The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Are School Openings Working Through The Pandemic -- Europe May Have The Answer.

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

Plus, what do James Cameron, Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorcese have in common aside from being film directors?

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily it's thursday of week 29 and let me start with a thank you to those of you who put us over the top with yesterday's podcast within a podcast the race next door on the bridge daily and when i mean put us over the top you gave us our biggest one night rating on podcasts since we started this. It was quite remarkable, really, to see how many of you last night and during the night and early, very early this morning, had downloaded the podcast. So we set new records there, well under the thousands, and we appreciate that very much. And I know Bruce does. There's been a fantastic addition to our Wednesday edition of the Race Next Door.

And obviously yesterday's was a bit of a home run in terms of a talking point because a lot of you clearly wanted to hear at least what we had to say, which may as well have sparked some ideas from you. In fact, there have been a few letters already. In terms of the debate, how it was run, how the two debaters, so to speak, performed. Anyway, so that's great. And we'll look forward to next week.

There's another debate, the vice presidential one, Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. And then two more with the two presidential candidates before Election Day on November 3rd. A reminder, if you have some thoughts that you want to make about any subject, drop me a line because tomorrow is the weekend special. And if you want to get your words in, there have been some great letters this week and last weekend on a variety of different things. So I will be choosing some of them for this weekend's podcast.

But you can write, you can offer something up at the Mansbridge podcast, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. All right, today, as a result of, well, they're not being, for me anyway, one clear theme to talk about today. It's going to be one of our equally popular potpourri days, where I've sort of collected a few things over the last few days, and we'll put them together and see whether any of them catch

your fancy. Starting on school, I mean this issue has been one that I've spent a lot of time in the last few months on and will continue to do such because I can tell from your comments and your letters and your questions that it's on many of your minds as well. I think we're still a little too early here yet to make judgments about how this has played out. Clearly, there have been a number of unfortunate situations in different parts of the country where students have contracted COVID-19. In some cases, classrooms have been shut down. And in some cases, schools have been shut down, at least for a while.

But we haven't seen enough time yet to make judgments overall about how this is working out. And so I don't think it's going to be long, probably another week or two. But some areas in the world have drawn some conclusions based on their first month or so of school. In Europe, many of the schools were open a week or two weeks, in some cases more than two weeks, before the majority of schools in Canada. So they're already making certain conclusions. And overall, in terms of Europe, it's staying committed to in-person classes. School outbreaks remain pretty rare.

So I've kind of drawn upon some of the things that were in a piece in the Washington Post this week, because they did a survey of a number of different countries. And I wanted to go over some of that with you, because I think it's important. Their article starts this way. I'll just read the first couple of sentences. The first sign that something was wrong at the lone school in the tiny Belgian hamlet of Seabray was when a teacher began to feel sick not long after classes resumed this month. She tested positive for the coronavirus. They started on September 1st, by the way. She tested positive for the coronavirus. Within days, 27 students and five other teachers also tested positive. Now, the village of 800, yet small, in Belgium's rural southeast corner

has become one of the latest data points in a complicated, angst-ridden experiment for communities around the world. How much does in-person schooling contribute to the spread of the virus? Now, this study by three of the post-correspondents, the reporters who cover the education with COVID story, the answer experts are saying in Europe after several weeks back in classrooms

is that it's rare for children to spread the virus within the walls of a school, but it's not unheard of. Not every country can point to a school where the coronavirus seems to have spread, and even where there are such schools, including in Belgium, Norway, and Germany, such outbreaks typically remain countable on a single hand, affecting a fraction of a percentage point of the millions of students and teachers in session across the continent. Okay?

So while the headlines were and the focus was on this little hamlet of Seabray in Belgium, the big picture overall in the country was, hey, you know, we're doing pretty good. Here's a breakdown on the situation in Belgium of Belgium's 8,400 schools, okay? 8,400 schools in Belgium. 16 have closed fully or partially because of the coronavirus. That's less than 0.2% of the country's schools. And most closed due to staffing shortages after teachers contracted the disease in the community. Not because the coronavirus spread beyond the initial person who got sick.

It is looking along these lines in most European countries to the point where many countries in Europe have dropped rules about wearing masks in schools. Not because they don't believe in mask wearing, they do. But because of the situation in schools reasoning that it's difficult for students to concentrate when they have them on all day. Public health authorities have spent more energy devising ways for children to study within relatively small cohorts. That's the key in schools as opposed to the population at large and shopping and going grocery shopping and just traveling around town where you could be bumping into anybody,

any number of different people that you can run into on occasion. Here, if the students are kept in small cohorts, they're seeing the same small group every day. And if quarantines are required, then fewer people will be affected. In Finland, more than 2,700 students and teachers were told to quarantine after being exposed to coronavirus cases since schools resumed in mid-August. So they've been open six or seven weeks now. But fewer than 10 people, 10 out of those 2,700 who were asked to quarantine, are believed to have contracted the virus after the initial

exposure. It's important to have transmission control measures in place in schools, said one of the officials. With such measures, he said, outbreaks can be limited. Now, one outbreak that has attracted significant scientific scrutiny in Europe is a June episode in Norway, where a total of 40 people, including 16 students, at a primary school in Lillestrom were infected. Through genetic analysis of the cases, investigators determined that the coronavirus likely was introduced to the school outside Oslo by two different people at roughly the same time.

One of the sources was probably an adult at the school who infected other adults and some children. The other source was likely a child who may have infected other children at the school, but investigators said the children also had close contact outside school. It's not easy to say that the children spread it, says one of the senior physicians who's been studying all this. If asymptomatic transmission was common,

we should be seeing a lot more cases than what we're seeing right now. She noted that Norway has decided as a society to prioritize in-person education. The view is, she says, I'm quoting here now from this post piece, the view in Norway is that children and youth should have high priority to have as normal a life as possible because this disease is going to last. They have the lowest burden of the disease, so they shouldn't have the highest burden of measures. So there is a couple of examples,

and the last one I'm going to read about is in Germany. As we've been watching Germany closely ever since we began these podcasts back in March. March. It's October. If there's one thing about this year, I know for some of you it has been going painfully slow because of the various burdens you've had to deal with. I can tell you in my case, it's gone like a bullet. I can't believe that it was six or seven months ago that I was, when I was starting my steps routine,

that there was still snow, a little bit, but there was snow on the ground. In some ways, it seems just like yesterday. Summer went by like a bullet, and here we are now in the fall. Anyway, we've talked a lot about Germany on a number of different things. I'm, as you know, a big fan of Angela Merkel and the way she's run things, and overall Germany, a country roughly twice our size, has, in terms of population, has done pretty well. They are going through the same kind of thing we're going through right now, where their numbers are bunching up.

Same in France, same in Spain, same in the UK. Anyway, in Germany, one of the first countries, reading again from the Washington Post, one of the first countries to send students back to class this term, the daily number of new infections, that's overall in Germany, the daily number of new cases, reached 2,500 over the weekend, the most since April. Still, public health experts say school openings

have been a success so far. The newspaper De Veldt surveyed the nation's federal states and found that 49 out of 33,000 schools, about 0.15 percent, that's, you know, less than almost half what it was in Belgium, our first example. 49 out of 33,000 schools had gone into full quarantine since the beginning of the school year. In almost all cases, authorities do not believe that the disease spread at school. So that seems to be one of the themes here is that where there have been cases the decision is being reached that these cases didn't happen in the schools, they happen outside of the schools and they were

basically restricted to those who had picked it up from outside the school. Some cases spread to other students, but only a few, because of the cohort system and other examples. Here's the worry, though. Well, worry is perhaps the wrong word, but certainly a concern on the part of all of those who were talked to by the post in this examination of the school systems and how coronavirus is being dealt with. The concern is that because they opened in August in some cases, and they've run through September and going into October,

and the weather has been good, as it often is during those months, that in schools a lot of windows have been open. and the weather has been good, as it often is during those months, that in schools a lot of windows have been open. There's a lot of fresh air going into the schools. Just as there is here. But we all know what's coming. And as one of the teachers said in Germany, fresh air is available now,

but as temperatures drop across Europe, classes with open windows will not be sustainable in just a few weeks. All right, that's your school story for today. A couple of other things in this kind of potpourri podcast today. What do these three guys have in common? James Cameron, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese. That's right. That's easy, right? That's an easy question.

James Cameron, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese. Three of the top film directors in the history of film. One of whom is a Canadian, right? James Cameron. I've interviewed James Cameron, talked to him, had a great chat with him, where he didn't live up to the reputation he had, which is supposed to be that he's really hard to get along with.

I got along with him great. Anyway, what do these three guys have in common right now well a deep concern over the state of movie theaters now as you know various businesses companies have been lined up with their hands out hoping for government aid as a result of the pandemic that has swept across the world and certainly across North America. And with hands out, literally billions of dollars has been offered to various companies and businesses and industries and individuals to try and ease the pain of the loss of business, loss of jobs, loss of homes as a result of the pandemic.

Well, Cameron Eastwood and Scorsese say it's a desperate moment for movie theaters, you know, the places where their product is shown, on its initial run anyway, as films across the country, and as part of our culture, as part of our history, part of our arts tradition, around the world, and certainly in America. So those three guys, and 67 other directors and producers,

along with the National Association of Theater Owners, the Directors Guild of America, and the Motion Picture Association, have banded together to write a letter to members of the U.S. Senate and members of the U.S. House of Representatives. And they're not mincing words. They say the coronavirus pandemic has dealt a devastating blow to movie theaters and that without funds, quoting from the letter,

theaters may not survive the impact of the pandemic. Your local theaters are going to close if you don't help us now. You know, you can go to a lot of small towns in Ontario, and I've seen them in Western Canada, different places, and one of the buildings in the small town is the theater. The theater that at one time was a theater for silent movies before the talkies came in. A theater that was home for the traveling theater companies,

the shows, actors and actresses, singers and dancers, would come to town, put on a show, be there for a week or two, and then move on to the next town. Well, with each kind of step, they upgraded to what was next along the line. From live theater to the silent movies to the talkies to the big spectaculars that we get now. Well, Cameron Eastwood and Scorsese are saying, we could be toast in terms of those theaters

across the country in big cities and small. The pandemic forced movie theaters to close their doors in mid-March. Reading now from a Reuters story, big chains including AMC Entertainment and Cineworld Picks, Regal Cinemas have reopened with reduced capacity in many U.S. cities, but not in the biggest markets of Los Angeles and New York.

Cinemas are an essential industry that represent the best that American talent and creativity have to offer, but now we fear for their future, says the letter written by these directors and producers. They've asked Congress to redirect unspent funds from the coronavirus aid package, and there are always unspent funds. They put forward trillions of dollars in packages, and they're working on a new package right now, but not every dollar is being spent.

So the letter asks Congress to redirect unspent funds from the coronavirus aid packages passed earlier this year or enact new proposals that would help movie theaters weather the pandemic. It's all part of the entertainment industry that has been suffering through all this, just like many other industries. But we know it here in our town,

Stratford Theatre Company, it's been closed all year, actors out of work. And the whole, the industries around it, out of work. People lost their jobs. And who knows what's going to happen? Normally, in the Stratford Theatre, and that's just the same at other theatres in other parts of the country,

normally they'd start rehearsals for next year, probably around February. Then they'd open on a limited basis in kind of April or May for previews, and then the real season starts usually in June. And it runs right through until October, November. So none of that happened this year. Well, they'd started rehearsals, I think, this year,

and then they had to cancel everything. So next year, what are they going to do? Right now, people are not optimistic about what it could look like next year. So that's a lot of jobs, right? It's not just the theater. It's all the various businesses that support the theater. It could be bed and breakfast.

It could be hotels and motels. It could be restaurants. It could be bed and breakfast, they could be hotels and motels, they could be restaurants, they could be any number of different things. So there's the cinemas and the theaters. And on the theater front, a CNBC article shows how the closure of Broadway has significant impact on the local economy and adjacent industries,

as billions of dollars typically are spent on accommodations, travel, restaurants, taxi cabs, and more in specifically industries that are hard hit. This highlights that the economy around the industry of culture reverberates far beyond the stage. Just this week, Disney announced that it would lay off 28,000 people as part of its theme park business, with about two-thirds of the positions being part-time employees.

So, you know, what was the airline industry today announced? That it could lay off 40,000 people unless they got help from the government immediately. So this story, you know, as much as a certain candidate for the President of the United States keeps saying, we've rounded the corner, we haven't rounded the corner. We haven't rounded the corner in any fashion, on any aspect of this story. As long as there's a virus, and there is a virus, as long as it exists and can't be countered, there's going to be pain, and more than just pain, on the health front, as awful as that is. There's going to be pain on the major economic front.

Okay. Last point. This is also a story about the difficulty of having to shut down through the pandemic. But I like this story because it tells you stuff you wouldn't have thought of. You know, the Metropolitan Museum, one of the most famous museums in the world, right? The Met in the U.S. So Quartz, another online magazine, has an interesting read right now. It lays out the mind-boggling logistics of shutting down the Met Museum,

where there are only 40 essential staffers supervising, get this, more than 2 million works representing roughly 5,000 years of fragile, vulnerable exhibits, all of which are vulnerable to pests. They're vulnerable to changes in temperature. They're vulnerable to exposure to light, all of which demands constant vigilance. So what has the Met done? Well, they now have a new wall listing the names of every single person currently working at the museum,

a poignant public tribute to the mostly unseen work of administrative, curatorial, security, and janitorial staff who keep it all running. Okay, so that's at the Met, but you can assume that that's happening in many of the places in your town, your city, your province, your country, where places like museums or art galleries, what have you, have been closed as a result of the pandemic. And yet there's lots of stuff in there that's got to be looked after. Every day is like a night at the museum. Remember those movies?

Stuff has to be looked after. Stuff has to be protected, not just from the elements, but from little things that may crawl in the night. Hey, it's not funny, Peter. It's pretty serious stuff. Because one day we're going to want to go back. And we're going to cherish every moment when we do go back. Because I think many of these places we took for granted.

Well, when all this ends, and it will end, treats and pleasures that we took for granted in the past will be ones we will gather a whole new era of respect for. All right. That brings me to the end of my rambling potpourri of facts for this day. Tomorrow is the weekend special. As we close out week 29. Get all excited and ready

for being able to say week 30. So tomorrow the weekend special. Your thoughts, your letters, your comments, your questions. I've got a fair number already, but I'm always anxious to look at a few more. I'll be actually recording the podcast early tomorrow,

releasing it at the same time, but I've got some business as such tomorrow afternoon that I have to do. I'm moderating a panel at the Munk School at the University of Toronto. It's actually a virtual panel, so I'll be staying here. But we are approaching the 30th anniversary of the reunification of Germany. And that is a story that Canada had a role in.

Not a minor role either, a major role. And so that panel will be discussing that. Among other people who I'll talk to will be the former Prime Minister of Canada at that time, Brian Mulroney, who played a leading role in the work towards the reunification of Germany. I've always found this topic interesting because I was in Berlin during that weekend when the wall came down, and everything kind of toppled out of that. Certainly Eastern Europe toppled,

but what I mainly mean is old ways of doing things changed, toppled, and a new sense of Europe emerged in a very short period of time after that weekend when the wall came down. And so I'll be talking about that at this panel at the Munk Center at the University of Toronto, and I'm looking forward to having that conversation. But as a result of having that conversation,

I'll have to record this podcast earlier than usual on Friday, tomorrow. And so if you have thoughts, questions, comments, you should probably try and get them in tonight, Thursday night or first thing Friday morning. So this has been the Bridge Daily for this Thursday of week 29. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.

We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.