Opening things up doesn’t solve problem
Maya Labbé is “constantly rotating between three rooms” in her house.
The Toronto high school student describes her situation like this: “I’m in my bed. I walk to my desk where I spend all of my day. By the end of my virtual classes, I do homework and then I eat dinner. I feel like I’m living the same day over and over again.”
This is probably because she is living the same day over and over again.
Many of us are. However, on Tuesday, Feb. 16, this will cease to be true for Labbé because, like her peers in Toronto, York Region and Peel, she’ll be returning to a physical classroom.
The kids are going back to school. (For now at least.)
“I’m sort of excited to go back, obviously, to see friends and be learning that way,” says Labbé, alluding to in-person learning. “But I’m also a little nervous. I don’t know if the city is ready for all of us to be going back. We might be going a little too early. I honestly don’t think we’ll be staying for very long. I think we’ll be going online again soon.”
I think she’s probably right. You don’t have to be a doctor to question the wisdom of the provincial government’s recent announcement to ease restrictions in the province and move March break to midApril, when some experts predict we’ll be smack dab in the middle of a third wave of COVID-19. (The postponement is also arguably unkind and unfair to teachers and students who were desperately looking forward to the imminent break.)
But, if you are a doctor, chances are you question this wisdom, too.
“Instead of deferring March break to April 12, it makes more sense to delay economic reopening,” ICU physician Dr. Michael Warner wrote on Twitter this week. “Time is needed to: 1. Vaccinate the vulnerable. 2. Evaluate the impact (of variants of concern)/reopening on transmission. 3. Make paid sick leave happen 4. Catch up with nonCOVID health care.”
Warner is one of several high-profile doctors and epidemiologists sounding the alarm about the Ford government’s easing of restrictions amid the detection of highly transmissible variants in Toronto and Ontario. Reopening is always risky but the variants are a terrifying new wild card.
That said, when it comes to schools, few people deny kids should be inside them. The benefits of in-person learning (formerly known as going to school) to their mental and physical health are extremely well documented. So is the long list of negative impacts of their being at home.
Again, few doubt this. What many of us do doubt, however — from top doctors to high school students in poorly ventilated buildings — is that the provincial government has done enough to plan for a safe and successful transition back to school. Or, for that matter, for a safe and successful transition back to any semblance of normal life.
This is a government that consistently urges people to stay home — in 22 different languages no less — yet, time and time again, refuses to implement the measures that would enable Ontarians to actually heed their advice.
Yes, I’m talking about paid sick leave and I’m not the only one. Groups to recently demand the provincial government legislate paid sick leave immediately include the Association of Local Public Health Agencies (representing 34 public health units), and earlier this month, the overwhelming majority of Toronto city council.
It’s well and good to talk up the benefits of sending kids back to school but, if you’re not willing to do the work to keep them there, honestly what’s the point?
We can’t beat this thing with a half-assed effort. Every avenue and every corner of society must be accounted for and protected or they are all vulnerable to infection.
I’m not a fan of political coups but, in light of their recent popularity, I do wonder what it would be like if coups were staged not by gun-toting whackos, but by nerds.
Imagine, for example, if epidemiologists temporarily overthrew the provincial government in order to manage the pandemic on their own without the interests of big business breathing down their necks.
Sure, we’d have a new problem on our hands (the death of democracy), but maybe the pandemic would sooner cease to be one of them.
For now we have no choice but to leave COVID-19 in the hands of the people we elected. Which, for Maya Labbé, may mean a hasty return to the three-room rotation. “Once we’re gonna open things up,” she says, “I think we’ll need to go into lockdown again.”
I hope she’s wrong. But I doubt it.