There’s talk in Ontario of relaxing restrictions on restaurants and gyms, which were responsible for 40% of cases that could be traced in TO. Here are economic reasons of why this is a terrible idea, especially when much of Europe and the US is falling apart

Thread:

Ontario and Quebec are doing fairly well since imposing restrictions; growth in cases has been linear, not exponential, and hospitals have not been overwhelmed. If we can live with ~1000 cases and 10 deaths per day in Ontario, that is. https://twitter.com/DFisman/status/1322885983197691905?s=20

If you look at economic data from StatsCan, the economy contracted by ~15% during the peak of the first lockdown in March/April, and has largely bounced back to normal in the last few months
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3610043401

The industries affected, mainly in food services, account for just 1.9% of GDP. Does it make sense to reopen these places when the economic damage it could cause would be roughly 10x worse? A new lockdown would do far more damage then limited measures now.

We are doing well, R is near 1.0, but anything can tip us into exponential growth territory. I don’t envy Doug Ford and other politicians who have to pick winners and losers in the economy… but if they don’t we’ll be triaging who lives and dies in a few weeks

We need to prioritize schools and essential industries, which would be threatened with uncontrolled spread. Once rapid testing is viable, we can try to rebuild our test/trace/isolate systems.

@BogochIsaac @IrfanDhalla @Sue_Innovates @IacovosMichael @DGBassani @CovidEcoles