Experts say they’re staying home for Christmas, and so should you
Hush pervades normally busy shopping period
“Awful is what we got. And so I think we really need to think about not ‘what do we need to be happy’ but ‘what do we need to do to not make it much, much worse’.”
TORONTO— Christmas holidays will be strange this year. Where streets would teem with crowds during the holiday rush, a hush now pervades as many Canadians opt to stay home, per most provincial COVID-19 orders. And instead of raucous house parties, families will have to opt for a small dinner, accompanied by a phone call or a video chat with distanced relatives.
It is an ‘ awful’ way to spend the holidays — but necessary, several experts have told the National Post — as Canada nears the end of its 10th month of the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected at least half a million Canadians and killed 14,275.
“Awful is what we got,” said Dr. Colin Furness, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto. “And so I think we really need to think about not ‘what do we need to be happy’ but ‘ what do we need to do to not make it much, much worse’.”
Over the last two months, provincial guidance on whom Canadians may spend the holidays with has been relatively consistent — limit celebrations to members of the same household, most premiers advise, or if someone lives alone, form a two-household bubble.
Ontario and Quebec, the two provinces hardest hit by COVID-19, will implement lockdowns, starting on Dec. 26 and Dec. 25 respectively, intended to tamp down a surge in infections.
Premiers of British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan also stressed that residents keep celebrations within their households or celebrate outside with others to ensure social distancing.
Atlantic Canada, which
Dr. Colin Furness Epidemiologist
has reported fewer COVID19 cases, is the only region where residents are permitted to mingle with members of other households with few restrictions. In Nova Scotia and P.E.I., Canadians can host indoor gatherings of up to 10 people, whereas in New Brunswick and in Newfoundland and Labrador, as many as 20 people may gather indoors.
If you’re making plans for the holidays, only do so if it aligns with the rules set by local public health authorities, stressed Francoise Baylis, a bioethicist at Dalhousie University. “If the rules do not accord with what you are planning, you should not be having that conversation in the first place.”
“There’s no place where I think the rules are too strict,” Baylis said. “In some cases, I think quite frankly, that the rules aren’t strict enough.”
Despite the relatively lenient restrictions in her province, Baylis has taken a prudent approach to her own holiday plans.
“My daughter (who lives in Denmark) will not be able to join us for Christmas” for the first time ever, she said.
Instead, the two have settled on a different way to spend the holidays together — watching ‘A Christmas Carol’ in their respective living rooms, and for Christmas dinner, exchange menus so they can enjoy the same meal in two different places.
“It’s not the same, it will be different,” she said. “But we’ll be able to have a conversation and we’ll be able to have the same meal.”
Furness, who lives in Ontario, one of the two Canadian provinces worst-hit by the pandemic, agreed that it’s necessary to follow the rules, even if the individual risk of contracting the virus is low. “The risk is to the entire population,” he said, “and the people who get infected over the holidays may not have a hospital bed in January.”
A survey released last week by Advanis, a Canadian research agency, found that nearly one-third of households in Ontario and in the Prairies (Manitoba and Saskatchewan) still plan to host family members from outside the household, ‘albeit a smaller number of people than usual.’
“I think people need to understand … COVID transmission is heavily asymptomatic,” Furness stressed. “So when I say that you could be lower risk, you can’t assess that risk. It’s still invisible to you.”
People are also “terrible” at estimating personal risk, added Azim Shariff, a social psychologist at the University of British Columbia. Shariff explained that our estimation is often clouded by an optimism bias — a belief that the personal chances of experiencing a negative event are lower than others — that lowers, in our perception, the risk of contracting the virus.