Follow the Science - Book

This is the first blog piece I’m sharing on the Follow the Science website.

It’s not about going back through the arguments of the Pandemic. It’s about what came after.

Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we stopped listening and how institutions lost public trust. Not just whether people trust public health, but how that trust is built, how it’s lost, and what happens when it breaks.

This essay looks at how that breakdown may now be showing up in unexpected places, including growing hesitation around things like measles vaccination. It also explores something I believe we got wrong during COVID: the difference between questions and claims, and what happens when that line disappears.

It’s a longer, more reflective piece. Not perfect, but honest.

If you’ve been trying to make sense of where things stand now, you may find something in it.

What We Lost When We Stopped Listening When Trust Breaks, Public Health FollowsIn recent years, public health responses to COVID-19 have begun to diverge in noticeable ways. South of the border in the United States, courts, regulators, and professional bodies have gradually reopened debate. Policies are being reassessed. Trade-offs are b...

After two decades working in public health and injury prevention, I lost my job at Island Health during the vaccine mandate period after my medical exemption was not denied because they demanded I get an an appointment with an allergist in 14 days and it took twice that long.

That experience changed the course of my life, and it became the starting point for this book.

Follow the Science: How a Country Lost the Line Between Science and Empathy, and How We Find Our Way Home is not just about mandates. It’s about what happens when policy, evidence, uncertainty, and human experience collide — and how division grew in the process.

The book explores:
• my personal journey through the mandate and dismissal
• the ethical and institutional questions raised during the pandemic
• how public trust fractured
• and how we might move forward as a more unified country

The ebook is available free, and paperback copies are now available.

Learn more or read here: www.followthescience.ca

I’ll also be sharing a few words during a live online launch this Friday at 4pm (Victoria time): https://fb.me/e/44OKaL0Wl?mibextid=wwXIfr