Coronavirus

[groundskeeper willie]

Just stay the hell out of northwestern Ontario. Is that too much to ask?  :-\

That's my biggest thing right now. If they refuse to shut things down at the very least restrict movement and travel. People from Toronto should not have been allowed to go to Aylmer last week. Everybody in Port Dover is begging bikers to stay away on Friday the 13th, but you know they're going to go anyway. There needs to be huge fines to prevent travel outside of your immediate area.

I think the problem there is that if you're not going to shut things down economically it's very difficult to shut things down socially just in terms of what that sort of thing would do to people's mental health(to say nothing of the fact that a lot of the things closed by social restrictions feed the economy).

Toronto generates a ton of tax revenue that gets spent outside of the city and the government can't keep expecting that to go on while the people in the city, who aren't getting rent breaks or being told not to work, are under the sort of pressure they've been under for months.

So while I 100% understand the desire to not see people from Toronto leaving the city right now, I think people need to realize that things are pretty tense here at the moment and there probably needs to be broader relief than just "You can't leave Toronto".

Things are tense everywhere. Anti mask protestors going to Aylmer doesn't improve anybody's mental health. Nobody's getting rent breaks, and precarious finances have been a problem province wide through all this.

If people in Toronto need to do something socially to reduce their stress they have access to more amenities than any other part of the province without needing to leave the city. Bikers flooding small towns when mayors and health officers are desperately saying not to does more overall harm than the minor mental relief it provides a small percentage of the population. If small communities have an outbreak they lack the medical resources to cope with even a small surge.

Just because Toronto is the economic hub of the country doesn't mean the rest of the country is their playground.

 

[Kin]

If people in Toronto need to do something socially to reduce their stress they have access to more amenities than any other part of the province without needing to leave the city.

I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to here but during a period of heavy restrictions then most things within the city itself are likewise closed. Especially with winter months approaching that will intensify as even most outdoor activities will become unrealistic.

Just because Toronto is the economic hub of the country doesn't mean the rest of the country is their playground.

No but by that same token the rest of the country can't expect Toronto to just keep humming along with no disruptions to their cash flow with these sorts of restrictions popping up every few months.

I mean, I could be reductive here too and say that it's very noble of small town folk to say they're happy to keep taking our money but not our covid but that's not particularly helpful.

 

[groundskeeper willie]

If people in Toronto need to do something socially to reduce their stress they have access to more amenities than any other part of the province without needing to leave the city.

I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to here but during a period of heavy restrictions then most things within the city itself are likewise closed. Especially with winter months approaching that will intensify as even most outdoor activities will become unrealistic.

Just because Toronto is the economic hub of the country doesn't mean the rest of the country is their playground.

No but by that same token the rest of the country can't expect Toronto to just keep humming along with no disruptions to their cash flow with these sorts of restrictions popping up every few months.

I mean, I could be reductive here too and say that it's very noble of small town folk to say they're happy to keep taking our money but not our covid but that's not particularly helpful.

What do you think people in small communities are doing right now that people in Toronto are being forced to miss out on? Everybody is restricted in their social life. It's not like the residents of Port Dover are going to have a big Friday the 13th party by themselves and are just saying people from Toronto aren't allowed to go to it.

The restrictions are the same for everybody. Stay home, only go out for essential reasons, limit social contact as much as possible. There's no part of those restrictions that include any reason for anybody to be traveling anywhere.

The GTA is headed for a lockdown eventually one way or another. Right now it's just a matter of how much of the rest of the province they take down with them. It would be better for everybody if the rest of the province can stay open and keep as much of the provincial economy going as possible.

 

[Kin]

What do you think people in small communities are doing right now that people in Toronto are being forced to miss out on?

I mean, it's not so much a question of what I think so much as it is the specific differences in what each level of the Province's covid framework allowsd for the communities in them. There's a pretty big difference between red and green for the purposes of what people are allowed to do. While these aren't all entirely consequential, some of them can have real impact, especially in winter months when the more relaxed rules for outdoor meetings don't apply.

The GTA is headed for a lockdown eventually one way or another. Right now it's just a matter of how much of the rest of the province they take down with them.

I feel pretty confident that Toronto wouldn't be "brought down" by another lockout, thanks for the concern, but regardless my point was never "people in small towns are having a better time of things" although, obviously, because of the way diseases work they've had fewer cases proportionally which I'd like to think would lead to marginally less stress than places where there are far more cases but I guess that's up to each individual.

My point was just that just having significant social restrictions probably isn't a viable strategy if the province/federal government expect the city to keep working the way it's supposed to for the good of the entire country and that if another lockout is inevitable, they probably have to figure out a way to make it an economic shutdown as well and have that load shouldered collectively as well otherwise the disease will probably continue to spread at high rates within the city which will bring things to a halt economically regardless.

 

[herman]

So no, I wouldn't characterize it as locking down the entire populace.

What I'm trying to point out is that this pandemic isn't easily controlled, and that it's easy to take shots at politicians...but exactly what would herman do differently, and based on what evidence?

I mean I don't want to speak for herman but I imagine the answer is... what Manitoba just did. No one is saying everyone should be locked inside their homes for the next 3-6 months.

I'm no government official or policy maker, but it's their job to solve these types of problems. They can attack the root cause, mitigate consequence, and/or develop remediation. With COVID, at a provincial and municipal (and even federal) level, the only available option is mitigating consequences from the front (prevention) and back (reducing impact).
- Limit the spread: mask mandates, distancing mandates, restrict/remove hot spot options
- Support the vulnerable with more resources in the social safety net
- Bail out food/service sectors
- Incentivize the reduction/cessation of rent and utility costs
- Ramp up testing and tracing
- Financially penalize anti-maskers severely enough to help fund the above
- Put some stronger marketing oomph into the messaging: propaganda is an effective tool (ever seen those WSIB workplace injury videos?)

Whatever Ontario has done has been like taking only 70% of your antibiotics because you got tired of taking them, or only chopping off the hand when the gangrene is up to the elbow. Partial measures simply lead to resentment without the benefit of actually stopping anything.

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/nbarrowman/status/1326347902034251776

 

[Bender]

https://twitter.com/nbarrowman/status/1326347902034251776

Ash is definitely a voice worth listening to.

 

[Bullfrog]

No but by that same token the rest of the country can't expect Toronto to just keep humming along with no disruptions to their cash flow with these sorts of restrictions popping up every few months.

I mean, I could be reductive here too and say that it's very noble of small town folk to say they're happy to keep taking our money but not our covid but that's not particularly helpful.

I'm not in a small town, but in a fairly isolated community. Almost every case here was a result of locals travelling to Toronto and back (I say "was" because community transmission might be starting.)

I don't think you're being very reductive. Small town folk will probably be glad for the province to give TO billions of dollars to stay the hell home.

 

[herman]

Ash is definitely a voice worth listening to.

She is far more polite than I would be about this.

One of the things that really struck me from the presentation of that framework is there was a slide that showed the list of priorities. And there were five or six different priorities listed there: limiting the spread of COVID, avoiding closures, keeping schools and child care open, maintaining our health-care capacity, protecting vulnerable populations. They can?t all be priorities. We need to prioritize within that. We have to decide, because we can?t do all of that right now. And so we have to identify what our true priorities are and recognize that not everybody is going to be happy.

But if we focus on remedying the spread of COVID, keeping our schools and child care open, and protecting vulnerable populations, then the other priorities follow. We can figure out how to reopen our businesses, and we can figure out how to restart the economy, but we can?t do it all at once. The problem right now is we?re trying to do everything and please everyone, and we just don?t have the capacity or the infrastructure in place right now to do that.

 

[L K]

We still don't have a lot of COVID in the area that I work but I also work in a hospital that has consistently run at nothing short of 117% capacity for the last 6 months.  We are 1-2 nurses getting sick away from not being able to staff units. CCAC/LHIN/PCOT/Home Care has a 4 week wait list on urgent cases to initiate services.

In the spring and summer we had pleas for physicians to offer to provide nursing support in some of our hardest hit nursing homes because we didn't have nurses. 

The half assed measures that are being done right now are going to fall flat on our face when the infrastructure collapses. 

Flu shot uptake in our community is sitting at around 46%.  It's usually pretty crap to begin with but it is worse than in previous years.  We are getting a trickle of supply from Public Health on a week by week basis where they don't let us know how much we are getting until the day of the shipment so we can't plan for flu shot clinics/drives because we legitimately don't know if we are getting 10 vials or 100.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

https://twitter.com/celliottability/status/1326543640127176705

4th time in the past 5 days that a new daily record high has been set.

Also not super excited that my city is starting to get mentioned in these.

 

[Arn]

Interesting to read this about how you guys are experiencing things. It seems to be that it's turning into a battle of health v economy when I think we all know economy = health. (Poverty = really bad health)

In Northern Ireland we are on the last day of what they called a "circuit breaker" which lasted 4 weeks. (I hate that name). Basically we'd reached a point where we had more people in hospital and in ICU than we had had at any point in the first wave back in March/April. Our hospitals were showing to be around 110% capacity.

The first 2 weeks coincided with school holidays so for those 2 weeks the only things open were "essentials" like supermarkets etc. The schools went back and still we had bars, restaurants, hairdressers etc shut down.

Now our attempt at a government can't decide what to do. The law expires at midnight tonight. Bars and restaurants etc have no idea whether to order in food/drink/put their staff on rotas.

The health minister has a report that says the restrictions need to be extended by 2 weeks.

The economy minister says we need shops. restaurants, hairdressers to reopen.

They held a vote. All parties except one (the DUP who have the economy portfolio in our PR powersharing Government systems) voted to extend the regulations by 2 weeks.

But because of our unique historic religious conflict situation we have a "petition of concern" or a veto that parties can theoretically use to ensure that any laws that are proposed cannot unduly impact one side of the community (so if someone brought in a law saying protestant people couldn't be employed as teachers the veto could be used).

The Democratic Unionist Party used this veto to stop the 2 week extension of the lockdown regulations.

So not only has a virus now been politicised, but it's also been religioucised now

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/theherleburly/status/1326619298060754951
I don?t know this podcast but is Ontario sitting on unallocated funding?

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/balancing-the-budget-is-no-longer-a-priorty-due-to-covid-19-ontario-premier-says-1.5146825

The FAO also discovered that $9.3 billion of the government's pandemic aid package has yet to be spent, leading to accusations of penny-pinching by the premier's staunchest critics.

Of the $21.9 billion in spending increases tracked by the watchdog, $6.7 billion in the Health Sector Response Fund and the Support for People and Jobs fund and $2.6 billion in the standard contingency fund has yet to be spent.

 

[princedpw]

Interesting to read this about how you guys are experiencing things. It seems to be that it's turning into a battle of health v economy when I think we all know economy = health. (Poverty = really bad health)

In Northern Ireland we are on the last day of what they called a "circuit breaker" which lasted 4 weeks. (I hate that name). Basically we'd reached a point where we had more people in hospital and in ICU than we had had at any point in the first wave back in March/April. Our hospitals were showing to be around 110% capacity.

The first 2 weeks coincided with school holidays so for those 2 weeks the only things open were "essentials" like supermarkets etc. The schools went back and still we had bars, restaurants, hairdressers etc shut down.

Now our attempt at a government can't decide what to do. The law expires at midnight tonight. Bars and restaurants etc have no idea whether to order in food/drink/put their staff on rotas.

The health minister has a report that says the restrictions need to be extended by 2 weeks.

The economy minister says we need shops. restaurants, hairdressers to reopen.

They held a vote. All parties except one (the DUP who have the economy portfolio in our PR powersharing Government systems) voted to extend the regulations by 2 weeks.

But because of our unique historic religious conflict situation we have a "petition of concern" or a veto that parties can theoretically use to ensure that any laws that are proposed cannot unduly impact one side of the community (so if someone brought in a law saying protestant people couldn't be employed as teachers the veto could be used).

The Democratic Unionist Party used this veto to stop the 2 week extension of the lockdown regulations.

So not only has a virus now been politicised, but it's also been religioucised now

I don?t believe it is the economy vs health.  A hard lockdown now, together with economic support for those out of work, can suppress the virus, keep people financially solvent, and then allow businesses to resume in a month.

In contrast, no lockdown (or additional restrictions) now means cases continue to climb to the point that hospitals are overwhelmed and a lockdown is unavoidable anyway, but many more have died or suffered serious health issues.

 

[CarltonTheBear]

https://twitter.com/jyangstar/status/1326702215998922755
https://twitter.com/jyangstar/status/1326882062750638081

 

[Arn]

I don?t believe it is the economy vs health.  A hard lockdown now, together with economic support for those out of work, can suppress the virus, keep people financially solvent, and then allow businesses to resume in a month.

In contrast, no lockdown (or additional restrictions) now means cases continue to climb to the point that hospitals are overwhelmed and a lockdown is unavoidable anyway, but many more have died or suffered serious health issues.

I would agree, but unfortunately it feels like by making a virus a "political" thing that's how the arguments are now being played out (here in the UK and in some other regions; others have not politicised it so much and handled it better) rather than seeing a balance between all sorts of issues.

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/jkwan_md/status/1326905556737658880
Countries that have prioritized public health over short term economic impacts still have an economy

 

[Kin]

Yeah, I feel like the "If you're so smart, what do you want Doug Ford to do?" question has been more or less answered with just listening to public health officials.

 

[Bender]

Yeah, I feel like the "If you're so smart, what do you want Doug Ford to do?" question has been more or less answered with just listening to public health officials.

Right, I mean we have a lot of data to run on now to make smart decisions and almost every step of the way virologists, epidemiologists and public health officials have got it right far more than they've got it wrong.

 

[OldTimeHockey]

Well, if the goal was to beat Quebec in cases in one day, Ontario's pulling away.

I'll agree that the response to this pandemic has been used a political tool far too often. Both sides are guilty of it.
Really, at this point, I don't care about sides. I just want them to make the right decisions. Any unnecessary businesses should be shuttered or moved to curb side immediately.