Today was 'Bent's first day back at work since Ontario dental offices were shut down on March 15. Apparently that stresses me out; I couldn’t fall asleep until almost 4 am. There are dozens of new guidelines and procedures so today he and his staff planned how it's all going to work. Everyone will be masked and trying to stay 2 meters apart as much as possible, which will make it harder to work together.
It won't be business as usual. They won't be doing every kind of procedure or treating every kind of patient. There aren't many hard restrictions. Each dentist can choose their own level of risk tolerance for themselves and their patients, and use that to determine which types of appointments they think should happen right now.
‘Bent and his staff got professionally fit tested for N95 masks today so now they know which models to buy if they can find any for sale! Luckily, they don't need N95s for every procedure so they'll still be able to move forward.
Although the provincial reopening gives the impression that we can all be less careful now, Ontario is really not doing well. The good news is that hospitalizations and ventilator use are steadily declining.
The bad news is that the daily new cases have been stuck around the same level for the past month. Ontario flattened the curve and established criteria for different phases of reopening, then proceeded to reopen even though we didn't meet the criteria. Even Québec is doing better. :(
With 'Bent returning to work, our family's interactions with the outside world have been greatly increased so to balance it, we'll try not to expand our non-work world too much until the case numbers drop.