So a Canadian is feeling the extreme mental exhaustion caused by the stupid COVID paranoia in his country and goes to Florida for a vacation: Josh Freed: Florida feels like another planet compared with Quebec | National Post

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.

Welcome to the Free Gunshine State!

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 .

Uh oh, right off the bat we start with the name-calling.  If we are so dangerous, what the fuck did you come South for? You could have gone to the safety of New York.

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.

And they have about the same amount of protection as the Fully Masked Canadians according to the new version of the settled science.

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

That ugly and disgusting word for the Whipped Ones: Choose.

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

Canadians are now unfriendly assholes who believe death is just a handshake away? Dude, you guys need to get several grips.

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.

I think the locals call them “dumbasses.”

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

You paralyze a country because of the “Coof,” you need your propaganda services to keep injecting fear or people may end up starting to ask difficult questions.

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?”

Damn, imagine that! Nobody is giving two shits about the hysteria. How dare them Floridians!

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.”

With a population that has come or has relatives in South America where people have been known to die of dysentery (Shitters) for decades upon decades, I believe the laxative has a bigger importance in the news line up.

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.”

Well shit, Miami is still the South, and you don’t mess with a man’s dog!

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

There you go, exactly what I mentioned above about feeding the fear.

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.

And people concentrated in what? Less than 10% of your territory? And I am not going to even ask about the age ranges.

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.

You call it bubble; we call it isolation cage like monkeys.

In Florida, entire conversations happen without the C-word mentioned, unless you bring it up.

Life goes on. Life is to be lived with the least amount of fake misery.

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.”

There again, that scary idea: Choice. I believe the author must have shat himself right there.

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

For Floridians, the “collective responsibility to protect others” means we get the guns out and patrol our neighborhoods after a hurricane has gone by to keep the looters away. And God have mercy on the souls of the assholes who want to rob the “abuelitos” next door. The gators will be well fed.

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 .

Ouch. That must have hurt, but that is what truth does.

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

Well shit, now that is a real pandemic. Florida is not perfect, and I don’t believe there is a vaccine to protect us from them.

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.

And you still believe that those suspended individual rights will come back? Hell son, the rest of the rights should be going to hell soon. And Fifth wave? Are you guys that dumb that you don’t see how deep a screwing are you getting?

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.

If you can’t legally invite people to your home, it is not your home. I hope you realize that. The government now owns it and owns you.

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.

And you still do not get the idea: It is not that Florida is against testing or vaccines or mask or treatments against the Chink Flu. Everything is recommended strongly and easily available, but nothing is mandated or forced upon anybody. To quote from your own article:

“Our philosophy here is: I look after myself and you look after yourself.”

And that has to be a terrifying concept for whipped dogs Canadians like yourself.