Dr. Bonnie Henry

First off the subtitle is misleading as Dr. Henry deals with the time she hears about this respitory disease in China at the end of 2018 until April, 2019. It explains it reached British Columbia and spread through and the steps they developed to track it, study it, make decisions regarding actions and communicating information on COVID-19 to the public and particular community groups. The process she under took is quite fascinating.British Columbia has a large Asian population, many business links with China and numerous airlines connected China and Vancouver. So it was natural for the disease to show up there first.

Dr. Bonnie Henry is the Provincial Health Officer for the Province of British Columbia, Canada. She consults with the Minister and Deputy Minister of Health and an assortment of community, provincial, national and international groups but is solely responsible for making the rulings that govern public health in the province. Her’s is not a political appointment.

The book covers in detail the development of her planned public health response for the province of British Columbia in dealing with the pandemic. I remember watching her news briefings from that time and how impressed I was with the way she presented detailed information to the public in a calm, straightforward manner. She has the ability to make hard decisions knowing how they will impact individuals but does so because they have to be done. Each statistic she reports is a person, not a number. She has become an hero for many in B. C. The title “Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe” comes from one of the mantras she repeats. Another is “It’s Not Forever, But It Is For Now.”

She opens a part of her life to the public. Just after closing down a variety of services, including hair salons she realized it is time for a cut and colour. She knows her hairdresser would go to her home but she also knows she can’t ask her to do so. Instead the hairdresser drops off some products and directions and she and her sister, Lynn do her hair. Following her next weekly televised press conference comments start circulating about her hair. So on the next Friday she tells the story of her hair, admitting neither she or her sister would be good hairdressers.

I found the book interesting but it could have been edited to make it easier to read. I found it dense, particularly in the prologue which was full of acronyms referring to public health organizations and national and international groups set up to deal with COVID-19, which were unnecessary as they weren’t used in the rest of the book. Because of her work with her team the province handled the first wave well and if the book continued it would show the preparations continued to hold.

If you live elsewhere this book will provide you with one government’s approach to dealing with COVID-19. If you somehow missed the beginning, how it developed in Wuhan, China and spread across the world this book might interest you. In Canada the Chief Public Health Officer of each province was the key person but each province dealt with it differently, although there was an exchange of information. The role of the Federal Government is with overarching matters, the closure of the border with the United States for example.

It amazes me that Dr. Henry found the time to write this book!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Reviewed May 30, 2021… (mehr)

Dr Bonnie Henry is the Provincial Health Officer for British Columbia, BC's most senior public health official. She is one of our most recognized faces as the person responsible for delivering daily pandemic updates. She is also the most trusted, her advice is (mostly) heeded, and her calm demeanour and leadership is heartening even while delivering unwelcome news. Dr Henry has built her considerable skill while working during many health outbreaks around the world including Ebola, polio, H1N1, and SARS.

The book was published following the H1N1 epidemic in 2009 with a brief update to include COVID-19. Although we are all familiar with rules to live by during the current pandemic, the information was clear, pertinent, and best of all, interesting. I was particularly interested in the vaccines that have come about during my lifetime, including those for polio, pertussis, diphtheria, measles, rubella, and TB, all diseases common when I was a child. Thanks to vaccines the lives of so many children born in my generation and later were saved.… (mehr)

This book, first published in 2009, takes the interested generalist reader on a tour of “Microbes Inc.”, visiting the various divisions of viruses, bacteria, parasites and fungi that live within and on humans and animals. The book was written at the beginning of the H1N1 epidemic and has been updated to cover the initial response to COVID-19. Dr. Henry, who is British Columbia’s Provincial Health Officer, is well equipped to write this book. It was especially illuminating to be reminded of the SARS epidemic, which provided some useful lessons for dealing with the current pandemic. And the advice in this book still holds up with regard to the current pandemic: wash your hands, cover your face, keep your distance.

I found the book clearly written while maintaining an appropriate amount of technical language. I did find the “Microbes Inc.” conceit a bit silly, though—it felt too much like an attempt at making things simpler, and the metaphor didn’t really work for me. I also felt that the section about the H1N1 epidemic (the swine flu pandemic) could have been updated a bit more; a footnote was added to say that the section was written at the beginning of the epidemic, but could a paragraph not have been added about the outcome? I was curious about that decision.

I’d recommend this book if you’re looking for a good introduction to the various types of microorganisms that can make us sick.… (mehr)