The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Canadians And Fighting Covid-19 -- How Committed Are We?

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

A new poll gives some serious insight into hoe committed we are in the fight against Covid-19.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily as we kick off week 23 of the daily edition of the bridge. Ever since COVID-19 struck, we've been going daily Monday to Friday with the exception of holidays. I hope you had a good weekend. I had a great weekend. I'm back in Stratford now. After a few days up in the Gatineau Hills,

Quebec, north of Ottawa. Great time. Really enjoyed it. Had the chance to spend a lot of time in the water. A little bit of canoeing. It was a nice break. But back at it now on a number of fronts and of course, always, whenever I can,

do the podcast. Now, there was an interesting piece I was listening to actually as i was driving to stratford today on the radio about a new survey a new poll done by the angus reed group angus reed organization and it was trying to get at exactly how many canad following the rules, you know, the basic rules, washing our hands, keeping distant, you know, six feet, a couple of meters from others, and wearing a mask. Those are kind of the main ones. So how many people are willingly trying hard to follow those rules? How many are trying hard but finding a lot of reasons

why their work life doesn't really allow them to follow them all all the time? And how many are just totally not interested in following the rules at all? So the findings are interesting. And as a result, I phoned my friend, Shachi Curl, who's the executive director of the Angus Reid organization. And she's been on this podcast before. And I used to do a fair amount of work with Shachi when I was at the CBC as well on the National. So I gave her a call and she was good enough to spend a few minutes talking about

what she sees as the most important stuff out of this survey, what it means and what it says about us. So why don't I let you listen to a part of that conversation? I don't know, eight or nine minutes. I think you'll find it very interesting. So here it is with Shachi. So Shachi, there's a lot of good stuff in these results, but when you look at it, what jumps out to you? What's the main thing that you see in these results? Well, it is a good news, slightly disconcerting news story. And I would say more than slightly disconcerting. It's a lot to make us uneasy. Look, the upshot here is that you've got about half the country that is reporting through its behaviors, its attitudes and mindsets is all in on fighting the spread of infection,

fighting COVID-19. So these are folks who, in terms of their hygiene, hand washing, mask wearing, keeping physical distance, not having a large social circle, mostly staying home. They are a public health officer's dream. If they could kiss them, they would. But of course, that's no longer allowed under COVID rules. You have a significant number, about a third of the population, who are ticking a lot of those same boxes. But what sets them apart and what makes them members of the inconsistent

segment is that they also have larger social circles and they are traveling a little bit more. And, you know, some of their behavior I don't think is necessarily driven by not caring. I think they are falling a little bit in between maybe some muddled messaging from public health officials and our politicians and others around, well, enjoy your summer, get out there, don't ignore the economy. It's okay to travel, but be safe and use your judgment. And of course, judgment and safety when left in personal hands are actually very subjective things. Then most concerningly, you've got about a fifth of the population, mostly young people, who are really just done with the coronavirus, done with the pandemic, and no longer motivated at all to do very much to stop the spread.

They're not washing their hands. They're not keeping physical distance. More concerningly, they are hanging out with not just close friends and family in a tight social circle. They're hanging out with anyone. Often that's happening indoors, often with no mask wearing or physical distancing. And these folks are really not very engaged

in terms of behaviors that would reduce as opposed to spread the rate of infection. So that is the group that I think public health officials need to be focused on the most. And we're seeing it. I'm talking to you from Vancouver. We're seeing it in British Columbia, where after really flattening the curve, numbers are ticking back up. And it is mostly driven by young people who are just, you know, either mentally done with this, or just not that engaged in terms of understanding and drawing a line between how their actions could have far reaching reactions. You know, I saw the pictures from, is it Wreck Beach in BC over

the weekend, which underline that point you made about mainly young people and seeming to ignore all the rules. But let me look at the big picture of these numbers, because I find them interesting in the sense that basically four out of five are trying hard or trying, at least trying, to follow the guidelines and follow the restrictions that are placed on them. One out of five, totally ignoring. Now, the public health officials that I've heard over these past few months have said if you can get a rate somewhere around 80%, you're going to be in a very good shape in terms of flattening the curve and putting

yourself and your community into a position of dealing with this virus as best one can. That seems to be the number that you're finding, this sort of 80% range, four out of five either trying very hard or at least trying. At least trying, absolutely. Look, I am not an epidemiologist. I'm not a public health specialist. If they're of the view that that's a good number to be at, I would say, okay, let's celebrate that moment. I think going forward, though, does it need to stay at that level? Does it need to increase as we go into cold't change, even as increased exposure to each other will absolutely change as the weather cools, as we've got kids in classrooms who are then going

home to multi-generational households as they do in so many parts of this country, then good, more power to us. So I think what we wanted to do was really understand and sketch out who's in it to win it, so to speak, who is really in the category of the don't care bears, and who maybe could be a little more adherent if perhaps they had a little bit clearer an understanding of what best practices are. Because with this, Peter, as you and I know, it is such a new thing. So we don't have five years of study or 10 years or 50 years to tell us really what best practices are, really how this virus behaves, because we are, to an extent, dealing with it on the fly. Yeah, you're right about that.

Last question, and it's about that one in five group. Aside from age, what can you tell us about them? What do they share as a demographic in that group in terms of whether by region or by background or by political beliefs? What can you tell us? Yeah, there are some interesting correlations. They do tend to be concentrated more on the prairie provinces, so Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Some of that, would imagine speaks to the rural urban divide. If you're somebody your bit for social distancing. So some of this is really around the mindset of my life hasn't changed all that much. It's not in my community. I don't really need to be doing these things. Politically, I wouldn't say that politics is

necessarily driving behavior on this, because one thing that's been quite heartening is across the political divide, we've seen our leaders pretty consistent in what they're saying, our politicians pretty consistent in what they're saying. But you can also find in what is the heartland of conservative support in the country, not to say that people don't vote for the conservatives in other parts of the country, but that really is the heartland, a more libertarian street. You will have some folks saying, look, a mask is an imposition on me. I know better what's best for health and what's best for my family and my community than anything a scientist in the city 500 kilometers away from me might say to me. So I think those things do combine. Interestingly, I think there's also something to be said for people's emotional mindsets around this,

something else that brings those cynical spreaders together. They are in general angrier at what's been going on in the last few months. So rather than, you know, some people have responded saying, well, I'm fatigued, I'm worn out, I'm anxious. Some are expressing gratitude. We see the cynical spreaders more likely to be expressing anger and really an ennui or a level of frustration that others, I think, are not. So there is that level of chafing. And again, if you're a 20-something or a teenager, you haven't been able to see your friends,

grads have been canceled, you can't do anything. Now maybe you've graduated into a really uncertain job situation. Yeah, you're angry, you're chafing. And really, I think these folks are expressing a level of doneness with it all. But of course, they don't have that luxury because this is going to go on for a while. Last quick one, and it's the same kind of question I always ask, whether it's you or Bruce Anderson or David Hurley. And that is something about the survey itself.

How many people were contacted and when so we spoke to canadians over the age of 18 in the last week and i'm just going to very quickly pull up the survey sample size it would have been more than 1500 but what so that's a big that's a big survey then. It is a big survey. It's a national sample. People across the country, every part of the country balanced on age and gender and regional demographics from every part of the country. And we talked to folks in English and French, and those are the results. So something around 1500 would be a margin of error of, what, two and a half percentage points either way?

Yeah, something like that, exactly. All right. Listen, Shachi, thanks so much for this. It's always great to talk to you, and I appreciate this one today. Thanks for the time, Peter. So there you heard it. Shachi Curl from the Angus Reid organization. She's in Vancouver, as she said.

And what do you think of those numbers? I thought they were pretty interesting. And I think they give us a sense of kind of where we are as Canadians, how we're reacting to dealing with this deadly virus. Speaking of numbers, you know, briefly, you know, I've come around, I think I've, you know, I've mentioned the positivity rate before, but it's starting to be the number that I find the most telling and the most interesting in terms of where things stand.

So, first of all, you know, if you don't know already, and I'm sure most of you do because the people who listen to this podcast are talking. There we go. Get rid of that. Who actually understands exactly what the positivity rate means? Well, it's pretty simple, really. Every day tests are done, and the number of tests that are done looking for COVID-19 in patients, if they turn out positive, the positivity rate is based on the number that are found positive

over the number who were actually tested. Now, we've heard some big numbers in some of the testing surveys that have been done, especially in the southern states in these last, the last month or six weeks, numbers that ran as high as 25, 30% positivity rates. Generally, it's accepted that if you are under 5%, your community or your state or your province or your country is in pretty good shape if you're under 5%, well, you know, the Floridas and Californias and Arizonas and Texas, they have not been. And neither have a lot of other. Georgia, I think, is the other one. I mean, there's some really huge positivity rate numbers.

Now, Canada has been dealing with some spikes in the last couple of days, the last, you know, 10 days or so in British Columbia, in Alberta, some in Saskatchewan, and in Manitoba. But ask and look for what the positivity rates are. They tell a much bigger story in terms of how you are doing. Let me use Ontario as an example. Ontario has gone through most of the last 10 days, I think, with only one or maybe two exceptions. They've been under 100 cases of positive per day out of testing that's been anywhere from 25 to 30,000 people. This is just Ontario. The positivity rate today was 0.31 percent. 0.31. Not 31. Not 3.1, but 0.31. So less than half of 1% of the number who have been tested

are turned out positive in today's numbers. So that is an extremely low positivity rate, which isn't much comfort for those who turn positive, but it is for the community at large. Because once again, something under 5% is good, according to public health officials. Over 5%, then you're definitely dealing, say the public health officials, with some form of community spread, that the virus is spreading in your community sort of out of check.

Well, at 0.31, they can narrow it down very closely to exactly how you ended up getting the virus. Now, the other positivity rates across Canada, I don't believe any of them are anywhere near 5%. I mean, overall, the last day that I saw the total number that turned positive across the country was under 500. Under 500 for the whole country. So positivity rates are all way down. Right now, some of the best positivity rates are in Ontario and Quebec,

the two most populous provinces, and the two provinces that have had the most difficulty with this virus, if you consider fatalities as the most difficult area of it. Anyway, when you're hearing the numbers churned out or you're reading the stories, look for the positivity rate. It's a pretty good reflection of how your area is doing. And you can get it for your specific community, for your health region, for your province, and obviously for the country. So keep that in mind if you get a chance. All right.

I've got a couple of other things I wanted to talk about. We've talked a lot about what happens if and when a vaccine comes along. Nobody's saying this is happening anytime soon, except Donald Trump. But let's say it happens early next year. Then the next question becomes, who gets it? Assuming you have enough produced, who gets it? How should the priority list be run? And generally accepted in that discussion, that argument, that debate, is that it should go first to frontline health care workers, doctors and nurses and those working in the hospital wards

where COVID-19 patients are being treated. And then backing off a little bit, police officers, firefighters, paramedics, that that grouping should be first up. Second up, the generally accepted area has been, okay, next up, older people, the elderly, the most vulnerable. Certainly we're the most vulnerable when this pandemic first struck. Remember the horror stories in the long-term residence homes. Well, as an interesting argument put forward in an opinion piece by a woman by the name of Faye Flam on Bloomberg, she argues that once a COVID-19 vaccine is developed, it should be given first to healthy young people to ensure the reduction in transmission in those who are most likely to transmit the disease, younger adults.

Vaccinating the young people could be the fastest way to herd immunity and could be a strategic use of limited vaccine amounts, especially in the beginning of the rollout. Now that's the first time I've seen that argument put forward. That's an interesting discussion, and we should have that. So, if you have thoughts on that, let me know. We are at the luxury of time waiting for this vaccine to think about things like this. Where should they first use the vaccine? Well, if you have thoughts on it, the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com.

You can always send them along. And I'll include them on the Friday weekend special. Now, here's another one. I had a couple of discussions on the weekend about students. And this time it was not about school from K to 12. It was about university students. And obviously the students who are going for their first year of university, they've waited their life, especially the last couple of years for this moment,

this honor of being accepted into a great university. The excitement that surrounded that, moving away from home, their first time, going into residence, taking classes at a university. It is one of the great steps in life, that first year in university or college. Well, for so many this year, it's not going to be that exciting because they're going to be absolutely kept away from the classroom for many. And the classes are going to be online. You don't even have to leave your home.

I mean, a lot of kids leave home, right, to travel to a university not in their town. And they end up in residence. That's part of the excitement, part of growing up, part of becoming, moving towards adulthood. Well, for so many this year, that's unlikely to happen. They could go to residence and sit in their room in residence, taking classes online.

Well, how fun is that? Or they could stay at home and take classes online. How fun is that? So that's an issue for a lot of kids. So Willie, my son, was in his final year at U of T this year. He was with me on this little jaunt up to the gatineau this past four or five days and we were talking about in the car and he said he'd been together with three or four of his old high school buddies here in stratford i think it was two weekends ago socially distant very careful

but they got around to talking about that and wondering aloud what they would have done if it had been their final year of high school and this had happened, and what would they have done about going to the university or college when they were being told it's going to be online? And they, I think more than half of them most of them determined that you know what

we'll wait a year we'll work for a year or we'll do something for a year but or we'll take you know we'll take a gap year or we'll we'll go back and what do they call it when you sort of do a go around, take grade 12 again? There's a term for that, which I've forgotten because I never got there myself. Anyway, there's a piece this week. Let me find it here in the last couple of days,

about this dilemma for some kids. Have I lost it here? I don't think so. Got it here somewhere. Basically, the argument is, and I've lost track of where I saw that, but the argument in it, I remember it well, was that's not going to be a good place to be because giving up that year of progress of university, whether it's online or not,

is going to cost you in the long run. It's going to cost you in the job market when jobs start coming back. It's going to cost you in the long run. It's going to cost you in the job market. When jobs start coming back, it's going to cost you in lifetime salary. So it's something you should be extremely careful about making a decision on. That if you have the chance to go to university this year or college,

even if it's an online class, you should do it. All right? That's that point. Now here's the last thing I wanted to talk about. I found this really interesting. It's from the Atlantic magazine, Atlantic.com. Just as the Great Depression permanently altered many people's behavior, a piece in the Atlantic suggests that a meaningful percentage of people will probably continue aspects of their new quarantine-induced habits

long into the future. We've talked about this many times over the last four or five months. How would we change and would we change permanently? Well, this article is suggesting, in fact, it's going to change permanently for some people. Even after the threat of the coronavirus passes, some examples of new behaviors include washing hands more often.

I can believe that. I'm so used to it now, I don't even think about it anymore. Wearing masks when one is feeling unwell. I'm not sure about that, whether that will be something that passes on into the future. Perhaps. If you're feeling poorly, if you've got a cough or you're sneezing or you just feel under the weather and you don't want to pass it on,

you grab a mask two, three, five years from now when COVID-19 is just a bad memory, we hope. Spending less on expensive hair and skin care products. Well, there are a couple of ways to spend less on expensive hair products. I learned one of these many years ago. But, you know, I wonder. I mean, look at what you used up until five months ago in your, whatever area of your house, in your bathroom, behind the mirror where you store your stuff. How much of that stuff do you still use?

Or have you learned to live without? Because of the way we live now and the final one is feeling more okay about staying home as opposed to feeling pressured to go out what do you think of that? I think those are all very possible. I think it's possible that a mask one is the one I'm not sure of. I'm not sure that there are going to be a lot of people who are going to say, I'm going to keep wearing masks. Maybe. I, you know, every once in a while I think about what is going to happen that first time I go to a Leafs game or a Raptors game. Will I be wearing a mask? When they open it back up to fans and I'm in an arena with 20,000 other people

screaming and yelling. Now that we know what comes out of your mouth when you scream and yell that we never realized was happening before, maybe masks will be with us for a while. I don't know. Good discussion. All righty.

There you go. Week 23 underway for the Bridge Daily. Hope you enjoyed it. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been the Bridge Daily. Joe, I wanted to tell you Wednesday will be the race next door this week. Wednesday. It'll give you a couple of days to watch some of the convention stuff.

It's kind of the, you know, the Monday, Tuesday of convention week in the United States for the Democrats. You know, there's some pretty good speakers, but it's not the big ticket stuff. Wednesday night, Thursday night are the big nights. So the Wednesday podcast, the race ahead, will deal with conventions and the impact they can have, especially this year with a convention

unlike anything we've witnessed before. All right? So that's Wednesday night for the race next door. But we'll be back here, as we like to say, in 24 hours. Thank you.