05-07-2020, 10:43 PM
(05-07-2020, 10:34 PM)jeffster Wrote: I was just thinking a place like Kingston, ON could go back to normal if they wanted to (as in the old normal). Just keep out people from outside the region from coming in. Their public health unit and head doctor did a phenomenal job at keeping the city safe. They're down to 1 active case. They had 61 cases in total, and no deaths. This coming from a region of just over 200,000.
Key difference in Kingston was that public health concentrated on LTC and retirement homes, making sure PPE was available, and ensuring isolation of the infected (they pull staff off of their other jobs). They also did a lot more testing and it was concentrated in those areas that were high at risk.
I really can't say that I am overly impressed with the job that we did here in this region, but it is what it is. Different region, different priorities. This time it hurt it.
A municipality has zero power to institute a complete shutdown on visitors, whether it could even be done at a provincial level I suspect is somewhat questionable, it would need extrodinary circumstances (which COVID clearly is, but I don't think this particular use would qualify) as it is pretty explicitly restricting a charter freedom.
That being said, a region which has a complete shutdown on interregional travel would be about as far from normal as you can get while sitting in restaurants...for that matter, what would the restaurants be serving? No region in Ontario produces it's own food, they all rely on interregional travel.
It is truely amazing how interdependent and interconnected we are, and how completely we delude ourselves into believing we are independent and self sufficient.