Zero evidence for extending Ontario's state of emergency

Ontario's provincial legislature is set to debate continuing Ontario's state of emergency once again this coming week.  The state of emergency, which has already been extended several times, is set to end on June 30th.  If approved it would mean emergency measures would be in place until at least mid July. 

These emergency measures are causing more death, pain and misery than they were designed to alleviate.  The cure has been worse than the disease.  Don't believe me?  Talk to someone who watched a family member die because their by-pass surgery was cancelled.  Or to the people who have been waiting for a cancer screening, knowing that early detection is the most vital tool in the box when it comes to surviving a malignancy.  Cancer is the number one cause of death in this country.  

Let's talk about the kids, forced to stay home because schools were closed.  Many kids have been isolating with parents who lost their jobs.  Job loss can and does lead to depression, which in turn often leads to alcohol and substance abuse, which in turn can lead ot child abuse....mental, physical and sexual. 

Those are the hard ones, but there are plenty more.  People dying alone, families denied the right to be with mothers, fathers and other loved ones as they pass.  No funerals to help people through the grieving process.  Graduations and other milestone events gone.  I'm 53, my cancelled vacation plans can be put off until next year, but you don't get graduations, the proms and sweet 16 parties back.  

Our entire society was tossed on its collective ear, with much of the pain being borne by the poor and marginalized.  Ain't that always the way.  This was supposed to be a war, we were fighting a virus that was going to have us lining up 10 deep for a bed in the ICU.  

It never happened.  Forecasts of Ontario needing a minumum of 1,300 critical care beds never came to fruition.  Thank God.  I'm not blaming the politicians for acting, they had experts forecasting a devestating scenario, and they had to do it without science but with computer based simulations.  There wasn't time for real science, and I don't fault the medical community for being wrong, they had to work on assumptions because that was all there was to work with.

The reason for declaring a state of emergency was to spare our already overburdened and underfunded health care system from being devastated.  Well, it has been.  As I write this there are only 286 people being treated for Covid in Ontatrio hospitals.  86 of those patients are in ICU and of those in ICU 59 are on a ventilator.  For every 50,000 people in Ontario this means one patient being treated for Covid.  This is evidence, not forecasts based on computer simulations.  

Ending the state of emergency does not mean life goes back to normal of course.  That will only  happen if a vaccine becomes available, or if the novel coronaviurs mutates and becomes even more benign that it already is, a scenario that is scientifically plausible however not certain.  

Education needs to continue so we can identify the small percentage of people who are at risk, and we need to stop killing people and destroying lives with emergency measures now.