I'm going to mix a bit of my professional life into my personal feed and talk about risk management. A thread...

This is the Hierarchy of Controls, you use it to determine measures to control hazards. The top is Elimination/Substitution of hazards (like using a robot, or a less dangerous chemical), next up is Engineered Controls, and down the list we go.

As you move from top to bottom, the controls become less effective. They are all useful, but you usually stack them for redundancy to strengthen the response.

Which one is at the bottom? PPE (safety gear), why is it the least effective? You let the hazard get right to the person before they are protected. But guess what, its usually the easiest to implement, so people jump to it first.

I teach and consult on starting at the top and working down when you can't implement the other controls. What I demonstrate to clients is that even though PPE is the easiest to implement, is is really that easy to sustain? You need to order it, store it, manage it.

That's lots of work for something that is the least effective control.

Granted, the ones at the top are sometimes very hard to implement and can be costly in time and money, but its worth it for knowing how easy they can sustain your gains.

Let's wrap this up with one thing that has bothered me about our covid school response. Ventilation upgrades would have been a much better solution for safety right from the start.

Would they have eliminated the need for masks? No, but they would have made them a complimentary measure and not the primary control.

But remember I said they can be difficult to implement because of resources, now if only the province had access to a large pool of money from someone to do this..........(pssst, what about that money from Uncle Justin?)

Finally, let's pretend we need to talk like our government and its all about the economy. Guess where all that money spent would have gone? Contractors are all local, our province has companies that are world leaders in this equipment. Lots of money pumped right here local.

I could also argue that Remote Learning (Substitution) is another effective control, but we spent very little money there as well.

I'm watching my province being run like a "business" during the health crisis of a lifetime, but no correctly run business would make the decisions they make.

And don't get me started on my thoughts on risk management and the vaccine rollout.......