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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1313659
B efore she was stopped, Mallon infected at least 51 people (three of whom died), rendering her a one- woman super-spreader event. The uncooperative cook was eventually incar- cerated against her will, and Typhoid Mary, as she would become known, would spend more than 26 years of her life in quarantine, served mostly on an island in the East River. Hindsight can provide moments of per- fect clarity. In Soper's piece, some of his pan- demic proscriptions were remarkably on point. Avoid needless overcrowding. Smother coughs and sneezes. Open the windows. Your fate may rest in your own hands—a colloquial admonishment to wash frequently. As we look back on the impact of our current generation-defining pan- demic—albeit from the eye of an ongoing hurricane—this advice still rings true. But even as these basic measures stand time's test, much has changed over the past century. Health care has evolved. Vaccines can be developed, often rapidly. Perhaps most telling, however, is that our leadership expectations are dramatically changed: in Soper's day, the number of times President Woodrow Wilson men- tioned the flu publicly was exactly zero. Today, things are vastly different. In B.C., the advent of COVID-19 was not only a health crisis, it was a test of leadership—for a government, a bureaucracy and a health- care system that was forced to respond to a threat that could have been, and still could be, existential. So what were the leadership takeaways from this plague? What, so far, have been the lessons of the pandemic? A C T I N G C L A S S Minister of Health Adrian Dix and Dr. Bonnie Henry, the province's public health officer, conducted their first joint press confer- ence in late January. They announced that B.C.'s first case of what was soon dubbed COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, had been discovered in some- one recently returned from Wuhan, China. Over the next few weeks, more cases would appear: by March 5, the province had logged 21, including its first known instance of com- munity transmission, a care worker at North Vancouver's Lynn Valley Care Centre. Yet for most, the threat was still abstract. On March 6, recommendations from the Office of the Provincial Health Officer and the BC Centre for Disease Control offered between-the-lines reas- surance: "It is not necessary to cancel school events, outings or field trips to public locations in B.C. and Canada and to most places in the world." Parents who had booked spring break travel for the fol- lowing week breathed a collective sigh of relief. It would be short-lived. Events unfolded quickly during the sec- ond week of March. As daily cases began climbing, it became clear that dramatic steps would be necessary to curtail the virus's spread. By March 12, one day before the start of spring break, Henry advised British Columbians to avoid international travel altogether. On March 17, she invoked the emergency powers outlined in Part 5 of the Public Health Act. "I reasonably believe that the following criteria…exist," Henry wrote. "The regional event could have a serious impact on public health; the regional event is unusual or unexpected; there is a significant risk of the spread of an infectious agent; and there is significant risk of travel or trade restrictions as a result." 40 BCBUSINESS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 TOP AND FAR RIGHT: CP IMAGES; BOTTOM: ISTOCK L E A D E R S H I P L E S S O N Act decisively—and be prepared to make the tough calls.