Yes. I feel very strongly about this and I'm not being casual or dismissive of those who are in a risky situation. I am exhibit A for that because I'm 65 and a male who takes immunosuppressive drugs for arthritis. So I'm a triple risk from this horrible virus.
In my enormous readings of the The New York Times, the Globe and The Wall Street Journal and of as many of the leading epidemiologists as possible, I have noticed the repeated point they have made that not everyone is equally at risk. We know this anecdotally.
We know that in the nursing homes, the senior citizens homes, Extendicare homes, whatever we want to call them, these people are tragically at very great risk, partly because they're in an enclosed space and because of their age and health vulnerability, whereas if I dash into Loblaws for 10 minutes at 7 a.m. where I stay three metres away from the nearest person, the idea that I'm in the same risk profile as the front-line health workers working every day with people with coronavirus is just preposterous nonsense. I am not at risk.
Paraphrasing the epidemiologists, we should be evaluating each of these firms and occupations in what Professor Streeck at the University of Bonn called “low contact, low risk”. Going into a retail store for five or 10 minutes is low contact, low risk, as opposed to people in nursing homes or in bars or at sporting events. By the way, the virus started in Germany at a music event where thousands of people were drinking and dancing together.
So we should be measuring and determining which businesses are low risk and then bringing those businesses back slowly, albeit with appropriate distancing measures. Right now, my only criticism is not of the government's response to the crisis but that we're treating everybody as being at equal risk. We're saying, let's close everything except essential services. The essential services are not being closed down because they're less at risk, but because they're essential to the economy.
I'm suggesting strongly that we should be making a measured, scientific, evidence-based analysis of each of these jobs and companies and so forth, and I would suggest that many of the retail businesses are low contact, low risk, except of course bars and restaurants. If I go into a framing store with my diploma and I'm there for five minutes, and I talk about the frame and the colour and the glass and leave the diploma there, it's not credible to say that I'm equally at risk as a doctor if I'm standing three feet away compared with that doctor in a hospital dealing with people with that risk. We need to make that assessment.