We had been doing well. Ontario handled the first wave of COVID-19 rather gracefully. Our neighbors to the south struggled, first in cities like New York during the spring of 2020, then in the sunbelt states in the summer, and then again during the so-called third-wave with the triple-threat of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. For most of this time, we retreated behind our smug Canadian confidence in good government.
Times have changed. To put it mildly, the Rona is kicking our asses. Our American cousins are reveling in a bout of well-earned vaccine gluttony. We are clearly not. Ontario fielded well during most of the game, but now that we're in the seventh inning we are really finding it difficult to close this thing out. Quite simply, we took our eye off the ball and it's costing us the win. Unfortunately, the game is really the lives of our friends, family, and fellow citizens.
We should have shut down sooner. We didn't. We should have listened to our medical experts. But we didn't. We should have learned from the experiences of every other country that has had a serious COVID outbreak. And now we wish we had.
The reason for our failures might lie in a phenomenon well-known to pilots and air-transportation experts.
Ontario has done fairly well through the pandemic, with relatively well-balanced controls. Case numbers began to escalate in late 2020 culminating in a spike during the Christmas season. Doug Ford, the premiere, announced a 28-day lockdown starting December 26, 2020. This announcement was followed by a strict lock-down order from January 14 to February 11. COVID numbers came down in the province but hospitalizations remained relatively high. The lockdown was lifted for most of the province by February 16, except for hard-hit regions like Peel and Toronto.
Towards the end of this lockdown, the Ontario government made a decision that may have come back to haunt us. Everyone wanted schools back open, but not before making some changes. The public health community had started to recognize the dangers of new Variants of Concern (VoC) emerging in the UK, Brazil, and South Africa. After consulting with education-related federations and unions, with Ontario's Science Table, and with the Chief Medical Officer of Health, the province announced that the students would be back in the classroom for February 16, well ahead of expectations. [1]
There was one more fateful decision. On February 11, Minister of Education Stephen Lecce announced:
"In support of our collective efforts to keep schools safe, we are postponing March break until April 12-16, 2021. This decision was made with the best advice of Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health and public health officials, including consultations with many local Medical Officers of Health." [2]
April 12 became the target date. It was the wrong one.
The dangers of get-there-itis
In March of 1967, a ship by the name of Torrey Canyon was steaming towards the UK. The captain was eager to make good time in order to get favorable tides for landing. The ship was nearing the treacherous Scilly Isles when the ship's officers made a fateful decision. Instead of going around, they attempted to navigate through the shoals. [3]
The gambit failed. The Torrey Canyon struck shore. As noted by Tim Harford, there was no one particular thing that caused this failure. It was a combination of things:
"Most serious accidents have multiple causes. A series of mistakes or pieces of bad luck line up to allow disaster. The Torrey Canyon was hampered by an unforgiving schedule, barely adequate charts, unhelpful winds and currents, confusion over the autopilot, and the unexpected appearance of fishing boats in the intended course."
Harford notes that the real cause of Torrey Canyon's fate was a condition colloquially called get-there-itis. We are so desperate to get where we want to go that we discount the true costs and risks. Psychologists and transportation experts use a more formal term: plan continuation bias. A 2004 NASA Ames study reviewed 19 plane accidents resulting from human error. Almost half involved plan continuation bias. It's incredibly insidious. What starts as a desire to get somewhere, becomes an obsession that blocks subtle queues of danger, increases confirmation bias, and grows stronger as we approach our objective. Robert Owens (2013) notes:
"So once you get too far down the wrong road, the biases get stronger, task saturation kicks in, situational awareness goes bye-bye, and you are totally defensive, no longer thinking ahead of the airplane."
The NASA Ames study applies specifically to air pilots. Harford notes that the same phenomena can apply to almost any situation or plan:
"The goal appears within touching distance; it's now or never. Tunnel vision sets it. The idea of a pause or a change of approach becomes not just aggravating, expensive or embarrassing -- it becomes literally unthinkable."
Doug Ford gets there way too late… maybe
The Ontario spring break was pushed to April 12. Well before this date, there were signs of trouble in Ontario. Public warnings were issued by public health officers and Ontario's Science Table. ICUs filled up. Editorials appeared pointing out the obvious: Ontario was losing the COVID-19 fight. More specifically, Ontario's most vulnerable populations -- working-class racial minorities living in multi-generational settings -- were paying the price. There was a potential white knight in the form of vaccines, but they were coming far too slowly to avert the disaster.
On April 7, the Wednesday before Ontario's delayed spring break, Ford's government capitulated by declaring a new state of emergency. The new stay-at-home order was to last four weeks. The situation continued to worsen. On April 16, the government extended the lockdown to at least May 20 with new prohibitions on outdoor gatherings, recreation, non-essential construction, and travel into the province from outside. The response has been widely seen as both draconian and not particularly science-informed as it ignores several of the key recommendations of public health experts (e.g., paid leave for essential workers).
This all could have been prevented. The signs were all there. Robert Owens -- in an article intended for pilots -- tells us what to do: know your options, realize that you will succumb to plan continuation bias, and think ahead of negative outcomes. Build out that pre-mortem. His last two recommendations are the most relevant:
"Don't procrastinate: Make decisions earlier, not later. Making the call to change course, divert, or go-around earlier is almost always the safer option."
"Be responsible: Think about your passengers or your loved ones on the ground. Sometimes a little reality check can help overcome our instincts when that decision to discontinue needs to be made."
Doug Ford admitted that he did the wrong thing. In a tearful press conference on April 22, he admitted that the government moved "too fast" and…
Wait. What?!?
His tears weren't for the deaths of Ontarioans caused by the glacial decision-making of his government and the mistakes induced by plan continuation bias. Instead, he apologized for announcing policies that restricted civil rights (potentially violating The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) and for closing outdoor playgrounds. He then proceeded to heap blame on federal authorities for provincial problems. [4]
We're not out of this thing yet. I'd prefer that we stay locked down until we know that we're clear.
Notes
[1]. I've taken most of the
dates and details from a Wikipedia page on the topic: "COVID-19 Pandemic
In Ontario."
[2]. See the official press
release from the Province of Ontario: “Ontario Delays March Break in an Effort
to Reduce Community Transmission of COVID-19.”
[3]. I've depended on Tim
Harford's retelling of the Torrey Canyon story (2019). It was also the subject
of the first episode of his Cautionary Tales podcast: "DANGER: Rocks
Ahead!" (https://timharford.com/2019/11/cautionary-tales-ep-1-danger-rocks-ahead/).
Harford, in turn, cites a 1968 book by Richard Petrow called In the Wake of
Torrey Canyon.
[4]. See Tsekouras 2021.
References
“COVID-19 Pandemic in Ontario.” Wikipedia,
23 Apr. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Ontario.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2021.
Harford, Tim. “Brexit Lessons
from the Wreck of the Torrey Canyon.” Financial Times, 18 Jan. 2019, www.ft.com/content/9e31e990-1a6a-11e9-b93e-f4351a53f1c3.
Accessed 22 Apr. 2021.
“Ontario Delays March Break in an
Effort to Reduce Community Transmission of COVID-19.” Province of Ontario
Newsroom, 11 Feb. 2021, news.ontario.ca/en/statement/60325/ontario-delays-march-break-in-an-effort-to-reduce-community-transmission-of-covid-19.
Accessed 22 Apr. 2021.
Owens, Robert. “Protect Yourself
from ‘Get-There-Itis’ — General Aviation News.” General Aviation News,
20 May 2013, generalaviationnews.com/2013/05/20/protect-yourself-from-get-there-itis/.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2021.
Tsekouras, Phil. “‘We Got It
Wrong’: Doug Ford Apologizes for Some of Ontario’s Enhanced Public Health
Measures.” CTV News Toronto, 22 Apr. 2021, toronto.ctvnews.ca/we-got-it-wrong-doug-ford-apologizes-for-some-of-ontario-s-enhanced-public-health-measures-1.5397661.
Accessed 23 Apr. 2021.
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