Editor:
Re: COVID-19 positive person was at Burnaby school every day last week, NOW News
I am severely critical of the health authority’s response to a COVID-19 exposure at Kitchener Elementary School in Burnaby.
So what should Fraser Health have done?
The first thing is to take the virus very seriously. If governing bodies do not take the virus seriously, they cannot expect others to; that is how provinces and countries end up in serious trouble. Fraser Health and others need to set an example.
When the exposure at Kitchener Elementary School was first discovered, the whole school should have immediately been closed until contact tracing had been completed.
If it was a member of a cohort who had the virus, then perhaps only that cohort should be required to stay away, isolate and be tested.
That, of course, was the whole point of establishing cohorts. Since we have never heard of this happening to a cohort in Fraser Health, one suspects this is not being done.
And, of course, the information should immediately be made known. This would avoid most of the anxiety experienced by the teachers who currently have no idea of what is happening and are scared.
The notices sent out say, “Only Fraser Health can determine who is a close contact,” and by implication who is at risk; this is extremely arrogant. Any government that takes such an attitude will not last long.
The risk to me is not something that Fraser Health knows how to evaluate; the risk to an individual may be evaluated as low, but if that person is in contact with me, the risk to me would be extreme.
Fraser Health also has the timing backwards. It assumes nobody has been exposed before contact tracing is completed. Meanwhile, perhaps someone has been unknowingly infected, the virus multiplies and the person spreads it - only then after contact tracing is done is the person asked to isolate and be tested. It is too late.
I see no reason to trust the health authorities for these and other reasons. They have let the virus get out of control and it is going to be extremely difficult to gain control. The measures announced on Nov. 7 will almost certainly not do it.
What is necessary is that the reproduction rate, the average number of people an infected person infects, must be less than one. More than one and the cases will continue to climb exponentially. Less than one and they will decrease exponentially.
When the chief health officer announced that she was aiming to keep this number at one I was horrified; that meant that she was content with having over a hundred cases per day.
David Huntley, Burnaby
