Titre : Curfews are Ineffective and Harmful.

Sous-titre : For a solidarity-based approach to the pandemic

We are now entering a critical phase of the pandemic. Yet the fifth wave carried by Omicron
did not come unexpectedly. What happened in the United Kingdom had already given an
idea of the coming epidemiological situation, yet the Quebec government failed to make use
of this delay wisely. It seems that 21 months of sanitary crisis were not sufficient for Legault’s
government to learn how to predict, planify, prevent and mitigate the pandemic. On
December 15, 2021, when the number of cases jumped to 3411, Legault persistently
maintained his promise to allow 20 guests at Christmas gatherings. When the number of
cases skyrocketed his government was forced to put certain restrictions, brandishing the
prospect of a new curfew. We have now reached this point.

The difficult and often traumatic collective experience of the last curfew, in effect between
January 9 and May 28, 2021, pushed us to write this letter to denounce the current situation.
Regardless of what Legault’s cabinet, Arruda and their expert collaborators say in the media,
many reasons lead us to question whether the curfew is an appropriate way to manage a
pandemic, even if its “sledgehammer effect” gives the impression that the government is
“taking action”. It must be reminded that Quebec has been governing by decree since
March, 2020. Last year, the provincial government made 31 million dollars in fines, simply by
applying the last curfew.

The government has never demonstrated the efficiency of the curfew. Instead, it carefully
avoided discussing numbers, rather using a confirmation bias sophism: the curfew worked
because the number of cases dwindled or less people went outside during the night,
according to mobility data. Regardless of how creating scapegoats and taking correlation for
causality became a common practice amongst our leaders, it must be emphasized that
Quebeckers have consistently respected the sanitary instructions imposed by the
government, during and outside curfew periods. As attested by the INSPQ’s Connect study,
the numbers of contacts in households remained largely stable between the Spring of 2020
and the Spring of 2021, except for the Summer of 2020. Furthermore, the peak of the
second wave was reached in the first days of 2021, long before the curfew could have had
any incidence, and the R0 had even passed under 1 as early as on December 29, 2020. In
addition, the epidemiological curves in Quebec followed roughly the same course as in the
other Canadian provinces, where there was no curfew. In short, the INSPQ’s data do not
allow us to assess that the curfew had any measurable effect.

Still following the Connect study, most variations in contacts took place at work and at
school. Unsurprisingly, on December 15, 2021, nearly 93% of outbreaks during the first half
of the fifth wave took place in elementary schools, workplaces, daycares, high schools and
higher education. Since Legault’s government did nearly nothing to solve the problem of the
poor ventilation and air quality in these environments, we should not be surprised that they
became infection foci for the airborne virus in the Fall of 2021.

Faced with this predictable catastrophe, we must agree that the contamination increase calls
for greater caution in social contacts. Yet the government has no right to determine whether
or not its citizens can visit close ones. Mitigating outbreaks, harm reduction, educating about
the risks of meeting people indoors, providing equipment (N95 masks, rapid tests, air
purifiers) and favoring autonomization should take precedence over control, repression and
drastic measures, which can potentially create effects largely adverse to those that were
expected, and cause collateral damage for certain segments of the population. Authoritarian
stances do not help the population to take informed decisions, but rather undermine its
adherence to efficient sanitary measures. Will the government continue to pull Quebec apart
from the rest of Canada every winter by prohibiting the free circulation of people when it gets
dark?

After nearly two years of living through this sanitary crisis, other urgent public health issues
have also been exacerbated. One can think of the mental health of the population, notably
among the youth, heavily strained by the lack of socialization. One can think of the increase
in domestic violence, the isolation, the difficult living conditions of ageing people, homeless
people, sex workers, disabled persons, racialized persons, persons without status, people
who use drugs or caregivers, interpersonal violence and tensions experienced by queer
people, teenagers and children in general. One does not have to preach doom and gloom to
see that a second curfew could prove very noxious, if not fatal, to many people who belong
to these social groups.

Provided that the government does not seem interested in acting upon built environments
and infrastructures, the current collective effort to curtail the curve of the fifth wave will have
to allow people to enjoy life in a way or another, with activities and walks in small groups in
secure outdoor settings. Omicron does not seem to propagate outdoors more than the other
variants. According to an Irish study, the outdoors transmission of COVID-19 amounts for
only 0.1% of total contaminations. If the objective is to reduce contaminations, depriving
Quebeckers from the possibility of being outdoors in the evening and at night, after work or
school, is a very bad idea, as it could encourage people to take risks indoors clandestinely.

In short, to ensure the population’s collaboration in this fight against an invisible virus in the
medium and long term, it is essential to put in place efficient and non-detrimental measures
that are based on science and that allow for a minimum of stability in our social activities. We
will most likely experience other pandemics in our lifetime. Implementing sustainable, flexible
and efficient public health infrastructures is long past due. Yet Legault’s government
stubbornly refuses to commit to it, preferring shortsighted management and indicting “private
gatherings” for all the chaos. As the police will be busy distributing fines to people taking
walks outside at night and cracking down on people reacting to unbearable conditions of
incarceration with mental breakdowns, Quebeckers will continue to contaminate each other
at school, at work, at the factory, at the hospital and at the daycare. At best, the curfew is a
“spectacle measure”, as medical anthropologist Vincent Duclos suggested. At worst, it is a
“punishment” imposed on individuals to mask the government’s systematic neglect and
inaction in managing the pandemic. In both cases, however, the curfew will bring more harm
than good. We will not accept to bear the brunt of this political manipulation a second time.
Signed by

Julien Simard, Ph.D. Postdoctoral fellow, McGill School of Social Work, Social gerontology
and medical anthropology

Jonathan Durand Folco, Adjunct professor, Élisabeth-Bruyère School of Social Innovation,

Saint-Paul University

Jean-Sébastien Fallu, Ph.D., Associate professor, School of psychoeducation, Université

de Montréal, Regular researcher at the Centre de recherche en santé publique

Chantal Montmorency, Coordinator, Association Québécoise pour la Promotion de la Santé

des Personnes Utilisatrices de drogues

Vincent Duclos, Professor, Social and Public Communications Department, UQAM

Emma Jean, PhD Candidate, Sociology Department, Université de Montréal

Philippe Néméh-Nombré, Vice-President, Ligue des droits et libertés, PhD Candidate,

Sociology Department, Université de Montréal

Camille Robert, PhD Candidate, History Department, UQAM

Émilie Dubois, Lawyer, Association des juristes progressistes

Alexandra Pierre, President, Ligue des droits et libertés

Philippe Blouin, PhD Candidate, Anthropology Department, McGill

Isabelle Larrivée, PhD Candidate, Sociology Department, UQAM

Yan Grenier, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Center for Disability Studies / Department of

Anthropology, New York University

Jade Bourdages, Associate Professor, École de travail Social, UQAM

Jessica Dolan, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Geography, Environment, and

Geomatics, University of Guelph, and Ethnobotanist, Saint-Regis Mohawk Tribe
Environment Division

Erica Lagalisse, Anthropologist, Postdoctoral Researcher at the London School of

Economics, International Inequalities Institute

Émilie E. Joly, lawyer

Remy-Paulin Twahirwa, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, London School of
Economics

Anna Kruzynski, Professor, School of Community and Public Affairs, Concordia University

Adam Fleischmann, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, McGill University

Nicolas Rasiulis, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, McGill University