Florida closed the beaches Thursday afternoon, and everybody knew it was too late. There were already Spring Breakers there, mingling and partying. It was like Amity Island closing the beaches after the shark from Jaws had eaten all the water skiers, and maybe a boat. I wish that was a joke.

We need to get away from each other, further away, now. Ontario isn’t Florida, but there is a gap between where we are and what we know, and the coronavirus is living in that gap, under the surface of the water. The province reported 43 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday afternoon.

“That still seems surprisingly low given the flow (of returning Canadians from abroad) that we’re seeing,” said Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer. He said he expected cases will rise.

But the new cases in Ontario are not even new; they’re the spray before a wave. At 10:30 a.m. Thursday there were 3,972 cases under investigation in Ontario, of unknown transmission. At 5:30, that backlog had dropped by one.

That is a significant data gap; if the virus is spread within the community, as opposed to travel-related cases, it means the house is on fire. The delay in getting tests has been reported as anywhere between two and five days, and some people have said it’s taken as much as seven. Officials say greater testing capability is coming online, but the gap hasn’t been closed yet.

“I always compare it to the light from a star,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, explaining the discrepancy between the reported numbers and the actual numbers. “What you’re seeing reported today is something that actually happened a while back, maybe two weeks back even ... so what we’re seeing now, with the day-over-day increase, is something that happened before.”

Before the federal government expedited the release of 800,000 swabs Wednesday, there was a testing shortage. Some hospitals rationed. Some all but ran out. Some doctors tried to repurpose gonorrhea and chlamydia swabs to supplement the supply.

As Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, put it, “testing isn’t able to track down each case in our community, because the mild illness the majority of people experience is not distinguishable from common colds, and we cannot test large numbers.”

Even with swabs, not everyone is tested. Tests are usually reserved for the significantly ill, for health care workers who have been exposed — a critical, critical issue — and for residents of long-term care facilities, which is a vulnerable population. Tests are also for cluster or outbreak situations, or surveillance testing of clinically suspicious populations.

Indeed, Ontario can’t mass test. In the containment stage of an epidemic, you act like a detective: interview family members, track the patient’s last 14 days, isolate those you need to isolate. Once community spread happens, heavy resources must also be devoted to mitigation, to keep more people alive.

Two front-line Ontario doctors who asked not to be identified told the Star they believe, based on their experiences, that containment is already gone. An ER doctor at McMaster, Ari Greenwald, recently made a WhatsApp voice recording for friends. It was sent around. He talks about how virulent the virus is, how smart, and how difficult it is to spot.

“The reality is that the reality of the cases out in the community, based on what I am seeing on the front lines in the last two to three days, is at least 10 times higher than the numbers you are seeing published, if not more,” he said. That may be accurate, and may not. But the virus’s ability to be asymptomatic, to hide in plain sight, is the worst part.

Half of Ontario’s 22 patients who have been hospitalized are in Toronto. Tam, in her daily briefing, made her strongest appeal yet, saying, “We don’t just need to flatten the curve; we need to plank it. And we need everyone, from government to communities, families and individual to work together. We all have to get it right, and to get it right right now. This is our chance, right here, right now.”

We need to get away from each other. The offices that are still open but don’t have to be need to send their people home. The stores that are open that don’t need to be open need to do the same. Don’t have friends or parents over; FaceTime them, call them, email them. Tell them you love them, and that you will see them again. Don’t take your kids to the playgrounds. I have four kids, and that’s not a small ask. I know.

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But there are doctors and nurses and paramedics and medical professionals out there right now, and the storm is coming for them and for us. Canadian doctors are already passing around warnings from doctors in Seattle, in Italy, even in New York City, about how to manage and survive when ERs are overrun.

Everything still feels normal now, even with everything. But we haven’t all accepted how dangerous this is. So act like you have it, act like you will get it, and know that it’s not a myth, or a joke. Get away from each other, please. The worst thing that could happen is that you did it for nothing. But the overwhelming odds are that isn’t true.