DON'T NARROW THE TUNNEL. WATSON,

No sooner does John Ivison write in these pages, as he did Tuesday, that Ontario and Quebec's COVID mitigation strategies “clearly are not working” so “a more impenetrable approach … a hard lockdown” is required than the Quebec government obliges with a diamond-hard lockdown that even includes a curfew. In Montreal, we've always prided ourselves on our nightlife, with bars staying open until the not-so-wee hours. A curfew will take a lot of the joie out of vivre.

A couple of pages over from Ivison, Colby Cosh wrote that: “Governments have maxed out their ability to handle the pandemic through onerous lockdowns.” Given their high-profile errors on masks, borders, testing, tracing and slow vaccine distribution, we're not nearly so trusting as we were last March.

Like most Post readers, I assume, I never miss either Ivison or Cosh. But if they are both right, we have a problem. Even ever-deferential Canadians may balk at “impenetrable” lockdowns imposed by governments whose COVID judgment they have come to doubt. And we Quebecers are among the least deferential Canadians.

Where you stand often depends on where you sit so I should say that I am a Type 1 diabetic born in the 1950s whose 95-year-old mother is living in long-term care. So I take COVID very seriously. I'm also minimally affected by lockdowns — as I suspect are many of the professors who recommend them so enthusiastically. I work at home and these days go out only to walk the dog, buy groceries or have prescriptions filled. For me, the main effect of previous lockdowns was that I had to stand a little farther from the other owners in the local dog run. (As a WASP, social

EVERY INDUSTRY IS ESSENTIAL TO THE PEOPLE WHO DERIVE THEIR INCOME AND SELF-WORTH FROM IT.

distancing comes naturally.) An 8 p.m. curfew means the dog will get her evening walk a little earlier — though since we never come within 10 yards of anyone on these outings, I can't imagine we're the weak link in the infection chain that is causing the virus to run wild.

In any case, where I sit is that: COVID is very serious and lockdowns barely affect me.

But there are lots of people whom lockdowns affect very severely. Neighbours with young kids who have to scramble when schools and daycares shut down. People who lose their jobs when “non-essential” industries are ordered closed. (Memo to politicians: Every industry is essential to the people who derive their income and selfworth from it.) My own 20-something kids, whose careers and, perhaps more importantly, social lives are put on hold. (When Aretha Franklin sang Who's Zoomin' Who? in 1985, she wasn't referring to online interaction.)

As of this writing, the latest numbers for Quebec are that 1,317 people are in hospital with COVID, including 194 in intensive care. Quebec's population is 8.5 million. So one in every 44,000 Quebecers is currently in intensive care with COVID. That's roughly the capacity of the Rogers Centre in Toronto. Imagine the Rogers Centre full of Quebecers. (Yes, it would be louder than normal. More fun, too.) If just one of these people needed intensive care, you'd think the other 47,999 could provide it. Even if two or three needed it, would that really be beyond the capacity of all the rest?

The problem in Quebec's ICUs is not lack of equipment or beds. It's lack of nurses and respiratory therapists. Several hundred are either off with COVID themselves or off awaiting the results of COVID tests. There's also anecdotal evidence of burnout and retirement. Everyone sympathizes with the plight of front-line workers. But if personnel bottlenecks are the big problem, then rapid testing and early vaccination for health-care workers would seem to be part of the solution, as well as greater flexibility about who does what job in health care. If this were wartime, volunteers would be welcomed, whether or not they were union members.

Granted, addressing the crisis, not by trying to eradicate the virus, but by finding ways to expand treatment until we're all vaccinated, may sound defeatist. But we're dealing with a highly infectious disease that is widespread in the population and, if anything, seems to be mutating into greater infectiousness. The psychological theory that you can get the full attention of people who have not responded to half measures by slamming everything shut for a month or two — maybe even longer since full vaccination isn't due until fall — seems a slim reed on which to rest such a drastic and consequential act.

As of Tuesday, people aged 90 or over accounted for 33.2 per cent of all COVID-related deaths in Quebec. People 80-89 accounted for another 39.7 per cent, for a combined total of 72.9 per cent. Almost three quarters. By contrast, people 30 to 60 accounted for just 7.8 per cent of deaths. People 20-29? Zero per cent. People under 20? Zero per cent.

I don't discount deaths of seniors. Far from it, I'm a senior myself. And I fully understand that COVID hurts people in other ways than killing them. But making the tunnel narrower and more punishing — inducing a cavein, as it were — just as light has appeared at the end of it is a choice I suspect we will come to regret.