Kids’ summer camps a COVID conundrum
One of the more disheartening phenomena on display nowadays here in Ontario, as Canada’s most populous province very gradually eases COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, is a very cheap form of COVID-19 class warfare. Because golf courses and marinas are among the first businesses allowed to reopen, and because nannies and house cleaners have been allowed back to work, it’s clearly rich folks who are calling the shots — or so the story goes on social media. Meanwhile the rest of us, who just want to visit our friends and relatives, are stuck in our hovels watching the paint peel.
It doesn’t hold much water. Ontario is clearly reopening on an economic and political timeline and not an epidemiological one: we are on the downside of the (first?) curve, but other than that, basically nothing we have been told is necessary to get back to normal has been achieved, especially on the testing front. No matter: A lot of people clearly want out of their cages. Accepting that, a lot of these decisions make perfect sense.
Everyone seems to agree that people need to get outside. And at last count, golf was Canada’s most popular sport, with 20 per cent of the population claiming to be active participants. ( That’s a pretty expansive conception of the “rich.”) Ontario’s pandemic-related guidelines for golf courses include disabling shared equipment like ball washers, leaving flags in place and raising the cups above the holes: Touching the cup with your ball counts as holing it. ( I just took 10 strokes off my game!) If there’s risk involved in that proposition, it seems entirely reasonable to take in the name of keeping sane.
Businesses that have remained open throughout the pandemic include parking garages, gas stations, auto repair shops and convenience stores. Marinas are parking garages, gas stations, auto repair shops and convenience stores … for boats. Only class envy, or this strange notion that people holed up in their cottages as opposed to their primary residences are a mortal threat to the hinterlands, argues for keeping them closed.
One might also spare a thought for regular folks who provide the services in question: no one is forcing them to work, but perhaps they would like a chance to fend off poverty and keep their businesses afloat. Yes, there is risk. Yes, nothing is more important than our health — but at a certain point, “health” starts to mean something far more complex than “not having COVID-19.” Most of us seem to be well past that point, and so the last thing we should be doing is begrudging each other’s freedoms. If you want more freedom for yourself, support more freedom for everyone.
Which brings us to the question of summer camps. On Tuesday, the Ontario government scuppered the entire overnight camp season ( not something you would expect from a government in thrall to the ultra-wealthy, incidentally). Day camps will be allowed to operate subject to the approval of local public health authorities, which is both good news and bad. Last week the City of Toronto announced it was cancelling its regular summer camps and would come up with something else that will serve half as many kids — leaving some 5,000 families in the lurch.
None of this makes particularly conspicuous sense.
It is easy to imagine how a residential camp, run as it’s usually run — bunks at full capacity, buffet meals, etc. — could be an outbreak waiting to happen. It was in the summer of 2009, when the H1N1 “swine flu” flu pandemic landed at several Ontario summer camps and forced at least one to shut down. Campers were either sent home or quarantined in on- site infirmaries, but the camps managed.
Camps don’t have to run the way they usually run. Nothing else does. Mind you, H1N1 was far more harmful to young people than COVID- 19 is. There were 29 influenza deaths among children under 15 in 2009, double the five- year average. COVID-19, in contrast, hasn’t killed anyone under 19 in Canada. Most children experience only mild symptoms. In Ontario, only two people in their 20s have died from COVID-19. Between children, teenagers and people in their 20s, you have nearly your entire summer camp population. It’s both low- risk and inherently self- isolating. Managing a camp full of sick, quarantined children is a very daunting prospect — one I suspect many parents, staff, insurance companies, and perhaps camps themselves might choose to avoid — but it’s not self- evident that the choice should be taken out of people’s hands.
As for day camps, while kids aren’t at such close quarters, they will go home to their families every night — and their parents and siblings may come into contact with many other people as well. To the extent children are at risk, they will be more so at day camp than at home. The provincial government clearly and correctly realizes, especially in a reopening and recovering economy, that relatively low-cost summertime child care like day camps is an essential service. But as we reopen society, responsibility for these sorts calculations must be returned to regular people: What’s essential and what’s inessential? What’s risky and what’s safe? It’s not too early to ask why we all can’t decide for ourselves.