Juno News - Why did the government shut down small businesses？

00:00:00.000 The Ontario government has released even more nuanced data about coronavirus cases in the

00:00:10.720 province and where they've been confirmed to be coming from. And I found this section on retail

00:00:16.320 spread particularly interesting, given that we are now moving into the Christmas shopping season,

00:00:21.040 which for many retailers is their make-or-break time. It's when they make all of their money to

00:00:25.120 keep them afloat for other months that, well, the sales aren't so hot for. And these numbers,

00:00:30.000 boy, they are telling. So they produce a graph that shows the daily number of confirmed cases

00:00:35.040 related back to retail through all of Ontario. You know what the highest day is, the highest

00:00:40.000 mega spike of retail cases? Four. Four, that's right. A couple days throughout this whole year

00:00:46.560 since the pandemic began have there been four cases traced back to retail outlets. And then

00:00:51.520 there's a bunch of days with three, a bunch of days with two, and then many, many days with one

00:00:56.720 and many, many days with zero. Zero spread directly related back to retail. And yet we've shut so much

00:01:06.000 of it down throughout so much of Ontario. What on earth is going on here? Well, I can tell you what

00:01:10.720 the public health officials say is going on here, because in truth, the majority of the numbers,

00:01:15.520 they're not really able to specify where they came from. So they chalk them up to community spread.

00:01:21.200 So when there are, say, 1,700, 1,500 cases announced in one day, over 50% of them are going

00:01:27.760 to be chalked up to this community spread. Meaning it was someone just out and about,

00:01:31.280 they were doing stuff. We don't know where they got it from. So they're arguing they could

00:01:35.760 have got it from retail. They're getting it from just society being open. So close society,

00:01:40.880 shut her all down. And I guess the big question for retail industry associations,

00:01:46.080 for individual stores, for the consumers, do you accept this? Do you buy this? You know,

00:01:51.840 there's one part of the puzzle here that is not discussed enough. And public health officials,

00:01:55.760 they actually do say this at the press conferences, beside the mayors, beside Premier Doug Ford.

00:02:00.800 They have said before that it's not really where you go, it's what you do while you're there. By which

00:02:07.680 they mean it's all about whether or not you are in close contact with someone in that indoor

00:02:13.120 setting for a prolonged period of time. The COVID alert app that the federal government is always

00:02:17.920 encouraging people to download, that doesn't actually kick in. It doesn't register an interaction

00:02:22.800 between two human beings until you are within six feet of each other for 15 minutes or more.

00:02:30.000 Why are we not talking about this more? So basically retail has been shut down because,

00:02:34.960 well, you know, maybe people are going to be in that 15 minute to six foot window.

00:02:39.360 Well, why don't we keep those things open, but then communicate more about what the real threat

00:02:45.360 is of coronavirus in those settings? The idea that this virus is being spread by sort of random

00:02:50.880 passing encounters between strangers. Well, you know, back in March, we didn't know,

00:02:54.960 we thought it was possible. Now we have so much data, research and information, and we kind of do know.

00:03:00.720 And we know that's not actually how it's happening. You do not need to be afraid of the person you're just

00:03:06.160 passing by in the aisle at the grocery store. That needs to be communicated a whole lot more,

00:03:12.400 because I think we can reopen a lot of what's been closed right now in various jurisdictions

00:03:17.120 across Canada, so long as we talk about the things that actually do need to be followed and the rules

00:03:21.920 that will actually play a productive role in decreasing the spread of the virus.

Juno News - December 01, 2020