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Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

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Re: Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

#31

Post by richardlblair »

motohagiography wrote: post #26

Reading this upon just arriving home from finding one of my remaining Toronto staple restaurants boarded up after 30+ years in business. (The Rooster, piri piri chicken place at bloor/ossington) I get the sense on the street that the credibility of these orders and the authority behind them is diminishing. It's been a year of data, analysis, effects, and now even vaccines/treatments for the minority of vulnerable peo…

Layer in the fact that it's not even a real lock down, so it will have minimal impact on the number of new cases.

If they need to lock us down (and in the process hurt business) fine, but actually lock us down. These half measures hurt people, businesses, and on top of it don't really do much to help the hardest hit cities.

Re: Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

#32

Post by Scramblejams »

space_fountain wrote: post #18
corry wrote: post #7

I'm not close enough to the data to know -- so am asking HN -- but why are schools being kept open? Is it because truly there is low risk on transmission that way (and this holds true for new variants too)? Or is this just to avoid the negative drag on worker productivity caused by kids staying home? In other words - how political is the decision to keep schools open? Should concerned parents still keep their kids ho…

Schools are indeed quite safe. The younger the safer, but generally children get sick less and are vanishingly unlikely to end up in the hospital or die. There's also evidence that schools haven't been a big transmission sites for covid probably because while teacher to teacher transmission is as big a problem as anywhere teacher student and student student transmission isn't that likely. The other side is that closi…

I'm very skeptical that schools are quite safe.

See https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1346362159446577154

Some key quotes:

Here is a study carried out across >200 countries that showed that among all interventions studied, closing educational institutions was the 2nd most effective. Importantly, the impact on R was similar for pre-school, primary & secondary school settings.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0

Another study of >131 countries showed that among different interventions studied, one of the highest changes in R (R ratio) between introducing an intervention & lifting it was for school closures:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

There are more good quotes and citations in that thread, it's worth a read.

Anecdotally, the amount of times I've been sick since my daughter enrolled in public school has been mind-blowing. The notion that kids are somehow impervious to contracting this, or don't bring it home to vulnerable family members, would mean this virus behaves very differently from all the other upper respiratory diseases commonly seen out there. That's certainly possible, but based on what I've observed -- for example, I'm 99% certain the coronavirus vector that got me was a child -- it just doesn't pass the smell test with me.

(Edit: Moved this from downthread)

Re: Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

#33

Post by chc »

908B64B197 wrote: post #22
undefined1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Florida vs California is telling. FL mostly stayed open and didn't do much worse than CA, despite Florida's much older population.

Per capita or overall?

Per capita. Florida did anomalously well given its seemingly poor handling of the situation. It's likely related to the fact that California has 3 of the 10 biggest cities in the US while Florida has 0, but that doesn't seem like enough to fully explain it.

Re: Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

#34

Post by iujjkfjdkkdkf »

908B64B197 wrote: post #28
iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's part of the point. Initially I couldn't understand why ostensibly right wing premiers in Ontario and Quebec were to pro-lockdown. But when you see how much the interests of bigger businesses are being served, basically removing all their competitions, it makes more sense. There are fewer lobbying efforts on behalf of smaller business (and none on behalf of people who just want quality of life) to the b…

The curfew rules some places have is interesting. That type of policies wouldn't fly in America.

I can't believe people are accepting it in canada either. I'm hoping that people will start to push back more as restrictions move from temporary to systematic, but so far I see very little evidence of this. Possibly just because the media refuses to cover it.

Re: Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

#35

Post by lsllc »

olyjohn wrote: post #11

The way at which we are opening up here in Washington State, you'd think that Covid was gone. But now here we are with double the cases we had when we originally shut down, and we're opening things back up. It's like we did all the previous shutdowns for nothing... like all that we did to isolate, work from home, etc was for nothing. It makes it feel like we were wrong to shut down before, and that it wasn't even nec…

It's exactly the same here in Massachusetts, 7-day averages have been trending up from a low back at the beginning of March -- for both cases and hospitalizations, yet they're opening up more and more and we just got rid of our travel ban (quarantine order). FWIW, MA also doing fairly well compared to most states with vaccinations, although eligibility for the general population isn't until 4/19.

MA COVID Data 3/31: https://www.reddit.com/gallery/mhfxi4

(courtesy of /u/oldgrimalkin on /r/CoronavirusMA).

Re: Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

#36

Post by lhorie »

guyzero wrote: post #25
lhorie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: In hotspot regions like Toronto, the new measures are very similar to restrictions that are already in place. At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Health Minister Christine Elliott said that the province did not issue a stay-at-home order like the one from the start of the year, because the last time officials saw that it had "tremendous ill effect on children and adults." Many stores were already doing curb…

The Achilles Heel in Ontario's policies have been a lack of mandated paid sick days, so people in warehouses are going in sick and at no point closing down large store or warehouse-type workplaces where the bulk of the transmission is happening. This is nowhere near enough and is very much a token effort without making any meaningful change. The Ford government refuses to actually spend any money to ameliorate the ef…

I mean, I'm always all for better worker rights, but are you saying they had better sick leave policies mid last year?

Because my understanding is that that's roughly when social gatherings restarted and coincidentally when infection rates started to rise again. I'd argue that social distancing protocols at places of business are more strict now than they were then, and I'm not sure better sick leave policies necessarily would help, since a lot of transmission is asymptomatic, and I don't imagine anyone in their right mind is going to allow a visibly sick person to be up and about at a workplace regardless of sick pay.

Re: Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

#37

Post by 908B64B197 »

iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #34
908B64B197 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The curfew rules some places have is interesting. That type of policies wouldn't fly in America.

I can't believe people are accepting it in canada either. I'm hoping that people will start to push back more as restrictions move from temporary to systematic, but so far I see very little evidence of this. Possibly just because the media refuses to cover it.

> Possibly just because the media refuses to cover it.

You mean the government funded state medias? Yeah right...

Re: Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

#38

Post by 908B64B197 »

chc wrote: post #33
908B64B197 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per capita or overall?

Per capita. Florida did anomalously well given its seemingly poor handling of the situation. It's likely related to the fact that California has 3 of the 10 biggest cities in the US while Florida has 0, but that doesn't seem like enough to fully explain it.

Density and demographics are two interesting points.

SF and LA are pretty dense in some areas, and not very car-friendly.

Florida skews heavily toward relatively well-off retiree who might already be a little more socially distanced than the norm.

Re: Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

#39

Post by [deleted] »

908B64B197 wrote: post #38
chc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per capita. Florida did anomalously well given its seemingly poor handling of the situation. It's likely related to the fact that California has 3 of the 10 biggest cities in the US while Florida has 0, but that doesn't seem like enough to fully explain it.

Density and demographics are two interesting points. SF and LA are pretty dense in some areas, and not very car-friendly. Florida skews heavily toward relatively well-off retiree who might already be a little more socially distanced than the norm.

[deleted]

Re: Ontario to enter four-week, province-wide Covid-19 shutdown on Saturday

#40

Post by undefined1 »

chc wrote: post #33
908B64B197 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per capita or overall?

Per capita. Florida did anomalously well given its seemingly poor handling of the situation. It's likely related to the fact that California has 3 of the 10 biggest cities in the US while Florida has 0, but that doesn't seem like enough to fully explain it.

maybe, but in terms of density overall;

CA: 253.9 residents per square mile

FL: 397.2 residents per square mile

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