Reaction was swift to my recent column about a covidiot following me out of a Burnaby shopping mall to yell at me.
And all because I suggested that he put on a mask in order to comply with provincial health regulations as we deal with COVID-19.
In response, I received a flurry of letters from anti-vaxxers yelling about the injustice of it all and how I have been “brainwashed” by the mainstream media (I thought that was me?).
“You throw around the term covidiot but it seems to me you should mind your own business,” wrote one person. “If he chose not to wear a mask that's none of your business. Using your logic calling him a covidiot makes you a vaxxhole. BTW...Omicron is an anagram for ‘Moronic’ which describes people that actually believe this is a real variant.”
So, yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there.
I hadn’t heard of the “vaxxhole” insult and I have to say that’s not bad. Short, concise and actually kind of funny. I don’t mind wearing that name because I’m not one of those people who will just stand by and watch people ignore public health orders. I will say something. More people need to speak up to fight this kind of behaviour and the misinformation being spread by some people.
Like those claiming Omicron is somehow fake. As the conspiracy goes, health officials around the world have “made up” a new variant in order to scare people and encourage more lockdowns.
Sigh.
It must be hard getting through doors while wearing a tinfoil hat.
Omicron is, of course, very real.
The B.C. Centre for Disease Control is sequencing every positive COVID-19 case to determine the rate of Omicron’s spread in the province.
So far, the results are unsurprising: it’s spreading fast.
However, the exact number of cases of the latest variant in British Columbia is delayed by as much as seven to 11 days, as that’s how long the centre takes to sequence each specimen.
“There is a bit of a delay … the whole genome sequencing takes several days,” explained provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry at her most recent press conference on Dec. 17.
“That's one of the challenges we're facing with this new variant around the world, is it takes time before you know when you can look back and look at what are we seeing,” said Henry.
Where is Omicron spreading in B.C.?
, Omicron is spreading most extensively in the west side of the Lower Mainland (Vancouver Coastal Health) and on Vancouver Island. This fact aligns with the rapid rise in cases in both areas, Henry noted. Ninety-three of the 167 new Omicron cases announced Friday are in the Vancouver Coastal Health region.
“And as we have noted, [Omicron] has started causing a rapid increase in the number of new cases of COVID-19 that we're seeing particularly in Vancouver Coastal and the Fraser Health region and here on Vancouver Island. It is moving quickly,” confirmed Henry.
Without real-time data, Henry said data from other jurisdictions as well as rising cases among vaccinated people is evidence enough of Omicron’s rise.
“We know from Ontario, where they’ve been ahead of us, or from the U.K., that the reproductive number, when it's introduced into the population, is higher than what we're seeing with Delta over the last few weeks,” said Henry.
- With files from Graeme Wood, Glacier Media
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
