Toronto, Miranda McCurlie has been living in your future. She has been for three weeks.

McCurlie left her Toronto office and began working at home on Feb. 28. She works in marketing at a tech company, which started taking precautions against COVID-19 before the virus made its way to Canada’s borders.

“Our work already had bought us N95 masks and gloves and hand sanitizer” before issuing the directive to work at home, McCurlie said from her North York condo.

While many Torontonians are already self-isolating like McCurlie, that number is about to ramp up with a call from the city’s chief medical officer to stay at home if you can.

Dr. Eileen de Villa on Monday also recommended that restaurants and bars move exclusively to takeout and delivery, with no dine-in service. She also made the recommendation that cinemas close — Canada’s big moviehouse chains did in fact close up on Monday evening — along with theatres and concert venues, to help counter the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is a different city now.

The cascading changes have been swift and stunning; the new reality abruptly altering Toronto. One need only hop on a surprisingly roomy downtown-bound streetcar or wander through the suddenly cavernous Eaton Centre to be struck by the contrast of what is with what was just over a week ago.

McCurlie is adapting to her new normal — anxiously, she said. For all Torontonians there will be challenges, but for some, those adjustments will be bigger than for others.

McCurlie’s 4-year-old son Leo is blind and has autism, while her husband Nathaniel is immunocompromised. She worries that Leo will regress since he is not attending preschool, where he accesses therapy.

“I can already see sort of regression in his progress,” McCurlie said.

That aside, though, working from home has meant her team has bonded, watching each other work silently over a video link; acts of kindness from colleagues have become commonplace as they check in on each other.

McCurlie said colleagues have sent supplies to help out her family, such as a large box of diapers and toilet paper.

This is just one example of sacrifice in a city faced with a pandemic that has swept across continents, driving people indoors and pummelling global markets.

The number of COVID-19 cases continues to grow in Toronto, causing de Villa to decree that the city will take drastic measures to increase social distancing. For the first time, de Villa’s comments suggested community spread in the city. She said three Toronto cases for which links cannot be found are still being investigated.

The recommendations impacting the service and nightlife industry will be subject to the Health Protection and Promotion Act. Under that provincial law, non-compliance could mean a $25,000 fine.

But this is necessary, experts say, before we overload our health-care system. The decisions made in the days ahead — including de Villa’s emphasis on social distancing — will help to flatten the curve. The idea is to sacrifice individual freedoms for the greater good.

“I am calling on our city to rise to this challenge to reduce the spread of this virus,” said de Villa.

“We know that these measures that I am recommending today work based on the experiences of other jurisdictions.”

The events that once brought us together and brought us joy now have the potential to bring us harm.

Apprehension about the coronavirus has emptied schools, churches, arenas, libraries, casinos and other public spaces and pushed many Torontonians to work out of their homes or simply encamp there.

“It’s sort of a short-term pain for the long-term gain of health,” says Shauna Brail, an urban studies professor and the associate director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto.

“A couple of weeks ago, we were still debating the economic implications or the public realm implications and whether they did or did not outweigh the public health implications of making these kinds of dramatic changes. We’re way past that now.

“But it’s not meant to be a long-term shutdown of the city. It’s meant to be an intervention in which the benefit far outweighs the challenge of encouraging the decline of some public life in the short term.”

We’re standing together to face down the pandemic. Just not too close together.

The new reality, for however long it lasts, has in many ways — if you ignore the toilet-paper hoarding — shown the city and the province to be resilient and compassionate; from social-media outrage over the draconian sick-day policies of some companies to volunteers offering to deliver food to our most vulnerable.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Elected leaders have tried to maintain calm. The province issued a statement over the weekend asking consumers to “please practise normal grocery buying habits” and refrain from panic buying.

The Ontario government also announced that workers will no longer need to obtain doctors’ notes.

Dr. Saverio Stranges, professor and chair of epidemiology at Western University, told the Star he had never seen anything quite like COVID-19. He’s from Italy and has been closely following developments there, said the scenario here is rapidly evolving.

“Most of the cases we had in Ontario, at least … were people coming from outside the province. The last few days obviously raised concern in terms of community spreads with no clear epidemiological links,” Stranges explained. “And that calls for more drastic measures of social distancing.”

This is important from a public-health perspective, Stranges stressed.

“We don’t have any other remedies” yet for the coronavirus, he said. “We need to be calm — but we also need to be responsible. And we have an advantage, because we have learned a lot from the Italian experience.”

Ontario hospitals have plans in place to be able to treat a spike in patients that includes increasing the number of beds available across the province. After coronavirus put a strain on the health-care systems of other countries, hospitals here have been asked to scale back elective surgeries. They can also draw on a stockpile of ventilators should there be a sudden increase in critically ill patients.

Other essential services too have contingency plans in place. GO and UP Express services are scaling back, as of Wednesday, in reaction to a sharp decline in ridership. Some lines saw a drop of 40 per cent by Friday.

The TTC has not cut back on service, though Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, is encouraging riders to use transit during off-peak hours to avoid crowding.

Other important cogs in the machinery of a city will remain in place, and that includes waste collection, road maintenance and emergency services. Shelters and long-term care homes will stay open but with strict visitation rules.

Not only are schools shut down for an additional two weeks after the current March break but many potential distractions for kids are also closed, such as libraries and recreation centres along with city-operated arenas, pools and daycares. The Toronto Zoo is also closed.

Even the big telecom companies are stepping up as more people are required to work from home.

Rogers, Bell Canada, Telus and TekSavvy are all removing data limits till at least the end of April.

For many, the gym is no longer a sanctuary to sweat out anxiety. Fit4Less Clubs and GoodLife Fitness Clubs have locked their facilities, with GoodLife saying it is working on digital, at-home fitness options for customers.

The shutdowns and cocooning is forcing some organizations to be creative. Canada’s World Wildlife Fund, for example, can’t hold its largest annual fundraiser — the CN Tower Climb for Nature — because the tower is closed. The event — with a goal of collecting $1.4 million over the two days of the event — will become a “virtual” experience, said Megan Leslie, the WWF’s president and CEO.

Brail believes that with so many public institutions shuttering over the last week, the pandemic and the need for lifestyle changes have become very real to people in Toronto.

“As it gets closer and closer to us, I think we’ve responded with increased understanding that it is in our city, it does affect the people around us and we do need to behave in different ways,” she said, noting that Torontonians are displaying calm and compassion.

“We know that there are a lot of vulnerable people. Either they live alone, they’re elderly, or their incomes are at risk. And we’ve seen some messaging around that it’s time to be kind, to take care of others, to be generous, as individuals, as institutions, as governments as public and private organizations. That’s a really important message.”

When Toronto comes out from under the shadow of this pandemic, Brail says her expectation is that we’ll embrace the value and benefit of working together again.

“There are people who would like to see that this demonstrates, ‘Aha, we’re at a moment where distance no longer matters as much.’ But I think what we’ll find is that the interaction matters very much. And while some jobs can be done remotely for the most part, actually we need to be together. We do better work, we innovate more, we accomplish more and we come up with new ideas that we couldn’t up with if we were all working separately.”

Read more about: