Officials should share the blame

Re: Editorial: COVID restrictions — A few bad apples = thousands of lost jobs, Oct. 10.

The position of the Citizen's editorial board, and the Doug Ford government, on the cause of the new restrictions is only half the story. Certainly, some of this is about “a few bad apples” being reckless, but that's a convenient scapegoat. It's also about failures of governance and messaging.

Messaging from provincial authorities has been consistently inconsistent and contradictory. Wear a mask, but go back to bars and restaurants to help Ontario small businesses. Keep to your social bubbles, unless you're at a wedding or a banquet hall or a casino. If your directions are clear as mud, don't be surprised when people have a hard time following them.

We have known since before the province moved to Stage 3 that indoor bars and restaurants are significant drivers of COVID-19 spread. In early July, a JP Morgan analysis showed that the best predictor of a surge in cases in the U.S. was a rise in credit-card use at restaurants in the weeks before. Reopening bars and restaurants was a huge gamble, one we saw breaking down in real time in Florida and Arizona as Ontario reopened. But the province was unwilling to spend the money needed to support high-risk businesses or expand testing and contact tracing to a level sufficient to deal with the higher risk.

It's easy for Ontario's chief medical officer, Dr. David Williams, to blame people for poor judgment. But if Ontario's leaders are looking to apportion blame for renewed restrictions, they should start by looking in a mirror. Cameron Climie, Ottawa