The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Is Europe On The Edge - Again?

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

There are spikes and there are spikes. The U.S. has had major COVID spikes, Canada not so much (and let's keep it that way!) But some key countries in Europe are worried there are signs of a second wave spike there.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily for the beginning of week 20 can you believe it week 20 we're at it. We're at week 20. 20 weeks since all this started, back in the middle of March. As I was saying on Friday, on the weekend special, you know, when it all started, you know, we were thinking, what, three, four weeks, a little lockdown, things will be back to normal. That was 20 weeks ago, and we sure ain't there yet. Now, there was some kind of positive news early this morning when, with much fanfare, it was announced that one of the vaccines

that has made it to phase three, meaning going into human trials, started the human trials today. And they're very confident about how they're doing and there are going to be tens of thousands of people tested. Now, if you'd kind of tuned into that, you might have thought, wow, first, here's a first.

Well, it's not a first. I think there are at least three or four other vaccines that have made it to that phase three just in North America. And then outside of North America, there are a number of others as well. And there's every reason to be excited and proud of the research scientists and the companies and governments and universities who've invested in all this, because they've done it under incredible pressure and very quickly. Short time period since all this started, right? January. Here we are at the end of July and they're already into human testing. Usually that takes like four years. But phase three is not a guarantee

of success. Phase three is not a guarantee that they found the magic bullet that's going to give everyone a vaccine that will prevent this from spreading any further. No guarantee of that. In fact, the odds are long. We went through all this last week, something like one in a hundred. So there's a long way to go yet in this process. And even if one of these that's being tested now or one of the other ones that will be tested in the next month or two turns out to be good, then it's the whole process of trying to get it into production and onto a delivery schedule that takes it to the billions of people who need it. So while there's every reason to feel good about today's news,

there's also every reason to be very cautious about how excited one gets. A week ago at this time on this podcast, I was raising, you know, real concerns about the spikes we were seeing in some of the Canadian numbers of new cases in different parts of the country. Now, there were spikes, but there are spikes and there are spikes. These were not spikes like we've witnessed in the States. Nothing like it. But they were enough to have some people feel very cautious

and challenging the decisions made by some of the provincial governments about reopening, especially when it came to bars, opening bars, opening some dining spaces inside, allowing private parties to take place of a significant number of people. Because it seemed to be that those were the kind of areas that were causing spread and causing some of these numbers to go up. Well, in the past week since then, because a number of you said, hey, calm down, Peter. It's, you know, early days.

Let's see how we do, which is good advice, obviously. But the overwhelming majority of you were certainly against bars being open. Anyway, in the week since then, the numbers in some places, well, Ontario, the biggest province, they started to go up last week, early last week. They doubled. And that had people on edge. They've come back down. They're kind of back where they were just over 100 new cases a day was today's number. And obviously, they'd like to see that drop into just two digits

and eventually into none. But still, they didn't spike going up. Now, we'll see what happens day after day. Keep monitoring it. In Atlantic Canada, amazing performance by the Atlantic Canadian provinces because there are no serious issues in any of the provinces there. Quebec is, you know, Quebec had a really rough go, as we all know, through the worst parts

of this crisis. Their numbers are higher than Ontario's still, but not that much higher. I think today's number was somewhere in 150 or 160. In Western Canada, there have been issues in the last week. Pockets of new infections. Numbers in some provinces into the hundreds. And BC, which was always the place to look to see how to do it properly,

they've been challenged as well. But overall, the numbers for Canada are pretty good. The positivity rate is still way down there. It still appears that the curve has been flattened, certainly nationally. But will it continue that way? That's the question. The answer into that is basically up to us. Are we going to keep doing what we're being asked to do?

Wash our hands, keep socially distant, take that very seriously, and wear a mask. You don't have to wear a mask when you go outside by yourself for a walk and there's no one else out there. You don't have to wear a mask when you're driving in your car. There's no reason why you can't, but you don't have to. But as soon as you get into any area where there are other people, put the mask on, please. It's for everyone's good, and everyone should do it. Now, okay, so I've talked about Canada. I've talked about the United States. We've kind of done a pass lately on Europe, right? We haven't talked about Europe, because they seem to have things under control. Well, listen to this that crossed the wires

this evening in Britain. From The Guardian. Europe is bracing for a second wave of coronavirus as continuing outbreaks raise the prospect of reimposed restrictions at a time when millions of people are traveling across the continent for their summer holidays. The Belgian government has warned that that country could be put into a second complete lockdown following a significant spike in infections, while in the Spanish region of Catalonia, it may also have to reintroduce a lockdown if outbreaks are not brought under control within 10 days. In France, the health

minister has called for greater vigilance after a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases in young people. And Germany's public health advisory body has said it is deeply concerned about the rise in cases over the past few weeks. All right. Now, whether that's second wave or whether that's the tail end of first wave, it's kind of unclear. They seem to be calling it the beginning of the second wave. Whatever the answer is on that, it's not a good thing. And obviously all those governments want to crush it now, deal with it now.

And so that's what you're seeing happening in Europe. Now, last week I also mentioned that we were coming up on a special broadcast that I wanted to do on masks. I'm not going to do that. It's going to be tomorrow. But let me say a couple of things about masks in terms of today's news. Because I think this all kind of fits with a discussion on masks. Tomorrow's focus will be kind of on two things when it comes to masks.

How effective are they? And what's involved in mask maintenance? What do you do with your mask? I think you'll find it interesting. But let's start by dealing with today's news on this issue, because I found this really interesting today. And it's a result of, well, I found it interesting because of something I told you about last week.

We'll see whether you remember it. Let me tell you what happened today, first of all. Delta Airlines. This just came out today, although apparently it happened last Thursday. Delta Airlines actually had one of its flights, which was going, I believe, from Atlanta. Or no, it was going from Detroit to Atlanta last Thursday.

And the plane went through all the normal procedures. You know, people checked in, they were wearing their masks as they have to in the airport, checking at the counter, boarded the plane, wearing their masks as they have to, sat down, and the rules of Delta, as they are at many airlines,

is you wear your mask from check-in to check-out. You wear it the whole time on the plane. Well, a couple of the passengers said, you know what, we're not going to wear time on the plane. Well, a couple of the passengers said, you know what, we're not going to wear it on the plane. And when they sat down, they took their masks off as soon as the plane took off. Now the flight attendants came up to them and said,

listen, you have to wear your mask. Delta's policy, if you use this, you know, I have an exemption. You have to prove it. And you have to take a virtual test. And that all is supposed to happen before you ever get on the plane. But these people didn't claim the exemption. They just said, no, no, no, we're not going to wear them. So the flight attendants tried to be persuasive.

It didn't work. Other passengers were upset. The flight attendant went and told the captain. What did the captain do? Turn the plane around. They flew back to Detroit. End of flight. And they have that ability and that power to do exactly that.

And those people who wouldn't wear masks were ushered off the flight. They weren't charged with anything or fined or anything like that, but they were told, we had a contract. You had agreed to wear your mask. You didn't when you were on the plane, and we're not taking you. You have every right not to wear a mask. We have every right not to fly you. And so that's what they did. They gave him the old heave-ho.

Now, what did that make me think of from the stories I told you last week? Remember I told you a story about a situation with an acquaintance of mine on an elevator in a condo in downtown Toronto. Where the condominium rules are, you must wear a mask anywhere. And this is that particular condominium, because I think each one can make their own rules on the mask issue. And in that condo, the rules were, are, you have to wear a mask in any public space in the building,

including the elevators. Plus, only two people at a time on the elevator. So this acquaintance of mine is in the elevator by herself as the elevator's going and descending. It stops at a floor. A gentleman gets on without a mask, and she says, gee, I thought the rules were you have to wear a mask. And he immediately got defensive, said, I don you have to wear a mask. And he immediately got defensive, said,

I don't have to wear a mask, I'm not going to wear a mask, I don't have a mask. And they got into a discussion, let's call it that, that was fairly heated about this issue. And eventually the elevator stopped at the main floor and the concierge, or the people working in the condominium, came by and ushered the fellow away and explained that those were the rules.

He was still arguing the point. Anyway, it did not make this acquaintance of mine very happy at all about what had happened. Made her quite uncomfortable, to say the least, about what had happened. So, to me, the response to that is, if I was the condominium manager, if I had some power to say something on that issue, I would have been like a captain on Delta. I said, the rules are very clear.

You get on my plane, you wear a mask. If you won't wear a mask, then we don't have to let you on the plane. You get on my elevator, you wear a mask. You won't wear a mask, you don't get on the elevator. That's why we have stairs. So why don't you walk up and down from the 35th floor or whatever floor you're on? That's what the answer should be. I think that mask would come on pretty quick

at that point. Anyway, I, you know, I'm sorry. I don't get this whole mask thing. Masks

obviously have an impact and that's what we're going to talk about tomorrow. So I want you to listen to tomorrow's podcast on masks, because it's kind of everything you want to know about masks. Everything you might want to consider about masks. They'll all be on there or a lot of it will be on there.

And I'm sure many of you will have thoughts and comments and ideas about the mask situation, and I'd love to hear it after you've heard tomorrow night's podcast, right? And then what you can do is you can write the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. But that's tomorrow night's podcast on masks. I think you'll find it interesting. Okay, last point tonight. I don't know about you, but I watched basketball and baseball on the weekend. It was a good weekend for the Raptors.

They won a couple of games. Not so good for the Blue Jays. Kind of blew the possibility of winning two, maybe even three, of three games in Tampa. They had great starting pitching, not so good on the finishing pitching. By the way, I did get some emails at the end of last week

responding to the fact that I'd given the big thumbs up to the fact we were going to be able to watch sports again and I talked about hockey and football, or not football, hockey and baseball and basketball and I think I may have even mentioned golf, but you know what I did not mention was soccer. And there are some diehard MLS fans in this country

for the three teams from Canada that are in the MLS, and they thought that I'd let them down by not mentioning the fact that they are back in the game as well. So I apologize for that. I'm not sure how much longer baseball is going to be in the game they've had a terrible day with what was it more than a dozen players

testing positive on one team games being cancelled will the season that just got underway will it continue or will it too be cancelled? I don't know. But here's something related to sports that comes out of The Economist today. It has an interesting set of findings about home field advantage.

There's no question home field advantage has been a big deal in sports for as long as it's been played. No matter which sport we're talking about. You have the home crowd on your side, that gives you an advantage. You're playing on your home court, that gives you an advantage. So the Economist has had its sports experts examining a set of data emerging from football games.

That's what they call soccer. Being played in empty stadiums across Britain and across Europe. And it reveals that referees feel they are less pressured by fans and gave similar numbers of cards, those penalties, for fouls to both sides. And visitors won almost as often as hosts did. Well, we'll have to keep our eye on that, because the games that I watched over the weekend,

it did feel like you were kind of on neutral ground. No fans in the seats, no real reaction from fans, or some piped-in crowd noise that didn't seem to favor one team or the other, in my view. But overall, is that going to have an impact? Will it have an impact on how games play out? I mean, the Leafs play tomorrow night. They'll be playing in Toronto,

but everybody's playing either in Toronto or Edmonton. So while they may feel that it's kind of a hometown advantage, there's no hometown there. You know, it's an arena full of coaches and staff, a couple of broadcasters perhaps, but no one else. Maybe familiar surroundings, but there's no even guarantee that the team that actually belongs in that stadium, which in Toronto's case would be the Leafs,

in Edmonton's case would be the Oilers, is even going to get their regular dressing room. So we'll watch that, see whether the economist is right. And their point about referees is interesting too. That suggests that referees actually get pressured by crowds. The crowds can force them to call a penalty or ignore a penalty? It would seem so. Who's to doubt the economist?

All right, week 20 is underway. Tomorrow, special on masks. Make sure you listen. Don't be shy about writing in with your thoughts about what you hear and what you didn't hear on this whole issue of masks. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. All right, that's the Bridge Daily for day one of week 20.

Never thought I'd say that. But it's true. We'll be back in 24 hours. Thank you.