Golf season is officially over.\u00a0 Have you ever noticed that for real golfers, as a breed, have a harder time dealing with the offseason than pretty much any other sport on earth?\u00a0 It\u2019s true.\u00a0 One of my friends says that once his kids are out of the house and he has an empty nest, he has detailed plans on how to convert his basement into an indoor golfing facility with putting greens, a driving range with a net, and a swanky watering hole with a big screen TV that will only show golf channels.\u00a0 I think he and I will become closer friends in the future\u2026<\/p>\n
Recently my friend told me about a day when he and his son took his younger daughter golfing for the first time.\u00a0 The father and son were doing all they could to be encouraging and positive with the young woman so that she could learn to love the sport as they do.\u00a0 The guys went first, the whole time talking their way through the process of driving the ball from the tee.\u00a0 Both made pretty good shots and complimented each other.\u00a0 Then the daughter went up and they gave her lots of tips and guidance.\u00a0 Then, their jaws dropped so hard they had to wipe grass stains from their chins and replace the divots.\u00a0 Right down the fairway like it was following a GPS to the green.\u00a0 The son kind of grimaced looked at his dad and said, \u201cMaybe Catherine should take up tennis instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, they all attributed it to beginners\u2019 luck<\/em><\/strong>. \u00a0It happens to most of us at some point in our lives when we try doing something we\u2019ve never done before.\u00a0 Of course, people swear that there really is no such thing, but I say they are wrong to some degree.\u00a0 I say wrong to some degree<\/em><\/strong> because there are scientific and psychological factors at play that actually give beginner\u2019s luck some validity.\u00a0 Without going into detail, factors such as lack of any experience or knowledge help beginners believe that anything is possible. \u00a0Also doing something new gives them a shot of adrenaline and makes them hyper-aware.\u00a0 They listen intently to knowledgeable and experienced experts and try to follow their directions and advice to — a tee.<\/p>\n I raise the issue of beginner\u2019s luck because there is an element of that in the way Ontario handled the first wave of COVID-19; to be more precise, how Doug Ford handled the first wave.<\/p>\n When the first wave hit Ontario, it was uncharted territory for our leaders at every level of government.\u00a0 No one had ever had to battle such a monstrous force.\u00a0 Political leaders were the ones in the position to make decisions but wisely deferred to public health and medical experts for advice.\u00a0 I have to admit that in the end, Ontario was overall pretty successful in flattening out the first wave infection rates.\u00a0 Ontario benefited from Doug Ford\u2019s beginners\u2019 luck<\/em><\/strong> for the same reason that my friend\u2019s daughter did on the links. \u00a0Ford committed to listening attentively to and following the directions of his public health and medical advisers to the letter.\u00a0 The focus of the objective was to flatten the curve.\u00a0 Ford did not allow himself to become encumbered with groups, lobbyists or individuals who understandably had their own concerns and agendas to press.\u00a0 Such influence is normal and expected.<\/p>\n Now, I\u2019m sure that I don\u2019t need to tell you what happened as the golf game progressed that day and how things continued in the days to come.\u00a0 Of course, the girl\u2019s success saw a downward trend because she started to be affected by so many other influences and detractors around her.\u00a0 She started taking advice from lots of other people and she also started to follow her own inclinations and processes.\u00a0 Hence, the end of beginners\u2019 luck.<\/p>\n Now Ontario finds itself in the midst of a second wave that makes the first wave look like a rehearsal.\u00a0 I\u2019ve often said a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.\u00a0 With five or six months of \u201cCOVID-19 experience\u201d under his belt, Ford allowed himself to be distracted by a wave of advice and requests from scores of groups and individuals that each have their own perspective and agenda.<\/p>\n When the infection rates started to double and triple, Doug Ford and Health Minister Christine Elliott said repeatedly that they were continuing to adhere to the advice of medical experts when they canceled public health measures in the province\u2019s hot zones.\u00a0 They gambled with people\u2019s lives and now experts project Ontario could hit 2,000 new cases a day next month.<\/p>\n On November 3rd<\/sup> Ford assured Ontarians that, \u201cThis framework was developed in consultation with the Chief Medical Officer of Health, the Public Health Measures Table, local medical officers of health, and other health system experts.\u201d The next day he said, \u201cEveryone had their input on it.\u00a0 I think they did an extremely good job.\u201d And on the 5th<\/sup> he told us, \u201cWe have well over 100 docs giving us all this information. \u00a0You know, it\u2019s not just Dr. Williams.\u201d<\/p>\n On the same day, Christine Elliott told Ontarians, \u201cWe take advice and recommendations from Doctor Williams, from the public measures table, there are a number of other doctors that feed into that table that provide us with that advice.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the above assurances were not true.\u00a0 How believable are these statements when hundreds of doctors and public health officials signed a letter advising Ford and Elliot that the advice they were following was not based on realistic science?\u00a0 The Ford government has, in fact, taken their eye off to the ball (i.e. flattening the curve), focusing on keeping their Conservative friends happy and on saving a buck \u2013 money that was given by the federal government to help fight the virus.<\/p>\n Andrea Horwath publicly questioned the credibility of Ford and Elliott\u2019s statements.\u00a0 \u201cWith the province in crisis and experts speaking out against the Ford government\u2019s penny-pinching everyone-for-themselves strategy in the battle against COVID-19, is Dr. Williams telling Doug Ford that he should do these things?\u00a0 Or did Doug Ford decide to do these things, and order Dr. Williams to justify them.\u201d<\/p>\n Ford loves to sound tough promising to lockdown the province in the blink of an eye if the numbers cross the threshold.\u00a0 The problem is that Ford won\u2019t share what his threshold for lockdown is.\u00a0 Not only is Ford refusing to reveal the threshold, but he is muzzling the experts who are advising his government on this by making them sign non-disclosure agreements.\u00a0 What happened to the promises of transparency and clarity?\u00a0 The only reason someone is forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement is if they have information that someone has something damaging to hide.<\/p>\n Unlike the first wave, in this second wave, Ford is caving into political pressure.\u00a0 In recent weeks, Ford has been moving in the opposite direction, opening things up by using a \u2018red zone\u2019 category which relaxes public health protections compared to the stronger Stage 2 restrictions. By relaxing public health restrictions too fast, Doug Ford is gambling with people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n It may be fine to put your faith in beginners\u2019 luck on the links or when playing card games.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not sure that Ontarians want to put their faith in a government that takes their eye off the ball and counts on beginners\u2019 luck.\u00a0 We need leadership that shows strength, clarity, transparency, compassion, and vision.<\/p>\n As always, please feel free to contact my office about these issues, or any other provincial matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Golf season is officially over.\u00a0 Have you ever noticed that for real golfers, as a breed, have a harder time dealing with the offseason than pretty much any other sport on earth?\u00a0 It\u2019s true.\u00a0 One of my friends says that once his kids are out of the house and he has an empty nest, he …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":1036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-27 18:42:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39550,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39549\/revisions\/39550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}