The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Despair, Hope And A Little Laugh ... All Right Here.

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Half of the country's Covid-19 deaths have happened in long term care facilities exposing a serious problem in the way Canada cares for its elderly. Will this disaster force change?That's the primary focus tonight, but we'll also make room for some hope and a smile.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily i was uh attending a board meeting today I'm on a number of different boards. And I was on one this morning and it was a Zoom board meeting. Obviously, no boards are meeting in the conventional way in person these days. Very few are, as far as I know. Certainly none of the ones I'm on are. Today's was a Zoom board meeting. And for many of the people on the meeting, it was the first time they'd been on Zoom, so they were all excited about it. There was a little like that SNL skit the other night of a Zoom meeting.

It wasn't my first one. I've been on a number of Zoom calls in the last couple of weeks, but a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't have told you what Zoom was. So it's been an experience and it's been one of those ways when we look at the impact it's had, where we start thinking about what impact are some of these changes going to have after this has all gone and we've moved on to a better, newer life. And a number of people mentioned on this morning's board meeting, you know, board meetings are never going to be the same because a lot, especially in national organizations,

like the one I was at today where there were people from different parts of the country, in fact, some from outside the country as well on the call, that normally they would have to fly to the meeting center. But here was the possibility that they could do it by Zoom in future dates. Now, it's always had that possibility on by dialing in to a conference, but there's something very different about dialing in and zooming in. When you can see everybody, it's a different kind of vibe. When you're sort of at the end of the phone or people forget you're even on there, you kind of doze off, or you start looking at other things

while the phone's sort of there, and you're kind of half listening. But with Zoom, you're kind of plugged in. You are part of the meeting. And I keep saying Zoom. I appreciate there are other ways of doing this, other platforms as well as Zoom. But it's become the kind of generic name that everybody uses right now. Anyway, so there's that.

I was talking to a major Canadian automobile dealer the other day who has, for a while, kept going in operation, was allowed to, they were called an essential service in his city. And what he'd done was he told his accounting staff to stay at home and his marketing staff to stay at home and work from home. That's a lot of business they're doing, getting a lot of different people to work from home. Anyway, he decided after a week or two of this that, you know what? They don't need to be here.

They can work at home. Even when this is all over, there's no reason for the accounting people to be here. There's no reason for the accounting people to be here. There's no reason for the marketing people to be here. I can give them some kind of bonus to use their home as a workplace. And I can save lots of money on rental space, office space. And when he said that to me, I thought, you know, there are probably a number of businesses that are thinking this as well.

So it'll be interesting to see whether some of those kind of changes happen in the future. Here's one thing I know will definitely happen, because there's a debate about how much change will really occur after all this is over. But here's one thing that I know will happen. And that's the situation with long-term care facilities. The numbers are really quite horrifying, what we've witnessed. And not just in Canada. We've seen this in the United States, we've seen it in Italy, Spain, the UK, and other countries. In Canada, so far, up to today, we've had, I think it's 833 deaths as a result of COVID-19.

833. Half of those, half of those deaths have been in long-term care facilities. That's a staggering percentage. I mean, we were always warned going into this that the most vulnerable were the elderly. Well, a lot of elderly people live in long-term care facilities. And those numbers, and, you know, you've seen the headlines in Ontario, the long-term care facility in Bob Cajun, Ontario.

Bob Cajun made famous in a song by the Tragically Hip, will now forever be looked at as this terrible situation at the long-term care facility there. Quebec, big numbers in terms of their fatalities from long-term care facilities and some horrible, horrible stories. And we are learning more about the way long-term care facilities are run in Canada. I mean, some are private, some are publicly funded, some are half and half. There's somewhere around 200,000 beds at long-term care facilities in Canada. There are going to be another 200,000 by 2035. The numbers will double in the next 15 years. What this is showing though

is that we've got to come to grips with exactly how these places are run how they're staffed some of the stories are not good about the way these places have been run the way these places have been run, the way these places are staffed. People who are working there are incredible through all this. But are they the right people?

Are they properly trained? What kind of regulations fit over long-term care facilities? All of these things are going to have to be examined. And I think you can safely assume that once this is all over, there's going to be a major investigation by governments at different levels into the way long-term care facilities operate in our country. All right. care facilities operate in our country. All right.

Let me tell you about a different conversation I've had just last night. You've heard me mention a number of times about all the different things that are going on in Canada and where we've got to send our praise and our prayers for those at the front lines, whether they're in the health care facilities, whether they're police officers, firefighters, paramedics, grocery store clerks, truckers, farmers. I've mentioned all of them many times. And it's nice to see, by the way, some attention being given in the last little while to truckers. Maybe the farmers will start getting some attention as well. But I'm proud of the fact that we've done those in the last couple of weeks. The other group that I've talked about occasionally

are researchers and scientists who are working extremely hard around the world and across this country at universities and private labs and various places right across Canada. And so last night I was talking to one of the officials of the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Center, kind of an international vaccine center, world-renowned. And they are one of the organizations in Canada, not the only one, but one of them,

that's working desperately hard to try and find either an antiviral that's going to work to slow this disease down and to give those who are suffering from it some relief, and, of course, trying to find a vaccine. And I was amazed to hear the story about what's going on in Saskatoon, the University of Saskatchewan. There's more than 100, somewhere between 120, 170, different researchers and scientists working at different levels within that vaccine center,

all working on areas like the ones I just listed. And the most critical of them, in the level three facility, they call it there, level three facility, in other words, they are working with the coronavirus in an attempt to find a cure, a vaccine. So they're all suited up in like hazmat suits where they're working. They're working night and day. There's at least two shifts, a daytime shift and a nighttime shift. They are making progress, as are other labs in different parts of the world. They are making progress as are other labs in different parts of the world

they are making progress they have come up with in a vaccine that they think has promise that it's working being tested right now on animals if it gets through the animal testing period, it will be then going to the next period, the next phase. Now, this will take a long time. We've heard 12 to 18 months is the normal, is kind of like the earliest things could get going, unless regulations are changed by the various health authorities, and they could be the Canadian government, the Center for Disease Control, the WHO.

All of these groups are working with places like the University of Saskatchewan right now. In fact, they told me that there are three times a week they have a conference call with some of the top scientists and researchers around the world, including the WHO and including the CDC, on the phone, exchanging information about how their different projects are going. This is cooperation unlike anything any of them have ever seen before. They didn't see it in SARS. They didn't see it in the N1.

What was that one? They didn't see this kind of international cooperation where scientists from different countries were talking to each other on a regular basis. This is a race for a cure, a race for an antiviral, a race for a vaccine. And in that race, there are no borders. And it was encouraging to hear.

And it was hopeful and encouraging to hear that all these people are working these kind of hours on their side of this story. And I don't think we recognize that enough. Two more quick things that I want to mention today Drew Doughty is one of my favorite hockey players I went from vaccines to hockey nice eh he's a defenseman for the Los Angeles Kings and he comes from this part of our country

comes from southwestern Ontario and when the season was shut down, he came home. So he's been in the kind of London area. He's a pretty good defenseman. There are people who dream that one day he'll be on the Leafs' blue line, but we'll see. Anyway, Drew Dowdy is never shy about answering questions,

and he was asked a question, I think it was this morning or last night, he was asked a question about whether he thought the NHL would be able to pick up its season and finish the current season and have a Stanley Cup run. And that's been an idea that's been kind of pushed by the

league and a number of players. Not a lot of players, but certainly by the league and the owners, they would love to get the game back on ice. Drew Dowdy asked about it, said, I don't see it. I don't see that happening. I do not see this season being finished,

nor is Stanley Cup played for this season. Next year, maybe. Not this year. Even if they delay it to late, late, late. Like late summer start up. I thought that was interesting, and I mention it for this reason alone. While all the fighting goes on between different levels of government and different leaders about when to start things up again

and who was responsible for shutting things down in the first place, and, you know, I'm talking mainly about Donald Trump, whose story changes every day about what he did or did do or didn't do or will do, I'll tell you, the person who shut down everything was Adam Silver, the commissioner of the National Basketball Association, when he decided that his league was not going to play another game because of the emergence of the coronavirus

and a positive test by one player at that point from the Utah Jazz, he shut things down. He was immediately followed by, I'm not sure the order in which, but the NHL, you know, soccer, football, golf, you name it. They all shut down.

Because Adam Silver moved first. He moved before Donald Trump. He moved before state governors or provincial premiers or the Canadian government. He shut his operation down. Everybody else followed suit after that. So, I think it's interesting that a sports figure was a leading proponent of closing down shop. And I find it interesting that Drew Dowdy is not shy about saying

it's going to be a while, a long while, before it opens back up again. Okay, so I've covered news, sports. I've covered science and research. I'll close on haircuts I'm sure a lot of you have been trying to decide what you're going to do about your hair people like me don't have to normally worry about that very often but

yesterday I decided you know what I've got to do something about my hair I haven't had a haircut in two months yesterday I decided, you know what? I got to do something about my hair. I haven't had a haircut in two months. And even though there's nothing on top, it's starting to look a little wild on the sides. So I got to do something.

And I found in the cupboard one of those kind of, I don't know, Canadian Tire barbershop kits. I thought, I can do this. And I pulled it out, plugged it in, got it fired up, put the little attachments on. And suddenly started, you know, cutting my hair on the sides. I thought, well, this is going all right. I mean, there was quite a bit of hair coming off.

And I thought I was doing this properly. Uh, and then Cynthia walked in to the room where I was doing this and said, what are you doing? Have you actually looked at the side of your head? Um, I hadn't because I couldn't, you know, like I hadn't because I couldn't you know like I couldn't figure out how to do that but it turned out that I had you know sometimes you see in the movies those kids who have you know cut little

symbols into their hair on the side of their head well apparently it looked like I had done a really bad job of trying to do that. And I'd taken off huge chunks of hair, not just sort of thinning it out, but like right down to the scalp. So she tried to clean it up as best she could. But let's put it this way. It's a good thing this is going to keep us indoors for another couple of weeks

because by then maybe it'll have grown back. Okay, quick note about tomorrow. We're going to have a special guest tomorrow where we're going to talk in much more detail in terms, well, in a more general way about this issue of how differently are things going to be in our life, in our society, when all this comes back, as it will someday come back? Will fundamental change happen to the way we live?

So we're going to kind of try to take a look into the future. And that'll be the major part of tomorrow's podcast. So I hope you give us a listen tomorrow on The Bridge. Well, for now, I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been the latest edition of The Bridge, and we'll be back in 24 hours. Thank you.