The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - I'm Back!! Start Counting.

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

A week off enjoying summer delights is over for now, and it's back to podcasting with a teaser on where the world's population is heading? You might be surprised.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge Daily. I'm back. It was tempting just to stay up there in the bush Enjoy the great weather Enjoy the water Fishing You name it It was great

But I'm back I just was so I was just so desperate to get back to talk to you on the Bridge Daily that I didn't listen to anything all last week I just like just cut myself some slack I had a great peaceful time

and I hope you had a good week as well so this episode of the Bridge Daily is going to do sort of a little bit of catch-up. We missed week 18. We just vaulted straight from week 17 to week 19. So here we are, 19 weeks since the Bridge Daily began on its coverage of COVID-19. So I'm actually going to touch base on a number of things that I've found interesting after reading a few things in the last 24 hours.

So I'll bring you up to date on those, and hopefully they're all new for you. One thing, I don't know about you, but one thing that I occasionally think about is the population of the planet. And, you know, how we deal with things like the virus with an exploding population. So I was thinking as I was driving back from the lake, the cabin, the bush, north of Ottawa,

driving back to Stratford, where I am tonight, I was thinking, you know, how many people lived on the planet when I was born? I was born in 1948, so when you look at the stats, you sort of kind of look at, you know, 1950, 1960, in that area. Well, the estimated population of the world, the planet, in 1960 was 3 billion. And it's basically gone up about a billion or a little more than that every 10 or 11 or 12 years since then. 1975, it was 4 billion.

1987, it was 5 billion. 1999, it was $4 billion. 1987, it was $5 billion. 1999, it was $6 billion. $7 billion in 2011. And in 2019, the last official number we have, $7.7 billion. So the number of people on the planet during my life has more than doubled. So what does that say about where it's heading? And this is why I found it interesting, because I've been thinking about this,

and then suddenly I read this from The Economist. The Economist is reporting that researchers at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington project that the global population will top out in 2064 and then fall steadily. Now, I never assumed that was going to happen. Of course, I won't be around to prove whether it has or hasn't. But that's what this study says. Per the new estimates, the populations of India and China will fall.

China is at 1.4 billion, roughly a little more than that right now. It's going to fall to 1.1 billion. India, which is around a billion, a little more than a billion, is going to fall to 730 million. While sub-Saharan Africa will be the only continent with a growing population by the end of this century. So we might want to delve a little more into that and try and understand why those numbers are going to drop.

Are we going to have less kids? Are we going to see a planet that adapts as a result of climate change to what it can grow, what it can feed? That's interesting. You've got all these people, yet it's going to reach a limit. As the economist says, it's going to top out by 2064. So in another 45 years,

the population of the world is going to top out. So those of you who are old enough to know that you will still be around in 2064 will remember this podcast and go, you know what? Peter was wrong when he read that. Or Peter was right when he read that. Or Peter was right when he read that. All right. Let's talk directly about some some COVID news.

Okay. And you know, we can easily get depressed about COVID news. You know that as well as I do. And if I wanted to get depressed, I'd start talking about how worried I get at watching what's happened in the States

and also in other countries where they reopened too soon and everything snapped back on them, disastrously as it is in the United States, combined reopening too soon with absolutely pathetic leadership, and that's what you get. Now, I worry here because, you know, we've been reopening. There's two things that I worry about on reopening. Bars, open bars, and in-restaurant dining.

I don't like either of those things. Not yet. Not until we know we've got this thing under control. Canadian numbers are good. There's no question about that, but there's been a bit of a surge in the last few days, a bit of a spike, perhaps is a better word than surge. But numbers have gone up a little bit

in a number of places across the country. And there seems to be a relationship between the numbers that are going up and this issue of in-restaurant dining and in-pub open bars. And that's why you're seeing a lot of young people who are getting hit with COVID. So if I want to worry, that's what I worry about. And I just hope that our leaders, if they see something, if the spike starts to look like it's a real spike

and it's continuing day by day. I hope they move fast and they close down what they'd reopened. That's what I hope. All right, now let me move on to the other things I wanted to talk about, about the state of the virus and who's doing well, which areas are ones to watch in terms of how we're dealing with this. The New Yorker has a read on how the government of the state of Bavaria, which includes Munich, so that's kind of like a state of Bavaria in Germany,

so it's kind of like a province, southeastern area of Germany, so it's kind of like a province, southeastern area of Germany. About 13 million people live there. It's responded to its coronavirus outbreak by turning it into a scientific study. Bavaria, with 13 million inhabitants, is the only federal state in Germany with such a rapid response task force which was put in place in 2014 during the Ebola epidemic this is one of the places that as a result of Ebola and some others as a result of SARS before Ebola, made recommendations about what to do and did it.

They were prepared in some fashion for what was about to hit them this year. So they put this in place in 2014. The article also credits, guess who? Angela Merkel for her leadership in keeping bickering regional leaders across Germany in line regarding pandemic regulations. So this has been a big issue, right? In some countries, and we've watched it play out in the states where, you know, some governors don't agree with other governors, and some governors disagree with mayors, and it just is a... I almost used cabin language there.

But it's not a good thing. Okay? But not so in Bavaria, where they've stuck by the rules they came up with immediately after the Ebola crisis, and it's helped them deal with the ups and downs of fighting COVID-19. School. Boy, I heard a lot about this over the last week or ten days from friends who were in the socially distance in the woods, and we did. And I got one round of golf in. It was an unbelievably hot day in Ottawa. But same thing, socially distance. Walked the course, carrying my bag,

talking about, among other things, schools. So look, the New York Times reporting that school districts in Los Angeles and San Diego, which together enroll some 825,000 students. Okay, everybody's trying to put pressure on these school boards, right? Some governments who say you've got to have the schools opened because the impact it has on the economy by getting kids to school so parents can work. Some parents who feel strongly that way as well. And other parents who say, are you kidding? We're going to send kids back to school when this thing is still raging as it has been in California? So these two school districts,

LA and San Diego, which together enroll some 825,000 students, are the largest in the country to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August, as the governor implemented sweeping rollbacks of California's reopening. Some advocates and parents have spoken up about how the loss of in-school instruction is especially destructive for underprivileged elementary school students who make up nearly 60% of San Diego's unified student body.

And many of them don't have access to internet. So that's the issue for them at home, right? So you've got these dueling forces on this, you know, critical issue to society about school and the importance of school. So there's what's happening in L.A. and San Diego. Anyway, they've said, no, there's no way. We're not going to do it. We're not ready to do it.

Here's a school-related topic. And where's this come out of? Parenting magazine. You ever seen that? Good magazine about parenting, all aspects of parenting. If children are to return to school for in-person instruction, it is likely they will be required to wear masks and Crayola. You know Crayola.

They've been making crayons for eons. So long ago that I used to have Crayola crayons when I was a kid. Anyway, Crayola has developed a five-day system to help kids and parents feel safer this school year. The system is color-coordinated to each day of the week, able to be labeled with the child's name and come with a mesh bag for washing. this normalization of masks for kids shows that Crayola is banking on this being with us for the medium to long term. I guess that's a kind of cynical way of looking at this,

that they've only come up with this idea and gone into production on it because they figure this is going to be needed for quite a while. They may well be right. Listen, they didn't come up with a vaccine while I was away. But let's hope they're much closer to coming up with a vaccine. And I assume that we're at least one day closer to there being a vaccine. That would be kind of automatic, wouldn't it?

That school issue, it's so emotional, and it strikes to the heart of parenting, and it strikes to the heart of how we're going to deal with this issue going forward. Here's an interesting one, and this relates, and I'm reading this because I can remember the very first week, back in week one, suggesting to you that you write things down, that you write a diary, if for no other reason that your family for generations to come will know what this was like. We're going through a moment in history

unlike anything any of us have been through before. And so some firsthand knowledge of what it was like, how it was, how you were able to deal with it in your home, with your family, will be beneficial, certainly to your own family through the generations to come. But perhaps more than that.

Museum curators and archivists have an interesting challenge right now, figuring out how to store and tell the story of the current pandemic, followed by severe economic collapse and a nationwide social justice movement for future generations. The New York Times reports that some museums have assembled rapid-response field collecting teams to identify and secure storytelling objects and materials, like the Smithsonian deploying staff to collect protest signs for eventual possible collection, while others are imploring people like you to document and save things like their diaries, their online posts, and see the historical value of their grocery shopping lists.

Got it? I hope you've been doing it. I hope some of you have been doing it, because I think those are going to be fantastic pieces of history for future generations. Okay, here's a couple more. I love sort of collecting all these little gems that are kind of out there. Journalist by the name of Brian Chen highlights in the New York Times again that our screen time, okay, the amount of time we're spending on screen,

whether it's on your phone or your laptop or whatever, has jumped at least 50% during the pandemic. And that what's called doom scrolling, which is the act of constant attention on terrible daily news, could take a significant toll on our mental and physical well-being. And Brian Chan, the reporter on this, recommends taking 15 minutes a day to connect with persons in your social support group

and doing mediation. I think we're trying to write meditation there. Meditation exercises daily. 15 minutes a day for a little meditation. What do you think of that? I think that's a great idea. Because you've got to block some of this stuff out. You can only take so much of it.

And if our screen time on our devices is up 50%, almost everything you read is hard to read. It's kind of negative. Right? So maybe a little bit of meditation will help. And some of you who've written over the past few months have talked about meditation and how it's helped you through all this.

You got a dog? I've got a dog. We have a dog. We have a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever. Fantastic breed of animal. If you're into wanting a dog or getting a new dog, it's certainly one to consider. And it's certainly one to consider if you've got young kids, because they're great with kids.

We've had two tollers. And our current toller, Bella, is, I think we were trying to figure this out the other day. You lose track of time trying to figure out how old she is. She's around 12, 12 or 13 years old. And her predecessor, Luna, lived to about 14 or 15, which is a good, healthy, long life for a toller. Anyway, great dogs.

And so that's why this one jumped up at me. It was in Bloomberg. It was a warning, actually, that pet dogs are running the risk of becoming overly bonded, which means they're intensely resilient. How about intensely reliant on their human's presence to stay calm and may become very distressed upon separation. Now, this is important to consider because most of us who have dogs who've been spending a lot of time at home as a result of the pandemic have been spending a lot of time with our dogs. Now, as things start to open up a little bit,

the dogs are suddenly alone after months of being always with somebody. And so what the Bloomberg article is suggesting is that you can address this issue by slowly increasing the amount of time each day that the pet is separated from you humans. So you get it all here on the Bridge Daily. You get a little pet advice. You get a little pet advice. You get a little diary advice. And so on and so on.

You get it all right here on the Bridge Daily. Clearly, it's going to take a while to refocus after taking a week off. But nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed some of that. I hope some of it meant something for you. So we'll go through the week, see how things go, see whether we got enough things to talk about. I didn't read any mail while I was away. But when I got back yesterday, I saw there's been quite a bit of mail.

And there's been some really good mail. And I'm assuming there's going to be some more mail this week. And if there is, as I'm sure there will be, Friday, the weekend special time, is important. That's when we get the opportunity to get your questions Friday, the weekend special time, is important. That's when we get the opportunity to get your questions and your comments and your thoughts all together for the weekend special. That's Friday's podcast. And if you want to contribute, please do.

The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. All right, I'm Peter Mansbridge. That has been the Bridge Daily for this week. Not for this week, for this day. We'll be back in 24 hours. 🎵