Thoughts on COVID-19

Needs to be taken seriously

I had assumed that the health care system in Italy was not at the same standards as Canada and that they had a substantially older population than we do. So, when I heard that BC authorities were preparing for the possibility that we could track the same as Italy, I initially dismissed it as not going to be that bad here.

After doing some research however, I learned that Italy’s health care system is ranked 2nd by the World Health Organization and Canada’s is ranked 12th. I also learned that 22.4 per cent of Italy’s population is over 65. In Canada, this is lower, at approximately 16 per cent. On the Sunshine Coast this number is much higher: approximately 29.6 per cent of the population here is over 65.

As the Sunshine Coast COVID Physician Task Force wrote in their March 27 update:

“The next two to four weeks will be a critical time period and it is imperative that we all continue to practise social distancing measures during this time. Our next steps beyond that will depend on how successful we are in containing COVID-19. We don’t want to put ourselves in a situation where we relax precautions too early and see a spike in infections, so it is likely that social distancing recommendations will be in place for a number of weeks, if not months.”

If you are not taking this seriously and following social distancing, you need to start.

If you are sharing “cures” for COVID-19 on social media or conspiracy theories that we should all be going back to work right away, you need to stop.

Goes beyond you getting sick

If your grandparent or other family member gets critically ill from COVID-19, goes to the hospital and dies, they will pass alone, without any family around them. There will be no funeral or celebration of life for a long time, if ever, and if you are the one that exposes them to this virus because you are not taking it seriously, you will have to live with that.

A good rule of thumb for social media is, if you don’t know for sure what you are sharing is true, don’t share it. Posting untrue things that diminish the collective consciousness and not taking social distancing seriously is not helping to flatten the curve.

The Canadian government and health officials both nationally, provincially, and locally have been excellent at communicating with the public on this pandemic and we can trust that, if a vaccine or some other treatment proves effective, they will let the public know. It is highly unlikely that they will rely on conspiracy theorists sharing on Facebook to get the message out.