4 ms·

Instead of having blanket lockdowns for everyone, reserve certain hours or days for at-risk people. A few of the stores near me, like Target and Wal-Mart, were

by hn8788 5y ago

Instead of having blanket lockdowns for everyone, reserve certain hours or days for at-risk people. A few of the stores near me, like Target and Wal-Mart, were closed from 7-9 am every day unless you were a senior citizen. That seems like a better solution than restaurants and non-essential stores being forced to close down 24/7. I went to a local mall a few days ago, and the amount of stores that went out of business because of the lockdowns is rediculous. I wouldn't be suprised if the whole mall has to close down soon, there's no way it's profitable to keep it running with 2-3 snack vendors and a couple of barber shops / nail salons being the major businesses left.

tehwebguy 5y ago
Seems like this would just make it so there would be no hospital beds available for non-covid things no? Unless maybe Canada has a few times more hospitals / beds per capita than the US?
- BadInformatics 5y ago
  It does not, and any discussion of whether certain public health measures should've been implemented should take that into consideration. Toronto-area hospitals were literally sending ICU patients to smaller cities because their own wards were overflowing. Moreover, attrition rates among clinicians (nurses especially) has been atrocious over the past year or so. People are only willing to put up with so much shit for so long, and most provincial systems have zero slack at the moment. That said, measures like GP described were/are in play in many cities. Seniors time was a fixture in the first few months of the pandemic, especially in smaller areas that did not experience a large caseload. That's another point too: I think a lot of HN commenters are unaware of just how fragmented and regional the Canadian healthcare system is. No two provinces implemented the same restrictions or policies at the same time, and only a couple put in strict stay-at-home style lockdowns. Note how the article mentions large increases in both Ontario (lax policies, then sudden strict lockdowns) with Alberta (very few restrictions). Even in Ontario, walking outside the biggest few cities would result in an immediate drop of most of the strict measures present in, say, the GTA. I know it's hard to capture this nuance discussing with strangers on some random online forum, but it's essential if we are to properly discuss cause and effect.

by hn8788 5y ago

tehwebguy 5y ago

Seems like this would just make it so there would be no hospital beds available for non-covid things no? Unless maybe Canada has a few times more hospitals / beds per capita than the US?

BadInformatics 5y ago
It does not, and any discussion of whether certain public health measures should've been implemented should take that into consideration. Toronto-area hospitals were literally sending ICU patients to smaller cities because their own wards were overflowing. Moreover, attrition rates among clinicians (nurses especially) has been atrocious over the past year or so. People are only willing to put up with so much shit for so long, and most provincial systems have zero slack at the moment. That said, measures like GP described were/are in play in many cities. Seniors time was a fixture in the first few months of the pandemic, especially in smaller areas that did not experience a large caseload. That's another point too: I think a lot of HN commenters are unaware of just how fragmented and regional the Canadian healthcare system is. No two provinces implemented the same restrictions or policies at the same time, and only a couple put in strict stay-at-home style lockdowns. Note how the article mentions large increases in both Ontario (lax policies, then sudden strict lockdowns) with Alberta (very few restrictions). Even in Ontario, walking outside the biggest few cities would result in an immediate drop of most of the strict measures present in, say, the GTA. I know it's hard to capture this nuance discussing with strangers on some random online forum, but it's essential if we are to properly discuss cause and effect.