The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - A Dog's Life in Covid-19

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Potpourri time tonight --- everything but the kitchen sink.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge Daily. Here we are, Tuesday of week 27. This morning I was up early and I was out driving in the country. Early. And early means, well in my case, you know, 8 o'clock, quarter to 8. And when you hit the country roads in southwestern Ontario at that time, and at this time of year, what you bump into are the sights and sounds of back to school. Back to school on the roads means school buses.

And so today, for a good chunk of the territory in my area, around Stratford, this was day one of back to school. A little bit later than many other places, but back to school nevertheless. And so all the things that you take into account the room they need to do what they have to do in picking up their students and getting them and delivering them to their schools. Now, the thing I thought about when I saw these yellow buses going across the horizon, some on the dirt roads, connecting the paved highways. One of the things I was thinking about was how many of those kids in those buses are actually happy that they're getting back to school because this is their way to learn. And while many other students have the opportunity to study from home,

because they just hook up their laptop or their iPads or whatever they got onto the net, and away they go. Well, sadly, in spite of the promises of politicians from all stripes, political stripes, in this country, not all kids who live in rural areas have that opportunity, because they just don't have access the way city kids do. And so some of those kids on some of those buses that I saw today were probably, a way grudgingly grateful that they were finally going to get to school because they could actually take classes, which they couldn't do because of lack of access from their homes in rural Ontario. Now some kids have access. I grant that in rural areas, but some don't. And it's a disparity

within the system right now that we're witnessing because of COVID-19. Now, aside from that, you're probably wondering why. Well, what was he doing in the country at 8 o'clock this morning? Why was he driving around? I'll get to that later in today's kind of potpourri grab bag of different things that you often hear, and you heard it here about a week or so ago, when we were talking about how some politicians, and certainly one in particular these days, likes to point to the stock market as a sign that the economy is either up or down.

And lately he keeps pointing out it, saying it's up. The market's going crazy. Well, the other half of the statement is the stock market is not the economy, right? Why is it not the economy? Well, in the United States, more than half of all stocks are owned by 1% of Americans. Half of all the stocks are owned by 1% of the people. While the bottom half of the population

owns only 0.7% of the stock market, of the stocks on the market. Now, those are American numbers. Canadian numbers are different. There's a little more involvement in the market in Canada by Canadians on a lot of different levels, like your Canada pension plan is in the market.

Your RRSP, if you have one, is most likely affected by the market. So you may not have individual stocks yourself, but some of the things that are part of your assets are, in fact, in the market. And it's a little higher here than it is in the States. But overall, the same is true. The stock market is in the economy. If it goes up, it doesn't mean that the economy is in good shape necessarily.

So I was reading an article in the New York Times, one of those ones that I save to get to eventually. This one was by Paul Krugman. He wrote it in the early part of this month, about a week ago. And he asked a simple question that is often asked in an election year. You know, are you better off than you were at the last election? Or in this case, as it relates to the market, is sort of, are you better off than you were six months ago when the

market crashed? Well on the face of it you'd say, well probably because the market's gone up, right? No. Because as Krugman argues, the economy is not the stock market. The economy is people. The economy is whether people are doing well or poorly. The economy is, are you doing better than you were, in this case, six months ago. And let me read a couple of lines from Krugman's article, which is titled, Gross Domestic Misery is Rising.

The simple fact is that over the past few weeks, the lives of many Americans have gotten much worse. Obviously, this is true for the roughly 30,000 Americans who died of COVID-19 in August. For comparison, only 4,000 people died in the European Union, which has a larger population. Plus the unknown but large number of our citizens, American citizens he's talking about, who suffered long-term health damage. And don't look now, but the number of new coronavirus cases, which had been declining, seems to have plateaued. Between Labor Day and school reopenings,

there's been a pretty good chance that the virus situation is about to take another turn for the worse. That is the same thing we're seeing here. He carries on. But things have already gotten worse for millions of families that lost most of their normal income as a result of the pandemic, still haven't gotten it back. For the first few months of the pandemic, depression,

many of these Americans were getting by thanks to emergency federal aid. But much of that aid was cut off at the end of July, and despite job gains, we're in the midst of a huge increase in national misery. And he goes on with many more examples. But the bottom line is, once again, that issue that the market is not the economy. So when you see days when the market, you know, jumps up to 300 points,

that doesn't mean the economy's booming. It means the market is booming. And the market isn't the economy. There's something else that's kind of related. Because so much attention is being placed on the end of all this is when there's a vaccine, right? I'm not going to go through all the timetables again with you.

You know it as well as I do. But the issue, and you heard David Fissman mention it again yesterday in our special sort of sense of the situation yesterday with him, the epidemiologist from the University of Toronto. When he talked about the issue with the vaccine isn't just developing one, it's then distributing it. It's manufacturing it. It's storing it.

It's ensuring that it's, you know, in the right temperature in its containers when it's being shipped, and getting it to the seven and a half billion people around the world that you're going to need to vaccinate. So here's reality on the vaccine front, And it comes from the chief executive officer of the world's largest vaccine manufacturer. Do you know who that is? Not the name of the CEO, but do you know who the largest vaccine manufacturer is? Serum Institute of India. It's actually a family-owned business, right?

There's a billionaire. There's probably a few of them in that company, in that family. Adar Poonawalla. He's the CEO of SII, Serum Institute of India. Here's what he said, talking to the Financial Times. It is likely about four or five years it will take to produce enough COVID-19 vaccines to inoculate everyone in the world. it's estimated that such a monumental undertaking will require 15 billion doses for what's expected to be a two-dose-per-person vaccine. And many pharmaceutical supply companies simply do not have enough materials

to make the whole supply at once. Okay, so that's yet another little piece of information for us on the vaccine front which is you know the further along we go on this the more realistic things start to get you know you had this impression if you believe certain people that oh my gosh bang there'll be a vaccine by october well that's been kind of shot down by the vaccine companies vaccine by October. Well, that's been kind of shot down by the vaccine companies. But even the belief that there could be one developed by the end of the year, which is possible, is still one that we should caution ourselves on because you then got to make it.

You got to package it. You got to package it. You got to move it. And what is he saying? This guy's business is making vaccines. He has the potential for his company to become even more of a multi-billion dollar operation. He's saying you're going to have to make 15 billion doses for the world, and that's going to take four to five years, not four to five weeks. Some people seem to be suggesting.

All right. So that's the COVID part of the big picture on the economy. Here's another piece on the economy. It's kind of interesting. Because we've been thinking ever since this whole thing started that this was giving us an opportunity to understand new ways of working with so many people working at home. And some of the initial indicators were, hey, we like this better. And that's not just from the employees, but also the employers who were saying, hey, this

is okay. So there's a new study out by JPMorgan Chase, an insight into the reason why banks are encouraging workers to return to their offices over the weeks ahead. Bloomberg reports that JPMorgan Chase found that a pattern of decreased productivity emerged among employees working from home, and noting that the process of creative combustion, that was the sense that, oh man, this is so good. It's working so well, and people are coming up with new ideas, and they coined this phrase creative combustion by people working at home. Well, they're now saying that whole idea has taken a hit. While pre-pandemic studies found remote workers were just as efficient as those in offices, there were questions about how performance would be affected by compulsory lockdowns,

particularly when considered in combination with learning opportunities for younger employees. And that's what they're finding. They're finding, well, there were nice early indications on this, but it's not panning out that way. And what we're seeing instead is decreased productivity. So that's something we should all keep in mind. Okay.

Have you been to a movie yet? Like in a movie theater. Have you done that? I haven't done that. I haven't got around to that yet. I'm not sure I'm in the right headspace for that yet. And clearly, some of the big movie production companies don't think we are in the right headspace for that yet either. And the first and latest indication of that comes from Warner Brothers. They've announced that they're going to delay their much-anticipated release of Wonder Woman 1984.

Much-anticipated, apparently. I didn't even know there was one, but then I'm not your target audience. But Wonder Woman 1984 was supposed to be released on October the 2nd so that's in just a couple of weeks but they've now announced they're going to delay it until Christmas Day which signifies what they sense is a kind of limited interest of moviegoers returning to theaters.

Now, Warner Brothers has been more bullish than some of the other big production houses in the idea of getting people into theaters. Who hasn't been? Well, Disney hasn't been. Their huge, big movie for this fall that was going to go into the theaters was Mulan, another animated feature. It was supposed to go into movie theaters

just in the last couple of weeks. But instead, what did Disney do? Well, they wanted to get you while you were at home. And so they offered it up on Disney+, which is their streaming service, instead of putting it in theaters. I was still crunching the numbers on that, but my guess is it's doing a lot better than it would have done

if it had been in theaters. Which brings me to my last point, which connects to my first point. Why was I out there this morning traveling the back roads and the country roads of southwestern Ontario at 8 o'clock in the Looking at school buses. I was out there because I was taking our dog, Bella, who's been an occasional guest on this podcast, as some of the loyal listeners will know. They've heard Bella in the background. Bella is a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever, which is a great dog.

And Bella, you know, she's a normal dog. She needs a grooming every once in a while. So today I was taking out to where she gets groomed, about, I don't know, 20 minutes, half an hour outside of Stratford, in the farmland. And as I was driving her there, I realized, you know what? Bella. Bella, my dog has had more haircuts in the last six months than I've had. And that's got to be a first in her life.

She's, I think, 84 in dog years now. She's 12, or maybe she's 13. I lose track. But she's had at least three groomings. I've had two in six months. Now, let's face it, she's got a lot more hair than I do. But the whole nature of the fact that she's groomed more often than I'm groomed is a new reality that's only existed in the time of COVID-19.

That never happened before. So that's why I was out there. So she's looking pretty good today, prancing around with her fancy new haircut. Not so me. Now tomorrow, tomorrow is Wednesday.

It's hump day for week 27 and you know what Wednesday means. Wednesday means the race next door. So Bruce and I will have a little confab tonight. We'll figure out what it is we're going to talk about tomorrow. In terms of what we're looking at in the race next door, what we'd like to talk about in terms of the Trump-Biden race. You know, Trump hasn't had a good week in quite a few weeks.

Now, I got a letter, as you may recall, a couple of weeks ago, saying we never talk about the good things Trump does. True, we haven't done that. We haven't devoted a program to that yet. And we're still researching that one. Now, he did, as it's been pointed out to me, receive a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in the last week or so. Now, it came from some extreme right-wing politician in Europe.

It was the nomination, but it's nevertheless, it's a nomination. And today, one of the reasons for that nomination was kind of signed officially by Israel and the United Arab Emirates in Washington as a recognition that each country would have for the other, which is a moderate breakthrough on the Middle East peace situation. It's not the big one that was promised, which is Israel and the Palestinians,

but it is perhaps on the road to getting there. And it reminds us of when the big breakthrough happened initially. It was Israel and Egypt. And the great hopes for what that would mean on, among other things, the Palestinian front. So let's see. I'd be surprised if the Nobel Peace Prize ends up in Donald Trump's hands, but, hey, stranger things have happened. But keep in mind, lots of people get nominated for Nobel Prizes.

Then there's a short list, then there's a decision. We'll see where it ends up at the end of the day. All right, so it is the race next door tomorrow right here on the Bridge Daily, the podcast within a podcast. And we hope you'll be there to listen in as Bruce Anderson joins from Ottawa. All right, that is the Bridge Daily for this Tuesday.

As I said, a bit of a potpourri of stuff. Hope you found at least one or two things in there interesting. The Bridge Daily will be back in 24 hours. Thank you.