The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - How Protected Are You With Just One Vaccine Dose?

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

A weekend of good news, bad news -- what to believe?  One if you've had one vaccine dose just how protected are you?  Plus Astra Zeneca falls back in favour while J and J falls out.  And, do women suffer more from Zoom fatigue than men?

Hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Are you a little confused as to where we stand exactly on the pandemic after this weekend? Because I'm a little bit confused. Let's try and sort it out. Like you, I have been so grateful and so thankful for frontline workers during the COVID crisis. Let's just talk about the frontline workers at SickKids, which is one of the world's best children's hospitals. SickKids doctors also work behind the scenes on incredible breakthroughs to help our kids and generations to come.

Listen to their inspiring stories in a new season of the popular podcast called SickKids Versus. Each episode explores a major sick kids discovery like, well, a virus fighting super molecule or a cure for hard to treat cancers. Just visit sickkidsfoundation.com slash podcast or search Sick Kids Versus and spell versus VS. So Sick Kids VS. You'll be amazed at what you learn. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Hope you had a good weekend. I had a pretty good weekend, although I was confused at times.

There were a lot of contradictory pieces of information that came out over the last couple of days that left me puzzled. I don't know about you, but certainly left me puzzled as to where exactly it is we are on the pandemic right now. Because on the one hand, you've got numbers in parts of Canada that aren't good. But maybe they're seeming to stabilize, even though they're not good right now. Stabilization is a good thing. But it may be a little too early to say that. However, those two bits of conflicting information are one thing. You've got this horrendous situation in India going on where people are literally dying in the lines trying to get into the hospitals.

India, the biggest producer of vaccines in the world, can't vaccinate its own people. A lot of the vaccines we have here came from India. The AstraZeneca's that we have here, many of them came from India, from the Serum Institute, the largest vaccine maker in the world. But India is in trouble. I think yesterday was 350,000 new cases in India in one day. And that's been the pattern for the last week, over 300,000 a day. I mean, it is the second most populous country in the world. You know, I recall a year ago when we were just starting this podcast

and we were talking about numbers we could see in the world around new cases and we were puzzled by China where this all started was very low number and India was even lower like much much, much, much lower. Almost an insignificant number of new cases. And, you know, many people, myself included, kind of questioned those numbers. You know, really? India's got more than a billion people.

How can it only have a few thousand cases? Didn't sound right. Neighboring to China. Anyway, horrible story going on in India right now. And here in Canada, of the various VOCs, variants of concern, one of them is a variant that seems to have originated or at least come from India. And that has people worried. And it has the experts worried because they're not quite sure whether this variant, even if you're vaccinated, will be prevented from ravaging your body. So you have all those things happening, most of which sound pretty scary to me

while at the same time you have reasonable people experts in the field including dr fauci saying you know what vaccinated people may be able to not have to wear masks in public. It's very soon. Could be very soon we institute new regulations. That would be one of them. That if you're vaccinated and you're outside and you're in the middle of a big crowd, maybe you don't have to wear a mask anymore.

Now, that's a wonderfully positive sound, and people will embrace that. But really, at the same time as all these other things are going on? I don't know. I'm puzzled. And when I'm puzzled and I'm confused, I go to people who, you know, are trained, prepared, even paid to answer some of these questions. And we've been extremely lucky here on the bridge for most of the last year in having access to some of the best minds on the pandemic, infectious disease specialists in different parts

of the country. You know them. We've been talking to them, Lisa Barrett, Dr. Barrett in Halifax, Lenora Saxinger, Dr. Saxinger in Edmonton, Dr. Isaac Bogoch in Toronto. And Hamilton joining us in a moment today will be Dr. Zane Chagla at McMaster University. And they have helped guide us through the ups and downs of this. And last week seemed to be a terribly down week, especially in the province's most hard hit right now. BC, Alberta, and Ontario. And Ontario is, well, you pick your word to describe the situation in Ontario.

It's been a mess. And there's all kinds of problems happening in Ontario, politically as well, as we definitely covered last week. But a primary concern to all of you is, like, what am I supposed to think? Is this third wave a precursor to a fourth wave? Or are we really seeing the worst of the last? Should we hope for a summer that gives us some calm from this disaster that has unfolded over the last year? Well, let's try and take it step by step with Dr. Chagla because I'm being so grateful to the various doctors

that we've talked to over the past year. They've been terrific in guiding us and giving us the kind of information that you need to make your mind up. I mean, for a lot of parents, the school situation is still, depending on where you live in the country, is so precarious.

I have a grandson in Winnipeg his school got shut down on Friday because a number of cases positives came up both with some students and some teachers now fortunately I use that word carefully

for him personally it wasn't involving his cohorts the cohort that he's in and therefore For him personally, it wasn't involving his cohorts, the cohort that he's in, and therefore he's fine. And let's hope it stays that way. But the school has been closed. So that's, you know, that's a bit of a shocker. But lots of families in lots of places in different parts of the country going through things like this.

And, you know, even in Nova Scotia, we talked with Dr. Barrett so many times about how well Atlantic Canada has been doing, and they continue to do well. But the numbers have spiked a bit in Nova Scotia in the last two weeks in terms of new cases. I mean, 70 new cases in a day doesn't sound like much when you're dealing with 4,000 in Ontario in a day. But it sounds like a lot in Nova Scotia when it hasn't been that high before. So they're watching things very carefully there. All right. As I said, let's talk to Dr. Jagla. Let's get some expert advice here in terms of, you know,

kind of where we are right now. Dr. Zane Jagla, once again, is from McMaster University in Ontario. That's near Hamilton. But he teaches at McMaster and works in a number of hospitals in different parts of southern Ontario. So we're lucky to have his advice again. So let's talk to him now. Well, Dr. Chacko, let's start with a sense of where we are

as we begin a new week. Are we any further ahead in this race between the variants and the vaccines? Yeah, I mean, I think many places in Canada had to go through some degree of restrictions to get things under control. I think we are seeing some signs that whatever has been done from a public health standpoint is certainly working. In places like Ontario and Quebec, where you're seeing numbers stabilize, there's still incredible healthcare demands across the entire system,

which really does create an inability to really tolerate any more COVID-19 from the sake of minimizing death and healthcare resources, which are already stretched to the brink across the country. But I think we are still seeing some effects of the vaccine strategy as they've been there so far. I mean, again, at this point in our pandemic in the second wave, we were seeing nearly a hundred to 120 deaths a day. And then we aren't seeing that across the country because those at the most vulnerable

standpoints those over the age of 70 those in long-term care have been largely vaccinated moving forward where i think the race between the variants and the vaccines is still being held up is the populations now that are at highest risk of transmitting particularly the dense urban regions the people working in essential workplaces, the multi-generational families, the people living within poverty jails and shelters, they're still not getting high uptake of the vaccine. And again, until we actually get that group saturated, who likely also seeds the community with COVID-19, we're not going to see necessarily the successes we want with vaccines preventing

transmission. We'll with vaccines preventing transmission we'll see vaccines preventing hospitalization you know adding to that it there's been a lot of concern in the last week to two weeks about what's been going on in india and the concern with the variant that has been established there and that it's traveling and there have already been indications that it's it has traveled relatively small numbers but nevertheless traveled to canada as well how worried are you about this india variant yeah i mean what's happening in india is not simply just this variant itself the the mutations in this variant uh at least from the descriptions to date, may give a little bit of immune escape from people that have been naturally infected prior.

May make vaccines a little less effective, not necessarily less effective in terms of hospitalization and death, but less effective in terms of symptomatic transmission. And, you know, they may transmit slightly more than the types at bay, but maybe not as much as B.1.1.7, which is circulating here. Now, India is obviously a complete other issue with, again, urban density, poverty, multi-generational families, the way people live, where 20% more transmission leads to, you leads to apocalyptic scenarios where those vulnerabilities are essentially brought to the surface very quickly. I think in the Canadian context, we have obviously more strength in public health systems.

We have more strength in testing. We have vaccines that are plentiful and in supply. Yes, mitigating the spread of this variant in Canada until we know everything about it is important, but I don't think we're necessarily going to see the same impact that India has with it. And I think, you know, we can be reassured that our current strategy moving forward is likely going to address this as much as everything else. So are you telling me that we could be in the midst of what is the worst of the third wave right now? Yeah, I think this is it. Right. Like, you know, I mean, I would go more and say we could be in the midst of the last wave right now.

And, you know, we're seeing this in England two months kind of ahead of us where they vaccinated 30% more of the population. They've had a stricter lockdown, which is now starting to emerge in the last three weeks in the low risk activity. And they're seeing deaths and hospitalization still stay low. You know, there's now debates in the UK in June and July in terms of what to do with the basic public health restrictions in terms of distancing, masking and all that stuff and when when we can actually repeal those and that really is our future moving forward we're going to see covid it's going to be a part of our lives um but again you know if the morbidity and mortality is that of what we see in influenza season for influenza that's fine we can

live with that there is going to be some needs to hospital capacity and treatment and testing that need to be integrated. But, you know, again, this last wave of the disease ravaging health care, shutting down essential society is probably at its end when we get to vaccines at a high level. You know, already in the States this past weekend, reasonable people who are very involved in the fight against the pandemic are beginning to suggest that it may be okay to soon start relaxing certain things like outdoor use of masks, maybe not so much anymore. And, you know, a few other things. Now, that makes people sit up and say, really? Already? What do you think of that? Yeah, I mean, it's crazy, right? But I think, you know, thinking back to March of 2020, when these rules came to place, you know, distancing, lowering capacities, lockdowns.

And then in April, when masking became part of the the issue you know we had nothing else right this was all a bridge to something else it was a bridge to keep cases low to keep health care under control to get to a point where we had better tools to control the pandemic and lead to much less of the death and disability that we're seeing the reality is as we got to this point, right? Those were artificial constructs. They weren't meant to be there forever. They were meant to buy us time to get to this point

so that we don't lose a ton of people along the way. It's hard to really put it down. And I even participated in one of the US articles on outdoor masking, and it was taken up with a lot of negative enthusiasm. I was actually shocked because I thought that was one of the things people would be very willing to do, to take off their mask and smile at people outdoors, knowing that it's a low risk. But I think it's that. I mean, people lived with this so long, they're petrified for themselves, they're petrified for society.

But these vaccines are incredible. They really have changed the face of COVID-19. And again, a mass vaccine campaign will likely take us back to what normal was prior to the pandemic well let me ask you a couple of questions that relate to the vaccine in in particular because a lot of canadians tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of canadians um who've had the vaccine already have had their first dose of the vaccine. And the second dose could be a while yet, especially if you're on the AstraZeneca cycle here. How well protected are you if you just have the first dose? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different factors in the population you are, your risk of comorbidities,

your risk of breakthrough, your risk of comorbidities, your risk of breakthrough, your risk of not having a response to the vaccine. You know, the studies coming out of the United Kingdom suggest anywhere between kind of 50% of the lower age range to about 70 to 80% to the higher age range of being protected against symptomatic COVID-19. And then if you break through that, there's about a 70% protection against hospitalization and about 80 to 90% protection against death about two weeks after the vaccines take hold.

There is a straight path there still for hospitalization and death and symptomatic COVID-19. And again, a young person probably isn't going to go down that path after the first dose, although they theoretically could. But an older person, you know, does develop those risks of going down that path for sure. And so, you know, I think realizing this and the federal government has been a little bit shy on putting out this type of guidance. There's a lot of people looking for it. And I think it is something that needs to go forward from a federal level to tell us what a first dose means for people in public health restrictions. Unfortunately, as a physician, I'm hearing about people that, you know, got their first dose of vaccine and do something a little bit more risky the day afterwards, thinking they're protected. And, you know, it's people like me that are trying to give that message to say, actually, no, you're not.

There is some risk still that doesn't, you know, the vaccines don't kick in for 14 days and there's still some risk in it at that point but you know people like me shouldn't be delivering this message i think it is upon us the federal government to start releasing that message to say this is our strategy and this is exactly what we expect of people right now at this point in the pandemic and in the uk and other countries did do that towards the gap so if know, let's just take an example. I know you want to be careful about what you suggest as what the plan should be, but, you know, say you've had your one dose and you're well past the 14 days, you're into your second month or even third month

because they tell you when you get your AstraZeneca, it could be four weeks, it could be four months before you get the second one. How restrictive should you be about what you do if you've only had one dose? I mean, would you consider, you know, major air travel either, you know, to the other side of this country or international going to Europe this summer? I mean, people are into that mindset already, right, about what they think they would be able to do this summer. Yeah, I mean, so the effects of that first dose are magnified by a number of people that have that first dose, right? So, number one, you know, the advice from the CDC originally was people who are fully immunized can interact with people that are fully immunized as part of that strategy because that combination of the two creates you know a more safe place with a single

dose and not knowing what everyone else is like you know that that really is where the the the part is you don't know if people are still shedding haven't been immunized you don't know if you could shed and infect someone that hasn't been immunized and so some of those high risk indoor settings are still probably settings you want to avoid or use a mask and minimize the amount of time. What I would say is that that first dose probably lets you do things like see family outdoors with a bundled approach. You know, have a very brief indoor interaction with, using a mask um you know doing the things that we were typically doing but allowing a little bit more of that risk rather than just a full stay-at-home approach um you know for for everyone you know we don't know what it is like for and for everyone and

i think that's really the part of this that's tricky you know there's still a lot of people that need to be immunized just a lot of vulnerable people that need to be immunized, still a lot of vulnerable people that need to be immunized. And so yes, you may be offered some protection, but you may be going into settings where there are people that aren't protected that are a part of it, right? So doing low risk activities, using it as part of the bundle to minimize risk is part of that low risk activity. It's probably the best we can offer people right now. And again, the federal government, if that's it, is fine. We just need to give that advice to people and really put the expectation out there. Just to wrap it up for this week, would you say,

would you describe yourself as cautiously optimistic at this point? Yeah, I mean, what's happening in healthcare, I've never seen in my career, right? Like this is unprecedented. We've never moved people around the province. We've never, you know, had surgery shut down to basically nothing. We've never had adult patients in pediatric ICUs. You know, it is a bit scary, but seeing the numbers at least peak is really, you know, the first step to healing here and hopefully going down a road of recovery as

as the next month goes on um but yeah absolutely i mean i think coming out of the first wave when we were at these you know incredible numbers and then decided to open up again a lot of us were nervous we didn't know what was going to happen we didn't know how transmission was going to be effective we don't know what schools were going to do. This time when we open up, again, we're going to have a vaccinated population. Hopefully we get to about 40-50% immunity by the time things start opening up across the country. That's very different, right? Now we're in a completely different game as it was in July 2020. And yeah, I'm enthusiastic. I'm optimistic.

That's probably the best it gets right now. And again, if COVID becomes a typical respiratory illness that might hurt a few people every year, that might cause a few hospitalizations every year, but are dealable and healthcare workers feel protected, we can live with that. That's probably the best it gets. Well, I hope, and I'm sure you hope, that that is the way it gets well um i hope and i'm sure you hope that

the that is the way it unfolds here in the next little while dr chagla thanks again as always for your time no problem thanks peter zane chagla uh talking to us um from i think his home um a few moments he he gets to be at, as opposed to be back and forth between hospitals and the University of McMaster. Busy guy, as all these infectious disease specialists are. And, man, we appreciate the fact that they take the time to chat with us here on the bridge, but also, as you can see, because you see all of them in different places

in terms of different media platforms. But, um, I think they kind of like talking to the bridge because they get an opportunity to talk for more than a couple of minutes, which is, which at times is a luxury because there's so, there's so much involved in this story. And I hope we got to some of the issues that are on your mind on the, as we open up another week on this story. I've got a couple of other things to talk about as it relates to COVID. But let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll talk about the issue of hesitancy,

because there's some good news and there's some, what would we say, troubling news on that front. Just like everything else on this day, there's happening this way and there's happening that way. A little confusing, but we'll try and get to the bottom of it right after this. Are you still trying to find ways to get into the world of crypto? Well, look no further. Bitbuy is Canada's number one platform for buying and selling Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitbuy has launched a brand new app and website with a new look, lower fees, and new coins. Bitbuy is your one-stop shop to get involved and super easy to use for beginners. Visit bitbuy.ca or download the Bitbuy app.

Enter referral code PODCAST20 to get $20 free when you make your first deposit. All right, Peter Mansbridge here once again with The Bridge. And as I said, there are a couple of things happening on the vaccine front that are of interest. As you know, AstraZeneca took a major hit with questions raised about the link to blood clotting. And the worst time for them was about two or three weeks ago. And there were pauses in the delivery of AstraZeneca. There were pauses on the part of some countries in using AstraZeneca. A lot of questions being raised on the whole issue

about what age you should get AstraZeneca. Anyway, as a result, Bayes-Ed took a big hit in terms of the hesitancy factor, in terms of people who were willing or not willing to take AstraZeneca. Well, here's how things have changed on that front. On all four vaccines that are being used now in Canada, first of all, the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines have not had any serious questions raised

about their safety issues. They're both running more or less exactly where they were running over the last couple of weeks, around 92% acceptance. In other words, would you take a Pfizer vaccine? 92% say yes. And that's what they said a month ago too. Not even a month ago, two weeks ago. Both Pfizer and Moderna on that front. Moderna is slightly lower at 90%, both now and two weeks ago. Now you get AstraZeneca

in the height of the questions around AstraZeneca two weeks ago, they dropped a 41% acceptance. In other words, would you take AstraZeneca? When the question was asked, 41% said yes. Almost 60% said no. That's changed quite a bit in two weeks. AstraZeneca has jumped up to 52%. So that's an 11-point change, which is significant.

So more than half of Canadians now, when asked, would you take an AstraZeneca, say yes. Now, Johnson & Johnson, or the actual name of the vaccine, Janssen, that one's different. Here you have 54% now saying they would take a Johnson and Johnson vaccine, where two weeks ago that number was 70%. The big advantage of J&J is that it's a one-shot deal. You only have to take once, right? But all these questions about the Johnson & Johnson,

although in Canada it was never held back, it just wasn't here yet. It's here now, this week, so they're going to start using Johnson & Johnson. But it's dropped to almost a half of Canadians saying they would take it, whereas two weeks ago it was 70%. So it's interesting, right? These stories break out and they have immediate effect, immediate impact. You know, we talked recently about vaccine passports, and it's a very controversial subject, and I'm not sure it's going to happen here in Canada, although there are certainly advocates for it, that you would have some form of a passport that you could show that I've been vaccinated, whether you're getting on a plane, going into a, you know, a concert, going into a big store, whatever. You have the ability to show that you're vaccinated

or that you've tested negative in the last 24 hours. So where is it actually happening? Where is the vaccine passport being used? Well, Denmark is a country where vaccine passports are now in full swing. The Danish government proposed a corona pass, as what they call it, for everyone over the age of 15. It's available on a mobile phone and on paper. It shows whether people have been vaccinated,

previously infected, or have had a negative test in the past 72 hours. The idea is to enable people to fulfill the requirements to go to the hairdresser, a restaurant, or elsewhere as the country gradually lifts restrictions. In Copenhagen, hairdressers and tattooists can now reopen. Theme parks and zoos are already open. If the situation allows,

then big shopping centers and indoor dining could resume on the 6th of May. But you'll have to have that passport. Or as they call it, a Corona Pass. The final issue I'm going to touch on today. We have mentioned a number of times over the last year that those paying the highest price in terms of the impact on their lifestyle, their work style, their job prospects,

are disproportionately women over men. Well, there's a new study that's just out from Stanford University, and it's focused on this issue of Zoom fatigue. Now, it's a big deal in the professional world, because so many meetings are now held on Zoom, and people are kind of tired. They loved it at the beginning, they're kind of tired of it now. And they're impacted negatively. And that's what they call Zoom fatigue. Kind of a catch-all phrase used to describe the exhaustion many workers say

they experience after a day of back-to-back-to-back video conferences, as opposed to what they used to have, which was face-to-face, in the same room, discussions. But here's the thing, and it goes back to this issue about women. Researchers found that women reported a significantly higher level of Zoom fatigue than men. Among the more than 10,000 study participants. So this was no shot in the dark study. This was a real deal. 10,000 participants is a lot. 14% of women self-reported feeling either very or extremely fatigued after video meetings compared to roughly 5.5% of men.

The study's authors began looking into Zoom fatigue after experiencing it themselves. We started talking about how tired we were having all these video conferences over and over and over, said Geraldine Fovil, one of the study's researchers and an expert in communications and virtual reality at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. So we said, let's look into it. All this data was compiled by the National Women's Law Center,

so it's their conclusions that I'm reading here. And this is what's interesting here. Well, it's all interesting, but this point is one that many are picking up on. The findings, which have not been peer-reviewed, so there's still some work to do on that front, add to a growing list of ways the pandemic has disproportionately impacted women and upended decades of progress for women in the workforce. More than 1.8 million women have left the labor force since the start of the pandemic. This is U.S. numbers.

Leading to the lowest labor participation rate since 1988. Per the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly jobs report. In March of 2021, women gained about 315,000 jobs. But at that rate, it would take 15 months for women's employment to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, according to the National Women's Law Center. It's essential, says one of the researchers, for science to uncover any source of inequity so society can address it and close the gender gap. Okay, we're going to leave it at that for today.

You know, know listen you can you can follow either side of this debate about whether we're in a good place or a potentially good place or whether we're in a really bad place because there's evidence on both

sides that won't you want to think positive so you want to think like Dr. Chagla is thinking. That he's cautiously optimistic. When the worst of the last wave is the way he's looking at it, as opposed to the worst of the third wave. Think positive. And I'm going to choose to do that

for a while now, too, because last week was rough. And this week is still rough for an awful lot of people in different parts of the country and certainly in certain parts of the world. Let's try to think positive and move forward.

All right, that's it for this Monday for The Bridge. We'll be back, of course, tomorrow. Wednesday is Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Friday. Friday. Way off there in the distance. Friday's the weekend special. And we'll look for your thoughts, comments, and ideas

on any number of different subjects. We'll probably come up with some in the next day or so. All right, this has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge. We'll talk again 24 hours.