Yet Again

 This surely does not need saying: the provincial plan for removing Covid restrictions is both insane and driven by politics. It is no coincidence that on this fanciful roadmap of the Ontario PCs everyone becomes entirely free to do as they will a couple of months before the provincial election.

In what fit of absence of mind they concluded that Covid would be so completely gone in another six months that they can plan on pulling back vaccine mandates, it is hard to imagine. The opening stages - allowing more density in places with vaccine mandates - is not prudent, but it is somewhat understandible. To assume that magically Covid will go away by March is pure wishful thinking. (Even if by some miracle Ontario could wrestle it to the ground, there would still be extensive reservoirs elsewhere.)

This is the extreme form of the government's complete failure to take the one critical step that is necessary: to say, clearly, that there will be no "return", no ability to resume the life of 2019. Even if the government were to drop its vaccine mandates entirely, all the employers and other fora will continue to worry about insurance and liability and are unlikely to drop their restrictions. Many people will, rationally, continue to avoid places where they are crowded together; although evidence from other jurisdictions suggests that fewer people are rational than one might hope. Masks will continue to be an important public health tool. Many people will continue to work from home, affecting the life in urban centres.

The one genuinely bright spot on the horizon is the (likely) very near approval of Covid vaccines for children and the (equally likely) of such vaccines being made mandatory (as many other vaccines are) for attendance at school.

It is, frankly, the task of the government, the parens patriae, to tell everyone the truth: life has changed, irreversibly (like one of those catastrophe theory transitions on a folded manifold).