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 | | Daily reported coronavirus cases in the United States, seven-day average.The New York Times |
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 | | Police talk to protesters in downtown, Ottawa.Brett Gundlock for The New York Times |
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The weekslong protests against virus regulations in Canada have multiplied across the country. Yesterday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the extraordinary step of declaring a national public order emergency aimed at stopping the demonstrations. |
Under the rare measures, the police will now be able to seize trucks and other vehicles being used in blockades, and the measure will formally ban demonstrations that "go beyond lawful protest." |
The protesters have set up a command center of sorts near Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the nation's capitol, where, today, the police chief resigned. For insight into the nerve center of the protests, I spoke with my colleague Sarah Maslin Nir, who visited the group. |
They're spread across two different hotels. They have a sort of command center at Arc the Hotel, and then a little bit down the way at the Sheraton is where they do press conferences. |
Yesterday's press conference was an interesting experience. It had a real veneer of being a highly legitimate operation by an organization playing by political rules. In it, Tamara Lich, the spokesperson for the movement, addressed Trudeau and condemned him for both the emergency order and demanded that he meet with protesters. They also had a constitutional scholar with them to discuss ways in which they believe that the mandates were violating liberties entrenched in the Canadian Constitution. |
Sounds pretty run of the mill. |
Yes, but at the same time, when a so-called mainstream Canadian television journalist asked a question about a weapons cache that had been found that day at another offshoot of the protest, the 60 or so people in the room erupted in rage. They basically shut down the press conference because of the temerity of this journalist to dare ask that question. So, you know, in some ways, they're operating very legitimately and in other ways they are suppressing protected speech. And actually, it became a frightful scene, especially for that guy, who was really chased out. |
What else did people there say? |
I should tell you that nobody had a mask on in any of the indoor spaces, which is against the law here in Ottawa. And someone said, referring to the media, "We know you're with us or against us, by if you're wearing a mask." And a lot of people were hacking and coughing. I said to one person I interviewed, "Are you going to get that hacking cough tested because you probably have Covid?" And he said, "No, never." He said it's not a big deal and if you're a vulnerable person, you're obligated to stay away from me, not the other way around. |
What's the scene like outside the hotels? |
There's a tremendous encampment of truckers still there and they don't appear to be going anywhere. It's just astounding, and I can't even say the word astounding enough, that there is no police presence, and hardly any arrests. Demonstrators are just allowed to occupy the city. And it's dangerous. There are hundreds of gas cans everywhere, open fires at night, babies running around, people smoking. I mean, it is just by God's grace that something hasn't gone wrong yet. |
That said, it has been an extraordinarily effective protest, especially using the brute force of the trucks to shut down the city. They have certainly started to turn Canadian opinion because a lot of people share their disgruntlement, and if you look at the opinion polls, they are shifting toward the protesters. |
How much are the demonstrations still about virus regulations? |
When you ask the truckers, it's exclusively about mandates. They don't want the federal mandates to be vaccinated, even though many of them are vaccinated. But when you get a little bit further under the surface, you get a tremendous number of fact-free conspiracy theories, but that people really believe. For example, that the vaccine was designed to reduce the population, or that the virus itself was created by Big Pharma to make money on vaccines. |
The truckers are also joined on the weekends by thousands and thousands of people, and a common sentiment among them is extreme pandemic fatigue. A common refrain is something like, "Stop telling me what to do, the virus isn't a big deal, it's just a common cold, we're overreacting and I want to get back to normal." |
 | | A traveling nurse last week in a field hospital in Rhode Island.David Goldman/Associated Press |
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In the flood of resignations and shortages that are redefining U.S. workplaces these past two years, nothing has been as dramatic or as consequential as the shifts in nursing. |
Bedside nursing has always been, as one hospital chief executive put it, a "burnout profession." The work is hard. It is physical and emotional. |
But when the pandemic hit, shortages only increased, pushing hospitals to the breaking point. As the virus spread, demand for nurses came from every corner. Some jobs for travelers paid more than $10,000 a week. |
The New York Times Magazine, in its "Future of Work" issue, explored the dramatic shifts taking place in the nursing industry, which is tied to everything from how we run our hospitals, to the way we value the work of caring for others, to our understanding of public health and medicine. |
The health care system will need hundreds of thousands more nurses to build itself back up. But the number of nurses with both the skills and the willingness to endure the punishing routines of Covid nursing — the isolation rooms, the angry families and the unceasing drumbeat of death — is dwindling. In a survey of critical-care nurses last year, 66 percent of respondents said they were considering retirement. There are around 153,000 new nurses being licensed every year, but based on projected demand, it will not be enough. |
It shows the current status of mask mandates in each state, including where residents are advised to follow federal guidance and where leaders are rejecting such guidance or mandates. |
The C.D.C. still recommends that everyone wear a mask indoors in public in areas of "substantial" or "high" transmission of the coronavirus, which is most areas of the country. |
What else we're following |
My husband and I are both vaccinated, as are all of our social contacts and family that we interact with. But we still are extremely cautious as we have a vulnerable child under the age of five. Our son hasn't been in a store in over two years, he's gone to the zoo less than three times in two years and we've missed family birthdays and weddings — all to keep him safe. As a parent who has seen their child on oxygen before, it is scary, and I don't want to go through that again. The most disheartening thing I've learned in the last two years is just how little people seem to care about the most vulnerable in our society. — Kate, Madison, Wis. |
Let us know how you're dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter. |
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