Immunocompromised Quebecers concerned by removal of vaccine passport

Quebec’s vaccine passport will be gradually phased out by March 14, which means you will no longer need to show your COVID vaccine QR code to sit at restaurants or anywhere else.

It’s already dropped for government liquor and marijuana stores, as well as big-box retailers. But for those who are at high risk or immunocompromised, like Aaron Ansuini, back to normal feels like a nightmare.

“What would that would mean for people like myself who’ve taken all of the precautionary measures that we feasibly can but just can’t really exist in a world where the public-health conditions don’t allow us to continue living safely?” asked Ansuini, an LGBTQ disability justice activist and founder of “Let’s Get By Together.”

“I can’t go anywhere, and so what becomes the disabling factor is actually no longer my disability. It’s actually the conditions that inhibit my participation as a disabled person there are a lot of things that I can do with the correct public-health measures, but if those measures are dropped, I’m now disabled by all of these.

“I start to wonder, like, am I expected to continue living my life? Like when all of these things make it impossible, like, I can’t go get food, like some of the basic things that you need to survive. I can’t imagine that they do expect people like me to continue living. And that’s really disturbing.”

For restaurant owner Graziella Battista, whose Montreal eatery was hard hit by the health measures, says she and her staff are seeing this as a way to move forward.

“People who have respected the request of getting vaccinated and protecting themselves, so we don’t feel that we are putting ourselves at risk at all with not having to check the passports. The only people that will come in probably that are not fully vaccinated are very few and far between.”

Not so fast, says behavioural scientist

While the government expects Quebecers to flock to bars and restaurants once the vaccine passport is lifted, that may not be the case according to Simon Bacon, a professor of behavioural sciences at Concordia University.

“The belief is, is that this it’s going to be a big win for businesses and the business is going to suddenly see a lot of customers coming. But actually, on the flip side of it, it may actually have a detrimental effect,” said Bacon.

“The consequence of that could be they have less people coming into their establishments, and those people that do come in could end up infecting and knocking out their staff. And then they may be left with a different problem as well.

“Those that are immunocompromised, those people that care for people who are immunocompromised and older age brackets and have a number of chronic diseases, a lot of them are not going to have the confidence to want to go to restaurants, go to events because they don’t have the safety net of knowing that everybody there is vaccinated.”