Pandemic policy a battle for balance
Hindsight is 20/20, and it's easy to be right after the fact. But looking back at Ontario's 28-day Boxing Day shutdown, there can be no doubt now that Premier Doug Ford was right to include Ottawa.
Since the Christmas holidays, COVID-19 infections have risen astronomically, prompting a recent warning from medical officer of health Dr. Vera Etches that Ottawa was approaching the “grey zone,” a level that involves a full lockdown. “Ottawa's COVID-19 levels are dramatically higher since before the holidays: 3X the rate of infection, highest yet — we are deep into the `Red' zone and approaching `Grey' territory; 3X the per cent of tests coming back positive; 2.5X the hospitalizations … ” Etches tweeted. “If we do not reduce the number of close contacts that enable COVID-19 transmission, our hospitals will not be able to maintain services and the number of deaths will increase.”
And this with the city in shutdown for the past three weeks.
We will never know how much worse the situation would have been if Ottawa had been spared the shutdown, as Mayor Jim Watson and Etches wanted. But what we can be sure of — and what we should take from this experience — is that when it comes to fighting the pandemic, there are no perfect decisions, just the best decisions under the circumstances. Which is what Ford did.
When the premier made the decision to include Ottawa in the shutdown, the city indeed had one of the lowest infection numbers in the province. On Dec. 21 when Ford made his announcement, Ottawa reported 31 new cases. By Christmas
Eve, it was 62. The cases per 100,000 people for the city were at 29.2 with a testing positivity rate of 1.2 per cent.
Ottawa was a model of compliance, successfully keeping infection rates low. Based on the numbers at that time, Watson and Etches were not entirely wrong to criticize Ford for lumping Ottawa in with hot zones in the GTA, where infections were running wild. Watson was worried about the impact of the shutdown on small businesses and the local economy as a whole, and he was right to be. “There are simply no facts to support a lockdown in the city of Ottawa,” he said.
True at the time, but COVID-19 infections are not about moments in time. You have to look at the big picture. Besides, Ottawa is not an island. It's a big city in a large region where people freely come and go, with a wide-open border with West Quebec. COVID-19, of course, doesn't know boundaries, and there are no lines it won't cross. Ford was concerned that despite Ottawa's low numbers the virus could spread from other places; better to err on the side of caution with a blanket shutdown. As January came, the city's numbers started to go through the roof and Ford's fears may have been justified. Over the first seven days of the month, Ottawa's infection rate per 100,000 people was 82.6 and its testing positivity rate was 4.7 per cent. Compared with December, this is a nightmare, and no wonder Etches sounded the alarm.
Clearly, the second wave of the pandemic has turned out to be as bad as predicted, and now we are in a new state of emergency. But the truth about fighting COVID-19 is that the choices are never straight or clear-cut. What's right to one group is wrong to another. A decision one group likes grates on the other. What one wants, the other doesn't. Getting the balance right is a constant battle. The city of Ottawa's initial differences with Ford show how difficult the issue is to navigate.
There've been significant missteps in handling the pandemic, most egregiously the continuing failure of the provincial government to protect seniors in long-term care homes. But given the soaring COVID-19 numbers in Ottawa, Ford's instinct on a shutdown turned out to be right. If there's a singular thing we've learned — or must learn — about COVID-19, it's that the moment you relax, it gets you.