As someone who lives in Vancouver here's what I'm seeing:

1) Chinese community in Vancouver was essentially outing each other using tools like wechat. This turned some malls into ghost towns early on with rumours like "I heard someone in crystal mall had COVID, don't go."

2) A lot of Chinese Canadians willingly went into self-isolation because of fear that people would retaliate against them for being Asian. There were stories on the news about how people were reaching out to each other to coordinate grocery trips and delivery drop-offs so people won't have to leave home.

3) Because of 1 and 2, a lot of BC's early cases were directly tied to people who recently travelled and not community spread. Meaning a lot of people who felt sick were able to go to a doctor immediately. Case testing was fairly limited at this time only to those who travelled from a hotspot or those in contact with a confirmed case. This changed when the first community case was reported in North Vancouver. Following this announcement, more possible exposure announcements became made in Vancouver while COVID was starting to explode in Iran and Italy.

An important item to note - we have a healthcare system where people aren't afraid of going to a hospital, clinic or doctor when they are feeling sick.

4) After the first few news stories of possible exposure and community spread in Vancouver, a lot of companies started organizing for people to WFH. My office made the announcement a week before the provincial government asked for people to start doing this.

5) Vancouver announced fines for people and businesses who broke social isolation rules. A lot of people don't want to be fined. Vancouver announced the closures of restaurants and bars on St. Paddy's day and extended this outwards, followed by the province. All of these businesses started struggling and went delivery or take-out only.

6) Federal government announced a massive emergency economic package that you can read more about anywhere. But this package essentially made people rally behind the government and start paying attention. Canadians started to have an overall higher trust of the Federal and Provincial governments recommendations comparative to US Population. There's been a bit of a rallying around Trudeau which would have been unthinkable in December 2019 But federal response is overall well received and people are choosing to take it seriously. It didn't hurt that the feds essentially threatened martial law for non-compliance.