Thread by @Tim_Bousquet

The first three COVID cases in Nova Scotia tested positive a year ago today, March 14, 2020 (they were announced the next day, March 15). A lot of stuff has happened since.

Hindsight being 20-20, it's easy to criticize after the fact. People were initially really scared and really confused, scientists and public health officials included, so mistakes and miscues were understandable.

But I always saw closing parks and beaches (and ticketing people for doing stuff like sitting on benches) was a horrible idea. And encouraging people to return to Canada I think (not sure on this one) was probably a bad idea.

And the nursing home deaths underscored both failed policies for decades and a failure in the moment. It's terribly sad, and infuriating.

Overall, however, we've done pretty well. Not perfect. But, jeesh, early on I was fearing death on a truly horrific scale. But we muddled through, Nova Scotia better than most, and now there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Most of us will be OK. Scarred, but OK.

A year ago there was dread in the air. Today, there's hope.

Now a word about vaccines...

There's a great deal of worry about the distribution of vaccines, which is understandable, and even good because people seem to want theirs as quickly as possible. The feared vaccine hesitancy either hasn't appeared or has been (mostly) set aside.

I get a lot of criticism for *not* criticizing the NS government for its performance on vaccine distribution. Seriously, I get hate mail about this. So I want to back up a bit and give my view.

I addressed some of the earlier criticism in this thread:

https://twitter.com/Tim_Bousquet/status/1365636243221078017?s=20

But I let's talk more generally for a moment.

The criticism is that it is taking too long upon receipt of the vaccine to it being administered. There are two questions: 1) is it true? and 2) does it matter?

Consider Nova Scotia's low case numbers. Nobody — nobody at all, not one person — has come down with COVID who would have otherwise have gotten the vaccine had delivery been sped up a few days. Nobody has died with the disease since August.

And now nursing homes, which face the greatest threat of deadly outbreak, are either fully vaccinated or very close to being fully vaccinated. Old people in the community, the next highest risk, are now getting vaccinated.

Is there still risk? YES. Most definitely.

But so long as the care that has kept the virus mostly at bay continues to keep case numbers very low (low single digits or zero per day) continues, it seems that risk is relatively (compared to most non-NS places) low. Wait, hear me out...

Should we be overly concerned that it takes, say, six days upon receipt of the vaccine to it being administered, as opposed to, say, four days? I don't think so, AT THIS TIME, because...

It's early days, the dose numbers have been very low. I'll accept that the province's efforts so far have been to develop and refine distribution systems, and to get it first into nursing homes. Both of those will take a bit more time than fully running mass vaccination clinics

But everything is about to change. We're going to be getting a million or so doses in the next few months, and the province will be tasked with vaccinating ~12,000 people PER DAY. *That* will be the true test of the system.

So if the number of doses in freezers or otherwise stuck in the distribution system starts going up alarmingly during the mass vaccination period, then we should be, er, alarmed! Such a situation will cause me to be a vociferous critic. I'm just not there now.