COVID-19 Pandemic: The Ideology of Incrementalism

The COVID-19 pandemic applies to public policies in the Ontario government and can be best explained through the ideology of incrementalism. This is because incrementalism looks to individuals or groups of people influencing public policy as well as models that analyze matters of small and slow changes to past decisions. The incremental model analyzes and uses a matter of small changes to past decisions. The process of incrementalism is important because, in a sense, it increases the rules and regulations on the community’s ability to access things like non-essential goods and services.

The Ontario government has been a prime example of how public policy is made through the influence and actions of the community. Many public actions helped implement public policies for COVID-19, such as the stay-at-home order; when COVID numbers rise too high, closing the non-essentials in the community would help prevent further rising numbers before opening up the community again. Another policy implemented is the color zones, where each color, ranging from green to red, would represent things like how many people can enter a store or what stores will stay open.

The government is also implementing further actions, such as making the COVID-19 vaccine available to Canadians. The interesting part about the vaccine is that there are certain restrictions as to who can get the vaccine and when. For example, adults such as the elderly over the age of 65 as well as essential workers such as healthcare workers were able to get the vaccine before anyone else. This group is considered to be group one out of three.

The groups are based on the risk factors within the community. It is clear by watching the video that the government now deals with matters at hand very differently than at the beginning of the pandemic, yet from a citizen’s perspective, the developments weren’t several radical and every policy was eased into implementation.