Careening To The Precipice

Yesterday, Doug Ford announced that all schools in Ontario will be closed until January 25th. Bruce Arthur writes:

There go the schools, and maybe it’s ironic. This is, after all, the province that refuses to learn anything as the pandemic spreads, and the way it’s failing the test has been predictable as a result. On Thursday neither the premier nor the education minister bothered to be the ones to say that Ontario schools will stay virtual through Jan. 25, save for the seven northern health units that have yet to be overrun. For parents, it’s a last-minute blow. A lot of people are scrambling again.

But it’s just one symptom of Ontario’s failure, and now we’re at the point where the province needs to make the hard choices. Either this province pairs the closures with actual lockdowns — which means no more skin-care product manufacturers open, after first-wave essential businesses included a private jet manufacturer — or the health-care system probably falters in a lot of places, and more besides.

The province's health care system is close to collapse:

There are backup morgues in London and Windsor, and a field hospital in Burlington, and record numbers everywhere you look: daily cases, active cases, hospitalizations, ICU patients, and deaths — 89 on Wednesday, a single-day high for the entire pandemic.

In the southwest, patients have been transferred from Windsor to Sarnia and Chatham-Kent. Peel was sending patients as far away as Barrie before Christmas. Within weeks, the bubble could stretch to Sudbury.

And, if the health care system fails, everything else folds. Ford's government was warned this could happen. And it has.

Image: NPR