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All Ontario Parks now closed until June 1 as of April 25th.
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Not good. There is no good reason behind keeping the backcountry closed. ICU's are way under capacity. They need to start inching forward to giving us back our lives.
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My thoughts exactly Joe!
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JoeScmoe wrote:
Not good. There is no good reason behind keeping the backcountry closed. ICU's are way under capacity. They need to start inching forward to giving us back our lives.
This argument doesn’t make any sense to me. ICUs being half empty are a sign that what we are doing is having the intended effect so far. If anything it’s an argument that we should continue with the current measures because they are working. You can’t use ICU capacity as your litmus test. What we really need is a much broader testing regime and significant declines in cases of all kinds.
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I don't have a problem with it. But find it hard to believe beer stores and liquor stores are still open and are considered essential services.
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Not good. There is no good reason behind keeping the backcountry closed. ICU's are way under capacity. They need to start inching forward to giving us back our lives.
This argument doesn’t make any sense to me. ICUs being half empty are a sign that what we are doing is having the intended effect so far. If anything it’s an argument that we should continue with the current measures because they are working. You can’t use ICU capacity as your litmus test. What we really need is a much broader testing regime and significant declines in cases of all kinds.
There are significant declines outside the long term care facilities. And the stories I'm hearing are the ICU's are way below capacity... More than half. The "best case scenario" trajectories they sold us were way under shot... If you beat your best case scenarios, how can you trust the modeling?
Knowing we can't fully eliminate the disease, give us some freedom back- slowly, and reassess regularly, working towards herd immunity in the population. This stay at home and do nothing attitude is ridiculous. We're just delaying the inevitable.
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...You can’t use ICU capacity as your litmus test. What we really need is a much broader testing regime and significant declines in cases of all kinds.
The recent link to the video of the Doctor from Arva had some good points such as the fact that the number of people that are infected has a high degree of uncertainty but the number of COVID deaths (or ICU patients) is much more accurate. Seems that the physical distancing we have all done has had much slowed the spread. However, I don’t believe that the camping ban has significantly contributed to slowing the spread. I also think that most of our society is willing and capable of practicing physical distancing while camping.
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This is somewhat of a cross post but I’ll put it here in case it was missed on the other thread I posted it in.
Saskatchewan seems to be the current leader among provinces in flattening this out. They have said that pleasure boating (including paddling) will reopen May 4 and camping on June 1. I’m not going to guess an exact date but I would say we are at least weeks and possibly a month or more behind them. If governments are working together as they claim we have some time ahead of us.
On the other hand, we reopened fishing already and Saskatchewan has not. That, from outward appearances(and my opinion), is due to lobbying efforts by anglers and hunters rather than solid decision making.
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Fortunately, most elected leaders base their decisions to preserve public safety upon informed scientific data and not the stories they have been hearing. They could easily change these dates if progress is made.
Perhaps a good analogy would be you have just run your canoe through a stretch of whitewater and you've taken on about six inches in the bottom of the boat. Do you stop and empty that out or do you go full speed ahead into the next rapids with that water sloshing around?
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Imaging the placement of a drive-in campgrounds sites apart from each other would seem to facilitate social distancing guidelines. However, expanding one's 'imaging' to the campgrounds' washroom buildings would put a serious crimp on both those social distancing guidelines and the 'hard surface contact' guidelines!
And incidentally, imaging the situation in the backcountry, I can think of many landings and portages that are much narrower than 2 meters. Despite being in the open space backcountry, maneuvering the tight confines of some of the landings and portages could well run counter to the social distancing guidelines .. plus the associated high-exertion exhalation could impact the 2 meter distance's effectiveness.
For me, the prospect of a surgical mask, fogged-up glasses and a bug-head-net would definitely spoil the experience. I'd probably want to limit any pre-vaccine camping to 'paddle-in' backcountry .. along with with a spray-bottle of disinfectant for the thunderbox and fireplace logs.
Just my 'musings' on the topic.
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I’m not sure you could ever satisfactorily disinfect a thunder box
I do agree though Barry, plenty of portage trails and landings are not distance friendly. I think that’s a manageable problem though.
I’ve stayed at a number of the campgrounds and even during summer when the campgrounds are full or close to it you can usually get in and out of the comfort stations with minimal contact. If they mandate a 50% capacity I don’t think that would create a barrier to reopening.
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For additional context, this article says we have close to 2000 ICU beds equipped with ventilators.
Currently, as of April 26 we have less than 200 people on ventilators and just 258 in the ICU (ventilator or not). This updates daily.
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I think one of the other things you have to take into account is how many backcountry trips are with people from different households, sure this wasn't an easy decision to make but at the end of the day probably the safest one for ALL the parks in the province of Ontario. my son and I had a may 8th trip planned, we are from 2 separate households so would have been cancelling anyways. As I said to someone else this morning, the trout population in Algonquin will be getting a break from seeing lures toss their way this spring. cheers and stay safe.
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For additional context, this article says we have close to 2000 ICU beds equipped with ventilators.
Currently, as of April 26 we have less than 200 people on ventilators and just 258 in the ICU (ventilator or not). This updates daily.
Joe, I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on this, but I do want to stress one more time that pointing to ICU or ventilator capacity as a reason to loosen restrictions is not giving you a complete picture. It is great that ICUs are so far under capacity. The goal of these measures is to make sure we don't get to (or beyond) that capacity. So far it's working. That alone is not a reason to loosen restrictions.
To bring this back to camping, I agree that it is an inherently isolating activity and that very likely the risk to the individual is low (crowded portages and gross thunder boxes aside). My guess is that everyone on this board would be able to put together a trip that avoids all others and doesn't increase risks to themselves or the broader population. My concern would be that if they reopen Parks, especially if there are still significant restrictions in other parts of the province, it isn't going to just be the people on this board rushing to the Park. My bet is you would get a milder version of Highway 60 during fall colours. You would also get people who aren't equipped for an early spring trip deciding to head into the backcountry to get away from the front country crowds (real or imagined). Both these scenarios would be counterproductive to what we have been trying to accomplish.
Look, I don't think we should be locked down indefinitely and I do really want camping to come back. Like everyone else, I've been stuck at home for the better part of two months now. I'm sick of it. But I'm not going to take issue with things proceeding cautiously on this one. Hopefully by this time next month (or earlier!) there is more evidence of things coming under control and the Parks can reopen.
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For additional context, this article says we have close to 2000 ICU beds equipped with ventilators.
Currently, as of April 26 we have less than 200 people on ventilators and just 258 in the ICU (ventilator or not). This updates daily.Joe, I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on this, but I do want to stress one more time that pointing to ICU or ventilator capacity as a reason to loosen restrictions is not giving you a complete picture. It is great that ICUs are so far under capacity. The goal of these measures is to make sure we don't get to (or beyond) that capacity. So far it's working. That alone is not a reason to loosen restrictions.
To bring this back to camping, I agree that it is an inherently isolating activity and that very likely the risk to the individual is low (crowded portages and gross thunder boxes aside). My guess is that everyone on this board would be able to put together a trip that avoids all others and doesn't increase risks to themselves or the broader population. My concern would be that if they reopen Parks, especially if there are still significant restrictions in other parts of the province, it isn't going to just be the people on this board rushing to the Park. My bet is you would get a milder version of Highway 60 during fall colours. You would also get people who aren't equipped for an early spring trip deciding to head into the backcountry to get away from the front country crowds (real or imagined). Both these scenarios would be counterproductive to what we have been trying to accomplish.
Look, I don't think we should be locked down indefinitely and I do really want camping to come back. Like everyone else, I've been stuck at home for the better part of two months now. I'm sick of it. But I'm not going to take issue with things proceeding cautiously on this one. Hopefully by this time next month (or earlier!) there is more evidence of things coming under control and the Parks can reopen.
When we were first locked down, the reasoning was we had to keep the curve below the capacity of our ICU's. We've done that. Very much so. We're now at the stage where we can reintroduce activities gradually all the while monitoring the R0 factor to keep it under 1.0 where it is now. But for some reason our govt's have changed their tune... All the while their modeling was wrong from the get go.
I think the biggest divide between myself and the anti-camping people is that there's a perception that we can beat coronavirus by simply staying at home. We can't. It's going to be out there until we achieve herd immunity or there's a vaccine.
My brother works in the medical profession and the doctors and surgeons he's talking to say there's a high undocumented death toll of people that would have went for medical treatments in the past, but now they're not going to their doctors and hospitals. They're calling that the true tragedy of the virus.
Last edited by JoeScmoe (4/26/2020 1:49 pm)
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I’m unsure I would call anyone on this forum anti camping.
At this point we’re getting closer to the loosening of restrictions. Hopefully sooner than later but ultimately at the say so of our government. Until then I hope we can all stay the course because we seem to be doing quite well.
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I’m unsure I would call anyone on this forum anti camping.
At this point we’re getting closer to the loosening of restrictions. Hopefully sooner than later but ultimately at the say so of our government. Until then I hope we can all stay the course because we seem to be doing quite well.
Aren't you a little upset though that the government said the goal was to keep the curve below the capacity of the hospitals... And now that we've far undershot that target, they still haven't given us any freedoms back? Especially ones that by all logical measures would not bump the curve?
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