Amy Tan: in BC we should be keeping an eye on the variants, actually doing the genome sequencing, not just assuming (as we are) that everyone has a variant. Which variant, what's the severity, does it lead to death, what's the attack rate in households. To be precautionary..

Dr. Tan: But also, as we reopen, we need to ensure that we are still taking care of the people who've continually been disproportionately affected, and protect their workplaces, we are going to keep exposing people and the virus will keep spreading like wildfire..

Dr. Tan: I treated recent immigrants, recent refugees, & they all had to work in the first wave and were frightened. They did not feel protected by their employers or by society. We must not lose sight of this. We're not safe until we're all safe, that's what #Covid19 teaches us

Dr. Lisa Barrett: she's an immunologist. The only time a virus doesn't mutate, esp RNA virus, is if there's no replication, ie no cases. They'll mutate. If you don't combine high levels of vaccines with testing/surveillance & manage borders, you won't stop this...need all 3.

Dr. Lisa Barrett: I call these new variants #covid21. Again, if you take away any of these 3 tools - vaccines, testing, and border management - we're not getting out of this any time soon. #cdnpoli #covid19BC #bcpoli

Nick: we've been reactive in BC. We are not getting out ahead of this, compared to other provinces. We have been at this for a year and a half and we're still just reacting. We can't focus on measures if they don't seem to be working. We have no rapid testing, no covid app...

Nick: 'We need better guidance. We need data. France did cross sectional random testing. Why aren't we doing more testing? I'd love to do more business. My parents have been in New Zealand 15 mos. and aren't coming home until BC gets it together!'

Dr. Lee: we need to create a foundation before we can gradually open up and ease measures. Quarantine, genome sequence like crazy...

Dr. Colijn. We should do everything Kelley Lee just said, but we need a precautionary plan on escape mutation. More rapid tests please (desp the neg rate/quality). The comparison isn't rapid vs PCR test. It's rapid vs no test!

Dr. Barrett. Agrees with both prior points. But also: 1. give people something to do, not just inactive stay at home. If that's home rapid test, good! 2. it's egregious that there's no national plan for indicators dictating shutdown etc

Dr. Barrett says it doesn't matter if rapid tests aren't perfect. Far, far better than nothing. Dr. Tan: we have to face fact there are transmissions in schools & workplaces...

David: the rules here are so clear, what triggers what, and that's key. To do that you have to engage community, and to do that you have to get granular. Break BC up into granular zones. Engage in that zone, see if zone can get down to zero. Every day, report cases by zone!

People then rally in their region collectively - then you conquer it.

Nick: support the businesses where you live. Be very cautious about contributing to spread if you move about. Shrink to your region. Meet your neighbours and local business.

Ending now. I have to say that I really enjoyed these comments by an excellent panel. Congrats to @a_longhurst for pulling this together and @Sfu_science for sponsoring. Excellent, thanks to all. Over and out./

Having so many belated thoughts & ideas about this panel but I'm going to append them to this thread tomorrow when everything has gelled. BC could easily be doing things so very differently.

..Recap of last night's SFU #Covid19BC panel, in which several experts warned that vaccines won't be enough to exit the pandemic safely, laid out all the best practices of pandemic management & stated that BC could easily adopt them - and should. In a few tweets: #bcpoli

One of the panel's best moments was Halifax doctor @LisaBarrettID dismissing the idea that only Atlantic provinces can pull off a #Covid19 elimination policy. Their success is not down to their culture, small size, coastline &c. but their style of engagement & more local approach

In NB they broke prov down into small zones & 4 phases of severity. Diff zones could be in diff phases & you don't travel between zones in diff phases. Zones are small enough & given enough granular LOCAL DATA that they feel like a team & collectively get their zone's cases down

..So a bunch of combined ideas there: acknowledgement that pandemic mgmt is partly about the job of creating behaviour, so engage ppl more locally, give them clarity (ie. in NB, set # of cases = which lockdown phase), & DATA TRANSPARENCY. BC does none of these...

..Panel experts agreed we need ALL of these 3 key things, interlocked, to get us out of this pandemic:
1. Good fed & prov border mgmt (full gold standard quarantine)
2. Ramp up testing: rapid & PCR tests & variant genome sequencing
3. Vaccines.

BC is only doing #3.
#COVID19BC

And a few of the myths that we're hearing too much from BC public health authorities were smashed. Govt needs to stop repeating myths (travel's not causing it, schools don't, rapid tests don't work etc)

..Key next point was the risk of "escape mutations." As you mass vaccinate, you can get breakthrough infections in people that give the virus a chance to mutate to get around the vaccine. Then we're back in pandemic AGAIN. Hence vaccines alone not enough. https://twitter.com/Lidsville/status/1387967294739943424?s=20

Which leads to the next point: Over the past 15 months our authorities ignored warnings & a 3rd wave came. This violated the precautionary principle (PP). (BC's mitigation strategy violates PP to start with.) Why aren't we adopting PP now, w/ spectre of escape mutations looming?

The precautionary principle is what the Atlantic provinces did: clamp down BEFORE things get out of control ; do *not* wait for science before doing so; mandate masks; manage borders; test like mad.

You most def don't jump to say, erroneously, that Covid isn't airborne.

Which leads to the Q: why does BC continue to claim it's different & can do none of the above?

Superdysfunctional British Columbia?

Henry, Dix, Horgan: do all of the above. Adopt Precautionary Principle. Share granular data. Mass rapid test. Sequence variants. Manage travel.