Covid in fall 2021

It has been sad and frustrating to see so many Torontonians putting their personal enjoyment before public health and ahead of suppressing the viral reproduction rate of the pandemic.

A reckless and deluded few are ‘protesting’ by pushing into mall food courts without wearing masks or providing proof of vaccination. Far more are eating unmasked inside restaurants, traveling to and through crowded places for the sake of recreation, abusing staff and public servants who try to enforce the rules, and generally asserting the importance of their own preferences over the public welfare.

Many Torontonians have followed the recommended precautions and gone further. These splits within our society seem demonstrative of a culture that emphasizes individual consumer choice as the chief influence on behaviour and which accepts a huge degree of entitlement about what people are allowed to do regardless of the ongoing conditions or likely consequences. It’s scary to ask whether we have the culture or the sensibilities necessary to overcome the most threatening challenges to humanity as a whole.

38 thoughts on “Covid in fall 2021”

  37. The bad news keeps coming. On Friday, Dec. 10, Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, released the latest federal modelling of the pandemic. It projects around 7,500 cases a day by January, assuming our transmission levels remain the same. However, if transmission increases by as little as 15 per cent, or if the new Omicron variant gets established, like Alpha and then Delta, then a towering wave unlike anything previously seen could arrive by the New Year.

    https://www.macleans.ca/news/with-the-omicron-variant-on-the-rise-should-you-attend-your-work-christmas-party/

  38. “Later that day, Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, announced that Omicron accounts for roughly 10 per cent of the province’s caseload. Three days later, Ontario’s Science Table estimated that Omicron’s share of new cases was 20 per cent, and that its case count was doubling every three days. By the next day (Dec. 13) that share had jumped to 30.8 per cent and its effective reproduction number (Rt) had climbed from 3.32 to 4.01 (meaning every infected person infects four others). In contrast, Delta’s Rt is 1.09. It is expected to become the dominant variant in the province this week and will replace Delta entirely by Christmas.”

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