National Post (National Edition)
Lockdown monkey could be a tricky beast
At last, Ontario is going to start reopening its economy. Either Monday or Tuesday of next week, Premier Doug Ford is expected to announce an end to the stay-at-home order and a reintroduction of the province's colour-coded restrictions system, according to information coming out of Queen's Park.
That will mean reopening areas like Ottawa, eastern Ontario and northern Ontario first, followed by later reopening for areas with higher COVID-19 caseloads, such as Toronto and some GTA municipalities. Expect the new plan to follow the same pattern as the province's staggered reopening of schools. The government is expected to allow all retail to reopen, perhaps with a slightly tighter capacity limit of 20 per cent.
That's welcome news for people whose jobs, businesses and mental health have been suffering from a provincewide lockdown now in its sixth week. It will worry those who believe that the Ontario lockdown hasn't gone on nearly long enough.
Ford's announcement will be an overdue return to rational, measurable standards for pandemic restrictions, but it will be interesting to see how he explains it.
Ford routinely tells the public that he only acts on the advice of the chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams. That could get sticky because Williams said earlier this week that businesses wouldn't be reopening until daily case numbers are down to 1,000 and there are no more than 150 COVID patients in intensive care in the entire province. While the daily case totals have fallen by more than half since the lockdown, intensive-care numbers have declined more slowly. As of Thursday, the seven-day average case number was 1,599 and 323 people were in ICU.
Based on the criteria that Williams cited, Ontario could stay locked down indefinitely. A decision to ease the lockdown has to take into account more than just health-system numbers. It's a difficult point to make when pandemic case and death numbers are in the news daily and the broader economic and psychological toll is more difficult to calculate and only sporadically reported.
We do know that Ontario's small businesses have been hit hard by government restrictions. While certain big box stores remain open, smaller retailers and other independent operators remain closed, not because they were unsafe, but because people in government speculated that they might be.
Only 37 per cent of Ontario small businesses are fully open, the lowest percentage in the country, according to Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Next week's reopening plan should finally address their call for fairness.
While Ford's decision will be popular with some, he can expect considerable blowback. An Angus Reid Institute poll released this week shows that only 26 per cent of Ontarians think the province's restrictions go too far. A further 29 per cent think the current rules are about right. But the largest group, 46 per cent, says even stronger rules are needed. That's the highest percentage in the country.
The concern is understandable. While one can make a strong case for easing Ontario's most recent wave of COVID restrictions, the wild card is the variant versions of the virus that are now appearing. They are considered more contagious and can certainly push case numbers up again. That's a risk that will have to be monitored closely. Williams is certainly worried about the impact of the variants. He doesn't want to see a reopening followed by a big case increase, followed by another lockdown.
No one does, but an extended lockdown would be more tolerable if people had any reason to believe that vaccines would soon have the virus under control. Thanks to the epic ineptness of the federal government's vaccine procurement, Ontarians are not in that happy position. The Ontario lockdown is buying time at great economic and societal cost, but it is wasted time in terms of vaccinating the masses.
Ontarians are going to have to live with COVID for longer than anyone would like. Realistically, we need to find the acceptable balance between case numbers and the need for people to work and lead some kind of a life. When it comes to the balance scale, a lockdown and stay-at-home order is the equivalent of one of those 800-pound gorillas Doug Ford likes to talk about. It's time to get the monkey off Ontarians' backs.