Thread by @sobittersosweet

This is not a new issue for BC. In the early days of the pandemic, it felt like a little benefit of the doubt was appropriate as the province tried to find its feet in response to the pandemic.
But it's starting to feel like at least one of two things are happening:

https://twitter.com/akurjata/status/1330045502981857280

a) Information relevant to public safety and understanding of the pandemic's impact is being withheld (sometimes for "privacy" reasons, sometimes with 0 justification); and/or

b) The situation behind the scenes is so hectic and strained that even basic info can't be communicated

Neither is good. Both could be true.

The premier and the PHO have said there are too many urgent matters that need attention now to allow for the set up of a system to collect disaggregated data about how different demos (racial, ethnic, income, ability) are being affected.

Even though the data is really important for a lot of reasons. Vaccine roll-out, anyone?
How will the province decide who goes first? Those most at-risk obviously make sense but, aside from seniors and frontline workers, it's not clear to me that we know who those people are.

The issue with data access is province-wide, as Andrew illustrates. Northern Health with ICU capacity. Island Health says it can't process FOIs at the moment. The health ministry just...doesn't respond often and gives non-sensical answers (see: previously published data viz)

And everyone is tired. People are tired of restrictions that they can't always wrap their heads around.
For ex, why are small live events banned but movie theatres and restaurants are open? Have we seen more exposures, cases linked to live events than those other venues?

Sorry - data's not publicly available. You just have to trust that the restrictions are based on...something.

If you want tired, frustrated, anxious and isolated people to buy in, dig in and do what needs to be done, it might help to be open and transparent about the situation

Maybe explain the choices being made and the data they are based on? BC has elected not to do that.
Other provinces are being more open with their residents about what the pandemic looks like but BC just keeps patting itself on the back for doing so well the 1st time around ...

And insisting we're still doing great with data to show it.

We did do pretty well with the first wave and there were costs to that. Costs we still don't know the extent of.
Take the surgical shut down. We know how many surgeries were delayed and have since been rescheduled

What we don't know is how many people died waiting for scheduled surgeries or had their conditions deteriorate to the point where the original surgery wasn't an option.

Other provinces have estimates, at least. BC? Nothing.

Information vacuums aren't good for anyone aside from those trying to control a message. There is currently a sizable one in BC and there are still months (at least) to go before we have any hope of even starting to get back to normal.