Ontario's current state is likely the logical outcome of the government's decisions.

I don't want this to be taken the wrong. As much as I am no fan of the Ford government they have handled the pandemic at most times better than most areas. However, even in this one bright spot on his record, those times where he hasn't handled it well have turned into calamity.

And while I can't peruse an alternate timeline where something else happened and thus I can't be completely certain, the paths followed by other regions both in Canada and abroad which have made similar missteps make a fairly strong argument that the decisions played a rather large part in people's behavior.

To that end I say... why a lock down the day after Christmas? Delaying the lock down in general was a bad idea. But, waiting until after the single largest travel day in the country to do it? That seems... ill advised. Also, the rules around when schools would open and the lock down itself was planned to end sent an additional subliminal message; it is OK to gather for Christmas as we'll basically have a 14 day quarantine before the youngest go back and 28 days.

So what went wrong? People read into that. And travel they did. And they didn't stop on Christmas. They went on gathering on New Year's. At least, given that cases are only just now starting to decelerate, that is what it would suggest. In fact, I would suggest people kept on gathering even after New Year's and stopped maybe a week ago as people's actions scuttled early returns for younger kids to school. 

Honestly, what Ford should have done is locked down on the 23rd or earlier. This would have cratered most people's plans and sent a stronger message. 

For me, the biggest factor in this mistake was the growing case rate in Toronto and in the GTA. This is the single most populous hub in Ontario and at the time of the lock down it had the highest positivity rate, the highest infection rate per capita and the highest numbers overall. The size of Toronto's population poses a MASSIVE problem. Virtually every Ontario family has a link to that city. And, with things not locked down on Christmas Torontonians would have flocked to family elsewhere or had family come visit them.

And now case loads are MUCH higher everywhere. And these places now facing these increased cases aren't prepared to deal with it. They are used to not needing the strict lock downs. They feel they've done their part. And now the problem is everywhere.