Vincent J. Curtis
18 Jan 21
Every day for the next month is a test of Premier Doug Ford’s sincerity, and even hisintelligence. Ever since the press conference in which Ford announced a province-wide house arrest, the number of COVID cases has declined. The justification for house arrest and the thirty day extension of his “temporary, one-time” shutdown that began December 26 is fast disappearing.
Ford’s modellers must be jinxed. On November 12th, they predicted 6500 cases per day by December 15, but Ontario came nowhere near that. Didn’t matter, more forecasts were said to show a collapse of Ontario’s health care system, and so the province-wide shutdown was announced. As predicted, the case rate actually increased as people were forced to congregate with infected persons in consequence of the restrictions.
In a panic at the rising numbers, a new set of modelling was released that forecasted as many as 20,000 cases per day by February 14th. This precipitated the house arrest order and thirty day extension of the “temporary, one-time” shutdown. But beginning the weekend prior to that fateful Tuesday, the case numbers stabilized and began to fall. They are now consistency at or below the 3000 per day range and show no sign of climbing to 20,000.
Is Ford sincere about imposing no more restrictions
than are necessary? Can he read the
numbers and spot not only the trend, but the vast disparity between the actual
data and the forecasts his alleged experts gave him?
-30-
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