When Dr. Henry says we must live with the virus, it's important to ask ourselves why. Let's review some history. #BCPoli #BCed #CDNPoli

A thread.

In spring 2020, BC had enough of a hard lockdown–schools, in-restaurant dining, pubs, gyms, pools, rec centres, etc. were closed—in order to get daily cases low. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-bc-closes-schools-in-wake-of-virus-outbreak/

Through much of June, our daily cases hovered around 10 for much of the month.

Unsurprisingly, cases started rising once service businesses and travel opened up. Except for a slight dip in late September, our cases were on an exponential growth curve between July and early Nov.

In November, Henry started to increase restrictions, first in the Fraser Health region, and then across the province.

This, combined with vaccinations in LTC and other high-risk places, has finally brought our daily new cases down to ~400. Good, but not good enough.

Recently, Henry has argued that the Nov. spike (which her modelers predicted, and which was forecast for months by rising cases), was due to SARS-CoV-2 becoming more infectious. Variants did make the virus more infectious elsewhere (see: UK), but not in BC at the time.

Dr. Henry's in an odd position: She's trying to argue that a lockdown that worked well in BC last year, won't work as well now. She says this even though we have more tools we could use—rapid tests, tracking apps, federal quarantines, vaccines—than we did the last time.

Why is Henry doing this? I see 3 possible reasons.

1) She's being leaned on politically.

2) She doesn't think it will work, so she refuses to try.

3) She thinks #COVIDzero is possible, and that success will show that most of the covid deaths since last summer were preventable.

In conclusion:

And just to state the obvious, in just a few weeks our path out of this could get much, much, more difficult.

The playing field has shifted; BC's strategy hasn't. Delaying the pain of a lockdown will only increase the pain of a lockdown. https://twitter.com/matpVI/status/1361025577075970048?s=19