2021-04-27 BC – Pandemics in British Columbia

Vaccination Clinics

Fraser Health opened up three pop-up AZ clinics in “hotspot communities” for people 30+ who live in those communities. At least, that’s how it was supposed to work. Apparently some places were not checking the postal codes. I don’t know if:

There is a quiet policy to vaccinate anybody who comes in.
The policy is to vaccinate only people from those postal codes, but the people working are ignorant of the policy.
The policy is to vaccinate only people from those postal codes, but the people working are afraid that if they turn patients away, the patients will get either weepy or belligerent.
The policy is to vaccinate only people from those postal codes, but the people working don’t care about the policy.

I haven’t decided how I feel about the pop-up clinics vaxxing people from out-of-area. On the one hand, getting people vaccinated is a good thing. On the other hand, getting targeted people in hotspots vaccinated is an even better thing.

One person on social media questioned whether unannounced pop-up clinics were the best way to serve essential workers who likely were not hanging out on social media in time to find out about the hotspots, and who probably were working and couldn’t arrange with their workplace to get vax that quickly.

Measures

Well, well, well, it looks like Playland is not going to open this weekend. I am not in the least bit surprised.

Sick Leave

Premier Horgan says he is working on a provincial sick leave benefit, since the feds wouldn’t do it.

Hyder-Stewart

Dr. Henry and Minister Dix mentioned something about Alaska Governor Dunleavy giving vax last week, but I couldn’t find anything out about it. There’s now an article about it: Dunleavy is offering to vaccinate Stewart, BC in hopes that they will ease restrictions on Hyder, AK which has no direct connections to anywhere except Stewart.

COVID-Zero

I have seen a lot of people on social media wonder why we didn’t shoot for eradication of COVID-19 instead of simply managing it, AKA shooting for COVID-Zero. “Look at the Atlantic Provinces!”, they say. “They have normal lives there!” They also point to New Zealand and Australia.

Well, I say, “Look at the Atlantic Provinces.” COVID-Zero is possible, but it’s f hard to do. Nova Scotia is in the middle of a four-week hard lockdown (and they are piiiiiiiissed about it) because some out-of-provincers blew off quarantine. Parts of New Brunswick are in lockdown.

Voluntary measures do not work. Even laws that are not diligently enforced don’t work perfectly because narcissistic sociopaths exist. To make people comply with quarantines, you pretty much have to incarcerate people in hotels. That is a) expensive and b) quite a restriction on people’s freedoms. Even then, it’s really hard because people have really good reasons to travel… and then they bring illness back with them. Perth just had a lockdown because someone went to India for their own wedding, for example. Or the hotel security has a breach, like in Melbourne, which resulted in a six week hard lockdown.

The more travellers enter your region, the harder it is to police. It’s also a non-linear function: if you get even one introduction, the virus can spread exponentially, regardless of how large or small your population is. A big region thus can’t spend the same amount of effort per person to keep the virus out, it has to spend more.

The more routes into and out of your region, the harder it is to control. Nova Scotia only has two roads in and two airports, and even it couldn’t keep the virus out. BC has 19 international borders, about six roads from AB, about six roads from YT, and 36 airports. Pre-pandemic, Halifax International had 3.6M air passengers; YVR had 19.7M.

BC also has a fairly large number of people who live in one province and work in another. Those who couldn’t work from home would lose their jobs.

Finally, a lot of our food is trucked in from the US. Either the trucks would have needed police escorts or they would have had to switch drivers at the border. I’m not actually sure if we have enough drivers.

I think that if we had tried for COVID-Zero, it would have been extremely expensive for all the guards we would have had to hire, and I’m not sure that even so we would have been able to prevent regular spread. I think we would have ended up in hard lockdown pretty much ALL. THE. TIME.

So I think it was correct that we needed to strike a balance, and yet any time you strike a balance, you can argue where the fulcrum should be. There is no right or wrong answer, only trade-offs. I think BC has done a good job of striking a balance. Is it perfect? No, but I don’t think perfect existed.