![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidge This morning being the first day of the "stay at home" regime in Ontario, I noted that that at 6:45 this morning the radio was reporting worse than usual congestion in the 401.
This is representative of why and how thus government's response to rising cases is missing its target. The highways are not full of people at 6:45 in the morning gallivanting about or indeed going anywhere entirely voluntarily; they are full of people going to work early because they have to.
All of which implies that workplaces, or at least many workplaces, have not been much affected by the rules -- which indeed mainly restrict some retail workplaces' hours and make little difference to any other places of work. Certainly the highways were not emptied of commuters now working from home or working more sparsely.
Although it's hard to tell, as public numbers are not as detailed as one would like, and there's some doubt as to whether even the government has clear information due to the weakness of their tracking and testing - it looks as though a major driver of Covid transmission is workplace exposure. Certainly the distribution of cases suggests that. Rates are highest in the areas more likely to house the poor who are likely to have worse and more crowded work conditions; this is only exacerbated by the relative density of their living conditions.
So a state of emergency and a stay at home "order" (more like a suggestion) already looks as though it will have little impact. Regulations strictly constraining risky conditions in all workplaces with vigilant enforcement, and not on an emergency basis (two to four weeks) but on an extended basis (the next six months or so) would be more to the point than what we have.
This is representative of why and how thus government's response to rising cases is missing its target. The highways are not full of people at 6:45 in the morning gallivanting about or indeed going anywhere entirely voluntarily; they are full of people going to work early because they have to.
All of which implies that workplaces, or at least many workplaces, have not been much affected by the rules -- which indeed mainly restrict some retail workplaces' hours and make little difference to any other places of work. Certainly the highways were not emptied of commuters now working from home or working more sparsely.
Although it's hard to tell, as public numbers are not as detailed as one would like, and there's some doubt as to whether even the government has clear information due to the weakness of their tracking and testing - it looks as though a major driver of Covid transmission is workplace exposure. Certainly the distribution of cases suggests that. Rates are highest in the areas more likely to house the poor who are likely to have worse and more crowded work conditions; this is only exacerbated by the relative density of their living conditions.
So a state of emergency and a stay at home "order" (more like a suggestion) already looks as though it will have little impact. Regulations strictly constraining risky conditions in all workplaces with vigilant enforcement, and not on an emergency basis (two to four weeks) but on an extended basis (the next six months or so) would be more to the point than what we have.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 04:26 am (UTC)You're entirely correct, but Dougie cannot do it. It'd be heresy to interfere with profits like that, and he's nothing like numerate enough to be susceptible to (accurate!) arguments based on total cost over a period of time.
There's a saying that sufficient incompetence is indistinguishable from malice; the thing that's horrifying me lately is the recognition that sufficient incompetence is indistinguishable from incompetence.
There is pretty much zero prospect of an effective pandemic response with the PCs in power, and pretty much zero prospect of them leaving power. I have no idea how to even start to react to this.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 03:25 pm (UTC)It sure is.
I can't imagine any way to even start to put some concept of governmental legitimacy back; hanging the whole cabinet in a very public and ceremonial way wouldn't be enough, since there's a functionally infinite supply of mammonites willing to run for office.
Plus, well, this stack of corpse, and the accumulating needless corpse pile due to the ineffectiveness of government.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 06:29 pm (UTC)"We might have done worse" is scant comfort, but it is *something*.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-15 06:52 pm (UTC)Nah.
Ontario was, last time I did the math, three whole orders of magnitude worse on per-capita deaths than Taiwan. One order of magnitude? Plausibly circumstance, but embarrassing, and where I'd put "could have done worse". Two? abject failure. Three? Three is getting into "appropriately artistic execution" categories of historical failure. Four? We're heading there.
Money is not substitutable for anything but money; it is not wits, competence, or character, and the lack of effective filters for those things in public life is a full-on ramifying disaster.
About Doug Ford his own self, one of two things is true; he's dumber than sand but someone managed to beat a certain reflexive propriety into him as a child, or he fully understands what he's doing and is consciously preferring the corpse pile to spending the money on effective public health. (Presumptively because precedent for expanding public spending on health, which as a devoted mammonite he abhors at all, but motivations are opaque at this distance.) I see no reason to suppose it's not the second case, whole and entire.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-16 06:00 am (UTC)There's this graph which has Canada on the exact same curve as the US, UK, or Sweden, just with lower numbers. (Especially if one looks at the log version.)
So I think the only difference in response effectiveness between us [and] the US is the proportion of the population who can't or won't stay home.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-17 02:44 am (UTC)I entirely agree with the general point. We have reached the point of diminishing returns with regard to restricting voluntary behaviour, which every state has faced or faces, and the effectiveness of the general response depends on the willingness to take steps driven by hard evidence regardless of the political aspect of the actions.
One tiny example, by the way, of actions prioritizing money over safety: several GO Transit lines have been reduced from trains to busses on account of low ridership numbers. But carrying, say, 10 people on a train allows them to be effectively isolated from one another (six cars, two levels per car) whereas on a bus, given what we know of Covid, there is a much more significant chance of transmission. The trains require more staff and burn more fuel. And I doubt the decision reflects concern for carbon emissions...
no subject
Date: 2021-01-17 03:33 am (UTC)Would never suppose you were!
I would disagree that Trump or BoJo's active malice is what's making Ford look less incompetent/relatively good; I don't think most of Ontario has noticed those. I think the lack of data -- the official COVID data you get with the Environment Canada weather app is an affront, and anything better you have to dig for/can't have due to StatsCan publication policies -- and general innumeracy and being able to look stern have let Dougie get away with it for this long.
That is indeed a telling example. Been trying not to get screamy about how mammonism is inconsistent with having a functioning society for years now. It's a philosophical parasite and it spreads because it does advantage individuals, right up until the whole thing crashes hard.
Peaking mammonism as the climate gets immediately dangerous is highly suboptimal.