What happened to Ford’s promised pandemic transparency?
OK, this is getting ridiculous. The Ontario government and public health officials know exactly where the COVID-19 hot spots are, down to the postal code, but they don’t want to tell us what areas we should avoid.
We’re expected to follow every order to stay home, don’t visit our parents, don’t sit on park benches, keep kids from their friends, all to avoid the coronavirus, but apparently we can’t be trusted with information about exactly where COVID-19 is doing its worst.
The coronavirus has ravaged Ontario’s long-term-care homes, which have been closed to visitors for months, but what — and where — are the actual risks outside those settings?
Despite Premier Doug Ford’s vow of transparency, that he would tell us everything he’s being told to justify the emergency measures and virtual lockdown imposed in March, the public is not being told what he, his cabinet and public health experts all know.
The reason for keeping us all in the dark about the known danger areas is, get ready for it, stigma! The people in charge of protecting us all during the pandemic are worried that providing the postal codes of infection hot spots will stigmatize those neighbourhoods.
With zero proof of any such stigmatization, or apparently any thought of developing a plan to combat the prejudicial behaviour they fear, our leaders and public health officials decided to protect the reputations of some neighbourhoods and put everyone at risk.
Giving people the information the government is sitting on would allow them to avoid COVID-19 hot spots and reduce their risk of exposure, but, of course, that doesn’t mean the risk would be reduced to zero everywhere else. There will be cases of the coronavirus lurking in other areas of Ontario, but obviously the risk of exposure in non-hot spot areas would be reduced.
Ford publicly talked Monday about some areas “lighting up like a Christmas tree” during the COVID-19 outbreak, including Brampton, WindsorEssex, Scarborough, and the Toronto neighbourhood of north Etobicoke, which the premier represents.
It appears Ford wasn’t worried about stigmatizing his own riding by identifying it as a COVID-19 hot spot, but he is concerned about the reputations of other Ontario communities in the same circumstances. I fail to see the logic, because there is none.
Toronto accounts for nearly twothirds of known coronavirus cases in Ontario. Other areas have had few cases of COVID-19, including many smaller, rural communities and the city of Kingston. Everyone deserves to know the rates of infection in all areas of the province, and the extent of testing done in each area as well, so we know what the data are based on.
Obviously, more testing is needed to clearly identify where the coronavirus is spreading, and where new outbreaks occur, but we’ve already identified neighbourhoods at risk that would be best avoided, if possible, for the time being.
The information about the COVID-19 hot spots is crucial for everyone as we start to reopen the economy and people start returning to work in bigger numbers. A company may decide to delay the end of working-from-home measures if its office is in an area with an outbreak, and workers in higher risk groups would know it’s best for them to stay home even as others return to the job.
The premier needs to return to his earlier position that the public deserves to hear all the information he’s hearing about COVID-19, and that includes the known virus hot spots. Anything less is a needlessly dangerous betrayal of the people who elected him.