Changing Mandates in Ontario

[jsburbidge]

 It is worth noting that the decisions to drop vaccination requirements and mask mandates are, insofar as they are data-driven at all, are based, not on an evaluation of how many people may contract COVID-19, but on an evaluation of how many people will end up in hospital, and, in particular, in ICUs.

Put more bluntly, the government doesn't care about people getting sick, they care about hospital overcrowding. (This has been visible and explicit since the start of the pandemic.) They also badly want the whole thing to be "over" by the time of the June election.

It is also important to recognize that the primary benefit of masks - except at the high end, which involves respirators proper - is (1) at a population level and (2) that they protect other people from the mask-wearer more than vice-versa. So saying that people can still choose to wear masks misses the point; the people who choose not to wear masks are likely to skew less cautious in other ways and therefore as higher risk.

Masking is a low-cost high-benefit practice if generally adopted in public places. Dropping a general mask mandate does not just verge on the irresponsible but goes well into that territory.

At an individual level the obvious strategy to take is to limit going to places where there is a significant number of Individuals one does not know and to wear a respirator, not just a cloth mask, when inside public places. Shopping online is still a better option in most cases; if one chooses to shop in brick and mortar locations, relatively smaller locations with better ventilation are better choices. Voting against the government in June is also a good idea - assuming that the opposition parties are willing to back continued restrictions. (I hold no real hope of this.)