Most of the provinces have been engaged in pandemic response theater. The core issue is hospital capacity, and the provinces across the board have failed to improve or address the issues in their healthcare systems.
Quebec has adopted a particularly theatrical set of of responses (curfews, this latest insistence on vaccine "passports" for stores), but I don't think anyone really expects these to be anything more than theater and moves for public appeasement.
I agree. Hospital capacity is critical. One of the biggest mistakes of the pandemic is leaders not being clear on exactly what problem they're trying to solve and laying out how a manageable list of mitigations address the specific problems.
Assuming that you're a software engineer in some kind of capacity because it's HN. If we put it into Big-O terms, reducing transmission via whatever means affects the exponent of the spread, whereas adding hospital capacity is a linear response. At a certain quantity adding hospital capacity makes sense, but at some point you can't beat the dynamics of the situation and the required hospital capacity can quickly grow hundreds of times beyond what exists, if, that is, you don't contain the spread.
The price differential between corporate chain grocery stores and big box stores reminds me of that between convenience stores and said grocery stores.
I'm wondering if a big box store went completely delivery-only (close all stores) with a minimum order of say $300, would profits go up or down. I'm wondering if it would be possible to guesstimate P&L close enough in each scenario to find the overall more likely capital-efficient business model.
A major criticism of the first wave of lockdowns was how it advantaged the big box stores. Walmart, because it sold groceries, was allowed to stay open, while smaller Walmart competitors were restricted to curbside shopping. I suspect this policy is largely a response to that criticism.
