Two lost months, and for what?

Toronto’s hipster community finds itself among the ranks of world-renowned COVIDiots, as the COVID-insufferably-self-righteous like to call them, thanks to a weekend get-together: Trinity-Bellwoods Park, in the city’s shabby-chic Queen West neighbourhood, was full of young men and women behaving scandalously. The camera can play tricks with perspective, and I have seen no census of the attendees, but certainly more than a few people not of the same household were conducting conversations at less than two-metres’ distance. Few if any appeared to be wearing masks, not that they’re required to.

They will find no defence here, exactly. But I don’t share the outrage, and I don’t think the outrage is properly aimed.

Human beings need to get outside and socialize. They have breaking points, and many are very understandably at them. (An aside: I can’t help noticing how many people venting fury on social media have also treated their followers to images of their back-patio office setups, or updates on their new vegetable gardens.) There is also no surplus of parkland in downtown Toronto. Photographic evidence suggests other neighbourhood greenspaces were very busy as well, though not to the same extent.

In other words, this was always going to happen. So the time is long past when politicians like Ontario Premier Doug Ford or Toronto Mayor John Tory should be able to cluck their tongues or stamp their feet at such people and expect their constituents to nod along in solidarity.

Jurisdictions facing significant COVID-19 outbreaks had one finite period of time in which to try to knock this bastard virus down. After that period of time, the socioeconomic costs of the shutdown would become unsustainable and the economy would have to reopen. We’re seeing that happen all over the world right now: in essence, countries are rolling the dice. If they did well in the allotted time, fewer people will have to die in the name of getting back to normal.

The federal, Ontario and Toronto governments have not done well — certainly not to any extent that justifies their leaders’ soaring approval ratings.

The feds have been abysmal since even before Day One, with Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam actively downplaying the threat. We shipped 16 tonnes of personal protective equipment to China with no viable plan to replace it. Whatever you think of travel bans as an anti-pandemic measure, the government undermined its own credibility by insisting they don’t work, then changing course 180 degrees over the course of a weekend. Most astonishingly, the feds at first utterly failed to communicate the most basic advice to returning travellers

— advice such as “don’t stop for groceries or at the pharmacy on your way home.”

And Tam’s initial ludicrous “masks don’t work” narrative has grudgingly evolved to support the use of non-medical masks “where social distancing is not possible.”

But the federal government’s official advice on “safe shopping” — indeed the entire web page titled “COVID-19 and food safety” — still doesn’t mention masks, even as the berth shoppers give each other seems to narrow by the day. This anti-mask stance seems to be ideological, bred in the bone.

At Queen’s Park, Ontario’s public-health boffins have of late been wondering aloud if they have a communications problem. Do they ever. For weeks upon weeks they insisted the sorts of people who were getting tested in other jurisdictions didn’t need to get tested in Ontario — a dead-obvious ruse born of a shortage of tests. Now they’re testing far below lab capacity — which is itself not very impressive — and can’t understand why no one’s showing up to get tested.

On Monday, Ford said everyone who had been at Trinity-Bellwoods should get tested. He was contradicted by his own public-health officials. Meanwhile, the government’s online self-assessment tool says what it has always said: Don’t go get tested unless you’re referred by a doctor or a Telehealth agent. Hopeless.

Toronto, meanwhile, watched as cities all over the world repurposed lanes of traffic for outdoor recreation — and shook its head disapprovingly. Closed roads inevitably lead to street parties, public health officials explained. Belatedly, grudgingly and half-assedly, as is its wont, the city has come around, declaring certain thoroughfares “quiet streets.” Knowing Toronto Public Health, it will probably conclude from the Trinity-Bellwoods incident that it was right all along.

It is gratifying to see fewer and fewer people awarding our governments participation medals for their terrible-to-middling performances. At 480 deaths per million population, Quebec is roughly halfway between France and Italy. At 144 deaths per million, Ontario is in the same league as Portugal (130). These numbers are vastly higher than any other province. When it comes to testing, no Canadian jurisdiction is in the big leagues: Alberta leads the provinces with more than 54,000 tests per million; Quebec is next at 46,000. Denmark is at 94,000, New York State 89,000, Massachusetts 78,000, Spain 76,000.

Mass testing and contact tracing, we are still told, are prerequisites for reopening COVID-afflicted economies. We don’t have them; there’s no reasonable prospect of us having them; and we’re reopening anyway. There is no way around it. That doesn’t excuse what happened at Trinity-Bellwoods, but it’s a useful reminder of what’s to come, like it or not. Govern yourselves as you see fit.

TORONTO WATCHED AS CITIES ALL OVER THE WORLD REPURPOSED LANES OF TRAFFIC FOR OUTDOOR RECREATION — AND SHOOK ITS HEAD.