Doctors want lockdown maintained

Vincent J. Curtis

12 Feb 21

RE: COVID projections predicting a disaster.  Hamilton Spectator of today’s date.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and that’s a better record than Ford’s medical modellers have had in forecasting the pandemic.  Listening to Ford’s doctors on the pandemic means you need to see a doctor – a psychiatrist!  Their opinion that Ontario needs to stay in shutdown and stay-at-home mode even now amply demonstrates their incompetence.

Let’s remember now and always that the purpose of the lockdowns was to save the health care system.  Slowing the spread, flattening the curve, and all those other cute phases weren’t intended to reduce the number of deaths.  The area under the curve remains the same regardless of shape.  The aim of the lockdown was to spread out the number of hospitalizations over time so that ICU beds and ventilators wouldn’t run short.  Well, Ontario is now well past the peak of the second wave, and the health care system wasn’t overwhelmed.  People can be let free, for a while.

On November 12, Ford’s doctor-modellers forecasted that by December 15 there would be 6500 cases per day.  They were wrong by a factor of three.  No matter, Ontario needed to shut down, something I said at the time would cause daily case numbers to rise dramatically.  They did, to a peak of 4500 on January 8.

On January 12, as case rates were beginning to fall, Ford’s modellers said that by February 14 Ontario would have as many as 20,000 cases per day.  To save the health care system, Ontarians needed to stay at home.  Well, knock my socks off if case numbers didn’t fall from 3900 per day to about a thousand a day, and guess who predicted that!

When doctors who work from 9 to 5 say that Ontario ought to stay under lockdown regardless of the data, you need to ask them why.  And buy a lottery ticket, you have a better chance of guessing right.

-30-