On March 11, 2021, the first national day of commemoration for the victims of COVID-19, the government promised, during an official ceremony, to never forget the men and women who had lost their lives in the pandemic. Fourteen months later, while the masks are falling and we are told that we must “live with the virus”, we are very little interested in those who are still dying from it. There was no official ceremony on March 11. Nor were there any when the milestone of 15,000 dead was passed. As if the threshold of acceptable death toll had changed.
According to social gerontologist Julien Simard, co-director of the collective work Shock treatments and tarts (Somme tout), which critically assesses the management of the pandemic in Quebec, this indifference is sadly revealing1.
The desire to return to some “normal” – even if that normal is not normal at all – comes with a denial of death.
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Julien Simard
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The commemoration of the dead is always a political event, he recalls. When we commemorate, for example, the 14 victims of the Polytechnique feminicide, it is a political space to question the causes of the tragedy and ensure that it does not happen again.
It is the same for the thousands of victims of the pandemic. “Opening a commemorative space for government is like a Pandora’s box. Because that requires opening a reflection on the deep causes of what I call a geronticide. »
Gerontocide is both an extreme and passive form of ageism, explains Julien Simard. “I define it as letting-die and not as an “active” gesture. A large scale letting old people die in indifference. It happens in oblivion, in abandonment, in the cracks of the bureaucracy… This is exactly what we finally see in the inquest of coroner Géhane Kamel. »
The government’s refusal to create a public inquiry commission to shed light on this geronticide testifies to the same denial that has transformed the deaths into statistics, according to Julien Simard. It would, however, be an essential exercise in understanding the structural causes of the tragedy and ensuring that it does not happen again.
No, Quebec is far from being the worst state in the world in terms of excess mortality (that is to say a number of deaths that exceeds the expected number) during the pandemic. Few countries have escaped it, the Statistical Institute of Quebec told us on Wednesday.2. But that’s no reason to give in to collective amnesia and denial.
For this specialist in the social aspects of ageing, one serious observation remains. “It is not going well in Quebec in the management of aging in general. And that didn’t happen with COVID. »
The pandemic has only shed terrible light on the consequences of neoliberal management of the health system. A management that allows whole sections of the population to be more exposed to avoidable death and suffering.
To an English-speaking journalist who, during a press conference on January 25, asked what was meant by “living with the virus”, François Legault replied: “We must perhaps accept more deaths. »
The answer left Julien Simard puzzled to say the least.
To me, every avoidable old death is unacceptable. I don’t understand why we don’t do everything we can to avoid excess mortality.
–
Julien Simard
–
Going all out does not mean going back to questionable shock treatments like curfews or relying on individual risk management. Rather, it is about truly acknowledging the lessons of the pandemic, about stopping the cycle of panic and neglect. It is a matter of relying on durable solutions, which have proven their worth, by ensuring, for example, that healthcare workers are well protected, that all CHSLD rooms are well ventilated or that as many as possible masks in closed public places until the pandemic is over.
So that “living with the virus” does not mean letting the most vulnerable die with the virus.
So that 15,066 dead Quebecers are not reduced to statistics.
1. Shock treatments and tarts – Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec, edited by Josiane Cossette and Julien Simard (Somme toute), will be released on May 10.
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On March 11, 2021, the first national day of commemoration for the victims of COVID-19, the government promised, during an official ceremony, to never forget the men and women who had lost their lives in the pandemic. Fourteen months later, while the masks are falling and we are told that we must “live with the virus”, we are very little interested in those who are still dying from it. There was no official ceremony on March 11. Nor were there any when the milestone of 15,000 dead was passed. As if the threshold of acceptable death toll had changed.
According to social gerontologist Julien Simard, co-director of the collective work Shock treatments and tarts (Somme tout), which critically assesses the management of the pandemic in Quebec, this indifference is sadly revealing1.
The desire to return to some “normal” – even if that normal is not normal at all – comes with a denial of death.
–
Julien Simard
–
The commemoration of the dead is always a political event, he recalls. When we commemorate, for example, the 14 victims of the Polytechnique feminicide, it is a political space to question the causes of the tragedy and ensure that it does not happen again.
It is the same for the thousands of victims of the pandemic. “Opening a commemorative space for government is like a Pandora’s box. Because that requires opening a reflection on the deep causes of what I call a geronticide. »
Gerontocide is both an extreme and passive form of ageism, explains Julien Simard. “I define it as letting-die and not as an “active” gesture. A large scale letting old people die in indifference. It happens in oblivion, in abandonment, in the cracks of the bureaucracy… This is exactly what we finally see in the inquest of coroner Géhane Kamel. »
The government’s refusal to create a public inquiry commission to shed light on this geronticide testifies to the same denial that has transformed the deaths into statistics, according to Julien Simard. It would, however, be an essential exercise in understanding the structural causes of the tragedy and ensuring that it does not happen again.
No, Quebec is far from being the worst state in the world in terms of excess mortality (that is to say a number of deaths that exceeds the expected number) during the pandemic. Few countries have escaped it, the Statistical Institute of Quebec told us on Wednesday.2. But that’s no reason to give in to collective amnesia and denial.
For this specialist in the social aspects of ageing, one serious observation remains. “It is not going well in Quebec in the management of aging in general. And that didn’t happen with COVID. »
The pandemic has only shed terrible light on the consequences of neoliberal management of the health system. A management that allows whole sections of the population to be more exposed to avoidable death and suffering.
To an English-speaking journalist who, during a press conference on January 25, asked what was meant by “living with the virus”, François Legault replied: “We must perhaps accept more deaths. »
The answer left Julien Simard puzzled to say the least.
To me, every avoidable old death is unacceptable. I don’t understand why we don’t do everything we can to avoid excess mortality.
–
Julien Simard
–
Going all out does not mean going back to questionable shock treatments like curfews or relying on individual risk management. Rather, it is about truly acknowledging the lessons of the pandemic, about stopping the cycle of panic and neglect. It is a matter of relying on durable solutions, which have proven their worth, by ensuring, for example, that healthcare workers are well protected, that all CHSLD rooms are well ventilated or that as many as possible masks in closed public places until the pandemic is over.
So that “living with the virus” does not mean letting the most vulnerable die with the virus.
So that 15,066 dead Quebecers are not reduced to statistics.
1. Shock treatments and tarts – Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec, edited by Josiane Cossette and Julien Simard (Somme toute), will be released on May 10.
–
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