The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Is Science Still Guiding Covid Decisions or Are The Polls?

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Many provinces have started rolling back Covid restrictions. Right or wrong?  Epidemiologist Dr Lisa Barrett joins us from Halifax with her thoughts on this question that goes to the heart of the question of covid management. 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Are you ready for a reopening? Well, you better be, because there's one coming. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto. And when we talk about reopening, we're talking about the move towards normalization and what everyone hopes will someday, relatively soon, be a post-pandemic world. The issue is, we're not in a post-pandemic world yet. But normalization is the way things are starting to move. You see a reopening of sorts taking place in a number of provinces across the country today. You see reopenings all over the place in the U.S., including no masks, you know, the end of masking. In Britain, you see rules about, you know, if you're test positive, you stay at home.

No, not anymore. Boris Johnson wants to change that. So, part of the handshake I have with you, the listeners of The Bridge, is that Mondays we deal with COVID. And I'm going to keep that handshake. I'm going to keep that deal. I'm going to keep that bargain today. But I do want to just say one little thing about our other story.

It has taken a lot of our time in the last couple of weeks over the weekend we watched what appears to be the end of the windsor story we'll see how that plays out and we saw a big development yesterday in Ottawa. We saw people who are frustrated with the way their city's been taken over by what they think is a mob who've occupied their downtown core and made life horrible for anyone who lives or works there.

And it's given their city a real bad name, not just in Canada, but around the world, as appearing to not be able to do anything about it. Well, yesterday was an interesting day, because the people who are against the occupying forces took charge on their own. They organized at a neighborhood level counter protests and at one point I thought this kind of sums up the story of the frustration of a lot of people. At one point, the counter-protest blocked the oncoming trucks

that were heading downtown to bolster the forces of the protesters, the occupiers, the insurrectionists. You call them what you want. And what happened? They stood in the street. You call them what you want. And what happened? They stood in the street. They blocked them. And then what happened? The police came along and told the counter-protesters,

you know, you can't do that. This is the same police who appear to have done very little, in some cases, nothing at all, to stop the protesters. But they did want to stop the counter-protesters. But the counter-protesters kept going, and in different parts of the city, they made life difficult for those who claim they're there for freedom.

So the Ottawa story is far from over. The political impact of the Ottawa story and the Windsor story and the southern Alberta story and the southern Manitoba story and countless other places in the country where there have been blockades. It's not over. Tomorrow, I'll tell you this now, tomorrow, we're hoping to have a special show on the bridge.

We're going to talk about the state of Canadian political leadership. That's overall. Federal, provincial, municipal. What is the state of Canada's political leadership? What has this story exposed about Canada's political leadership? Two special guests should be a good conversation. But as I said, I've got a deal with you, and my deal with you is to talk about COVID, the pandemic, coronavirus, on Mondays. And we've done that through the help of some great people, epidemiologists.

Coming up today, it's Dr. Lisa Barrett from Halifax, where they too, on this day, have just gone into a reopening of sorts. Let me say something about COVID, first of all. As you know, or you should know, we've had more than 35,000, approaching 36,000, deaths in the past two years in Canada as a result of COVID. And over the next few weeks, we're going to see a huge number in the U.S. as a new total.

Because they're going to hit a million. One million. Now there's a headline in the current Scientific American that I saw over the weekend. Here's the headline. the move towards normalization. And they're saying, sure, we can move there, but don't assume that means there's something normal. About one million people have lost their lives. And they pull back that number a little bit. They pull back kind of the story above the story of the one million.

And it's this. Some 140,000 children in the U.S. have lost a caregiver, about one in every 500 children. That is a big and consequential loss, and those children are probably not among the many who are ready to move on to normalization. Another nearly one million Americans can't move on because they're already dead. I'm reading this from the Scientific American. One more, two more lines. During this pandemic,

black people have been disproportionately killed by this virus. About 50,000 people have died each month of COVID, meaning several black children are being orphaned by COVID this month, as you read this. So is it rational to be calling for the end of life-saving mitigation efforts and saying they harm children when so many have been orphaned here and worldwide. We can't ever forget those who we've lost in these last two years.

The U.S. number is staggering. It'll hit a million in the next couple of weeks. We'll hit 36,000. 36,000 Canadians lost because of COVID. And I guess that's why I want to talk about this issue of reopening. Moving towards a hopeful goal of normalization. And as we do these moves of reopening, raising the question, is it too soon?

What have we learned from these last two years? So I'm not trying to do a downer here because I know a lot of you, including me, have been looking forward to a reopening. I just want to raise the question. I want to talk about the consequences. And who better to talk about it than one of our epidemiologists. And we're going to do that when we come back in just a moment. All right, Peter Mansbridge here again. I'm in Toronto on this day. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. And we're glad you've joined us.

Important discussion to have here now. Dr. Lisa Barrett has been one of the epidemiologists who has joined us every few weeks. Every Monday we have one of our doctor friends who is up to speed on this story in so many different ways. They're all epidemiologists. They all teach at universities, but they also work in hospitals and in their practices. And they are dealing with COVID patients all the time. Dr. Lisa Barrett, Dalhousie University. She's in Halifax.

And here's our conversation. So it's more than just Valentine's Day there. It's also reopening day. I mean, it's the phase one. So it's not little things, but it's the start. And I want to know how you feel about that. How you feel about reopening now. How I feel about kicking off Valentine's week with the virus dating more

in my population. Yeah, exactly. If you will. Well, you know, we all hear this has to happen at some point and that there are, from a public health perspective, that there are lots of population impacts right now. And the science around exactly the when of going backwards on precautions is great. So how do I feel about it? Well, I'm not allowed to feel. I'm a scientist. I'll say I am very carefully watching the things I always watch because up for measuring enough in the next number of weeks to months. And I'm not certain that we are setting people up to understand that this may not be a unidirectional move if we're going to do this well and protect the vulnerable. So that's how I feel about Monday, Valentine's Day. What do you mean by unidirectional move? Well, we are at a point where we all have uncertainty fatigue. We're tired of hearing about maybe if, when, there might be some change.

None of us want to hear that. And so we've stopped saying it. And by the we, I say the royal we, there's lots of people still saying we need to be mindful. But what I mean is when we reduce precautions or restrictions and say it will take a massive change in something to make us reverse that. I think we are missing the fact that there may need to be small baby steps backward. If we take giant leaps forward, with reducing precautions, or else we are going to see our system get stressed and more deaths than we need. And that is going to be regrettable, I think.

So that's what I mean by unidirectional. I think if we take leaps forward, we're going to have to expect either baby or adolescent steps backwards at some points for shorter periods of time, not just always about reducing restrictions in one way. You know, at the end of the day, whether it's Nova Scotia or Ontario or Saskatchewan, I mean, many of the provinces are heading into this, you know, pullback on restrictions. And, you know, eventually it's a political decision, right? That's the decision that's made. It's made by, you know, a premier or a cabinet, and eventually a federal government on the restrictions that it has to choose. The concern seems to be whether or not this decision is being made as they've always said it would be made by the science, or whether it's by polls. I don't want to get you into trouble here, but I mean,

what do you sense? Do you think the polls outweigh the science right now? Well, so if you look around at what we know and what we don't know, we don't know what rate of change we're going to see with this virus as it continues to be more widespread. And it's documented itself to be faster changing than we thought over the last four or five months. New variants coming out when we said that probably wouldn't happen. So we don't know the rate of change of the virus. We don't know what this virus is going to do with respect to its compatibility with the vaccine. And it's still changing so much that that's a real unknown and a threat because vaccines are the backbone of our response.

We don't know how people are going to respond to this virus as vaccinated people, if it changes a fair bit, if they're going to continue to be equally boosted by new vaccines. We don't know how this virus is going to settle into the population, particularly around longer term side effects and longer COVID. Possibly it's going to be fine, but we don't know. And we do know that there are still an incredible number of vulnerable people out there that don't really recognize that yet. And we don't know who all the vulnerable are. So a ton of uncertainty. And that's the science so far. And you can't speed up Denmark

and the UK in time to make them our indicators, even though they're not perfect indicators anyway. Time is only going to tell us that. And so, when I say, what does the science show? There's a lot the science is showing, but there's also a lot we don't know. And ignoring not just what the science says, but what the science is saying we don't know is a vast mistake right now if we don't want to end up going backwards. When you talk about the vulnerable, you're talking about more than just those who are not vaccinated, right? Absolutely. There's people that roll into my hospital and hospitals around this province every day who are transplant patients who've gotten an organ transplanted, a kidney, a lung, a heart. There are people out there who are on medications to suppress their immune system.

There are people with chronic kidney disease who go to dialysis all the time. They are all people who, even if they're vaccinated, do still tend to be vulnerable to more severe disease. don't have great testing in place for those folks. And we don't have great ways of getting them to early treatments across the board. So they are vulnerable in many ways. And that's not even thinking of people in more marginal situations with limited access to healthcare geographically, or populations of folks who just don't have a lot of trust in the healthcare system and don't seek medical attention till too late. So those are all a lot of vulnerable people out there. Not saying we shouldn't change anything, because those people will always exist. But we do need to be aware that there's still a lot of those folks out there. And they don't quite get it yet all the time that they are still at risk. The message of mild has been a real detriment to those folks. And they feel like they're making a big deal out of nothing if they even comment on their early symptoms sometimes.

And that's a problem. Did we place too much emphasis on the vaccines? And I don't mean that from the sense of um you know not taking them i i mean just from the sense of we really left people with the impression that vaccines were going to make them safe not not safe from the possibility of getting covered but but much safer obviously than if they didn't have vaccines. And I think that is the situation. But we made people really believe that the vaccines were going to change the game a lot, that it would be a real game changer.

And yet here we are. And they are. But here we are two years in, and we're still saying, you know, we've got to be really careful here. And there are a lot of things we don't know yet. And we've got to be careful that we don't kind of flip back into this, that we don't reopen too fast. The political problem has been people are sick of it.

I'm sure you're sick of it. Everybody's sick of it. And there's this sense we've just got to get out of it. We've just got to move on. Did we kind of set ourselves up in a way on that? Well, 100%, or at least somebody set somebody up. I mean, it's always been, in many of the science people who do this for a living, it's always been a tool in the toolbox, a staple tool in the toolbox.

But you can't do this. You can't go through a pandemic, no matter what stage, without the other tools in the toolbox. Now, that may not mean lockdowns, but getting rid of masks, having large gatherings all at once, taking away some of the basic small things that can be helpful in limiting virus spread all at once, while we get time out there for people to understand where the virus is headed, and to make sure vulnerable people are well aware of what they need to do. That if you take away the fact that those tools are still needed, and just concentrate on the vaccine, that if that's the message people got, and I think needed and just concentrate on the vaccine, that if that's the message people got, and I think it was a lot of the time, I think that's wrong. And it

does set us up for people. It added, I think, to this mismatch that people feel right now. They feel deceived, I think, that we are still here. Number one, you know, before a pandemic is firmly and fully done, it would never be less than years. The absolute lockdowns, I thought we were going to be done with a little earlier. But I think we kind of undersold the fact that pandemics last for years, not weeks. I think we're surprised by this virus and the way it's behaving so far. And I think we need to communicate this to people that there's still a lot of uncertainty about it. But that's a certainty.

I think if we start changing the narrative here to certainty statements, like the pandemic is not done. This does not mean a lockdown, but it does mean altered life for months longer in meaningful life ways, but also not pre-2019 normal phase. So I think we need to start shifting the certainty narrative a little bit, or else we may be okay, but we well may not be. And with five big uncertainties looming above us, it's very difficult to think that we're doing the safest thing, even at a population perspective level right now. How hard is it to convince people when they see around them? And I mean, outside of Canada. I mean, you know, obviously we look at the Americans and there's certain things they do that a lot of Canadians wouldn't do right now. But it's not just Americans.

I mean, the uk now i did boris johnson said the other day if you if you test positive you don't even need to stay at home you can go out yeah and you've seen you know there are european countries that are that they're dropping every restriction so you see and this is a worldwide pandemic, and travel is opening up, and people are flying all over the place. And as Canadians, we're sitting there going, well, wait a minute. What did we do wrong that we aren't enjoying all those, all that? How do you answer that?

Yeah, you know, I do think it's important for us to watch, and it may be fine. Again, this may be okay. I am not saying the world is going to come crashing down if we take away all restrictions all at once. And what I tell Canadians when they ask me the same question every single hour amongst my friend group who aren't in medicine, to be clear. What do I say? I say, look, think about this. If you're an investor and someone told you there's five big things that we don't know about right now, but I want you to invest $1 million right now into this stock. You'd look at them and you'd say, hold on here now, what are we doing? Can't we put a little bit of money in here, get a little more information, and then put in a bigger amount of money or put

small amounts in over time. And then they suddenly start to think, huh, now there still are people out there who are high risk investors, they don't mind taking the risk, don't care about the five things they don't know about, don't really mind if that would mean that their kids don't eat, they lost all their money. That's fine. There are certain numbers of those people out there as Canadians. But I think we need to give people that information and be transparent about what we don't know and what we think is the estimated risk. Every single week we go forward and watch other places and they've taken away all restrictions

and things are fine or not. We gain more information and knowledge, and then we can change our mind, take a bigger step forward, take a pause if we don't get the right answer. But you got to take into account, I think, the risk threshold for folks. And if you don't tell people what the uncertainties are and what the possible risks are, then they're not really making an informed decision, I don't think. And while there are those high-risk investors and the only ever going to do, I don't really invest money, but those registered retired savings things, there's a lot of people in

the middle with a mixed risk threshold who may want to take things a little slower. And that's fine. People who want to go faster can go faster. But you got to give them the uncertainties and not just say, we've got to learn to live with this virus. That's turning into a motherhood apple pie statement. And I think about it and I go, yeah, yeah, I think we think we all actually are doing that every single day. Let's not turn this into a slogan that is devoid of science and facts and certainties and uncertainty. So I think that's where we're in that challenging area right now. And it's linked to things I don't know about like human behavior. We're tired. What are you comfortable with right now in terms of, you know, if you're reducing the way you have been behaving, especially in this last month since Omicron came around.

What are you comfortable with for the average person who's been triple vaxxed, who's been playing by all the rules in terms of winding things down a little bit? What are you comfortable with? I'm comfortable with slightly bigger groups getting together from just outside their household, you know, getting together for a social interaction, knowing that, you know, if they have access to some tests, they test, they don't, they don't, but getting together, but knowing, you know, doing some planning, you know, three days before that slightly bigger gathering with multiple households, you don't go to every big stadium based event that there is, for example, if you go out into your workplace, you're still wearing a mask. And if you're going to go to see a vulnerable person, somebody older or has other medical problems after your social engagement, you wait three days to figure

out, you risk stratify things a little bit. So, you know, that's my version of living with COVID is planning, doing a little more social interaction. But understanding, you know, if I have a friend who sees 30 people en masse indoors every day, it's likely that they are going to run across in the run of a week in this province, at least right now, COVID, because there's a lot of it out there. And then if I see them and I'm due to be at the hospital next week,

even if I get mild COVID, I can't be present and go to work and do my job to help save my colleagues from having to do it for me. So I have to be mindful and aware, not just as a health care worker. This could be any industry, but we do have to be mindful and aware that we're not back to normal. So am I comfortable with those things?

People going out a little more? Yep. Plan it. Plan to reduce your interaction with vulnerable people after for a bit. Keep the masks. If you're going out to larger group places, workplaces, or going back into your workspace, make the most of ventilation that you can. Keep the hand-washing stuff. All the simple things,

and I know ventilation isn't always simple, but it can be simpler in certain situations. Keep doing that stuff. That is not taking away your freedoms and rights. And I think it's sensible until we reduce the uncertainty around what's going to happen next. And the thing that would make me most comfortable is continuing to do a lot of measuring. Measuring, I don't think it's okay to get rid of understanding how much virus is in our communities. I don't think it's okay to stop reporting on and being aware of the health system stressors. So human beings out in the community who may need to use said healthcare

system know what's happening with their health care. and if it's going to be stressed or getting more stressed because there's more virus around they may make different choices around what they do for a few weeks and i think that's important okay last question um how difficult is it to be at the front lines of this thing today versus the way it was two years ago? And I ask that because two years ago, it was the healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, whatever, who were the heroes, right?

And they were looked upon as the heroes. We've seen some awkward times in the last while. And we've seen more people sort of raising the question about, you know, the scientists will never let us out, you know? And so you become the focal point in a different way than you were at the beginning of this. So the question is, how difficult is it to be you right now? I think some people take it more personally than I do.

I see it. I find it a smidgen frustrating. But I also don't tell people I don't want anything to change because I don't believe that's true. I do want to make sure people understand my role is to communicate facts about what we know and we don't know and what the potential implications of that might be. I have never been the person who said no one should smoke or that every single human has to be vaccinated no matter what or they're bad people. I have never been a person who said, you know, alcohol is bad for you, so we should never let people use it. I think people should have a lot of autonomy, but they need to have the facts around it. And so how difficult is it to be me? I'm not popular with a lot of folks right now. I never really was in it to be popular. So the good news is I'm not

missing that role. It's a little stressful for somebody who likes people to be happy and to feel like we're all on the same page. That's been challenging in the last number of weeks, for sure. Frustrating on occasion. But for the most part, I'm okay if people hear what I'm saying, take that information, and make decisions that don't too much impact people who don't have choices, who are vulnerable without choices. If our privileged folks don't consistently make the wrong choices and still hear what I'm saying, I'm okay. That when I get really frustrated, to be honest, is when people who have all the privilege of whatever sort that is, decide to not listen willfully, not just to me, but to some facts and make some choices they don't have to make. And then I see it impact the people who are coming in who are vulnerable and

didn't have that choice, that's very frustrating. So, not so hard to be me from an unpopular point of view, but hard to watch the folks who make the most potent decisions for other people not listen sometimes. Well, let me tell you, you're popular with me and you're popular with the people who listen to this program. And we really appreciate, as I always say, your time because I know how busy you are all the time. Dr. Barrett, thank you. Thank you. Dr. Lisa Barrett in Halifax, Dalhousie University epidemiologist, one of the amazing people who's been working pretty much every day for the last couple of years on this story.

And at the same time, helping us understand it from her perspective. And she's very honest about that and how she feels and what she thinks. On some of the key questions that I know many of you ask because you send me letters all the time. And this is a particularly challenging moment in this story. So there you go. But I don't want to, I mean, this has been a heavy show from start to bottom.

So what I always like to do at the National in my days, I, you know, there were some big nights there, some heavy shows, but we always like to try and find a way of saying something near the end of the program that would make you realize that, you know, the sun's still going to come up tomorrow. And that was sometimes something funny or just something light. So I've got one for you. And it's a COVID-related story.

Found this in, where did we find this? In The Guardian. And here it is. There have been precious few positives during the COVID pandemic, but British academics may have unearthed one. People look more attractive in protective masks. Go figure. Now, I bet you weren't thinking that.

Researchers at Cardiff University were surprised to find that both men and women were judged to look better with a face covering obscuring the lower half of their faces. In what may be a blow for producers of fashionable coverings and the environment, they also discovered that a face covered with a disposable type surgical mask was likely to be deemed the most appealing. A couple more facts on this. One more in particular, because I know you would want to know this

the main study was done men looking at men or sorry women looking at men and the women concluded those who were talked to, the majority were concluding that men look better in a mask than without a mask. Now, that may have had something to do with the fact that the most popular people, this study was done almost a year ago. They've just come up with the conclusions recently.

It may have been because a year ago we were in the, you know, we were just getting vaccines. There was a lot of stuff to do with hospitals and stories in hospitals. And a lot of people felt good and safe around. And we talked about this with Dr. Barrett in the early stages of this thing. When they saw healthcare professionals who were wearing masks, they felt more comfortable.

So that may have had something to do with it, or it just may be that women looking at men decided the men were better looking with their faces half covered i know that feeling um they are waiting the results they've done more studies and the key ones being men looking at women and how they feel about them in the mask. So obviously, the bridge will be all over that story when it comes out. All right, quick reminder, tomorrow, special program,

we're going to look at the state of political leadership in Canada as a result of the convoy story. And how do we judge the state of Canadian political leadership? That's tomorrow. Wednesday, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce will be by.

Thursday, an opportunity for your comments. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. That's where to write. And Friday, of course, Good Talk with Chantal Hébert and Bruce Anderson. So look forward to all that. It should be another exciting week. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening

on this day. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.