The past few days have seen the emergence of an effort to build up self-reporting capacity to fill in where provincial governments are choosing to be wilfully blind to COVID caseloads - as well as a response questioning whether people should be willing to provide information to that project.
Now, I certainly wouldn't dispute the point that if governments at any level were putting resources into a reliable source of COVID case tracking data tied into a reliable testing sample, we'd be far better served using that than any voluntary alternative.
Sadly, that option doesn't exist. To the contrary, plenty of provinces are doing everything in their power to push testing (and thus results) into the private and personal realms, while also withholding the information they do have in their possession.
That game-playing with crucial public health information would be dangerous enough as a matter of normal accountability. It's downright suicidal where the same governments going out of their way to close the door on case tracking are the sames ones who have repeatedly launched into a "nothing to see here!" routine even when it was a matter of widespread awareness that cases, hospitalizations and deaths were spiking.
We shouldn't respond to deadly know-nothingism by simply accepting the self-interested decision of negligent leaders that nothing can be known. And the attempted alternative - flawed though it's been so far - serves as an example of what citizens may need to do in order to account for governments abandoning all sorts of fields where action would be in the public interest. (This is a familiar issue given the development of tent cities, harm reduction sites and other stopgap community measures which have emerged to take care of people whose lives apparently aren't seen as worth saving by the people who hold the power of the state.)
From the standpoint of having a means of actually collecting data about a pandemic which governments are all eager to put out of sight and out of mind, we should be applauding - not criticizing - the people putting in the time to assemble one. And from the standpoint of collecting information, it's also worthwhile for people to consider reporting rather than rejecting the possibility of non-state data collection - once we can be satisfied that there isn't undue risk in providing our own information.
In the case of ReportMyRapidTest, it's worth noting that there was some thought as to levels of privacy within its initial design, which makes names and other identifying information optional. And to his credit, since the systemic problems with the initial database were pointed out, Kevin Liu has recognized the need to start putting together appropriate security architecture and privacy governance to ensure that any sensitive information actually provided is properly protected.
From here, the path forward should then be for people with concerns to participate in strengthening the protection the voluntary site is able to offer, ideally to allow it to reach a level of security which makes them comfortable participating as well.
Ideally, the end result will be for our political leaders to get back into the picture based on the recognition that it's an embarrassment for community-minded volunteers to have to develop alternatives to basic government functions. But if they refuse to do so, we're far better off cooperating to redevelop the pillars of civil society, rather than simply taking the word of ideologically-driven politicians that they need to be left in ruins.
We are supposed to report our rapid test results in Nova Scotia to an email address at Nova Scotia Public Health. Although to be frank, with the ubiquity of Omicron, who exactly now feels it's a big secret if they contract it and if other people know? They legally have to tell their close contacts of the past three days anyway. Omicron is here, it's in community spread everywhere, and nothing much is going to stop it.
ReplyDeleteThe second thing is that RAT seems to be only about 50% efficacious in giving correct results with the Omicron variant. I learned that last Thursday on CBC Radio on the car radio outside the pharmacy where I had just received my booster shot! Great! The package of five RATs I had gone to so much trouble to obtain, now offered all the same assurance of giving a correct result as a coin toss.
Let's be clear, if you can't figure out you're going down with a "cold", you must be singularly unobservant. Nobody much has had a cold or flu since the Covid pandemic began, so it takes not much beyond the brainpower of an intelligent newt to grasp the fact that if you you suddenly get the sniffles and a sore throat and a headache, it's the one-day polio! Er, Covid. Even NB Premier Higgs worked it out. You self-isolate and monitor, take a RAT if you've got one and if positive, try to book a PCR test.
So I'm at a loss to work out why we need to collate all the Omicron RAT positives that may or may not be correct. Once we have the info, what use is it? If millions in the country are going to get it anyway, mostly mildly so far because most people have been vaxxed, what public health advantage can be gained from knowing about all the not very important cases and where they are? If it's everywhere, what hot spots are you going to attempt to contain? Beyond hospitals and care homes?
Colour me confused. In NS, we did an absolutely bang-up job containing Covid right through the Delta variant. Not like the provinces of Sask and Alberta, where complete intellectual right wing vacuities rule as premiers. But Omicron throws all the old stuff out the window, because there are simply too many cases.
Personally, I'm not impressed with any of the vaccines. They are what's termed "leaky". They allow vaxxed people to get another variant of Covid and be infectious carriers even if they're not badly disabled themselves. And that's where things stand, the way I see it. Restrictions can only limit the rate of spread of Omicron, which logic says is the thing to do if society is to remain functioning. Spreading the infections out over time is our only chance. Official contact tracing, which NS did right up to Omicron, was helpful to prevent nasty Delta outbreaks from spreading. With Omicron, there's no chance of keeping up, and it would be a waste of effort to try, in my opinion.
Dr Robert Strang and our NS Premier had a Covid update yesterday, and said pretty much what I said here. In the big picture, case counts don't matter, hospitalizations do. The virtually assembled press was told the same thing last Thursday at the previous conference. But the reality hasn't sunk in to them any more than the author of this article, judging from the mostly dopey questions that followed. Sometimes you wonder if anyone in journalism has a pair of ears after one of those conferences -- asking questions that have just been answered twice.
I dunno. What am I missing?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/what-nova-scotians-should-know-about-rapid-testing-during-omicron-1.6302963