Thought of the Day - January 27 2022 - Lessons from the Google Banner

Over the past week, Google has been displaying the following banner; an animated gif with masked letters with golden armbands.

It turns out the armbands are representing their COVID Exposure app; the one we did not really implement in Canada. When I clicked on the banner from here in BC, it took me to the provincial vaccination page.

I heard an interesting talk about how people now commonly say that disruptions to schools, places of work, hospital services, recreational facilities etc. are caused by the virus. While it would be true if schools could not function due to sick teachers, or hospitals were overwhelmed, however in actual fact the majority of the disruptions are due to our pandemic mitigations. We can look to countries such as Sweden to see what might have happened with far fewer restrictions. Sweden fared slightly worst from a fatality perspective and slightly better from the perspective of education disruption, effects on mental health and economic indicators such as inflation. That said, we have no way of really knowing what would have happened in Canada over the past two years without these measures.

As we strive to end the pandemic it is important to reframe our current issues. Every area where we might say "the virus caused this" now needs to be reviewed, as in most cases it turns out while COVID concerns may have been the initiator, the virus is not the reason. Only by doing this can we eliminate measures that can no longer be justified.

In short, we need to get rid of things like the Google banner so we can get on with our lives.

Cheers

Cliff