By David P. Ball
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Epidemiology blogger and writer discusses the vaccination effort, safety questions and the COVID-19 pandemic's disastrous inequality side effects.

Reports are emerging of frontline health workers in the Downtown Eastside receiving their first vaccine doses this week, after B.C.'s first few thousand vaccinations got underway for the most at-risk.

It's a reminder of the unequal impacts of COVID-19 on the poorest and most marginalized in our society. And the social inequalities that have worsened this pandemic on the lowest-income and most precarious workers and communities are more evident than ever, says Crawford Kilian.

Kilian is a longtime writer for The Tyee and also author of the H5N1 epidemiology blog. He first wrote about COVID-19 on Dec. 31, 2019, when it was still being referred to as a "viral pneumonia" in Wuhan, China.

That was months before most governments began taking the virus urgently despite warnings from their own public health experts.

During an interview with The Pulse on CFRO, he reflected about what we've learned over the last 12 months, about whether the new vaccines are safe and effective, and his own personal experience with polio — a once catastrophic disease that has been eradicated in North America thanks to vaccines.

But while scientists and public health experts have had to learn at lightning speed, authorities still have much they need to learn in the next year to get COVID-19 truly under control, especially among the most vulnerable.