It's Friday night twitter so I'm gonna go on a little rant here about the government secrecy and COVID-19

Someone died of COVID- where did they live?

There is a care home outbreak. How many people have died there?

How many ICU beds are there in northern B.C.?

If you thought the public should have access to any of that information you'd be wrong, based on government patterns

How many cases in schools?

What about infections in healthcare workers?

Again, no.

All of this is hidden behind a shroud of "privacy".

Hell, on any given day we don't know if the data we're getting will come in the form of an email, a news conference, or just go up on a website.

Some numbers don't make sense? You may or may not get clarification

It
Does.
Not.
Have.
To.
Be.
Like.
This.

Other jurisdictions even in Canada have consistent, proactive disclosure of data. They don't tell you Bob up the street has it but they can tell you where cases are seeing upticks

For TWO DAYS I have been trying to find out if there is truth to the whispers that the ICU unit here is full... or almost full... or overflow.

But I can't even get an answer on how many ICU beds are available.

It is definitely less than twenty. Someone could go and count them

People have died and are possibly still dying due to a care home outbreak in Dawson Creek.

We haven't received updated numbers on how many people in that care home have tested positive in a week.

They want people to take this seriously but when it comes to the serious things: ICU's filling up, people dying in care homes, they depersonalize it, bury it in bad data and delay.

I don't know what's behind it, but it is a deliberate decision to not share information

And it's not just with the public. It's with other health agencies. It's with data scientists who are collecting information worldwide to try and get an aggregate look at how this virus spreads and what activities are more dangerous than others

And it leaves us in the position of looking to the public that we're not doing our job. "Why aren't you reporting on the full ICU"? Because I can't get information one way or another about it because somehow either health officials don't know, or don't think the public should

Does any of this change the basic advice of wash your hands, keep your distance, stay home if you're sick? No. But it demonstrates whether you are being transparent with the information you have, or whether you even have the information the public hopes you do

And when you demonstrate an unwillingness to be transparent that's how people start buying into conspiracy and misinformation and rumour. Because absent of the truth, something else will fill the vacuum

Also this! You know those really resonant images and interviews with nurses you see in other places?

The idea of a nurse being able to talk candidly here is... I won't say impossible, but it's not great https://twitter.com/Ben_Nelms/status/1330046759800877058?s=19

This is supposed to go in fleets now, isn't it