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Lockdowns in Canada were ridiculous, particularly in Ontario. People weren't even allowed to go to parks or hikes. My parents couldn't drive to their cabin up

Lockdowns in Canada were ridiculous, particularly in Ontario. People weren't even allowed to go to parks or hikes. My parents couldn't drive to their cabin up north in fear of being ticketed. My mom was telling me a story of her colleague's husband who resented her for going to work because he thought she was going to get him killed. Are unreasonably strict lockdowns a good idea? Does it drive unnecessary fear? What if it causes more people to disregard rules later on?

throw10920 5y ago
> People weren't even allowed to go to parks or hikes. If this is true, it's some pretty impressive science denialism - it's pretty obvious that there's an extremely low chance of transmission outdoors (assuming that you're not, you know, breathing right into someone's face, or next to 20k people in a stadium).
- annexrichmond 5y ago
  https://globalnews.ca/news/7757913/cherry-blossoms-high-park-toronto/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7757913/cherry-blossoms-high-park... > During a news conference at Toronto city hall Wednesday afternoon, Mayor John Tory said the three main concentrations of cherry blossoms at High Park would be fenced off to “discourage” people from gathering. to be fair the park closures might not have been as general as I made it sound in my original comment but there were definitely some degree of closure of parks in addition to general sentiment of people being afraid to even go outside https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/horseshoe-resort-ski-hill-opening-day-capacity-limits-1.6270384 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/horseshoe-resort-ski-... > Ontario ski resorts were closed for seven weeks from Christmas Day 2020 through to February of this year. Ontario was the only jurisdiction in North America to close its slopes, according to the Canadian Ski Council. The province had said the closures were needed out of an abundance of caution and at a time when cases were soaring and vaccines were new.
- sdenton4 5y ago
  I think it actually took quite a while for outdoor safety to be firmly established. Canada was meanwhile having a very hard time sourcing medical supplies (and eventually also vaccines), meaning there was fear that a real blowup could be much worse than in the US.
- xg15 5y ago
  It isn't. Closing off certain places isn't done just because those particular places have an increased risk of infection but also to stop people from traveling to and from those places. I live in western Germany. Home office mandates in my country were for a large part to stop people from commuting in crowded trains every day, even if their actual workplace might not have had a high infection risk. I live near a busy shopping street. Back in march 20, there was a blanket order to close everything in that street - cafes, malls, mom&pop shops, etc. The street consequently was deserted for a few months. Later, restrictions got more targeted, with an overall goal to keep untested and unvaccinated persons out. And this may lower the infection risks for individual stores, but I can just observe that the street itself is as busy again as before the pandemic.
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    So shut down the trains. If someone is driving to their cabin, there is no reason to stop them. It was always completely irrational to prohibit solitary or family-oriented outdoor activities. They did that around here for a while, in a largely rural state in the US Pacific Northwest region. Senseless "do something!" edicts like that give a lot of rhetorical ammunition to the denialists and antivaxxers, while doing nothing to address the spread of COVID.
    - gebruikersnaam 5y ago
      Another reason to keep people from traveling is to make sure they stay where there's available healthcare. If everyone traveled to their cabin and got sick, the local hospital wouldn't be able to handle all the cases.
      - CamperBob2 5y ago
        Sorry, that's unconvincing at best.
    - xg15 5y ago
      Not anymore, as the virus is already anywhere. But there absolutely was a reason to stop potentially infected from travelling large distances and carry the infection into other regions.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bduerst 5y ago
  People were allowed in parks. The hyperbole comes here in that the parks closed during certain seasonal events that tend to draw huge crowds.
  - dmix 5y ago
    That's not true. I tried to go to provincial parks in Ontario and they were gated off and closed...
  - yonaguska 5y ago
    So those videos I watched of teens being arrested for skateboarding or playing hockey weren't real?
    - TravHatesMe 5y ago
      Or the guy drinking coffee in a timmies parking lot
- jollybean 5y ago
  It's a tiny bit glib to lament 'science denialism' in a pandemic for which we do not have any living memory of dealing with, a new kind of disease for which there are many unknowns, serious concerns with equipment and personnel shortages, high mortality, time constraints, a state of emergency, and most evidently the very low social cost of 'not gathering in groups' outdoors. In hindsight, they probably didn't need to go that far, but that's hindsight. Along with the vaccine denialism, the other thing that has surprised me among the concerns of the plebes, is how they have difficulty grasping what an emergency implies. There is a term called 'Fog of War' that military people are aware of, hinted at in the term 'No Plan Survives Contact With The Enemy'. Running government is like running a company - it's operational. But governing in an Emergency is more like running a startup but where all your personnel are 9-to-5 functionaries not used to such situations. It's managed chaos at best, nothing will be optimized.
jollybean 5y ago
Nobody has ever dealt with these problems before in living memory there are far too many unknowns, and there are very serious consequences i.e. death, hospitals overflowing, staff shortages, it's a very real emergency. If part of your job is to sit there and watch the numbers come in, and hear the reports fro the Health Officers, it's visceral. It's managed chaos at best. Personally, the 'no parks' thing was a bit much, and they should have encouraged 'strong distancing' at the same time encouraged people to 'get out'. But lockdowns are ham-fisted and crude in every way but if we can bring a national emergency down to something more bearable, so be it. If COVID strikes again this winter, hopefully we can be more nuanced about it (i.e. probably encourage people to get outdoors).
FpUser 5y ago
>" People weren't even allowed to go to parks or hikes" This is total BS. I live in Toronto and I've never seen so many people in parks as I have during COVID lockdowns. What was discouraged is big companies having party in the parks. I cycled every day in various Toronto's parks so speaking from experience.
jollybean 5y ago
"Are unreasonably strict lockdowns a good idea? Does it drive unnecessary fear?" ??? If you look at the data fro Our World in Data you see exponential spikes, implying any group facing them is on the precipice of disaster. The lockdowns decisively killed the spikes and prevented untold harm. That for a few weeks 'you couldn't go to the park' is relevant, but not hugely material, neither is that they caused a bit of fear. The 'no parks' bit is maybe an excessive feature taken in an emergency context but it's not a big deal. Whatever we want to call them and whatever the mechanism, they were mostly useful.
- annexrichmond 5y ago
  I think it's material if people felt certain rules were invasive (which they were). And that was my point -- such people may be less inclined to follow certain guidelines in later phases of the pandemic. > The lockdowns decisively killed the spikes and prevented untold harm. I don't think that is definitively true. Florida hasn't been locked down at all with zero mandates since last June and while it's certainly not rainbows, it's not nearly "untold harm" either. Did it "kill spikes" or just delay them to some degree?
  - jollybean 5y ago
    "I think it's material if people felt certain rules were invasive (which they were)" 'That you can't visit some parks' is not material in the face of the fact that you 1) cannot go to work 2) cannot gather with people 3) must wear a mask 4) cannot go to restaurants or cinemas 5) numerous other restrictions and especially 6) Must stay at home unless you have a reason to leave. Most of those restrictions are legitimate in the fact of a drastic spike in COVID cases, which makes the 'Don't Go To A Park' a footnote in that context. "The lockdowns decisively killed the spikes" -> "But Florida didn't have Lockdowns" "Hey, I didn't wear a seatbelt, and I have never been hurt in an accident!" Every situation is a bit different, and the data is not perfectly clear, but the evidence points to 'the total social changes due to lockdowns' do actually work, moreover, none of that was known in May 2020. We had no examples but the crisis in China and Europe back then. Given a state of emergency in the early stages of COVID, the close downs were within reason even if they erred a bit too much on the side of caution here and there. 'That we cold not go to parks' just isn't very relevant. If we have to do another lockdown, we will probably be able to go to the park.

throw10920 5y ago

> People weren't even allowed to go to parks or hikes. If this is true, it's some pretty impressive science denialism - it's pretty obvious that there's an extremely low chance of transmission outdoors (assuming that you're not, you know, breathing right into someone's face, or next to 20k people in a stadium).

annexrichmond 5y ago
https://globalnews.ca/news/7757913/cherry-blossoms-high-park-toronto/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7757913/cherry-blossoms-high-park... > During a news conference at Toronto city hall Wednesday afternoon, Mayor John Tory said the three main concentrations of cherry blossoms at High Park would be fenced off to “discourage” people from gathering. to be fair the park closures might not have been as general as I made it sound in my original comment but there were definitely some degree of closure of parks in addition to general sentiment of people being afraid to even go outside https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/horseshoe-resort-ski-hill-opening-day-capacity-limits-1.6270384 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/horseshoe-resort-ski-... > Ontario ski resorts were closed for seven weeks from Christmas Day 2020 through to February of this year. Ontario was the only jurisdiction in North America to close its slopes, according to the Canadian Ski Council. The province had said the closures were needed out of an abundance of caution and at a time when cases were soaring and vaccines were new.
sdenton4 5y ago
I think it actually took quite a while for outdoor safety to be firmly established. Canada was meanwhile having a very hard time sourcing medical supplies (and eventually also vaccines), meaning there was fear that a real blowup could be much worse than in the US.
xg15 5y ago
It isn't. Closing off certain places isn't done just because those particular places have an increased risk of infection but also to stop people from traveling to and from those places. I live in western Germany. Home office mandates in my country were for a large part to stop people from commuting in crowded trains every day, even if their actual workplace might not have had a high infection risk. I live near a busy shopping street. Back in march 20, there was a blanket order to close everything in that street - cafes, malls, mom&pop shops, etc. The street consequently was deserted for a few months. Later, restrictions got more targeted, with an overall goal to keep untested and unvaccinated persons out. And this may lower the infection risks for individual stores, but I can just observe that the street itself is as busy again as before the pandemic.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  So shut down the trains. If someone is driving to their cabin, there is no reason to stop them. It was always completely irrational to prohibit solitary or family-oriented outdoor activities. They did that around here for a while, in a largely rural state in the US Pacific Northwest region. Senseless "do something!" edicts like that give a lot of rhetorical ammunition to the denialists and antivaxxers, while doing nothing to address the spread of COVID.
  - gebruikersnaam 5y ago
    Another reason to keep people from traveling is to make sure they stay where there's available healthcare. If everyone traveled to their cabin and got sick, the local hospital wouldn't be able to handle all the cases.
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      Sorry, that's unconvincing at best.
  - xg15 5y ago
    Not anymore, as the virus is already anywhere. But there absolutely was a reason to stop potentially infected from travelling large distances and carry the infection into other regions.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bduerst 5y ago
People were allowed in parks. The hyperbole comes here in that the parks closed during certain seasonal events that tend to draw huge crowds.
- dmix 5y ago
  That's not true. I tried to go to provincial parks in Ontario and they were gated off and closed...
- yonaguska 5y ago
  So those videos I watched of teens being arrested for skateboarding or playing hockey weren't real?
  - TravHatesMe 5y ago
    Or the guy drinking coffee in a timmies parking lot
jollybean 5y ago
It's a tiny bit glib to lament 'science denialism' in a pandemic for which we do not have any living memory of dealing with, a new kind of disease for which there are many unknowns, serious concerns with equipment and personnel shortages, high mortality, time constraints, a state of emergency, and most evidently the very low social cost of 'not gathering in groups' outdoors. In hindsight, they probably didn't need to go that far, but that's hindsight. Along with the vaccine denialism, the other thing that has surprised me among the concerns of the plebes, is how they have difficulty grasping what an emergency implies. There is a term called 'Fog of War' that military people are aware of, hinted at in the term 'No Plan Survives Contact With The Enemy'. Running government is like running a company - it's operational. But governing in an Emergency is more like running a startup but where all your personnel are 9-to-5 functionaries not used to such situations. It's managed chaos at best, nothing will be optimized.

jollybean 5y ago

Nobody has ever dealt with these problems before in living memory there are far too many unknowns, and there are very serious consequences i.e. death, hospitals overflowing, staff shortages, it's a very real emergency. If part of your job is to sit there and watch the numbers come in, and hear the reports fro the Health Officers, it's visceral. It's managed chaos at best. Personally, the 'no parks' thing was a bit much, and they should have encouraged 'strong distancing' at the same time encouraged people to 'get out'. But lockdowns are ham-fisted and crude in every way but if we can bring a national emergency down to something more bearable, so be it. If COVID strikes again this winter, hopefully we can be more nuanced about it (i.e. probably encourage people to get outdoors).

FpUser 5y ago

>" People weren't even allowed to go to parks or hikes" This is total BS. I live in Toronto and I've never seen so many people in parks as I have during COVID lockdowns. What was discouraged is big companies having party in the parks. I cycled every day in various Toronto's parks so speaking from experience.

jollybean 5y ago

"Are unreasonably strict lockdowns a good idea? Does it drive unnecessary fear?" ??? If you look at the data fro Our World in Data you see exponential spikes, implying any group facing them is on the precipice of disaster. The lockdowns decisively killed the spikes and prevented untold harm. That for a few weeks 'you couldn't go to the park' is relevant, but not hugely material, neither is that they caused a bit of fear. The 'no parks' bit is maybe an excessive feature taken in an emergency context but it's not a big deal. Whatever we want to call them and whatever the mechanism, they were mostly useful.

annexrichmond 5y ago
I think it's material if people felt certain rules were invasive (which they were). And that was my point -- such people may be less inclined to follow certain guidelines in later phases of the pandemic. > The lockdowns decisively killed the spikes and prevented untold harm. I don't think that is definitively true. Florida hasn't been locked down at all with zero mandates since last June and while it's certainly not rainbows, it's not nearly "untold harm" either. Did it "kill spikes" or just delay them to some degree?
- jollybean 5y ago
  "I think it's material if people felt certain rules were invasive (which they were)" 'That you can't visit some parks' is not material in the face of the fact that you 1) cannot go to work 2) cannot gather with people 3) must wear a mask 4) cannot go to restaurants or cinemas 5) numerous other restrictions and especially 6) Must stay at home unless you have a reason to leave. Most of those restrictions are legitimate in the fact of a drastic spike in COVID cases, which makes the 'Don't Go To A Park' a footnote in that context. "The lockdowns decisively killed the spikes" -> "But Florida didn't have Lockdowns" "Hey, I didn't wear a seatbelt, and I have never been hurt in an accident!" Every situation is a bit different, and the data is not perfectly clear, but the evidence points to 'the total social changes due to lockdowns' do actually work, moreover, none of that was known in May 2020. We had no examples but the crisis in China and Europe back then. Given a state of emergency in the early stages of COVID, the close downs were within reason even if they erred a bit too much on the side of caution here and there. 'That we cold not go to parks' just isn't very relevant. If we have to do another lockdown, we will probably be able to go to the park.