When it comes to COVID, Tom Walkom writes, half measures won't work:
Either we are fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, or we are not.
There can be no half measures.
Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s medical officer of health, made essentially the same point Tuesday when she ordered the city’s restaurants and bars to continue banning indoor dining for another 28 days.
Yes, the ban was hard on Toronto’s eateries, she said. But evidence showed it was having an effect on the spread of the virus. Why give it up now?
That's the hard lesson behind this ugly situation:
Too often, politicians ignore this. Take, for instance, Toronto’s misguided effort to encourage winter patio dining.
This is based on the fact that the virus is less likely to spread out-of-doors. That in turn leads to the reasonable conclusion that in the warmer seasons patio dining can be safer than in-house dining.
And if it is safe to eat outside in warm weather, shouldn’t it be equally safe when temperatures are cool — particularly if the patios are enclosed and heated?
The short answer is no. If patios are enclosed and heated, they are no longer outside. Put simply, outdoor patios can work in winter only if they are, to all intents and purposes, indoors.
More to the point, an emphasis on encouraging Torontonians to engage in more patio dining contradicts one of de Villa’s central recommendations: to reduce as much as possible all contact with those outside one’s immediate household. As de Villa writes: “That means limiting in-person activities outside the home to essential activities only.”
Businesses need direct government support to stay afloat. In Ontario's budget, there are sweeping plans for tax cuts -- the usual conservative strategy for economic health. But that strategy gets things backward. Non-existent businesses cannot take advantage of government tax cuts.
Projections suggest that there will be 6.000 new cases a day in Ontario by mid-December. We're getting it wrong.
The virus comes first. The economy comes second. We can't split the difference.
6 comments:
When the Ontario Medical Association, Nursing Association and Hospital Association have all written to Ford complaining that his new colour-coded system is grossly inadequate, you've got to wonder what the hell is going on. Half of Toronto's Covid cases come from institutions under heavy government regulation: schools and daycares (22%), LTC and retirement homes (18%) and healthcare (10%).
We're back to shocking conditions in seniors homes, with Revera's Kennedy Lodge in Scarborough reporting 92 Covid-positive residents and 29 Covid deaths since October. How many deaths will it take for the government to properly regulate or eliminate the private LTC sector?
Instead of following the effective New Zealand and Australian playbook, Ford and his lackey Dr. Williams are now aping the half-measures that spectacularly failed in the US and England. Stop listening to "business leaders" and listen to the public health experts. As you say Owen, we can't split the difference.
Cap
Exactly, Cap. We haven't got our priorities straight.
Owen, I was recently forced to look into long-term care for a relative. Doctors were recommending LTC as his condition was declining, so I called the home they recommended. I found out that daytime staff consisted of one RPN to push meds and two PSWs to wake, bathe, change and feed 32 residents. Night staff consisted of one PSW. An MD visited once a week. I was appalled.
We ended up asking the doctor to declare my relative palliative. This allowed additional funding to flow from the local health network and gave him the support he needed to stay in his retirement home. I wouldn't send my dog to a LTC home. As Mound and others have pointed out, these conditions have existed for a long time. I don't understand why police aren't charging the management of places like Kennedy Lodge with criminal negligence causing death. Even if management were eventually acquitted, a strong message to smarten up would have been sent to the industry.
Cap
We used to believe that, in Canada, the government did a better job of providing certain services than the private sector, Cap. Then we drank the Kool-Aide, convinced private enterprize always did a better job than the government.
COVID has exposed that myth as pure balderdash.
With the exception of Gandhi; Churchill was the greatest orator of the nineteenth century.
Without his intervention WWII would not have extended beyond mainland Europe.
as inspirational as his words were his actions before and after WWII were far from what he preached.
Great words and great actions vary and have indeterminable results.
TB
True, TB. But this surely is a time when our actions must match our oratory.
Post a Comment