Ontario’s school opening plan is not a “strong plan”. It’s a weak, incomplete, under-resourced plan that continues to be improvised 25 days (thanks to delay) before school opening.

It will be backstopped by a public health surveillance plan for schools that has only just begun to be formulated. (Like, literally, last 2 weeks at the provincial level).

It is an inequitable plan that applies different standards to public school kids than are afforded private school kids

It is a foolish plan, because it doesn’t use available expertise and resources to reduce the likelihood, magnitude, and rapidity of onset of a devastating fall pandemic wave, which is the default assumption for Canadian public health agencies

And lastly, it is a dishonest plan that presents wraps itself expediencies, half-truths, and cherry picked data, in an attempt to appear science based.

I was contemplating a long thread to go through each of the above points and expand on them at length. If someone pisses me off enough in responses I may yet find the motivation to do that.

But look: elections have consequences. This is the leadership our province chose. Nobody can have seriously thought Ford et al were going to be pushing resources in the direction of public schools and teachers. It’s a shame.

As I say: the silver lining to Covid is that your kids and my kids are overwhelmingly going to be ok. The problem is that they do transmit Covid (really), they do get Covid (really), they are more likely to be asymptomatic (and infectious) (really)

And we are thus abruptly creating mass gatherings throughout the province just as the season turns and environmental factors (humidity? Temp?) start to move in a direction that favours increased R. Remember how great Australia did until Aussie winter? Yep

And the resultant surges won’t stay sealed in schools.

Anyway, I’ve said all this before

There’s an abundant literature on school opening and closing and both pandemic and seasonal influenza. I’m too tired of repeating myself to tweet links. Google or pubmed if interested

Good luck, Ontario. I think it’s going to be an interesting autumn.

When you’re looking back on this in 6 months, please remember who made the decisions, who supported them, and who ran interference for them

/end