Thought of the Day - May 5 - Is BC Missing An Opportunity?

As we know businesses and the public are calling for relaxing the current restrictions. We have also heard BC is looking to do limited re-openings shortly. However, this should be a conditional deal.

This is the perfect time to introduce those measures needed to make us all safe and should be "part and parcel" of relaxing restrictions. Otherwise rather than a gradual re-opening of more and more services we are risking the negative effects of significant case increases, impacting both the heath and the trajectory of our economic rebuild.

We have to remember this is a balancing act (more on this in a later blog). Along with reopening, we should selectively introduce new measures - mandatory public mask use, tracking and tracing phone apps, more extensive (and at times mandatory) testing, business compliance checks, new measures to protect the most vulnerable, etc.

Before "giving away the farm" BC should make sure to move forward in announcing and implementing critical practices. Practices that will need the public's participation. As we used to say in IT "people have long lead-times". It took almost a month to get people to think "physical distancing" and "handwashing", let's not let these next weeks slip by.

Cheers

Cliff