The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Alberta goes from worst to first? Is that possible?

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

Two weeks ago Alberta appeared to be the province with the worst Covid problems.  Now its on the verge of being the first to fully reopen.  What happened?  And is it safe?Dr Lynora Saxinger joins us from Edmonton for this one.  Plus a lot more.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge. You're just moments away from this question. Alberta, how did it go from worst to first in just a couple of weeks on COVID-19? A can of pet food, where every ingredient matters. Some companies like to brag about their first ingredient, but the A Can of Pet Food team is proud of their entire bag. That's because every recipe has been thoughtfully sourced and carefully crafted with the highest quality ingredients, starting with quality animal ingredients, balanced with whole fruits and

vegetables. Akana Pet Foods are rich in the protein and nutrients your dog or cat needs to feel and look their best. Available in grain-free, healthy grains, and singles for sensitive dogs. Akana, go beyond the first ingredient. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here once again. This is The Bridge. And today's topic is about Alberta because it just seems like a couple of weeks ago we were talking about Alberta in the most negative tones because things were bad there. Where really looked very difficult. COVID-19 was hitting hard. The hospitals

were full. The case numbers were up, so were the death numbers. And this was just a couple of weeks ago. While other provinces were working their way down, Alberta seemed to be working its way up. Well, talk about a turnaround. Here, just a couple of weeks later, Alberta is announcing that it's going to be the first to have basically a full reopening. So what happened? How did they make this work so quickly? And is it working? Is it safe? Those are legitimate questions to be asking. And we're going to ask them today of Dr. Lenora Saxinger, who has been one of our infectious disease specialists. You know, we've had him in Halifax and Toronto and Hamilton and Edmonton,

giving us a sense over these months of this story of just how different parts of the country are doing and how they look at the country as a whole from their different vantage points. So I tracked down Dr. Saxinger to talk about the Alberta story. Here it is. So I got to say, I'm a little bit confused because a couple of weeks ago, Alberta was leading the country in problems because of COVID-19. And now all of a sudden it's on the verge of leading the country in reopening. What am I missing here? Well, I don't think you're missing anything, honestly, because we did have a really severe high burden outbreak, a very significant

surge. We had a lot of people in hospital and ICU. Because that wave involves a lot of younger people, there were shorter stays and there was a lot of turnover in the hospital. And we managed to get through that. And with an effective, you know, lockdown, basically, we started to see and possibly with summer as well, we started to see cases drop very rapidly in the community. It took a little while longer for that to let us, but now we're at a place, I think that's a lot more comfortable in health care and um the the provincial government um i think has been very interested in opening you know for all sorts of reasons part of it is that a proportion of the population is interested in in not having lockdowns um and also i think for economic viability of a lot of businesses and so i I think that Alberta probably has the most, I guess,

aggressive opening plan that I've seen. And based just purely on the numbers of cases, I think that that's not a crazy thing. I think that's within the realm of reasonable actions. I think the piece that makes me and a lot of other people nervous is the presence of the Delta variant in the background, because that adds a lot of other people nervous is the presence of the Delta variant in the background, because that adds a lot more variability to what might happen. Well, expand on that a little bit for me, because, you know, as a medical practitioner, you being a little bit uncomfortable is, you know, is not a good thing. But in terms of the Delta variant, what kind of significance has it played in Alberta so far? And what are you concerned about in terms of the future?

Well, we've had a high profile hospital based outbreak in Calgary. And actually, Calgary remains the place with the most Delta cases. But even across the province and other little pockets, there's an increasing presence of Delta as a proportion of the cases. And so although the absolute case number is low, within that low number, the Delta proportion is creeping up to around a third probably right now. Now, with the overall numbers still being okay, people could say, well, you're not having an issue, why worry about it? But, you know, when I'm trying to predict the future, which everyone tries to do and you can't, I looked to the UK and in the UK, they had exactly the same phenomenon with overall low case numbers, but increasing Delta proportion. They had a slower opening plan. They also have a similar but not exactly the same vaccination rollout profile.

And they started to see surges of cases in young people in the UK, which took a while to catch up. But now they're also seeing increasing hospitalizations. And so you can't predict the hospitalizations from the case numbers the same way anymore because it's a different population that's getting infected, the people who are unvaccinated and mostly younger people. But you still do see a hospitalization surge. So to me, the whole thing kind of wraps up as, you know, what are we looking at in terms of our reasons to change what we're doing. And if it's purely on the basis of hospitalization, which I think is more or less what's been stated, then, then, you know, we might get through this with elevated case numbers in that community. If, you know,

you look at those case numbers and you say there's still vulnerable people, there's still a lot of partly vaccinated people and you're not willing to kind of accept that potential price, then I think the argument would be for a slower opening to allow a little bit more adjustment if we see the Delta situation starting to take hold more broadly. Like right now, I think the Delta is potentially still somewhat more containable, but if it completely replaces what's transmitting, I think it does change the game quite a bit. And I'm not sure exactly what that would look like. There seems to be an undercurrent in what you're saying is that we're dealing

with the unknown. We are. And, you know, you can take a, can I say that this is going to be a disaster? No, I don't know. It might be okay. It also might not be okay. So it kind of depends on your philosophy of and risk approach. I actually think the healthcare system, especially people are so tired and it's just been such a terrible time that the idea of another surge affecting, you know, affecting the way we're doing things and affecting people who've been on the ground much more than I in dealing with COVID patients, especially, you know, younger COVID patients, which were a big part of the last wave.

I think that that actually is something by that risk aversion as well. Whereas there are also people in communities in Alberta where they really haven't seen an impact of COVID in their lives at all. All they've seen is the impact of the restrictions. And so that's the other piece, I think, that's kind of coloring what we're seeing. But I'm nervous for some of those communities because some of those communities are also the ones with very low vaccination rates. And so they have a lot of vulnerability to epidemics in those areas. I'm wondering what the, you know, you mentioned the UK, and I'm wondering what the lesson is there,

because they were on the verge of, it was going to be this week, of reopening. And they had everybody, you know, in kind of a very excited pitch that they were about to reopen. And then the British Prime Minister changed that, changed his decision on that just a few days ago. And basically has said, it's going to be another month. You know, we've got to lift a heavier load for one more month, and then we're going to be fine.

What did you think of that because there was a there were enormous pressures in britain as well get this over with we're seeing good numbers we've got great vaccine rates and they do um and now you're telling us we got to do it all over again but they are doing it all over again yeah that actually, you know, that was really predicated entirely on a scientific evaluation of risk. And they took a very unpopular political position and carried it through because of that risk assessment. They actually had three different academic groups doing modeling on what might happen based on the patterns they were seeing with Delta and with vaccination. And they all came up with a similar conclusion that there was really a significant risk of another surge. It's hard to extrapolate that too directly because

of course the population there is a lot denser too. So, you know, the dynamics of transmission, you can't just say that is what's going to happen here based on their models but i think that it does make you think twice about what could happen here and um and you know i think that um this the style here hasn't always been a lot of uh transparency the way the british system has in terms of, you know, modeling reports and discussions and everything else. And so I'm not really quite sure how much the situation with Delta has been modeled internally. It would be good to know that. I think that that would be reassuring to people to know that that had been encompassed in the decision making.

But if the current plan was all put forward based on what we had at the time, which was really all alpha transmission, which we were used to. I think that that leaves us more vulnerable. I also think that, you know, a lot of places would be looking at what happens here, honestly, because I don't really see the current course being likely to change at all. And so we're kind of on the roller coaster. And at the end, we're going to get off it.

It's just not clear what's going to happen in between. And when you say the current course, you're talking about the plan to reopen the plan of opening yeah i think i i personally would perceive the likelihood of that shifting to be very low and so the way i've been messaging it is you know if you're feeling tentative that's okay a lot of people are like there's there's both a a psychologic vulnerability to reopening and then there's also this kind of difficult to quantify risk of reopening and in combination to me that says just because you can it doesn't mean you should and that a lot of people have been doing so much heavy lifting for this whole time like they've been doing fantastic work and curtailing their own activities to their own detriment. And that has actually helped everybody. It really has. So there's a lot of of community-based view of things i mean another example edmonton and calgary are both looking at extending their mask mandates um just for the city

um and and that's because the province is going to be lifting the mask mandate and i actually think that's a reasonable way to go about it. I think that gradual reopening with some people potentially choosing to maintain those protective behaviors, both for reopening and beyond, is totally reasonable. And it might actually help us a lot. Now, I know you're focused for obvious reasons on the Alberta situation, but put your national cap on for a moment because we're you know we are finally entering the summer the long-awaited summer that we've all been anxious for for months and months and months um what is your sense overall in the big

picture of where we are right now I'm actually maintaining guarded optimism for the summer because if we recall last summer, a lot of places were quite open and the summer effect of reducing the effective reproduction number was fairly significant. Now, it almost gets cancelled out by the Delta variant, that advantage, I mean, just, you know, very rough numbers. The increased transmissibility might cancel the summer advantage.

But, you know, with some continued judicious and not necessarily horribly restrictive activities, I think the summer could look a lot better because, you know, we have vaccination in place and it's going to protect vulnerable people very, very well. It's not going to be completely even across the country, but I think that it's extremely unlikely to me that we would ever see a devastating surge. Again, I think we would see many surges that will affect individuals that might affect some, you know, regional health care provision but i don't think we're ever going to get steamrollered again i think that we've we've kind of learned the strategy and we're trying to get ahead on the vaccination there's a lot of

challenges but i actually think that it's kind of shifted from this vast unknown of of this fearsome unbelievably world-altering epidemic pandemic um to a strategy game that's a much more knowable quantity and so we can kind of figure out what we need to do then we have to operationalize all that but we're in a much better position than we were and you know i cannot understate uh overstate, can I redo that? I cannot overstate how amazing the vaccines are. Like they're really, really, really, really good. We spend a lot of time kind of, you know, focusing on, you know, rare side effects and problems, but that's going to be what happens with any biological product, you know, but as any kind of treatment or medication that we use,

we're going to find out what the rare problems are when we use it a lot. And we're trying to vaccinate the whole world. The odds game here is so amazingly in favor of vaccination that it's, it's, you know, quibbling about details almost hurts. I think, I think we've maybe messaged too much caution like i think you have to message caution but you also have to message the optimism and i think i'm profoundly optimistic about how we're going to be able to manage a decent but changed future um with the right strategies and the right support so the other

thing that i would rant about would be, how do we actually keep the knowledge gained? How do we keep the strategy gained? How do we use that to make sure that this does not happen the same way? And how can we actually change the course in parts of the world that are still in the middle of the bonfire? And so there's a lot of challenges, but, you know, I feel like it's so much more noble now. You know, I sometimes, you know, you kind of have to pinch yourself every once in a while because seven months ago, we didn't even know that it could be a vaccine. We knew people were working on it, but we didn't know it could. And within seven months, you see the startling number of vaccines that are being produced on at least four different platforms um certainly that

affect this country and the millions of doses that have been handed out and the vaccine rates now which are you know every day are showing these significant jumps i i think sometimes in our the world we live in in 2021 we take these kind of successes for granted and we shouldn't because it's been a remarkable, a remarkable story of the discovery and the distribution of the rollout of vaccines. Oh, it's huge. And I mean, it's interesting because so much of it leveraged previous work. And so much of the success was really based on this intense collaborative effort that was truly global. I mean, so people were stopping what they were doing and switching full steam ahead to COVID vaccination because the researchers, the scientists and everyone actually were all in the same boat. Everyone was affected by this in a terrible way, but they had tools to help address it and so it was just a massive effort and so impressive like i i if i get depressed about you

know public feedback that tells me that you know our messaging is is falling astray that there's still all this conspiracy theories there's still you know basically mobs bearing pitchforks at each other. If you take a step back from all of that mess, which I think is, you know, ultimately deal withable and look at what's happened so far, I think that, you know, it's fantastic. And it's just an issue of trying to carry through that same will and support and collaboration into the other things we need to do so that we don't ever have to have this kind of situation happen again with some new pathogen or even some new version of this pathogen. Dr. Saxinger, once again, we thank you for your time. We hope you have a great summer. We hope

you were able to get a bit of it on your own or with family and not having to work every day. Yeah, I'm actually really hopeful for that too. We'll see how it rolls. Okay. You take care and thanks again. Thank you. Bye-bye. And our thanks to Lenora Saxinger,

Dr. Lenora Saxinger in Edmonton, just as we had Isaac Bogoch with us yesterday and as we had Lisa Barrett with us last week and a week or so before that it was Zane Chagla from Hamilton. These four have been terrific to us throughout these months and they've never stopped working. I mean, their real job isn't dealing with the media. Their real job is dealing with patients, and yet they have always found time

because they know how important it is for people like you to hear from medical specialists, not just politicians and bureaucrats, but those who are actually dealing with patients every day and dealing with the issues surrounding vaccines and all of that. So it's been great of them to talk with us and we will be forever indebted to the fact that they gave us their time. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we come back. It's kind of a shortened version of the Thursday Potpourri. It's going to be the Tuesday segment two potpourri coming right up after this. Peter Mansbridge here again with The Bridge. You're listening to us either on SiriusXM Canada,

Channel 167 Canada Talks, or you are listening to us on whatever podcast platform that you choose to download The Bridge on. Wherever you're listening and however you're listening and whatever time you're listening, welcome. Glad you joined us all right a couple of things to wrap up today's um program with and i found these are all interesting little snippets from the news you know i'm not sure what you're planning for this summer i know that some of you are still waiting for a clear indication from your province or your city or what have you about what travel you may be allowed to do.

And, you know, one of the great travel ideas in this country is to travel this country. You know, I'm old enough to have, and been lucky enough, partly because of work, to have been to every province, every territory, many times, many different communities in all of them, and see just how spectacular this country we call Canada can be from its geography. Its challenges still exist, and we know them well after the difficulties of the last few weeks, which really have been difficulties for generations

for certain populations in this country. But travel does give you a sense of the diversity of our land. And getting that opportunity usually comes for most people in the summer, especially with families. You know, my good friend Mark Bulgich, the co-author of Extraordinary Canadians, the book that we had out last fall that did extremely well and is actually still doing well. Mark made it a point, his family made it a point every summer

that they would travel to a different part of the country. So they would understand the country and they did a lot of this by car, they did some of it by I think train, some of it by plane. But they went pretty well everywhere. I think they did all the provinces. I think they did all the provinces. I know they did Yukon. I'm not sure if they did Northwest Territories as well before. That would have been before it became Northwest Territories and Nunavut. But I know he did a lot of the country.

And for him and his wife and his kids, it was a big deal. It was a family uniting experience, obviously, for one. But it also was a sense of country experience and a different appreciation of the different challenges that exist in different parts of Canada. So why am I saying all this? Well, I'm saying it because odds are that some of you may be able to do some of that this summer. Whatever the case may be, you're probably going to be in the car with your family.

And one of the things about the last year, this is a real departure from where I was just talking, because this isn't a pretty story. The part of this story is about the very nature of automobile travel. I think that most of us have assumed that in the last year and a half, because we've all stuck close to our homes, but as a result, the issue of accidents, traffic accidents, was probably down. Now, I have not seen the numbers yet for Canada, but I am looking at them in the States, and they're not good.

Believe me, drivers in the pandemic have gotten more reckless. That's the conclusion of a CNN study that has been putting together all the numbers from the last year. Let me read you just the first couple of lines of this story. When the coronavirus pandemic shut down the country last year,

we're talking about the U.S., highways emptied out as many people holed up at home. But those who got behind the wheel engaged in riskier behavior, leading to the deadliest year for U.S. traffic crashes in over a decade. Now, who would have thought that? I never would have thought that. I just assumed because there were fewer and fewer people traveling that it would mean fewer and fewer accidents.

But more motorists went too fast, failed to buckle up, and drove under the influence of drugs and alcohol, according to law enforcement and traffic safety experts. The outcome was grim. This is in the U.S. alone. 38,680 people died in vehicle crashes, the highest number since 2007, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Fatalities also increased among motorcyclists, bicyclists, and pedestrians, even as the number of miles driven nationwide actually dropped by more than 13% compared to 2019. I don't know about you, but I got to tell you,

I find that shocking. There's a couple of other examples here showing different parts of the country. In New York State, more than 1,000 people died in motor vehicle crashes last year compared to 938 the year before. Crashes in Colorado mirrored similar trends. Incidents of excessive speeding going 40 miles an hour, they use miles an hour, or more over the limit. Shot up by 48% last year over 2019.

During the height of the pandemic, many drivers stayed home and were discouraged from travel unless absolutely necessary. This is one of the police officers talking here. Some of the drivers on the road seem to feel the traffic law is no longer applied during the pandemic because of the decrease in commuter traffic volume. Well, obviously, that was not true. And that was not the case.

You know, I'll look forward to finding the Canadian numbers. And if I get them all, I'll report them to you. If it's anything like that, it's, it's a sad commentary on what we've just been through. All right. Here's another thing that we, you know, post pandemicpandemic, you know, we've talked about this many times. How, you know, how is it going to be different? Are we going to be different? Is our work life going to be different? Is our social life going to be different? How will we perhaps be different?

You know, one of the things I was wondering about was the handshake. You know, will we return to the handshake or is it always going to be this kind of like elbow bumping thing? Well, last week I had a meeting downtown Toronto in a

outdoor patio setting with two other people. So there were three of us in this meeting. All of us had been double vaccinated. And it was a nice open air, kind of breezy area. And so we felt pretty safe. Anyway, we meet there late in the afternoon one day last week. And I'd never met these people before.

I knew of them, they knew of me, but I'd never met them. And so suddenly we're in that situation that we've all been a million times before. You're suddenly meeting people, you're standing there, and I reached out my hand to shake hands and the fellow one of the the other two people the fellow kind of looked at me like uh handshake and then said oh yeah i'm sure can't. And I never even thought about it. It was kind of an automatic reflex. And I felt stupid afterwards because, you know,

we've all decided we weren't going to do that for a while. And I certainly haven't done it for more than a year. But there I did it. I shook hands. And I wasn't quite sure what to do immediately after that. Do I immediately go and try and find some, you know, lotion to wash my hands with? Did he?

So it was a strange feeling, but it does go to that point of, there are some things that may be different for a while, or they may not there are some things that we do and want to do again and there are some things obviously that we may not want to do again and there's a piece in axios um just a short piece But it's about this whole issue of, the title is the less than welcome return of social obligations. And some, you know, handshakes are one thing,

but there are a bunch of examples in this article that a year and a half of spending time with close friends and family actually felt pretty comfortable for many of those who could do it. In some cases, you couldn't even do that. But that's kind of what you were limited to, right? Family, close family family and close friends. On top of that, many people have learned to fill their free time with hobbies, other hobbies that they had either given up over time or hadn't even discovered until this. Like cooking or making art, or running.

And they're not willing to give up those hobbies to make room for more social engagements, especially if they're not fulfilling. In this article in Axios, they talk about, now they quote one fellow saying, there are people at work that are perfectly fine, but I don't want to talk to them at the copy machine again. I'd rather do anything else than that. The pandemic's no longer a viable excuse to blow off the friends or acquaintances

that you don't particularly care about seeing. And it won't get you out of seeing that weird uncle at this year's Thanksgiving. Or, maybe it will. Maybe you just say, yeah, I don't want to see you. I don't need to see you. I've got along fine without you for a year and a half. You know, I think it's interesting in the sense that there's so much of us trying to understand what it's going to be like

when normalcy does return. May not be this year. Almost certainly be next year. Now, here's the last one for today. The Verge. Theverge.com. They do a lot of tech stuff. They've got an article on, you know, the tech producer Canon make cameras.

They've become more and more sophisticated as technology has become more sophisticated. Well, Canon has put cameras with artificial intelligence inside its Chinese offices that have a very special function. Now, you tell me how comfortable you are with this. The cameras are, you know, kind of facial ID cameras. If you want to enter a particular office area within the office, you're sighted by the camera. It either lets you in or not. But this one's different. It just doesn't look at you, this camera.

It will only let you in if you're smiling. Seriously. You got to be smiling. All the workers have to be smiling. I don't know what this is for. It's to ensure that kind of like everyone is in a good mood when they go into work. But I'll tell you,

that may be the workplace of the future. You've got to be smiling. At least in this office. Maybe there'll be an office where you've got to be frowning. Or you've got to be standing on your head. And the smiling AI camera. What's next? Who knows? All right.

That's going to wrap her up for this day, this Tuesday. That means tomorrow, Wednesday, is Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson will be by. Looking forward to talking to Bruce. Remember last week, he told us he was going out to buy a pump to help in his radish farming experience. And I tell you, we've had a lot of mail about that. I mean, Bruce talks about a lot of interesting stuff

that relates to the world in which we live and the politics that we're all watching and the election that seems almost certain for later this summer. But it's his radish farm that has people talking. And I'm sure we'll find out tomorrow how he made out with that pump. That's it for this day.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. This has been The Bridge. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.