Welcome to Ontario, where we are in lock down again.

It is really unfortunate we are in this situation again. We didn’t need to be. We could have been substantially more rigorous about how we approached testing for COVID, constraining vectors of transmission, and minimizing spread of the virus.

This may sound odd, but sadly Ford’s Ontario government’s focus on the economy has missed extraordinary opportunities that existed. We could have done so much more for the economy AND constrained the spread of COVID.

What is interesting is these opportunities are STILL present. We can still implement these now, just without the same impact it would have had six months ago in the summer.

The first thing to note is now we have to up our game: COVID is mutating given the number of people infected and how we are fighting it. We need to be prepared for this by minimizing spread as much as possible to reduce opportunities to mutate and overcome our efforts to immunize.

First are all the notes we made in https://www.oneoddsock.com/2020/08/10/covid-19-and-the-ontario-education-guidelines/.

Since I posted this we have learned a lot about how effective school is at present. It is clear that it isn’t working effectively.

Students don’t reliably have effective spaces or resources for learning that school provides. So when learning remotely (as high school students are obligated to 3/4 of the time and now all students have to do ALL of the time), accommodations are needed to make education effective.

The following are additional recommendations: