If it were possible, the word “COVID” would be banned from pronunciation as it has become synonymous with fatigue, weariness, exasperation, anger and all those feelings that eat away at morale.
And it’s even worse when you compare yourself.
By touring the Canadian, American or European media, we can see that COVID is everywhere the big topic of the news. And as there is no lack of criticism of the way in which the various governments are managing the crisis, we deduce that basically, we are all in the same boat.
But when you’re in the field, you understand that the words “chaos”, “disorganization”, “severity” and company do not have the same meaning for everyone. In my case, I admit to being quite confused since two of my children left at the beginning of January to study for several months in Europe, one in France, the other in Sweden.
The pleasant surprise: as soon as they arrive, the impression of coming back to life! The COVID exists, which imposes constraints, including the precious vaccination, but their host society is not paralyzed. We visit each other, we go to the restaurant, we go out, and if in doubt, we have rapid tests on hand. And we manage to talk about something else in the public space!
This is called “living with COVID”. Here, this scenario is unlikely.
Certainly, we must take into account a host of factors that explain the particular case of Quebec, as my fabulous family doctor (she has a practice at home and can see patients in case of emergency!) reminded me during my very recent consultation. Here, the harshness of winter locks us in for a long time and we are Latins, so the practice of distancing specific to Scandinavian, Germanic or Asian peoples is not natural to us…
And above all, she insisted as a professional who has also traveled a lot, our health system has nothing to do with what we find elsewhere.
Let us remember the major shortcomings: fewer hospital beds per inhabitant, less home care, fewer health professionals to distribute the work, which the doctor concentrates here in his hands…
COVID has at least shattered the illusion we have about the state of the network, this belief that “once you get in, everything is fine” with which Quebecers have been reassuring themselves since too long.
It’s been bad for decades — since the beginning, in fact. Our public health system was set up in 1970, and in 1974, the government created a first working committee to look into emergency room overcrowding! From committees to reports, from reports to reforms, the matter only got worse.
That everything is on the verge of collapsing today is ultimately only the logical consequence of a problem present from the foundation of the system. Unless we rebuild everything from scratch, things will never be better. Not for nothing did Prime Minister François Legault promise a “refoundation” of the health system a few days ago.
We would like to believe it. You would have to believe it, because it makes no sense for the weakness of the network to lock up all of Quebec at home, waiting for the opening, closing, reopening – and we start again! — a multitude of activities depending on whether the hospital beds are occupied or not.
However, the task will be so gigantic that it is already utopian, even if the CAQ government has the advantage of being able to envisage a long-term project, its re-election being almost certain.
But simply imagine the layers of the Ministry of Health between which it will be necessary to navigate, the medical and union corporatisms which it will be necessary to face, the force of habit and inertia which it will be necessary to counter, the forms of all kinds which ‘it will be necessary to give up, the accounting reflexes which often have the last word… we guess that it will end with another light at the end of a tunnel which lengthens as we advance.
It is all the more difficult to accept when you have already tested a health system elsewhere. This was my case in France, where I lived for two years and where I had a child.
I remember being amazed when, due to illness, I went to the emergency room of a small Parisian hospital. The waiting room was empty! “What exceptional luck! I said to the young woman at the reception. From her closed air, I deduced that she didn’t understand me… Of course, some French friends explained to me later, very amused: in this country, waiting in the emergency room doesn’t exist!
My pregnancy allowed me to understand why: quick access to a doctor’s office for serious concerns; recourse to the pharmacist in the event of a minor problem; home visit by a midwife following childbirth; ease of making appointments of all kinds, even for the foreigner that I was… I haven’t seen any more emergencies during my entire stay.
I had my other children here and I have never found this global approach, neither for me nor for them, nor when recently some of my relatives suffered from serious illnesses, even more exhausted because access to too often had to go through an inhuman stay in the emergency room.
In France, they did everything to keep us out of hospital; here, everything sends us there. To the point that, and this is our tragedy, all of Quebec is now imprisoned there. Failing to give us the key to get out, can we at least open the windows for good and let us breathe?
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