Montreal Gazette publishes lies, creating unwarranted panic and putting people at risk.
Here’s an excerpt from an article by one Aaron Derfel:
Derfel depicts Montreal’s emergency rooms as extremely dangerous, crowded, COVID-infested places. Would anybody want to go to such a place, even if one were in pain? Obviously not.
Here’s the thing, though. My mom was at the Lakeshore Hospital ER in suburban Pointe-Claire yesterday. On the exact same day the article is describing. The ER was empty. My mom’s waiting time was one minute. She was admitted for appendicitis and had surgery. The place was clearly running below capacity. There were three patients in isolation for COVID. They were not in any way placed in the proximity to other patients. Of whom there were very few.
My mom is an immigrant, and she doesn’t have enough English to read Montreal Gazette. And that’s great because she hadn’t seen any of the lying stories that spread panic. As soon as she felt abdominal pain, she went to the ER. And now she is well.
But imagine how many people read this coverage, believe the lies and decide not to go to the ER, putting their lives at risk.
Shame on you, Aaron Derfel. You are a liar and a hack. You are also a bad human being.
Clarissa's Blog 
The more I read him, the more I hate this piece of shit.
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I heard that Anglos in Quebec are a lot more nervous about COVID because the English-language coverage is so much worse than the French-language coverage.
I’ve never heard of this hack journalist before but it’s unconscionable what he’s doing.
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We only know this particular story is a lie because we caught him out. But how many more lies by these so-called journalists are there?
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I don’t know but we can’t trust Derfel
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And Legault called him out for this exact thing weekend ago.
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…weeks ago….
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Wow, I had no idea. Let me know if you find a link!
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https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-the-thursday-edition-1.5569848/montreal-health-reporter-surprised-premier-criticized-his-covid-19-reporting-1.5569853
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Thank you so much! I really appreciate it.
The guy is clearly a hack with an agenda.
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There was a tweet fight between him and Alain Vadeboncoeur (I don’t like him much, but he’s not a total piece of shit) but Vadeboncoeur is a weak character so…
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No word by him about the borders mismanagement. No word by him about hassidic superspreaders.
I changed my mind: Legault was right to call him out.
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I am curious, how did your mother (or some other relative accompanying her) determine the number of Covid patients in that hospital?
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The room is divided in two with a transparent seal. You can see who’s inside. COVID patients are in one half of the ER, other patients in another.
Mind you, I’m not describing what happened in the whole hospital. The hospital has all but two floors given over to COVID. I’m describing the ER.
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As for the hospital itself, it’s the least dangerous place you can imagine. COVID patients are completely sealed off from other patients. Personnel changes their PPEs constantly. For instance, they change their gowns as they walk down the hallway literally every 30 feet.
The post-op room that’s supposed to hold 8 patients was empty. The OR was available within 15 minutes.
This means the hospital is not nearly at full capacity and definitely very safe. People need to know!
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Gave that article another careful look. The diagram/graph in the same article clearly indicates that Lakeshore is doing very well indeed, it is in the green at 52%… So here we seem to have a case of the text sloppily written in a manner that implies that since 13 staff have tested positive at Lakeshore at some point (which may as well be true), the situation there is as dire as in those hospitals that are in the red at over 100%. My own sources tell me that at least some of those hospitals that are shown in the red are indeed in the red.
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It would have cost him nothing to say, “aw, shucks, my mistake, I didn’t mean Lakeshore, I meant XYZ.” Instead, I get a group of really crazy trolls who are threatening to doxx me and calling me every name you can imagine.
This is clearly no longer about discussing the ER situation.
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“This is clearly no longer about discussing the ER situation”
Do they want you to do anything? Or is it that they simply want revenge for you outing the reporter as unprofessional at best, untruthful at worst?
I feel bad for posting that link and inadvertently bringing you such unwelcome attention. At the time, my only thought was that it might help explain why it took so long for the hospital to process your mother in Emergency. Egad!
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Oh no, please don’t feel bad! I’m very glad this happened because now we can see exactly how this kind of news is manufactured and protected.
I’ve been blogging since 2009, and today’s trolls are puny weaklings compared to the really vicious ones that used to come by in the heyday of blogging.
So please don’t feel bad. None of this is on you at all! I’m very grateful for your participation on the blog!
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The problem is with the tone… If the message were – see, this is the graph, there is shit happening in some hospitals, but this and that hospitals are still below capacity, please go there if you are in an emergency situation but can choose where you go – this would be a very useful article…
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Exactly! But the goal is to stoke panic for some incomprehensible reason. And writing a helpful, measured piece wouldn’t promote that goal.
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“problem… the tone”
Respectfully, I disagree – the reporter is relying primarily on single sources at two hospitals to give him an ‘inside’ story to add colour to his already scripted Henny Penny narrative. He’s hardly the only reporter pushing this narrative, maybe it’s the only narrative heard in the Anglo Quebec media, but I notice that counter-narratives are beginning to emerge in both the National Post and other Postmedia outlets.
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So… is this about the reporter? Like, does he have a pool of professional troll superfans? Is he really popular in Canada? Or does the guy have so much spare time that he can troll you himself? That would be incredibly lame.
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Apparently, he has a pool of really crazed fans. I think one of them is his wife but the rest seem to be strangers who really really love him for some reason.
Seriously, who could have thought that a journalist for a local city paper could have such faithful fans?
Curiously, no matter what kind of criticisms I’ve published of Trump, I’ve never been hassled by the MAGA types. And I used to be a huge opponent and wrote very critical stuff.
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That is very weird. It’s the kind of thing I would expect if I made a public facebook page and used it to criticize my crazy ex-sister-in-law. She and her illiterate alcoholic friends would descend on that like a troop of drunk howler monkeys. But you really don’t expect that from some random Canadian reporter.
Perhaps the Polite Canadians stereotype is as accurate as the MAGA Internet Trolls stereotype…
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“Polite Canadians stereotype…”
Excuse me… excuse me… v. sorry to interrupt… but I’m actually super-polite, eh?
(…but that’s not to say that our country isn’t also full of real hosers that stretch all the way from sea to sea to sea)
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Canadians are definitely less… excitable than Americans. But COVID craziness transcends cultural differences and national borders. 🙂
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Apparently the guy was singled out by Legaut who criticized his reporting about a week ago (as David also mentioned here). And it somehow became a part of Anglophone-Francophone tensions in Quebec and the guy became a hero for Anglo community…
Frankly, I personally believe that Montreal Anglos being more concerned about Covid than the Francophones has zero internal reasons, it is just a spillover of the media wars in the US. With Anglo Montrealers identifying with New Englanders and New Yorkers to a larger extent than any other Canadians do.
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OK, that really makes it clearer. I’ve been out of Quebec for too long and I don’t capture the nuance very well. Thank you for clarifying this part!
I do know that there’s been an intolerable environment created in Montreal in particular where my sister lives. People are literally at each other’s throats. There’s a vehicle that circulates up and down the street, issuing commands for people to separate in a mechanical voice. This is cruel and inhuman.
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