Confused about Stay-at-Home rules? You’re Not Alone

COLIN KERR
Staff Reporter

BARRY’S BAY – The more often the rules change and multiply, the more confusion we are left with.
After a year of this, most of us just wear our masks, do what we are physically allowed to do – we can’t for instance, walk through a store’s locked doors – and wait for the next set of rules to come.
If you are looking for hard-and-fast rules, you have come to the wrong place. There are such rules but they seem to be more along the lines of ‘good advice’ than anything else. We are ‘allowed’ to exercise, for instance, but what about children who sit in school all day with 20 or 30 of their peers, can they ‘exercise’ with them at the playground, in my living room, etc.?
Before the stay-at-home order came into effect, there is a group of 15-20 young people playing and watching basketball – what could be more wholesome? And what could seem such a blatant violation of the 10 or fewer rule? Does it matter that these are all students who spend all day together in class? Do classes constitute bubbles?

The why
No one should question the good intentions, and good goals of the order, as spelled out by the province, which is to “save lives, prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed, protect in-person learning and keep children in schools, allow for more time to vaccinate Ontarians, stop the spread of COVID-19 in communities.”
The thing most of us do not know about is the actual state of hospitals. We can’t know, because hospitals are pretty hard to get into these days, but we take their word for it.
We can see that the rate of infection is accelerating. It has been since the dip in February. We are almost back to the high we attained around January 10.

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