public transit, which strongly contributes to the infections in work, "other establishments", and legal "activities and events". Which has a big impact on infection, unlike the other factors.

Politicians had many other tools they chose to relax or not to use right as they enforced the curfew. For example, restrictions on schools were relaxed, a major driver of infection - places like gyms and so on were opened, which already infected hundreds of people, rapid tests were not used in outbreak environments, schools were not outfited with basic ventilation (even just an air purifier would help!), contact tracing is in a horrible state, etc...

Most of all, the politicians could actually release the data behind their decisions, going a long way to increase goodwill and compliance, but chose not to.

They chose the curfew because it would placate those who asked for stricter restrictions and get people to disagree with them, because it would be flashy and hard to ignore, because once restricted to Montreal it wouldn't cause issues to their voterbase, and because it's very easy to implement and doesn't hurt businesses with which the current government is incredibly cozy.

[graeme]

I think public health estimated actual infection rates are 5x the reported case counts. Where are cases easy to measure? In schools and work where you can easily know who was there. Where are they hard to measure? In informal social gatherings among rule breakers.

You’re looking only at the extreme case. Hardcore parties will still party. But regular people who just want to have a dinner party of ten, won’t. There is no data on overall gathering changes (no one tracks that), but you have to assume casual gatherings drop off. And anecdotally I know people are cancelling plans.

As it gets brighter late at night I think the argument against curfew will be stronger. People do go outside on late summer nights and that is safe.

I agree with you on ventilation, and rapid tests etc. If I were in charge I’d do that and not a curfew. But Arruda doesn’t believe in aerosols or rapid tests. So I understand why the politicians reach for the tool they can actually use.

As for data: there’s an easy way to settle this. Find infection per capita in quebec vs ontario vs bc before the first curfew, and after. It’s the only major difference. I think Quebec’s relative numbers improved post curfew, but I don’t have good time series on hand. Know of any?

I know the curfew is psychologically brutal! I’m merely arguing it probably works, too.

Also I’m from New Brunswick originally and there in the Edmundston region they have the same policies as the rest of New Brunswick, except that people disobey the rules and have private parties. They’ve had constant outbreaks, but it doesn’t show in the stats because those people don’t go for tests and they don’t share full info with contact tracers. Public Health officials have described the rule breaking in their briefings. We know it is the case as New Brunswick doesn’t normally have local cases so the virus only enters by rule breaking.

[sudosysgen]

>I think public health estimated actual infection rates are 5x the reported case counts. Where are cases easy to measure? In schools and work where you can easily know who was there. Where are they hard to measure? In informal social gatherings among rule breakers.

A large part of why infection rates are higher is because a lot of people simply don't get tested, be it because their workplace doesn't want them to (happened to a lot of people I know), or because they have light or no symptoms. Otherwise, people who were infected in a party and then infect other people that do get tested have a high likelihood to get traced as sources of infection too. Besides, there is no obligation to cooperate with contact tracing, if you go get tested after going to a party you can simply not say anything, so I don't really see why people that get infected at a party wouldn't get tested. On the converse, the one party-goer I know of apparently gets tested weekly, but hey that's anecdotal and low quality.

>As for data: there’s an easy way to settle this. Find infection per capita in quebec vs ontario vs bc before the first curfew, and after. It’s the only major difference. I think Quebec’s relative numbers improved post curfew, but I don’t have good time series on hand. Know of any?

The issue for this is that sadly the curfew was not implemented alone.

That said, one can look at when the curfew was extended to 9h30PM, and indeed there is no significant difference.

[graeme]

Have a look at the CTV stats. Quebec peaked at 30 per capita, fell to less than 10 with the curfew. And having kept a version of it, now is less than 15 per capita.

Ontario was 25/7/25. BC was 16/10/23.

Roughly. My prediction would be that Quebec has a lower peak than these two provinces and spends less time with max restrictions. Ontario issues a full stay at home order, and did so before Quebec’s curfew announcement.

Also Montreal is the only place that kept the curfew at all (9h30 vs none until recently) and it has markedly lower per capita case counts than the rest of quebec or other BC/Onatario.

Do you have an alternate explanation for this data?

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/health/coronavirus/tracking-ev...

[sudosysgen]

Of course. The curfew being imposed in January also came with harsh restrictions on schools and with workplace closures, and at the same coincided with the wrapping up of the vaccination of the healthcare system, which together account for 80-90% of cases.

Montréal is also the only place that kept many, many other other restrictions and that had accelerated vaccination before cases popping off everywhere.

So we really have to limit observation to curfew only changes.

[graeme]

That’s a hard comparison as there many variables during past case declines too when curfew lifted.

However, right now Ontario has had a total lockdown for a while, but no curfew.

Quebec has similar restrictions (maybe less stringent?) but has a curfew. Case rise nowhere near Ontario.

My bet is we’ll see this divergence continue. The curfew seems to be the biggest point of differentiation Quebec has re: Ontario and BC.