The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Are You Concerned Or Confident About Canada's Vaccine Supply?

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Vaccine supply in Canada has been down to a trickle for most of this month, but now we're told its about to quadruple.  Do you believe that?  Or should you be worried?  And what about that variant that shud down Newfoundland in a matter of hours, is it coming your way?  That's the major question today and we've got a great guest to walk us through it all - infectious disease specialist Dr Zain Chagla.Plus the end of the Lear Jet, and yet another news organization comes up with a set of rules to govern its journalism.

Hello there, Peter Ransbridge here. You are just moments away from the next episode of The Bridge, where today we ask the question, are you now confident or are you still concerned about the latest forecast on vaccine supply in Canada? And hello there, that's right, Peter Mansbridge here with the bridge. Man, it's a winter wonderland here in Stratford, Ontario, right in the heart of southwestern Ontario, and also right in the heart of kind of where we have the lake effect with snow. Now, a lot of places in the country, especially the eastern half of the continent,

have got snow today. This is no exception. It looks great out there. You know, there's not a lot. But there's enough to make it really visible, and snow is the order of the day, and that means the shovels are out, and that means the kids are out on the Avon River

that splits Stratford almost down the middle from east to west, and there are a lot of little hockey rinks, ice rinks along the river. It's a very shallow river. They drain it before the winter sets in. But nevertheless, some great ice. And, you know, I must have counted a dozen or so, at least a dozen or so, little makeshift ice rinks along the river over the weekend. Now, we're a small town, city, 30,000, a little over 30,000.

So a dozen or 15 little ice r 30,000, a little over 30,000. So a dozen or 15 little ice rinks, that's a big deal. And they were all being used all weekend. Anyway, that's the weather report for today. If you're like me, you probably are one of those kind of pandemic nerds who likes to crunch numbers and look at numbers. And I go to the Canada website. You know, you just sort of Google Canada COVID or something like that, and you'll end up being directed eventually to the Canadian government website. It really breaks the numbers down.

And I've been doing that, I guess, wow, since last March. So we watched all those numbers go up of cases and testing through last spring. And then it settled down in the summer. And we thought we were maybe kind of getting away with it. And in the fall, the second wave started to hit, and it got ugly, and it got especially ugly last month in January. It started to dip down again. So if you just go by those numbers, cases, testing, positivity rate,

and you look at the fancy charts and maps showing the different parts of the country and where there are cases and where there are few. By the way, I noticed the Atlantic bubble is now just the maritime bubble, right? Newfoundland is setting its own course, as Newfoundland often likes to do. But this is a tough one because they've got the variant, and we'll talk about that in a couple of minutes. But Nova Scotia, PEI, and New Brunswick, still very low numbers. Anyway, overall, the picture in terms of numbers on new cases and on deaths

is showing some significant improvement this month over last month. However, there are things on the horizon that are legitimate reasons for some concern. And then there's the whole issue of the vaccines. What has happened to the Canadian vaccine situation? You know, were we sold a bill of goods? Did the government sell us a bill of goods? Did the companies sell the government a bill of goods? All I know is that a lot of people who were figuring they would have had

vaccines by now haven't had the vaccines yet. Now, we're told over the last couple of days that relax, all things are going to be okay. The supply coming in from Pfizer especially and Moderna is going to quadruple the number of vaccines available in Canada starting this week. And we actually will make our promise of the number of vaccines done by the end of March. And still, everybody's holding firm on this guarantee that they'll all be done by September. Or every Canadian who wants a vaccine will have had a vaccine by the end of September. So time will tell on those. However, it does leave you kind of sitting there wondering,

okay, what am I supposed to believe here? Should I still be concerned as I was for the last few weeks about where are the vaccines? Should I still be concerned about that? Or should I be confident in what I'm hearing in terms of the vaccines being available? So who are you going to ask? Well, you know, the policy here at this program, we don't talk to government officials on this because we want to go to the best sources, and those are the people who are following very closely the vaccine situation because they are helping deal with it. Most of them are infectious disease specialists, and you know if you've listened to this program, we have talked to infectious disease specialists in Alberta, in Ontario,

and in Nova Scotia. I'm trying to get a kind of sense of the country here. And we're going to do that again today with one of our regulars, Dr. Zane Chagla. He's in Hamilton. He is a professor at McMaster University, but works with a number of hospitals as well in southern Ontario. And he's been great, especially on these dual issues, vaccines and the variant, the Newfoundland variant.

What is the lesson on that story? So maybe it's time I stopped talking and we started asking questions of Dr. Chagla. So Dr. Chagla, help me out here because I'm confused. It depends on these days who you listen to about whether or not I should feel confident or whether I should feel concerned about the vaccine supply. What's the answer so i mean pfizer had said there was going to be a four-week lag and vaccines are scaling up and there was a four-week back lag and vaccines are scaling up and so you know the promises of four million pfizer vaccines by the end of march

and another two million modererna, you know, six million vaccines vaccinating three million individuals in Canada is an incredibly potent milestone. And so, you know, I think we should feel optimistic that our supply is actually increasing. And with every dose administered, we are going to get better and better and better outcomes for the population. Well, listen, we all hope you're right. But part of the reason for the cause of concern is we seem to not be doing as well as many other countries, not just a few other countries, but many other countries.

We've dropped well down in the world rankings on that front. And, you know, we've gone through this period of the last few weeks where there just weren't vaccines. The supply wasn't there. So I ask you again, why are you still, why are you confident? Yeah, I mean, one thing to mention about the global rankings and, you know, much of Europe and the United States and the UK is using Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, which are probably the most evidence based ones on the market. Much of the rest of the world that we're being compared against is using Sinopharm, which is the vaccine that was derived in China, as well as the Sputnik vaccine, which is derived in Russia. The data looks reasonable for it, but it's still not had the robustness of the data as Pfizer and Moderna. And so, you know, people need to understand that with some of these comparisons and recognize, you know, again, this is a well sought after global supply chain. And, you know, again, Pfizer was retooling so they could meet an expectation from 1.3 billion vaccines to 2 billion vaccines across the world, recognizing that this is going to help with humanity's fight against COVID-19.

I think we got the worst of it. But again, as vaccines are rolling out, as the Canadian government and provinces have told us to get ready to get it into community dwellers, I think we can have a lot of optimism that the supply chain is sorted out and we're back on track to what was expected at the end of March. And are we ready once it starts getting here?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the benefits and certainly where I work in the greater Toronto area, you know, while we've had this time to recognize that we haven't had the supply, it's also been precious time to plan for when the supply comes, recognizing the problems we've had in the first month of prioritization, of registration,

of optimizing people coming in on board and so yeah I mean I think there are plans to hit the ground running and to have multiple modes of vaccination whether they be parking lots large-scale clinics mobile health teams we've had a great rollout in long-term care using community resources to get there and so it's going to be a little bit bumpy, but I think there's been a lot of proof of principle, plus the experience of the United Kingdom and the United States into rollout, where we've seen kind of the methods of community engagement and community strategy, and also what hasn't worked in those settings, and trying not to replicate it. All right, let me ask you one question that some people do worry about,

and that's whether or not the right people are at the head of the line for when the vaccine is more widely available. So, I mean, I think the biggest thing that has been shown across multiple studies around the world is the largest risk factor for death and complications of COVID-19 is age and age alone. And so that is actually probably the easiest thing to put people in line for, recognizing that other medical conditions are a spectrum where people can have very mild and not really complicate their lives to severe and be at high risk of COVID-19 complications. We have age as part of our registration for things like medical coverage, licensing. We have doctors with EMRs that can easily pull people by age. And so, yeah, I mean, I think prioritizing, obviously congregate settings, which was the

most important right now, age and very, very high risk and vulnerable populations like indigenous populations where healthcare resources are simply not available in the case of an outbreak will identify the right people right away. And so that first wave based on age, based on indigenous status, based on congregate care facilities will likely hit the people that have suffered the most. It's when we start getting to bigger rollouts after that, where yes, there is a risk of people jumping in line or a risk of people over-representing their conditions where we have to be much more vigilant, but it's going to be difficult to deal with as they're very, very loose at that point where, you know, someone with high blood pressure can be very mild or can be very severe in that sense. Who's doing, who's, who's responsible for being vigilant? I mean,

who's, who's checking the line? Yeah. I mean, it's up to public health units. And I think there is something to be said here. You know, there, there, there were rollout issues in the United States around this where, you know, they identified age appropriately, but they didn't necessarily control for the people that were being hit the hardest, the lowest income communities, the more racialized communities, the highest essential worker communities. age and it was over represented by people who are of a significant age but also of a status where they were easily able to acquire the vaccine based on education and merit and so you know it is something to be monitoring for i think public health units can do a job leaving it to the communities to do it is important because they know how to engage their own uh own people they know their troubles they know their hard spots. But, you know, the accountability also needs to lie with them that doses don't get wasted. And there's not a significant

number of people that jump the queue. All right, let me switch to something that everybody seems to share a degree of concern on, and that is the variants. And especially the the lesson if there was a lesson in what's we've just witnessed in newfoundland in the in the last week the sudden explosion of the uh the variant that uh you know they call it the british variant or the uk variant uh although i guess it's still kind of up in the air where it exactly started but nevertheless um what did we learn from what happened in newfoundland and what's still happening in newfoundland you know these variants especially the one that derived in the uk b117 have a predilection to fairly extreme growth in the context of society being open now they do transmit more they replace normal strains.

And, you know, we will see in Canada, as we're seeing in Ontario, we saw in Denmark, we saw in Switzerland, we see in the UK and Israel, that it will replace the normal strain out there. It still doesn't mean public health rules fail. And many of those countries like Ireland and Denmark have been able to keep their numbers low, regardless of the strain transmitting, even though it is transmitting more than what's there, but it's a lesson to say when you have a more open society with these variants in mind, as was the case in Newfoundland, you may deal with issues with explosive growth very quickly. And again,

this is being seen in other places in the world, in Australia, which has seen very small growth. They're dealing with a large outbreak associated with the hotel. There's new reports in New Zealand of an outbreak, including B.1.1.7 there. And so, yeah, you know, it is one of these things where it mixes with public health rules, where if societies are more open, the variant is able to spread, it can spread often much quicker than what would be expected. If societies have the rules in

place that are enforcing public distancing, that are enforcing masking, that have restrictions and are able to adapt and pivot based on the spread of the variant, I think you can still see a lot of good control and not as much calamity. But again, it has to be monitored and there has to be rapid responses as Newfoundland is doing now to get control back. Are you worried? I mean, you're in Ontario

and Ontario is opening up a bit. Yeah, I mean, I think that we in Ontario, I think many of us have been living under some form of restrictions. We've had rates that have not been optimal. And I think much of the population has adhered to what needs to be going on. My big worry in Ontario is that there are still very vulnerable populations where we see much of COVID-19 spreading essential workers, people in shelters. And, you know, the provisions to protect them aren't necessarily there. Lockdowns or no lockdowns, they're still not totally protected with sick day leave and access to good testing. And so my worry is you're going to see the variants spreading in that population as there's already trickles of, and that's going to spread

out into the general population after that. Okay. Last question. Schools under that scenario. Yeah. I mean, I think it does create some liability. You know, the outbreak in Newfoundland seems to be attributed back to a high school as the amplification source. And so similarly, I think you can operate schools. the public health measures need to be optimal, you know, class sizes may need to be readdressed down the line if we're seeing spread of the variants quickly. And parents need to be, again, empowered to get their kids tested appropriately. That being said, you know, there are some jurisdictions in the world that have been able to operate with the variants circulating with schools open, Switzerland being one of them, knowing kids' education is so important. And

again, that kids don't seem to be overrepresented in death as part of this variant spreading. I think we can try to navigate schools being open, again, with a very tight leash on things if they do get out of control. And I'll leave it at that. Dr. Chagla, as always, thank you so much. No problem. Zane Chagla, joining us from Hamilton. He's an infectious disease specialist. He's working out of McMaster University, but also a number of hospitals in southern Ontario.

And he's been a great addition to our group of different doctors, infectious disease specialists, all of them, who've been helping guide us on this story. And I think there's a lot of worthwhile information, as there always is in these interviews, in that one in particular. Well, still ahead. It was good enough for Frank Sinatra, but apparently it's not good enough for today's rich and famous. All right. What was that Frank Sinatra stuff all about?

Well, here it is. I'm amazed, actually, that I didn't do this last week because you know my fascination with all stories, airline and airplane. Well, this story came up last week, and I saw it, but I kind of let it slip and let it pass, and I thought, no. On the weekend, it slip and let it pass. And I thought, no, on the weekend it popped up in my mind a couple of times.

And I thought this was a real signature moment from the 1960s that carried on for decades after that. Well, the headline in the story is Learjet will end production. The Learjet will end production. The Learjet. Now, this was a significant part of aviation history because in the early 1960s, people like Frank Sinatra wanted a small jet so they could move around. In his case, it was particularly from LA to Las Vegas.

He wanted to go back and forth. You know, that's a short flight. But nevertheless, he wanted to travel in style and he wanted a jet to do it. And so he was one of the first ones who signed up for this whole idea of Learjets. They were the first kind of small, private jet aircraft. And so Sinatra used one.

They became famous in songs. Carly Simon wrote about the Learjet. Pink Floyd mentioned the Learjet. Now, Learjet was, you know, an American company, but eventually it was bought out by Bombardier, the Canadian company. That was, I think, in the early 90s. But what happens is people who like the Learjet, you know, it was small. It was kind of cramped. And they thought, can we make these a little bigger? Can't you come up with something bigger,

you aircraft companies? And sure enough, they did. And suddenly the rich and famous were traveling in more expensive private jets. And the Learjet kind of fell by the wayside. They made about 10,000 over the life of Learjet. And so there were a lot of miles flown, a lot of places that were traveled to on

Learjets. I did a, I've flown on a Learjet, but I've flown on a lot of those small, well, not a lot, but I've flown on small private jet aircraft, usually on short-haul flights. I've had to do that a couple of times for work, more times for giving speeches, and sometimes on private events that I had a chance to go to. Once, I flew overseas in one of those small jets.

And that's not quite as luxurious as traveling on a big airliner. It's a little cramped, and depending on which way you're going, remember we've had this discussion before about when you travel west to east, you have the wind at your advantage usually at high altitudes, and when you travel east to west, not so much. In fact, the flight from, say, Europe to Canada is much longer when you're flying in that direction than it is when you're flying from Canada to Europe.

And that was the occasion that I was in. I was flying to Spain for a conference, and I got there, a private conference, and I got there, and on the way back, we had to stop in Newfoundland for gas. We had to load up on gas because we didn't have enough to make it all the way back. Anyway, I'm being picky. It's still pretty nice to travel in those kind of aircraft.

But for Learjets, they kind of fell by the wayside. And sure enough, the end of the era for Learjet has been approached. Bombardier also announcing it's going to cut 1,600 jobs. That's about 10% of its workforce. Explained how it lost, you know, $600 million roughly last year. Those are U.S. dollars. So, anyway. So Anyway It's funny, it's ironic in a way Because it was

You know, the company just announced A couple of months ago Their latest new Learjet model The Learjet 75 Liberty I guess that's not going to happen too well Anyway, the end of an era And that's not going to happen too well. Anyway, the end of an era. And, you know, probably doesn't mean a lot to people who were born in this generation,

but it was something, it was one of those words, one of those things that helped define, you know, the 60s, 70s, 80s were Learjets. Now, I have one other airline story that is, you know, it plays off that whole idea of flying from Europe to North America. There are set routes, right? The aircraft, you know, they're almost like highways in the air. And the pilots, when they file their flight plans, they're looking for certain routes that they appreciate, but they end

up basically being told which route they can take by air traffic control, or trying to manage all these different aircrafts that are flying back and forth across the Atlantic. If you have any of those airline apps that show you all the aircraft in the skies, have a look at them someday in terms of how many planes, when we're back to normal, how many planes are crossing the Atlantic. Well, that's the point of this story. There's nowhere near as much traffic crossing the Atlantic either way than there used to be. And this affords pilots an opportunity to pick a different route

and pick a route that could be faster, use less gas, any number of things. And that's what's happening. A great report in The Hill last week by Alexandra Kelly talking about how airlines can now pick their own Atlantic routes thanks to the pandemic. And as a result, they can save fuel. And I'm sure those savings will be passed on to us,

the flying customer. So it's an interesting little side story to the pandemic about the impact it's going to have on airlines. I mean, all these stories we've heard for the last year, and they've been devastating to the airline industry. In terms of layoffs for every runner from pilots and flight attendants to the mechanical crews on the ground, to those who sell tickets at the airport, and to the

billions of dollars that have been lost in the airline industry. Here's one small sliver of a silver lining, which is pilots can pick their own routes now, and perhaps routes that will be a benefit to all of us, for at least those who travel. You know, the last time I traveled, well, the last time I was on a plane at all,

was a year ago now, it was in February. The last half of February, I was over in the UK. And haven't been on a plane since. I certainly haven't been on a plane crossing the Atlantic, but I sure hope that I am within the next year. You know, it's time for a little golf in Scotland. All right. Here's your final story for today, and it kind of links up to one of the things that we talked about a few weeks ago on this broadcast slash podcast. Got to call it both because it's a broadcast on Sirius XM. And it's a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. But we talked about how news organizations in their attempt to try and regain

trust on the part of the public are, some anyway, are making clear their journalistic standards and policies. CBC has one, you can get it online. Pull up all their standards, JSP, and what they're trying to adhere to. Well, the one that attracted our attention

a couple of weeks ago was Axios, the news organization in the U.S. that came up with 10 points that they're trying to follow, one of which was really interesting, which is no longer within their journalism would any of their journalists express any opinion at all. No opinion.

Just the facts. Well, that led to an interesting discussion. But that's theirs. And I see over the last couple of days, the San Diego Union Tribunes, which is a news organization in Southern California which owns a number of papers and is responsible for a number of papers,

has come out with what it calls the Fairness Checklist. And there are quite a few things on it. I'll read a couple of them. Obviously, if you're going to call it a fairness checklist, everything they do must be subject to a fairness test. And they say, and this is in their own paper I'm reading from their column, we will not hesitate to decline to publish a story that fails to meet our standards. We don't shade the truth.

We let the facts lead us. We show our work. So there are points. I'll go through them quickly. Be factually accurate. That should be obvious. Keep in mind our own values, cultural biases, and preconceptions, I'll go through them quickly. Be factually accurate. That should be obvious. Keep in mind our own values, cultural biases, and preconceptions,

and avoid imposing them on others. That's important. Ensure that our word choices and the overall tone of stories are fair and neutral. Present a diversity of views in their best light. Frame stories fairly and openly, in particular the critical sections that make an impression on readers, that is in the lead and at the end, in other words at the beginning of the story and at the end of the story. Ensure there are no surprises in the story for our subjects. They should have an opportunity before publication to know the full thrust of the report and respond to any meaningful details or accusations.

Now this is an interesting one here, and we've all come up against this in our journalistic careers. They are going to include this in their arguments for fairness. Give subjects ample time to respond. Generally speaking, a minimum of 24 hours. Boy, sometimes on a breaking story and you have details where you need either confirmation or an explanation, it's hard to wait 24 hours, especially if you know you're being deliberately held back. But that's what they're putting in. Include a timely response from subjects. Listen with an open mind and portray their point of view

in a straightforward manner. And just two more. Reach out to allies or sympathetic parties and scour the public record to understand the point of view of subjects who are unwilling or unable to talk. Make a sincere effort to reconcile conflicting information if our subject's point of view does not square with other data points in a story. Interesting.

Here's what I like about all of this um news organizations are trying to be more transparent in the way they operate and they have to be more transparent i've been arguing this for more than a few years i you know i argued it internally at the the CBC when I was there on a, you know, day-to-day full-time basis. I just think it's really important if you're going to, there's no doubt that the trust factor is dropped for journalism in general, as it has for many professions. But for journalism, it is absolutely imperative that they regain that trust factor. And part of the way of regaining trust is answering the simple questions that many people have about how we do our jobs. How do you make the decisions you make as a daily news organization? How do you make the decisions you make on any number of

different areas, from covering scandals to covering elections. How do you make those decisions? Well, you've got to explain it. You can't leave people in the dark on these things. Because when you do, you invite that lack of trust. So I applaud the San Diego Union Tribune for putting out its fairness checklist. I'm sure it's provoked some discussion within internally at the papers that belong to that organization, just as the Axios stuff has. The very fact that we're discussing this kind of thing in the open

is a good thing. And I'm sure some of you are going to jot me a note on this because you have when we talked about the Axios situation. All right, that kicks off a short week for us as we took yesterday off. Hope you enjoyed the replay of the program we broadcast yesterday on SiriusXM. Tomorrow, it is Smoke Mirrors and the Truth.

Bruce Anderson will join us as he does every Wednesday. I think we want to kind of, you know, tie the knot a little bit on the Trump story, but in a different kind of way. And I think, you know, what we saw once again over the weekend and in the vote and in the way Americans have reacted to the vote was the polarized nature of political thought and thought in general in the U.S. And the question that I have is,

how dissimilar are we to the Americans? Are we as polarized as they are? So that's what we're going to toss around a little bit tomorrow. Thursday, who knows, could be another potpourri day. We've got a whole stack of different things I haven't talked about yet. And Friday will be, as it always is, the weekend special. So it's your opportunity to get your thoughts in on various subjects. Could be anything on COVID.

Could be anything on this media transparency issue. Or it could be anything else that's on your mind that you think should be on our minds. So don't be shy. We've already got a lot of letters that came in over the weekend. But we'd like to get more. And the best are kept for Friday. All right.

I'm Peter Mansbridge. It's been great to talk to you here on The Bridge, whether you've been listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, or on any of the various platforms where you get your podcasts. Tomorrow, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson joins us. Hope you'll be there with us. But for now, that's the bridge.

Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.