It’s not the time to let up on distancing

For every conversation about COVID-19, there is one common, underlying theme.

That is, people need to continue staying home when possible, and when it’s not they need to maintain a safe distance between each other.

Leave the science to the health-care providers. For the rest of us, the plan remains simple.

This week Ontario expects to reach its peak in the number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Very soon, those numbers should start creeping down day by day. The number of deaths will likely continue to rise for a while, because most of those involve cases diagnosed a week or more ago. But soon, those will decline as well. The plan appears to be working.

Of the drop in confirmed cases, Ontario’s associate medical officer of health Dr. Barbara Yaffe said “that does give me a glimmer of hope, but with some caution built in.”

What she is saying is, this isn’t the time to take our foot off the pedal. For that positive trend to continue, people need to keep avoiding people.

A report last week proved how devastating COVID-19 has been to Niagara’s economy, even in such a short time. When the virus forced closure of all non-essential businesses, it crippled tourism, one of Niagara’s most important economic engines.

All told, across the region about 11,000 people lost their employment by the third week of March when the survey was taken. In all likelihood next month’s report, based on data being gathered about now, will be more devastating.

In a video conference Tuesday sponsored by Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce, Niagara Region’s manager of economic and research analysis, Blake Landry, presented stark figures for the local tourism industry. In a normal year, he said, it reports overall revenues of about $2.4 billion. But already this year, it estimates it has lost about a billion dollars of that.

That means people put out of work, families dependent on the federal government for income assistance, and a lot of stress as people wonder what kind of future they face.

Tourism is more than just the people who staff hotels, wineries and attractions — it impacts shipping, food and laundry supply, agriculture and a long, long list of service providers.

To have any hope of saving any significant portion of the tourism industry season this year, people need to continue to isolate as much as possible to bring the COVID-19 spread under control. And across Niagara, we have generally been good about doing that.

While authorities in other regions have taken the step of charging people caught violating the province’s emergency order, there are no reports of it happening here. Niagara Regional Police haven’t issued any, and if municipal bylaw officers have done so they haven’t announced it.

That, despite a few eyebrow-raising incidents like crowds gathered near Table Rock in Niagara Falls a couple of weeks ago. Or the so-called Corona Cruise last weekend, for which nearly 100 car enthusiasts and their vehicles gathered in Port Colborne’s H.H. Knoll Lakeview Park.

It was investigated by police, but no charges were laid. Still, said Port Colborne Mayor Bill Steele, “the anxiety level of people in our community, the province and across the country is high.”

“We didn’t need 100 cars parking at our park.” Everyone is anxious. Everyone wants out of the house. We all want to go shopping, maybe take a holiday.

But we’ve come this far; maybe we’re not far from being able to say we at least have this thing under control.

We can’t let up now. Too much depends on it.