Want to keep track of our work? Sign up for PoP BC updates, actions, public health information, and announcements.

Jan 20, 2022: Living with COVID – Who Pays the Price?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we may all be weathering the same storm, but we are not all in the same boat. Some of us are in sturdy yachts, while others find themselves in much more precarious vessels.

One person’s experience of the last twenty-two months can be vastly different from the next. How can we implement public health measures that work for everyone, when our needs, risk tolerance, and living situations are so diverse?

When faced with a highly contagious virus that spreads through the air we breathe, protecting the most vulnerable people among us is a collective responsibility. Individuals can neither protect themselves nor protect others when transmission within the community is allowed to run rampant.

In a world that is increasingly centered around “me” and “now”, how can we build a future where we are all safer and stronger together?

This briefing provides insights regarding what it’s like to be a clinically vulnerable person during the COVID-19 pandemic in BC. When the institutions we created to protect public health decide that the rampant spread of an infectious disease is preferable to regulating vaccinations, masks, the purification of indoor air, increasing the capacity of our healthcare system, or burdening private businesses with temporary inconvenience, who pays the price?

What are some of the choices clinically vulnerable people have to make in order to stay safe?

What impact has the pandemic had on them, their families, and their communities?

If others could walk in their shoes, what would they hope they’d learn?

If they could speak with BC Public Health leaders what would they tell them?

Speakers:

Sharona Franklin, Artist and Disability Advocate

Isabel Jordan, Patient Partnership Specialist

Marion Brown, MBA, Policy Design Consultant

Facilitator: 

Jaclyn Ferreira, Rare Disease, Disability & Inclusion Advocate

Share this:

Archived Briefings from Protect Our Province BC

As we start a new school year, clean air in schools is a vital issue not only because of the health effects from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and air pollution, but because of the direct link to the ability of children to learn. Hear about the new recommendations for Indoor Air Quality in Schools and Childcare Facilities from Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Health.
“For some of the most vulnerable patients, the air in the hospital can be deadlier than the diagnosis that brought them in” Join Protect our Province BC and Drs. Susan Lee, Jean Warneboldt, and Victor Leung to hear about their advocacy, their struggles and successes in improving the air quality in different BC Health Authorities. Why are different healthcare administrations within BC treating this critical topic so differently - in one, obstructing and blocking and in another rewarding and awarding?
In honor of February being Heart Month, cardiologist Dr. Leslie Kasza joined Protect our Province BC’s Dr. Susan Kuo for a discussion on COVID-19’s impact on heart health and how you can reduce your risk. Don’t be fooled into thinking it won’t happen to you because you are _________, fill in the blank: young, healthy vaccinated and/or you only had a mild infection, etc.

More News from Protect Our Province BC

No lessons were learned. This year, despite the lessons that could have been learned and implemented, BC public health was as ill prepared as it was last year for the viral "respiratory season”. * And so on January 9, a new record number of hospital admissions was set at 10,345 . For more up to… Continue reading State of Public Health in BC
Second in a series of two posts by an Alberta mom. Find the first post here: No One Is Listening To Me Image: The Rona Lisa by Rosie Pidgeon, a young Belfast art student living with Long Covid.  To view her artwork, please visit @art_byrosie_ Alberta Long Covid Kids During the Delta wave in October… Continue reading No More Stolen Childhoods
Alberta Mom Photo: @BerlinBuyers My first confirmed Covid infection was in fall 2022 at a time when the few Covid protections we had left only applied to healthcare settings. I knew I was at higher risk of developing Long Covid as I am a working age woman. This terrified me as my son had already had… Continue reading No One is Listening to Me