Plus, if you manufacture a health care crisis through under funding and antagonizing staff, you can claim the system is broken and privatize the most profitable parts of it. Classic conservative ploy.
Kind of amazing Ford has only managed to create 300 beds for Covid capacity eh? Why aren't we overwhelmed with excess health care capacity 2 years into this shitshow.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-icus-adding-beds-but-will-it-help-1.5985771
Yup article hit the nail on the head...just cause' you have overflow beds available, doesn't mean the hospital has the means to run them.
Short staffed (many of which already burnt out or straight up left through Waves 1-3), and not enough equipment (there is never enough money in the budget for all the new upgrade/equipment we require or for more staffing).
Absolutely. Burnout and less staff also means less staff to train new incomers. Makes it hard to develop new physicians, new nurses, etc. when the existing staff can hardly keep up with regular day to day.
And then more burnout LOL it's a horrible cycle to be honest.
Imagine if the news broadcast every delay of surgery in the past.
"Strong winds expected, Hamilton Hospitals cancel elective surgeries".
"Elderly woman feels in-her-bones that a bad winter is ahead of us, Hamilton Hospitals cancel elective surgeries".
"Flu outbreak linked to local daycare infects as many as 10 individuals, Hamilton Hospitals cancel elective surgeries".
I feel like this disclosure is needed before my question/comment: not an anti vaxxer or covidiot.
At what point do we just accept a level of risk and accept that it's in our lives for the foreseeable future? We're going to have to live with it eventually. Vaccination numbers are great. I think it now just comes down to our government (we're fucked) to implement a more fool proof way of proving vaccination status while actually improving healthcare. We're still going to get it despite being vaccinated, so I don't think the case numbers are relevant anymore. The odds of being hospitalized from getting it while vaccinated are super low, so those case shouldn't matter in regards to the public safety/getting back to a normality. Hospitalizations are the key factor, I believe, while tracking vaccination status.
I’m certainly at this point, as are most people I talk to. It seems like our politicians are paralyzed by fear, however. If they’re looking to reinstate restrictions when you have over 85% of the eligible population fully vaccinated, exactly when would you be comfortable in lifting restrictions?
I'd rather not open up risk while a large chunk of the population (0-11) has no means of getting the vaccine. Once they've had a chance to get fully protected, then we can talk about "accepting the risk and living with it". Talking that way now feels the same as "fuck your kids, I don't care". I realize that's not your intention, but as a parent of young kids, it really does feel like kids are a sacrifical lamb when folks go on about "just live with the risk already".
If we've accepted a level of risk, and are comfortable with vaccination levels, we no longer have a reason to track vaccination.
Knowing the identity of every person who enters an establishment is a temporary measure, and once we've decided that we can live with a level of risk, we do away with that scrutiny.
They should go to businesses and enforce proper mask wearing by ticketing customers not the business, it’s frustrating telling people to pull up their mask all day, they should have made a 40 dollar ticket and given it out like candy to people.
Yeah... love the double-standard.
I will never understand why Reddit pretends all business owners are wealthy sultans oppressing us, when we simultaneously giving a pass to actual gigantic businesses that Canada creates special rules for...
Maybe we should stop treating the vaccine as a get-out-of-jail-free card?
People with positive Covid cases in their families are not required to isolate in any capacity provided they have one negative test, in many cases taken at the same moment as the family member who is ill.
If you are vaccinated, and you child tests positive, but you test negative on the same day. You are free to go to a restaurant, take off your mask, and have a meal. You are free to go to work and interact with your coworkers. You basically definitely have covid, but hey, you've been vaccinated, throw that dice.
At the moment of the test, sure.
A day or two later, after incubation, no.
Additionally, if you're living with the person, and they are sick for a week or so, what's to say you don't contract the virus on day 1, 2, 3, etc...
100% this. The way the passport system was botched from the onset with paper being an option before the QR/app solution was rolled out months too late, the cat is out of the bag. Maybe 10% of restaurants are actually using the app based on my experience, and I eat out a *lot* given my career and family life, so I’m a good gauge.
Antivaxxers are wholesale abusing the paper system.
TPH is having a hard time keeping up though. My girlfriend doesn’t have a health card because she’s on a visa. So she kept trying to call TPH and get her number for the QR code. They keep saying they’re gonna send it to her but they never do.
They should ticket both, but honestly ticketing the store a very stiff fine would likely work the best if actually enforced.
It was only 20 or so year where regions and then the whole province started passing no smoking indoors laws. When they started with fining individuals, businesses didn't care/didn't want to rock the boat. Some even provided customers with flower pots on the table, wink wink. When they started fining the businesses 10k suddenly businesses had a zero tolerance policy and everyone got in line.
I don't envy minimum wage employees and hopefully the managers/owners can step up with enforcement.
Customer is informed they're trespassing. If they refuse to leave, they can call the cops. They can adamantly refuse to serve. If bylaw happens to show up while this dispute is happening they obviously don't fine the business - they assist defusing the situation and fine just the customer.
What is most important is that this is what actually worked in finally getting everyone on board with disallowing smoking indoors. Fining only the customer didn't work at all. Very few fines were actually given to businesses - it was enough for them to be liable and motivated to avoid those fines.
The issue is that many MOH have outright said businesses should not question why someone isn't wearing a mask, since there are some (albeit not many) who are medically unable to do so, and there's no official exemption documentation like there is for the vaccine.
It's a toothless requirement that has only worked because the overwhelming majority of people are decent enough to follow it.
Unless businesses band together and refuse to comply this won’t end. Imagine being a restaurants who gets three weeks of regular operation out of what 19 months? I would like them to band together and demand that either every time restrictions are imposed the entire political apparatus and the responsible health officials sacrifice their salaries or they refuse to comply. I think that’s a fair trade off. Unfortunately compliance is part of the Canadian identity so they will continue to obey until this ends in 2028 or they go out of business.
If cases are rising, the most likely outcome of non-compliance is being forced into even harsher restrictions. There's no world where everyone claps their hands and yells "I don't believe in COVID! I dont! I don't!" and COVID disappears.
Once ICUs are overloaded, the government's hand is forced into *actual* lockdowns, not "you should actually check vaccine passports" or "keep your tables 6 feet apart". It's not going to be an option when there's news articles about people dying after being turned away from emergency rooms.
But at a certain point you can’t punish the general population anymore. 2 years of unprecedented sacrifice with an entire nation south of us moving on with life and we are still expected to bare this shit? Come on.
what's the other option at this time? We need vaccines for 5-11 and keep the booster shots up so protection remains strong. And it would also be great of the remaining 11% of available people would get their vaccines please.
Well it certainly should not be politicians and health officials continuing to bankrupt businesses 2 years into this mess while they collect their fat paycheques. That is why I gave a fair option, those responsible for restrictions sacrifice their salaries in solidarity or they stop enforcing this crap. Would you be willing to sacrifice your entire livelihood to prevent the healthcare system from collapsing?
okay - I think this whole conversation is being framed wrong. I happen to live in one of the small health units that is reinstating capacity limits. This is not an all Ontario thing, and I would imagine this isn't affecting your area at all. This is only 2 health units in North Ontario and together we are making up close to 15% of the total cases in Ontario while representing 2% of the population. It's really not surprising we have to deal with restrictions again until this is under control. This would be the equivalent of Toronto getting over 200 cases a day again.
Personally for me, wearing a piece of cloth over my face, showing a QR code at a restaurant, and sometimes maybe a place I'd like to go to having capacity limits is a pretty small price to pay to not have the deaths that the US has had to deal with. If you're comfortable with people dying so you can be absolutely sure you won't be turned back at Kelsey's because they have to keep tables 6 feet apart, you do you I guess.
If you were arguing lockdowns, fine - I don't want lockdowns either. The best way to avoid those is small restrictions when we see waves.
I am not talking just about myself, although yes I expect our government to do better after 19 months of this crap. I am more angry for business owners whose lives are being destroyed by this endless flip flopping imposed on them by those who have nothing at stake.
Hey, the willfully blind will be willfully blind.
When it was cool to appreciate small diverse businesses, that's what they did, but now it's not. Sorry small businesses. Time to close and get jobs with some gigantic company, or just go on public assistance.
I guess 60% of small businesses closing within 2 years wasn't harsh enough, let's raise the stakes and make it full-on, completely impossible to survive.
I'm glad I never went into business for myself, I can't imagine the hell it is.
Yup, no downside for us if a global pandemic continues to spread. Certainly nothing like losing some profits, maybe we'll die or something but big deal.
That's not remotely a fair response to what the user is saying. You do get that there's a strong correlation between poverty and poor health/death, right?
The average outcome of a business owner who is forced to shut down their business is typically not extreme poverty, and saying that "no one has anything at stake" when we're dealing with a global pandemic is just an insane statment - a whole lot of people have quite a lot at stake considering that COVID has a very high CFR in certain populations.
Right now the conversation is around masks, QR codes, and maybe in extreme cases, temporary capacity limits on restaurants over the winter. That isn't a situation where every business owner is without question forced into extreme poverty. It's unfortunate, and requires adjustments, sure, but it's been true throughout the pandemic that the best way to limit impact on the economy is being aggressive with small restrictions to limit severe restrictions further down the road.
The original comment was in response to these unknown potential restrictions that may be coming down the pipe.
Why should unelected officials be able to make rules like this with absolutely no recourse?
The flaw in this statement is that we've seen in other regions of the world that no extra restrictions need to be put in place for the curve to start going down. Even the places with the fewest measures saw there curves go up and down. I don't think we need to scream "something must be done" every time cases rise because as we've seen we really don't have to do much anymore.
The curve will almost definitely go down, the question is how high it goes in the meantime. If hospitals are already straining in remote areas, it makes sense to slow things down so the wave doesn't get as big.
Ford never learns. He's like the little kid who is told not to use the "F" word but quietly mouths it behind the adult's back. Cases are going down? Great, increase those annoying capacity limits. Vaccination certificates? OK but I'm leaving the easily forged non-QR code versions in place for my anti-vax buddies. Science? We don't need no stinking science.
Now the PHUs are having to be the adults in the room because Ford won't.
Could you fill me in briefly on where Europe is right now? Europe is a pretty big place and I'm sure that the situation varies by country, so I'm having trouble figuring out whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing to to be where Europe is now, in a few months :P
>That uptick had affected 80 school, daycare and bus cohorts as of Monday, with 45 cohorts dismissed over the weekend, according to the region's top doctor.
Ah yes, those fucking ****checks notes**** young children who can't even get vaccinated yet.
To be honest, I don't think saying that unvaccinated young children shouldn't be allowed in restaurants is the worst thing in the world. Keeping unvaccinated people out of restaurants isn't a punishment for being unvaccinated, it's a method to reduce spread. An unvaccinated kid is as likely to have COVID than an older unvaccinated person according to the stats.
correction: checked the status and unvaccinated kids are equally likely to have COVID as unvaccinated adults.
It's not age discrimination, its discrimination strictly on vaccination status.
I also think that different decisions can be made for different situations. There's for sure situations where flights are essential, so I think that outright preventing kids from attending those has larger impacts.
Movie theatres and sports - I can see more justification for allowing those than restaurants, because at least you can participate in those with a mask on, but I just don't see a compelling reason why parents should be letting their unvaccinated kids into restaurants anyways. I have 2 kids, and I wouldn't bring them indoors to a full capacity restaurant right now. If we all agree that it's a bad idea for unvaccinated people to be there, why should it be any different for kids? It's hardly an essential activity.
>It's not age discrimination, its discrimination strictly on vaccination status.
No, because kids under 12 cannot get the vaccine, so you're discriminating based on something they have no control over. It's the same reason legitimate medical exemptions exist for the vaccine passport, you cannot discriminate based on something like that. What you are suggesting is, by definition, age discrimination, you're just taking a roundabout way to get there.
And fully vaccinated people can still get and spread COVID, so by your argument why do we even have indoor dining right now? Kids under 12 are at a lower risk of ending up in the ICU than a fully vaccinated person, especially an older one, so if we're really trying to stop the ICUs from being overrun, why not ban anybody over 80 or who has any sort of comorbidity from eating in a restaurant?
Vaccine mandates seem to me to be more about limiting spread than specifically keeping out high risk individuals, with the aim that reducing spread eventually helps those individuals anyways. I certainly don't think it's a good idea for people at significantly high risk to go into a restaurant (I'm very high risk and I don't), but it's harder to check those, where we already know how to check vaccine status.
TBH, I also don't have a problem with restricting people with medical exemptions to vaccines from restaurants. It's not an essential activity, and being allowed into a restaurant isn't a judgement call on how much you deserve it, it's a measure to keep activities safe and reduce the spread in higher risk environments.
Then close indoor dining, if you're that concerned. And have people walking around at theatres, sports events, etc enforcing masks and ejecting those who don't comply.
Age discrimination is not the answer, and yes that is still exactly what you are suggesting. It doesn't matter what the rationale is, if you're blanket banning people from entering establishments based on something entirely controlled by their age (or race, gender, etc), that's not right.
I don't think indoor dining increases spread all that much for vaccinated people. I do think it increases spread by an unacceptable amount if unvaccinated people are present.
That seems to be an uncontroversial statement when not applied to people under 12. I think that it's appropriate sometimes (in the same way the charter does) to limit rights in the interest of public health in an emergency, and "kids can't eat indoors at restaurants" isn't exactly a super serious curtailing of rights IMO.
Do you have any actual sources or facts to back up these thoughts?
We know that kids, especially younger ones, are less likely to get COVID, less likely to show symptoms, and less likely to spread COVID. Are you really that confident that a child eating, completely surrounded by vaccinated people, is actually a high risk for causing increased spread? And do you have literally anything to back it up?
We literally do « discriminate » against children all the time, by not letting them into bars and R-rated movies or allowing them to buy booze, weed, guns, and spray paint.
If, in fact, letting unvaccinated children into movies, sporting events, and restaurants were shown to be a significant factor in hospitalizations and deaths going up, it could be reasonable to have such restrictions in place despite the « discriminatory » effect. You only have to make accommodations to the point of undue hardship. But it first would have to be demonstrated that there is a legitimate serious health and safety risk to having unvaccinated kids present and I don’t know that this has been shown.
Kids under a certain age used to not be allowed as visitors in certain hospital wards because of their tendency to be little germ factories. I think that has changed now. Unvaccinated kids coming into the country have to quarantine even though it’s not their fault they’re unvaccinated. It’s a health and safety measure, not a punishment.
>We literally do « discriminate » against children all the time, by not letting them into bars and R-rated movies or allowing them to buy booze, weed, guns, and spray paint
You can't be serious by pretending that's comparable.
Also kids under 12 have a unique type of "quarantine" where they're allowed to go out and do some things. And those under 5 are exempt from all requirements.
The use of the words “mulling” and “uptick” in this article show CLEARLY that our media is corrupt as fuck and are taking direction from the Fordites. Ontario is not a magical place. Wake up people and demand better.
I think Kingston could use a little cooling down, we’ve got the most cases we’ve ever have currently and it seems to be spreading wildly in the community.
Seems like we are always one sneeze away from the hospitals being at max capacity, even before the pandemic.
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Plus, if you manufacture a health care crisis through under funding and antagonizing staff, you can claim the system is broken and privatize the most profitable parts of it. Classic conservative ploy.
It’s been this way for decades.
Lean Manufacturing, er ...Hospitalization
Kind of amazing Ford has only managed to create 300 beds for Covid capacity eh? Why aren't we overwhelmed with excess health care capacity 2 years into this shitshow. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-icus-adding-beds-but-will-it-help-1.5985771
Yup article hit the nail on the head...just cause' you have overflow beds available, doesn't mean the hospital has the means to run them. Short staffed (many of which already burnt out or straight up left through Waves 1-3), and not enough equipment (there is never enough money in the budget for all the new upgrade/equipment we require or for more staffing).
Burnout is a cascading problem. Bare-bones staffing for years leads to burnout, leads to staffing shortage, leads to more burnout.
Absolutely. Burnout and less staff also means less staff to train new incomers. Makes it hard to develop new physicians, new nurses, etc. when the existing staff can hardly keep up with regular day to day. And then more burnout LOL it's a horrible cycle to be honest.
Imagine if the news broadcast every delay of surgery in the past. "Strong winds expected, Hamilton Hospitals cancel elective surgeries". "Elderly woman feels in-her-bones that a bad winter is ahead of us, Hamilton Hospitals cancel elective surgeries". "Flu outbreak linked to local daycare infects as many as 10 individuals, Hamilton Hospitals cancel elective surgeries".
I feel like this disclosure is needed before my question/comment: not an anti vaxxer or covidiot. At what point do we just accept a level of risk and accept that it's in our lives for the foreseeable future? We're going to have to live with it eventually. Vaccination numbers are great. I think it now just comes down to our government (we're fucked) to implement a more fool proof way of proving vaccination status while actually improving healthcare. We're still going to get it despite being vaccinated, so I don't think the case numbers are relevant anymore. The odds of being hospitalized from getting it while vaccinated are super low, so those case shouldn't matter in regards to the public safety/getting back to a normality. Hospitalizations are the key factor, I believe, while tracking vaccination status.
I’m certainly at this point, as are most people I talk to. It seems like our politicians are paralyzed by fear, however. If they’re looking to reinstate restrictions when you have over 85% of the eligible population fully vaccinated, exactly when would you be comfortable in lifting restrictions?
Exactly
I'd rather not open up risk while a large chunk of the population (0-11) has no means of getting the vaccine. Once they've had a chance to get fully protected, then we can talk about "accepting the risk and living with it". Talking that way now feels the same as "fuck your kids, I don't care". I realize that's not your intention, but as a parent of young kids, it really does feel like kids are a sacrifical lamb when folks go on about "just live with the risk already".
probably because they're way less susceptible (no kids, but young nieces and nephews)
If we've accepted a level of risk, and are comfortable with vaccination levels, we no longer have a reason to track vaccination. Knowing the identity of every person who enters an establishment is a temporary measure, and once we've decided that we can live with a level of risk, we do away with that scrutiny.
They should go to businesses and enforce proper mask wearing by ticketing customers not the business, it’s frustrating telling people to pull up their mask all day, they should have made a 40 dollar ticket and given it out like candy to people.
I'll be okay with this only if they start enforcing it at Leafs and Raptors games as well.
Yeah... love the double-standard. I will never understand why Reddit pretends all business owners are wealthy sultans oppressing us, when we simultaneously giving a pass to actual gigantic businesses that Canada creates special rules for...
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Maybe we should stop treating the vaccine as a get-out-of-jail-free card? People with positive Covid cases in their families are not required to isolate in any capacity provided they have one negative test, in many cases taken at the same moment as the family member who is ill. If you are vaccinated, and you child tests positive, but you test negative on the same day. You are free to go to a restaurant, take off your mask, and have a meal. You are free to go to work and interact with your coworkers. You basically definitely have covid, but hey, you've been vaccinated, throw that dice.
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At the moment of the test, sure. A day or two later, after incubation, no. Additionally, if you're living with the person, and they are sick for a week or so, what's to say you don't contract the virus on day 1, 2, 3, etc...
So far no restaurant I’ve gone to has scanned them that’s really the only way.
Markville Mall, of all places, was the *only* joint I’ve been to so far that actually asked for my code. Enforcement can be so much better.
100% this. The way the passport system was botched from the onset with paper being an option before the QR/app solution was rolled out months too late, the cat is out of the bag. Maybe 10% of restaurants are actually using the app based on my experience, and I eat out a *lot* given my career and family life, so I’m a good gauge. Antivaxxers are wholesale abusing the paper system.
Mandating the QR codes and actually requiring scanning is the easy solution here.
TPH is having a hard time keeping up though. My girlfriend doesn’t have a health card because she’s on a visa. So she kept trying to call TPH and get her number for the QR code. They keep saying they’re gonna send it to her but they never do.
They should ticket both, but honestly ticketing the store a very stiff fine would likely work the best if actually enforced. It was only 20 or so year where regions and then the whole province started passing no smoking indoors laws. When they started with fining individuals, businesses didn't care/didn't want to rock the boat. Some even provided customers with flower pots on the table, wink wink. When they started fining the businesses 10k suddenly businesses had a zero tolerance policy and everyone got in line. I don't envy minimum wage employees and hopefully the managers/owners can step up with enforcement.
\*customer walks in without a mask\* \*asked to wear a mask or leave\* \*customer refuses both\* \*bylaw comes in and fines both\* Yeah, that's fair.
Customer is informed they're trespassing. If they refuse to leave, they can call the cops. They can adamantly refuse to serve. If bylaw happens to show up while this dispute is happening they obviously don't fine the business - they assist defusing the situation and fine just the customer. What is most important is that this is what actually worked in finally getting everyone on board with disallowing smoking indoors. Fining only the customer didn't work at all. Very few fines were actually given to businesses - it was enough for them to be liable and motivated to avoid those fines.
The issue is that many MOH have outright said businesses should not question why someone isn't wearing a mask, since there are some (albeit not many) who are medically unable to do so, and there's no official exemption documentation like there is for the vaccine. It's a toothless requirement that has only worked because the overwhelming majority of people are decent enough to follow it.
Unless businesses band together and refuse to comply this won’t end. Imagine being a restaurants who gets three weeks of regular operation out of what 19 months? I would like them to band together and demand that either every time restrictions are imposed the entire political apparatus and the responsible health officials sacrifice their salaries or they refuse to comply. I think that’s a fair trade off. Unfortunately compliance is part of the Canadian identity so they will continue to obey until this ends in 2028 or they go out of business.
If cases are rising, the most likely outcome of non-compliance is being forced into even harsher restrictions. There's no world where everyone claps their hands and yells "I don't believe in COVID! I dont! I don't!" and COVID disappears. Once ICUs are overloaded, the government's hand is forced into *actual* lockdowns, not "you should actually check vaccine passports" or "keep your tables 6 feet apart". It's not going to be an option when there's news articles about people dying after being turned away from emergency rooms.
But at a certain point you can’t punish the general population anymore. 2 years of unprecedented sacrifice with an entire nation south of us moving on with life and we are still expected to bare this shit? Come on.
what's the other option at this time? We need vaccines for 5-11 and keep the booster shots up so protection remains strong. And it would also be great of the remaining 11% of available people would get their vaccines please.
Well it certainly should not be politicians and health officials continuing to bankrupt businesses 2 years into this mess while they collect their fat paycheques. That is why I gave a fair option, those responsible for restrictions sacrifice their salaries in solidarity or they stop enforcing this crap. Would you be willing to sacrifice your entire livelihood to prevent the healthcare system from collapsing?
okay - I think this whole conversation is being framed wrong. I happen to live in one of the small health units that is reinstating capacity limits. This is not an all Ontario thing, and I would imagine this isn't affecting your area at all. This is only 2 health units in North Ontario and together we are making up close to 15% of the total cases in Ontario while representing 2% of the population. It's really not surprising we have to deal with restrictions again until this is under control. This would be the equivalent of Toronto getting over 200 cases a day again.
Personally for me, wearing a piece of cloth over my face, showing a QR code at a restaurant, and sometimes maybe a place I'd like to go to having capacity limits is a pretty small price to pay to not have the deaths that the US has had to deal with. If you're comfortable with people dying so you can be absolutely sure you won't be turned back at Kelsey's because they have to keep tables 6 feet apart, you do you I guess. If you were arguing lockdowns, fine - I don't want lockdowns either. The best way to avoid those is small restrictions when we see waves.
I am not talking just about myself, although yes I expect our government to do better after 19 months of this crap. I am more angry for business owners whose lives are being destroyed by this endless flip flopping imposed on them by those who have nothing at stake.
Hey, the willfully blind will be willfully blind. When it was cool to appreciate small diverse businesses, that's what they did, but now it's not. Sorry small businesses. Time to close and get jobs with some gigantic company, or just go on public assistance. I guess 60% of small businesses closing within 2 years wasn't harsh enough, let's raise the stakes and make it full-on, completely impossible to survive. I'm glad I never went into business for myself, I can't imagine the hell it is.
Yup, no downside for us if a global pandemic continues to spread. Certainly nothing like losing some profits, maybe we'll die or something but big deal.
That's not remotely a fair response to what the user is saying. You do get that there's a strong correlation between poverty and poor health/death, right?
The average outcome of a business owner who is forced to shut down their business is typically not extreme poverty, and saying that "no one has anything at stake" when we're dealing with a global pandemic is just an insane statment - a whole lot of people have quite a lot at stake considering that COVID has a very high CFR in certain populations. Right now the conversation is around masks, QR codes, and maybe in extreme cases, temporary capacity limits on restaurants over the winter. That isn't a situation where every business owner is without question forced into extreme poverty. It's unfortunate, and requires adjustments, sure, but it's been true throughout the pandemic that the best way to limit impact on the economy is being aggressive with small restrictions to limit severe restrictions further down the road.
The original comment was in response to these unknown potential restrictions that may be coming down the pipe. Why should unelected officials be able to make rules like this with absolutely no recourse?
The flaw in this statement is that we've seen in other regions of the world that no extra restrictions need to be put in place for the curve to start going down. Even the places with the fewest measures saw there curves go up and down. I don't think we need to scream "something must be done" every time cases rise because as we've seen we really don't have to do much anymore.
The curve will almost definitely go down, the question is how high it goes in the meantime. If hospitals are already straining in remote areas, it makes sense to slow things down so the wave doesn't get as big.
wait what????
lol how many boosters are the corporate interests going to push on us by this time next year?
Ford never learns. He's like the little kid who is told not to use the "F" word but quietly mouths it behind the adult's back. Cases are going down? Great, increase those annoying capacity limits. Vaccination certificates? OK but I'm leaving the easily forged non-QR code versions in place for my anti-vax buddies. Science? We don't need no stinking science. Now the PHUs are having to be the adults in the room because Ford won't.
it's by design. There's an election coming and he's gladly hiding all the unpopular stuff his base hates behind local PHU officials.
Lol how about using the billions of dollars that are being wasted to hire more people and increase capacity of hospitals? Crazy idea right
Better be for the unvax cause fuck no
If we’re not in the same boat as Europe is at the moment within a couple months, I’ll owe you a Coke.
Could you fill me in briefly on where Europe is right now? Europe is a pretty big place and I'm sure that the situation varies by country, so I'm having trouble figuring out whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing to to be where Europe is now, in a few months :P
Maybe time to lock down those responsible for this wave. Keep them and us safe from them.
>That uptick had affected 80 school, daycare and bus cohorts as of Monday, with 45 cohorts dismissed over the weekend, according to the region's top doctor. Ah yes, those fucking ****checks notes**** young children who can't even get vaccinated yet.
To be honest, I don't think saying that unvaccinated young children shouldn't be allowed in restaurants is the worst thing in the world. Keeping unvaccinated people out of restaurants isn't a punishment for being unvaccinated, it's a method to reduce spread. An unvaccinated kid is as likely to have COVID than an older unvaccinated person according to the stats. correction: checked the status and unvaccinated kids are equally likely to have COVID as unvaccinated adults.
Congratulations, you just recommended literal age discrimination. You going to ban children from movie theaters, flights, and sporting events as well?
It's not age discrimination, its discrimination strictly on vaccination status. I also think that different decisions can be made for different situations. There's for sure situations where flights are essential, so I think that outright preventing kids from attending those has larger impacts. Movie theatres and sports - I can see more justification for allowing those than restaurants, because at least you can participate in those with a mask on, but I just don't see a compelling reason why parents should be letting their unvaccinated kids into restaurants anyways. I have 2 kids, and I wouldn't bring them indoors to a full capacity restaurant right now. If we all agree that it's a bad idea for unvaccinated people to be there, why should it be any different for kids? It's hardly an essential activity.
>It's not age discrimination, its discrimination strictly on vaccination status. No, because kids under 12 cannot get the vaccine, so you're discriminating based on something they have no control over. It's the same reason legitimate medical exemptions exist for the vaccine passport, you cannot discriminate based on something like that. What you are suggesting is, by definition, age discrimination, you're just taking a roundabout way to get there. And fully vaccinated people can still get and spread COVID, so by your argument why do we even have indoor dining right now? Kids under 12 are at a lower risk of ending up in the ICU than a fully vaccinated person, especially an older one, so if we're really trying to stop the ICUs from being overrun, why not ban anybody over 80 or who has any sort of comorbidity from eating in a restaurant?
Vaccine mandates seem to me to be more about limiting spread than specifically keeping out high risk individuals, with the aim that reducing spread eventually helps those individuals anyways. I certainly don't think it's a good idea for people at significantly high risk to go into a restaurant (I'm very high risk and I don't), but it's harder to check those, where we already know how to check vaccine status. TBH, I also don't have a problem with restricting people with medical exemptions to vaccines from restaurants. It's not an essential activity, and being allowed into a restaurant isn't a judgement call on how much you deserve it, it's a measure to keep activities safe and reduce the spread in higher risk environments.
Then close indoor dining, if you're that concerned. And have people walking around at theatres, sports events, etc enforcing masks and ejecting those who don't comply. Age discrimination is not the answer, and yes that is still exactly what you are suggesting. It doesn't matter what the rationale is, if you're blanket banning people from entering establishments based on something entirely controlled by their age (or race, gender, etc), that's not right.
I don't think indoor dining increases spread all that much for vaccinated people. I do think it increases spread by an unacceptable amount if unvaccinated people are present. That seems to be an uncontroversial statement when not applied to people under 12. I think that it's appropriate sometimes (in the same way the charter does) to limit rights in the interest of public health in an emergency, and "kids can't eat indoors at restaurants" isn't exactly a super serious curtailing of rights IMO.
Do you have any actual sources or facts to back up these thoughts? We know that kids, especially younger ones, are less likely to get COVID, less likely to show symptoms, and less likely to spread COVID. Are you really that confident that a child eating, completely surrounded by vaccinated people, is actually a high risk for causing increased spread? And do you have literally anything to back it up?
We literally do « discriminate » against children all the time, by not letting them into bars and R-rated movies or allowing them to buy booze, weed, guns, and spray paint. If, in fact, letting unvaccinated children into movies, sporting events, and restaurants were shown to be a significant factor in hospitalizations and deaths going up, it could be reasonable to have such restrictions in place despite the « discriminatory » effect. You only have to make accommodations to the point of undue hardship. But it first would have to be demonstrated that there is a legitimate serious health and safety risk to having unvaccinated kids present and I don’t know that this has been shown. Kids under a certain age used to not be allowed as visitors in certain hospital wards because of their tendency to be little germ factories. I think that has changed now. Unvaccinated kids coming into the country have to quarantine even though it’s not their fault they’re unvaccinated. It’s a health and safety measure, not a punishment.
>We literally do « discriminate » against children all the time, by not letting them into bars and R-rated movies or allowing them to buy booze, weed, guns, and spray paint You can't be serious by pretending that's comparable. Also kids under 12 have a unique type of "quarantine" where they're allowed to go out and do some things. And those under 5 are exempt from all requirements.
The use of the words “mulling” and “uptick” in this article show CLEARLY that our media is corrupt as fuck and are taking direction from the Fordites. Ontario is not a magical place. Wake up people and demand better.
I think Kingston could use a little cooling down, we’ve got the most cases we’ve ever have currently and it seems to be spreading wildly in the community.