Locking down in Ontario and no one is happy

Ontario Premier Doug Ford is in trouble. Ford surprised a lot of people by announcing a sweeping shutdown on Monday. He's in trouble because a lot of people don't think a sweeping shutdown is necessary.

He's also in trouble because other people think the shutdown is entirely necessary, but isn't happening fast enough. Reports originally said it would start just after midnight on Thursday, but the government shifted the date until Saturday, with Ford arguing businesses needed more time to prepare.

The people who don't think the shutdown is necessary point out that most of the trouble with worsening COVID-19 numbers is confined to a few areas, in particular the city of Toronto and the regions around it. Why shut a whole province when the problem is relatively confined?

The people who think the shutdown is totally necessary say this is no time to putz around, continually trying to manage a virus that has outsmarted every previous effort to putz with it.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson is among the “why us?” crowd, upset that his city, which has relatively low numbers at present, was included in the order. “There are simply no facts to support a lockdown,” he railed.

On the other hand Anthony Dale, president and chief executive officer of the Ontario Hospital Association, is angry that Ford delayed the original starting date by two days.

“We are already hearing from hospital and health system leaders who are shocked that the restrictions will not come into effect until after Christmas.”

I guess your view on this depends on who you think has a better idea about the health needs of the province, the mayor of Ottawa or the head of the hospital association. Ford has repeatedly emphasized that he's going to listen to the “health experts,” but there are plenty of people willing to assert that some of the health experts handling the crisis have shown themselves to be in over their heads.

This conundrum has been standard for efforts to contain the pandemic since the day it began. Everyone agrees that lockdowns are bad for almost everything except slowing its spread. The economic effects are devastating, the mental health effects are worrying.

So what's the choice? If there's a working model of a successful alternative out there, one that has succeeded in defeating the virus without increasing the death toll or hurting the economy, it's found a good hiding place. Early in the crisis, much was made of Sweden's relatively liberal approach, trusting in people to take responsible measures without ordering everyone to stay home and binge-watch Swedish Netflix. But lately COVID cases have been soaring there, hospital beds have become scarce, King Carl XVI Gustaf says the government's approach has been a failure and Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says gyms, pools and other public places that had been allowed to stay open will now be ordered to close.

“We see that we need to do more because we see that the spread of the infection is too serious and we have a strained situation in the health-care system still,” he said.

Though Sweden's situation is worse than its Nordic neighbours, it's still better than some European countries that went for lockdowns right off the start. Lofven is still resisting a full shutdown on the simple reasoning that “people would not put up with that.” If you doubt his logic, just cast an eye to the south of us, where 300,000 deaths testify to Americans' refusal to let anyone tell them what to do, even if they have to bury Granny in the backyard as a result.

There have been protests in communities across Canada against shutdowns, masks and violations of the right to get sick and spread a fatal virus. A muchshared video this week shows police wrestling with a 21-year-old man in Calgary who figured his right to play hockey gave him special dispensation to ignore bylaws against large gatherings. Inevitably the cops have been accused of going too far, but since when does a mouthy 21-year-old get to dictate the rules? If he decides drunk-driving laws are too strict, does he get to ignore those?

As far as I can tell, premiers in Canada have overwhelmingly failed in handling the outbreak. Poll ratings for Jason Kenney in Alberta and Brian Pallister in Manitoba are in the dumps. Ford's shutdown looks like an act of desperation nine months into a crisis that won't go away. Even the sainted Dr. Bonnie Henry in British Columbia says personal attacks aimed at her “have been very hard” to deal with. The Atlantic provinces managed to survive by shutting out the rest of the world, but not many other parts of Canada could get away with that, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has managed to keep his numbers up by simply signing cheques and sending out money.

The reasons for all this seem apparent: We (meaning the whole world) were wholly unprepared for this pandemic. We're not sure what caused it, we can't agree on how to handle it. Just because someone is elected doesn't mean they know how to stop a virus, so they turn to “experts” who can't agree among themselves. The vast majority of deaths in Canada are among the elderly, but we've failed to provide the protection they need. Arguments that young people are largely safe would seem contradicted by an analysis published in the Journal of the American Medicine Association indicating deaths among people aged 25 to 44 “climbed to historic highs in the first few months of the pandemic,” and compare with the worst period of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

We're obviously not as smart and sophisticated as we think we are. Our expertise in dealing with unforeseen plagues seems to have advanced little since people dealt with the Black Death by just leaving town. We've simply improved the technological ability for people to complain about it. When this ends, we need a lot less moaning and a lot more effort put into devising a preparedness regime. And we better do it ourselves because waiting for others will leave us where we are now, waiting for someone else to send us a vaccine.

WE (MEANING THE WHOLE WORLD) WERE WHOLLY UNPREPARED FOR THIS PANDEMIC.

NATHAN DENETTE / THE CANADIAN PRESS Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has said his decisions are based on the advice of health experts, announced a sweeping provincial shutdown on Monday. Some say it was not needed, others say it should have been done sooner.