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I am employed. I have everything I need in my apartment. I don’t have so much as a dog to walk, never mind kids to keep from going feral. I am not complaining. But that apartment comprises 500 square feet, and two wee windows. When I think about holing up here until July — a timeline Canadian politicians are unwilling to dismiss, and that may prove optimistic — it fills me with nothing short of genuine dread.

I would kill just to have access to a desk somewhere else, or the balcony I had in my previous apartment, never mind the semi-detached house I grew up in in Midtown Toronto that’s probably worth $2 million right now. I know how it would feel to ride this thing out on Heath Street East — barbecuing every night, chatting safely with neighbours over the fence — as opposed to in apartment 301. It’s night and day.

Now think about people in basement apartments or crummy public housing. Imagine when it gets hot, and folks don’t have air conditioning. Imagine being cooped up 23 hours a day with your kids in a stifling shoebox, relying on the same federal government that can’t manage its own payroll system to shepherd you through economic catastrophe. To keep people in such circumstances indoors by force, to denounce them even for taking a walk, to shut down schoolyards where kids could ride their bikes and scooters in at least relative safety, is to risk mental and physical health outcomes that should certainly be weighed against the risks of COVID-19 itself.