COVID-19: Now's not the time to go 'hog-wild,' experts warn

Beers on a patio. Getting your hair done. Going to church, synagogue or mosque. Dropping the kids at daycare and hitting the mall.

In the time of COVID-19, these are dizzying freedoms suddenly bestowed upon us.

Ottawa is among the cities allowed to proceed with Stage 2 of Ontario's reopening plan, measures intended to bring the province's stifled economy back to life while continuing to mitigate the risk of transmission. But health experts and community leaders are warning people to proceed with caution.

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"We have gotten this far, and we cannot let up on our efforts to control the virus," warned the city's medical officer of health, Vera Etches. "Stay the course, Ottawa."

"We're not out of the woods on this by any measure," echoed Mayor Jim Watson this week.

Raywat Deonandan, an epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa, had this grim outlook: "I would expect a rise in cases if people are a bit too exuberant in the extent to which they embrace these openings."

Covid fatigue and you

It's not that the experts don't understand you've had enough; it's just that they don't want us returning to the way things were.

"There is a risk for people going hog-wild and not practising social distancing," said Melissa Brouwers, professor and director of the University of Ottawa's School of Epidemiology and Public Health. "But I also understand there is COVID fatigue. This is what makes human behaviour pretty complicated."

You keep your gatherings small, magical things could happen.- Raywat Deonandan, University of Ottawa

Some people are choosing to accept more risk for the sake of their own mental health, or perhaps for their economic survival.

"There are many ways to make these decisions," Deonandan said. "And I'm loath to say that one lens is better than the other lenses."

"We want to be extra careful when we are uncertain," Brouwers added. "But we know not everyone will subscribe to that principle."

Weighing the risks

Perhaps you've seen them: contractors, eager to get back to work, crowding Home Depot; shoppers pushing their carts the wrong way down a one-way aisle at the grocery store; Uber drivers without masks.

These aren't necessarily the oblivious "covidiots" of March and April. In many cases, they're individuals who have weighed the risks and made a conscious decision to return to normal sooner than the rest of us. When those individuals get together, the experts call them "bubbles" or "cohorts."  

But if too many of these bubbles or cohorts merge, there will a resurgence of new cases, and that risks a return to the dark days of March.

"If everybody is increasing their activities, then you can amp [the risk of transmission] up," said Earl Brown, an emeritus professor of virology at University of Ottawa. "You don't want it to get well-seeded again where you've got to shut down to gain control."

According to Etches, embracing Stage 2 means taking responsibility for your own behaviour, and your own exposure. 

"It's up to you to make informed decisions and lessen your risk of infection and the risk to people close to you," she warned.

Brown's book club is a good example of that agency. "We've been debating back and forth, could we have a meeting in someone's backyard? Half the people were 'definitely not,' and half the people were 'maybe,'" he said. "You balance your needs and your wants against the risk."

Kids a big risk

Of course, not everyone has the capacity to weigh those risks responsibly.

"I'm so worried about kids this summer," said Catherine Pound, a pediatrician at CHEO. "There are still a million rules to abide by. Adults have a really hard time following those rules, so how can we expect children to do that?"

At the end of the day, it's up to their parents to weigh the risk for them.

"Kids are very cute but they are full of germs," Pound said. "They're going to go give a hug to grandma, and then we're back into that cycle of COVID."

But the experts agree all's not lost, so long as we all act responsibly.

"You keep your gatherings small, magical things could happen," Deonandan said. "You wear a mask and … stay two metres apart, and even more magical things happen."

"Let's see what the data brings," Brouwers advised. "Let's see if the choices that are being made around opening up were worth the risk."