Josh Freed: Florida feels like another planet compared with Quebec

During my visit, I saw some customers shake hands with their waiter, as if to say: “Thanks, I’ll have some germs for dessert,” Josh Freed writes.

Josh Freed

• Special to Montreal Gazette

Jan 22, 2022 • 1 day ago • 4 minute read • 160 Comments

Everyone’s out and about in Florida, filling bars, restaurants, movies, gyms, and jam-packed sports arenas, like this one in Tallahassee when Florida State upset Duke in men's college basketball on Jan. 18.

Everyone’s out and about in Florida, filling bars, restaurants, movies, gyms, and jam-packed sports arenas, like this one in Tallahassee when Florida State upset Duke in men's college basketball on Jan. 18. Photo by Mark Wallheiser /Associated Press

I have a confession to make: I recently fled Quebec for a week, a refugee from Legault’s 2.0 curfew-and-confinement rules.

A friend told me about an available condo in Florida, my wife and I made a last-second decision to briefly escape and work remotely. But the second we landed, it felt like we’d arrived on another planet.

While Quebec is in full confinement mode, Florida is Cowboyland, where you barely know COVID is happening, despite much higher new case and hospitalization rates than ours .

It’s lunacy by Canadian standards, but an eye-opening experience. For starters, everyone’s out and about, filling bars, restaurants, movies, gyms, and jam-packed sports arenas.

Stores and supermarkets don’t require masks but some cashiers and customers wear them, though often under their nose or chin — Florida-style. It seems a way of announcing: “Look — I’m masked!” when they’re not.

Restaurants are fully open and peeking into some, they’re mobbed. Waiters can choose whether to wear masks, and at least half don’t.

In ever-friendly America, some customers even shake hands with their waiters before leaving, to say: “Thanks, I’ll have some germs for dessert.”

It’s easy to spot Canadians at restaurants, as we’re the ones properly masked and nervously sitting on the terrace, even in the rain.

You can see the difference in the media, too. In Quebec, COVID totally dominates the news, because there’s almost nothing else happening.

In Florida, it’s the reverse.

I checked the prestigious Miami Herald recently on a day Florida had risen to more than 70,000 new daily cases — almost twice as many per capita as Quebec, much like their hospitalizations.

But the first mention of COVID anywhere in the paper was exactly 18 stories down, with the headline: “Amid Omicron surge, hospitals are stretched thin. What can Florida lawmakers do?”

Ignore it, as always, I guess. Meanwhile, the 19th story was: “Florida COVID update: 71,742 new cases as hospital patients increase.”

Among the many stories played far higher up were: “Miami Marlins name managers for minor-league affiliates” and “Microbial contamination in laxative can cause a ‘life-threatening’ infection.”

But that still beats NBC TV’s Florida website that day, which ran this story way ahead of COVID: “Police officer kills dog in Miami-Dade after barking complaint.”

It’s hard to make this stuff up. Meanwhile, in La Presse the same day, the top six stories were about COVID.

By any measure, Florida life seems surreal, as if everyone’s wearing blinders and trying not to notice a disease that’s killed more than 63,000 Floridians. That’s about twice as many deaths as in all of Canada, in a state with two-thirds our country’s population.

It’s health madness, but there’s a psychological upside, since COVID doesn’t dominate all life like here. We Montrealers live in a tense, depressing pandemic bubble — all-COVID, all the time — which is why many people avoid following the news.

In Florida, entire conversations happen without the C-word mentioned, unless you bring it up — which, of course, I did. I asked a group of seven 60-somethings I met at a restaurant terrace how they felt about Florida’s non-existent pandemic rules.

Every last one said they loved how Florida handles things. In the words of one woman “Our philosophy here is: I look after myself and you look after yourself. If you want to wear a mask indoors, you should. If you don’t want to go to a restaurant, you shouldn’t.”

When I asked about our collective responsibility to protect others she shrugged and said: “That’s just not how we think here.”

I mentioned Quebec’s recent curfew, but they all just laughed, dismissing it as “Canadian communism.” Many others obviously agree as more people moved to Florida during the pandemic than any other state .

Thousands of Quebecers have also looked into moving there since the pandemic.

It’s a tale of two worlds. Like most Canadians, I still think collective safety trumps some individual rights. But I’d prefer something between the cowboy individualism of Florida and the heavy-handed paternalistic rules of Quebec during this fifth wave.

Our curfew was lifted, but we still can’t legally invite anyone to our home, while other Western countries and Canadian provinces allow from five to 20 guests.

Britain, France, Spain and other European countries are starting to “live with Omicron ” like the seasonal flu, and dropping many emergency measures. Ontario plans to do likewise. When, if ever, will Quebec?

To fly home we needed a COVID PCR test, almost impossible to come by in Montreal, with lineups hours long at most hospitals. Consequently, the Quebec government won’t allow anyone but the very sick to take them, while travellers must go to private clinics and pay perhaps $200.

Meanwhile, every Florida pharmacy does free PCR tests, even for travelling foreigners. It seems bizarre in a country with no universal medicare, where people are often bankrupted by medical bills.

But when we went for our free test at a pharmacy, there were a dozen people waiting, all wearing masks, the only place I’d seen that all week.

For the first time, it felt a bit like home.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43831986)

Really makes you think

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832034)

====

"Cowboy individualism of Florida" = massive poker tell that the author knows nothing about US culture other than his own pre-existing biases. Florida cowboyism?

"heavy-handed paternalistic rules of Quebec during this fifth wave." = Stockholm Syndrome. he's internalized some kind of MK Ultra meme of being in a "fifth wave."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832009)

The same ones who think white people drag gays behind trucks, shoot niggers, and bomb abortion clinics for fun

Aka Kikes

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832027)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_cracker

Nice try, Ari.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832360)

israel is on their 14th booster shot program already.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43833766)

Lmfao at these psychopaths

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832038)

Shante Zaccaria

22 HRS AGO

Give me a break. Are we supposed to feel bad that you and your wife escaped our authoritarian illogical lockdown measures and that you felt uncomfortable at the bare sight of people living freely. How can you have the audacity to complain about unmasked waiters when all the restaurants and waiters here are forced into unemployment and surviving by the skin of their teeth. When our nurses are forced to work overtime and the mere thought of a vacation is a distant utopian fantasy. Have you no shame. Stay home and rot in this regimes oppressive measures you so praise and spare us the misery of reading this entitled rubbish.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832055)

1 DAY AGO

Thanks for this great article. I own a company here in Montreal with my partners and hold 531 employees, we have decided to move out into the States and are looking at Florida as our home. I agree, Florida is the place to be.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832060)

1 DAY AGO

"old privileged boomer burns metric tons of fossil fuels to escape the tyranny he help set up and has the audacity to criticize the policies of another country that welcomes him" and people wonder why Canada is collapsing...

REPLY

3 REPLIES

16

2

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832064)

Marty Funkhauser

1 DAY AGO

Yet there you were.

Pick a lane, Freed. Either embrace the gaslighting, tyranny, and fear pr 0n or embrace the ability to live freely in spite of a 99% survivable mega-flu.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832081)

lols

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832108)

You’ve got what you voted for libs, STAY THE FUCK HOME!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832208)

____

Canadian freaks don't even shake hands?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832316)

the 'Have-It-5-Different-Ways-Simultaneously' sophistry is just too much after a point, you can't deal with it, and you have to have rid of them.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832342)

Lol. Masks, lockdowns, restrictions do nothing.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43832971)

Lol at this middle-ground bullshit. “I just wanted a little bit of tyranny! Something in between normal free life and hysterical covid totalitarianism!” Well, guess what, kike: it doesn’t work like that. We’ve seen over and over that you can’t just give authoritarian libs an inch and hope that they’ll be satisfied. Either you are free or you aren’t.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43833034)

let me stop you right there hoss

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5014604&forum_id=2#43833955)