Read on Twitter
1/ You know in the disaster movie when a headline on the news in the background is meant to foreshadow how oblivious the characters are to looming catastrophe? Yeah, that. Rant from a concerned BC bystander... #bcpoli #bced https://globalnews.ca/news/7595103/bc-covid-variants/
2/ Yesterday our @bcndp govt + public health held a power point pres on the vaccine rollout and took a few questions. It was the 2nd time last week they'd appeared in person. During these press confs, reporters are not allowed in the room and can only ask one qn + one follow-up.
3/ Plenty of the people who elected this govt have questions. Like: why are our healthcare workers still under droplet protocols when this is also an aerosolized virus? Why did we only mandate masks in hospitals in Nov 2020? http://www.bccdc.ca/health-professionals/clinical-resources/covid-19-care/infection-control/personal-protective-equipment
4/ Why does public health insist rapid tests are labour intensive, unreliable and not useful when scientists (and Health Canada) disagree? Pilot projects are identifying/isolating multiple asymptomatic cases. How many more lives could we be saving? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/rapid-testing-bc-covid-19-1.5879915
5/ Why don't kids in classrooms protect each other and their teachers by wearing mandated masks? Why does BC have a special restrictive definition of 'outbreak' just for schools that ensures multiple in-school transmissions are never flagged as such to parents or the public?
6/ Why is @bcndp pursuing FSA tests this year? How is standardized testing a priority in a school year rife with disruption? Who benefits? (Hint: a right wing think tank) What if the same effort went into ventilating classrooms as to administering an unnecessary provincial test?
7/ Why did BC tighten our Covid testing parameters in December, then fail to loosen them when testing centres in urban areas sat (and still sit) empty? Why are we not exploiting the lull to test close contacts, contacts of contacts, or do random surveillance testing?
8/ Why do we report misleading test numbers to the public (that incl workplace testing by sports, film industry etc) but different numbers to the feds? Why can data scientists still not get clear, usable raw data from the govt one year into this pandemic? https://twitter.com/vb_jens/status/1352853393870450688?s=19
9/ Why are we not collecting disaggregated data? Why have we ignored our racialized communities, who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic? How is this govt by the people for the people? https://www.capitaldaily.ca/news/covid-19-race-based-data-collection-vancouver-island-bc
10/ Why are we down to two "press conferences" a week when we are still seeing 500+ cases per day? Why waste time at them reading long inventory lists that could be released in writing? Why do we cut these sessions off when the hour runs out, not when the questions run out?
11/ And the qn that started this rant: why did no one tell us we'd doubled the variants found in the province last week? We have the ONLY reported cases of the SA variant in Canada - and they were community acquired. Why was this info buried in a situation report? Big news, yes?!
12/ Early in 2020, I was so proud of @DrBonnieHenry, @jjhorgan and the @bcndp - but we were working from an old tried and true pandemic playbook. Many of those strategies are no longer useful - yet this govt is actively resisting change, transparency and innovation.
13/ We need to be nimble. We need to make bold choices that protect the economy AND our health. We need to have clear metrics to measure our success/failure, clearly communicated, and we need the public to join with govt in working towards those targets.
14/ I want to be proud of BC. But if we can't embrace evolving science and pivot accordingly, if we can't be honest with people about new threats, we're just not all in this together - we're plot points in a disaster movie. We need to write a better ending. #CanadianShield
