Juno News - Are COVID-19 restrictions reflective of reality？

00:00:00.000 On Friday morning, Ontario reported their latest coronavirus cases and it appeared to be a record

00:00:11.720 setting 723. Wowzers. And right away, many people cropped up online from anonymous accounts to

00:00:20.120 doctors saying, what's going on? This is spiraling out of control. Shut her all down. Hold on a 1.00

00:00:26.680 second though. The numbers were not true. Well, not really. 75 of those numbers, give or take,

00:00:33.960 were actually previous numbers from the spring and summer that Toronto Public Health hadn't yet

00:00:39.640 updated to their tally. So take those numbers off and you are not actually at a record high in

00:00:45.900 Ontario. Okay, well that didn't stop some people from reporting that as a headline that it was a

00:00:50.660 new record. It didn't stop people freaking out about it. And here's the interesting part. It

00:00:55.760 didn't stop Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who probably knew the truth, from announcing new restrictions

00:01:02.200 in Ontario. Some real head-scratcher ones as well. Like for instance, that gyms can now only have 10

00:01:09.100 people inside a fitness class. So not working around on the weights or on the treadmills, but

00:01:14.140 in a yoga class, a boxer size or whatever goes on in those fitness classes. Now this rule applies

00:01:19.680 strictly to all gym facilities. So whether you're a small little one or whether you've got a large

00:01:25.160 cavernous space, only 10 people, one size fits all. They also announced restrictions for banquet

00:01:32.040 halls, gatherings like that, and how many people can sit at each specific table. Another odd one size

00:01:38.320 fits all. And this all coming after it has been established and agreed upon that they don't actually

00:01:44.940 know what's driving many of the cases in Ontario. And they can't isolate the variables when it comes to

00:01:51.040 gyms and it comes to restaurants. David Williams is the chief medical officer for Ontario. And he

00:01:56.240 actually said just the day previously that these restaurant cases they're talking about, yes, they've

00:02:01.200 isolated a few cases from diners inside the restaurant. But a lot of these restaurant cases are

00:02:06.940 actually the staff after everyone's gone home, going and hanging out in the back room, sharing meals

00:02:12.920 together, taking their masks off, saying, oh, thank God that that public that could infect us is gone.

00:02:18.000 We can now let our guard down, but they're hanging around with each other in close quarters without

00:02:22.960 masks for over 15 minutes. So they're spreading it to each other. Things that you wouldn't really know

00:02:28.880 based on the headlines and based on the way our officials announce new restrictions. Seems like

00:02:34.800 Ontario Premier Doug Ford has become something of a lockdown loving leader as a lot of people ask,

00:02:40.820 are these new rules that are coming into place actually reflective of reality? I've spoken to a number of very

00:02:47.100 prominent doctors, medical experts, public health officials about the various issues that are

00:02:52.060 going on right now. And they want to take a much more holistic perspective to coronavirus, that it looks

00:02:58.120 like this is going to be here for the long haul, that even if a vaccine comes sooner or later, it may be more

00:03:03.500 like a seasonal vaccine, like influenza, and we just got to learn to live with this. And that includes being able to just go

00:03:11.280 about and live our daily lives. So I don't fault officials for changing policies as their understanding

00:03:17.120 of how coronavirus works changes. We can't expect them to all get it perfect right away from the

00:03:22.640 beginning. But we've also got to calm down a little bit and seeing various numbers and indicators flux one

00:03:28.560 day or the other, and then suddenly announcing all these restrictions to make it look like we're doing

00:03:33.500 something to appease. Well, to appease what? If the folks are frustrated, they see numbers, they just

00:03:39.740 get emotional about it, and they don't have the context. Well, then I think it's the job of leadership

00:03:44.940 to provide them with the context to make sure that we can all go about and responsibly live our lives in

00:03:51.580 a healthy fashion.

Juno News - October 02, 2020