The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Monkeypox - What You Need To Know

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

How seriously should we take the threat of "monkeypox".  Dr Isaac Bogoch is back to help us with that one.  Plus are we about to see the return of the supersonic passenger jet?  And, whatever happened to the phone booth?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge, Monkey Pox. That's right, some simple facts you need to know. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Stratford, Ontario. As we watch the final hours of May creep in through today and tomorrow, and then June. June starts this week. And we hope, we hope June sends us on a nice summer, no matter where we are in Canada or, for that matter, around the world. We hope that.

But there are always challenges, as we all know. One of the great things about doing a podcast, as opposed to the newscast that I used to do, and I have to keep reminding some people that the bridge is not a newscast. It's just a podcast. It's just an opportunity for me to talk about some of the things that happen to be on my mind at any particular time or that I think are are worth discussing in a longer format and that's what we do at the bridge now that doesn't please everyone and it's one of the great things about a podcast is that I get to hear from a lot of you. And podcast listeners are,

I think they're different than the traditional newscast listeners. Podcast listeners are prepared to spend a little more time discussing any one particular topic. And they're not shy about giving their feelings on those. And they're not shy about giving their feelings on those, and they're not. None of the letters I get are, you know, wacko letters. There's the odd one that may have a tendency to sort of delve into the areas of conspiracy theories, but not many.

Most letters I get are from thoughtful people with thoughtful comments about the topics we've been discussing. Occasionally, I'll get letters from people who think that we're not covering what they want covered. Or we're spending time on things they're just not interested in. You know, I got a couple of letters last week. People saying, enough about Ukraine. I don't care about Ukraine.

Well, I know you're probably listening to the wrong podcast. We devote one day a week, not even the full podcast, but about half of it, to staying in touch with that story. Because it is an incredibly important world story in my view. It's a story that Canadians are spending enormous amounts of money on in terms of the support they're giving the Ukrainian government.

And I think it's worthy of the kind of discussion we have, which is Tuesdays with Brian Stewart, former foreign correspondent, who gives us his take on what's really going on behind the scenes

on that conflict. I got a letter on Friday and said, enough with the shootings in schools in the United States. I don't care. It's not Canada. Well, we don't want it to be Canada. And that's one of the reasons that we have touched on it.

But like everything else, stories move on. But as I said, the overwhelming number of letters I get are extremely positive and grateful for the kind of discussions we have. And I think that's one of the reasons why I see again over this weekend that it was the number one political podcast in Canada ranked by Apple. And that's nice to know. It's not the reason we do this. We do it, as you know. Many of you know. I started this almost two years ago now as a hobby,

just basically for something for me in my retirement years to do. And it turned into kind of a, more than just a hobby when SiriusXM came by and, and wanted to purchase the rights for it. And they run it every day at 12 noon on SiriusXM channel 167 Canada Talks. As well, obviously is getting it on your favorite podcast platform. Anyway, I just wanted to say I appreciate the comments you make,

whether I agree with them or not. I appreciate the fact that you give them. And you give them in such a fashion that shows you care about what you talk about, what you write about, and what you listen to. So thank you for that. On this day, a number of people have written actually in the last month saying, boy, I really miss your COVID Mondays.

Hey, I don't miss my COVID Mondays. I really appreciated the doctors and the infectious disease specialists who we talked to from different parts of the country on a regular basis through the height of COVID. COVID still exists, still out there. But it was starting to, in some ways, sound the same every Monday as we were battling our way through this. And as we now look forward to and hopeful for a summer that's going to be a little bit easier on our lives, COVID-wise, fully recognizing that the possibilities exist that by the fall,

we may be in some difficulty once again. But what's been interesting about these last couple of weeks is that we've seen this other thing coming over the horizon, and we're not quite sure how to take it and how serious it is and whether we should be worried. And that's called monkey box. And I've resisted talking about it, doing anything about it, until this weekend when I thought, you know, we should do something on this.

We should try and get a sense of how serious is this, how concerned, if at all, we should be about it. And so where did I reach out to? I reached out to one of our infectious disease specialists to talk about it. And that's Dr. Isaac Bogoch from Toronto, from the University Health Network, who's been terrific for us, as was Lisa Barrett and the other doctors who we've talked to from different parts of the country. So I reached out to Dr. Bogoch on the weekend,

and he was just getting ready to leave for overseas, a major conference of infectious disease specialists in Geneva, where he would be talking about the current situation in terms of specifically on COVID and where do we go now. So he was literally about to be going out the door. And we managed to hook up to have our conversation first about monkeypox. It's not a long conversation, but it's an important conversation.

I want you to listen to it closely in what he has to say because this should answer your basic questions on monkeypox and whether or not we should be worried. So let's get at it. Here he is, Dr. Isaac Boguch, University Health Network in Toronto. This was our conversation. Well, let's assume that I know nothing, which is pretty close to the truth,

but let's say I know nothing about monkeypox. What should I know? All right. So let's start with the very high, high level stuff. It's a virus. It's a viral infection. It's been around for millennia. We only discovered it in the 1950s.

The first human infection was in the 1970s. It's endemic to West Africa and Central Africa. There's periodic outbreaks of this. Once in a while, someone hops on a plane and you get a case in Singapore, the UK, the United States. Whenever that's happened,

typically, there's been one or two other cases of transmission and then it gets quelled. It's important, I think, not to blab on and on, but most cases tend to be mild, especially with this variety of monkeypox. And it can resemble, the thing that it might most closely resemble that people would remember is the chickenpox, even though they're completely different infections. But people might see skin manifestations, and that can kind of resemble the chickenpox, even though they're completely different infections, but people might see skin manifestations and that can kind of resemble the chickenpox. I think the other important thing to note too is many people born before 1970 received a smallpox vaccine, and this virus is closely related to the smallpox. And that vaccine does provide cross protection.

And in fact, in the public health response to this, you're going to see the smallpox vaccine rolled out, which is the same vaccine as the monkeypox vaccine because it works just as well. Luckily, smallpox has been eradicated. That was a horrible disease. I'm much more severe under the spectrum than monkeypox. So if you were one of those people who had a smallpox vaccine prior to 1970,

are you, in a sense sense still protected against this you probably have some degree of protection it's just not quite clear how much and you know there's been prior outbreaks of this for example there was a famous one in 2003 in the united states and people who had the monkeypox vaccine or the smallpox vaccine pardon me had very significant protection against a monkeypox infection when there was a monkeypox outbreak in 2003 again that was close to 20 years ago so is there waning of immunity throughout those 20 years yeah there might be but there's still probably some degree of protection is this something we should be worried about something we should definitely keep our eye on I think it's also fair to recognize that

currently there are probably still under 30 confirmed cases in Canada, and we have a population of 38 million people. So no, the risk to the general public right this minute, again, we have to timestamp our conversations, but right this minute, the threat and the risk to the general population is negligible. The risk to certain populations, and again, no stigma, no value judgments, no discrimination whatsoever, but certainly there are more cases in the men who have sex with men community. And if people are having multiple close partners or multiple sexual partners, the risk in that community is moderate, not high, moderate in that community.

We know infectious diseases are infectious, and of course, they can be transmitted from person to person. If this outbreak isn't quelled quickly, of course, it's not going to stay restricted to a certain cohort. For example, men who have sex with men, it can infect anyone. No one in Canada, or not many people in Canada, have immunity to this, especially people under the age of about 45 or so. So, I mean, this is something that you really want to jump on quickly so you can get it under control. The faster you do it, the easier it's going to be.

If it scrumbles along longer and starts amplifying, it's just going to be harder and harder to get under control. We certainly can do it. We have the tools to do it, but it'll just be harder to do if it amplifies more. Is it a sexually transmitted disease or can it be transmitted in other ways yeah most of the transmission let's just take a step back and acknowledge that even though we've known about this infection since 1950 this is under the umbrella of what's called neglected tropical diseases also known as ntds these are diseases that primarily impact low-income countries. That's

the World Bank definition, low-income countries. And quite frankly, in high-income countries, we just don't care. We don't focus on them. We don't pay attention to them. We don't fund them. There's no giant monkeypox research institute with billions of dollars funding this much like we have for cancer or heart disease. So we certainly know a bit about this virus, and we're not starting from scratch, but we don't have the same burden of evidence that we do for other diseases that plague us in high-income countries. That's a long-winded way of saying

we know something, but we don't know everything. Based on what we know, it's not the most effectively or efficiently transmitted virus. It certainly is communicable from person to person, but it doesn't have that explosive capability, for example, like COVID-19. most effectively or efficiently transmitted virus. It certainly is communicable from person to person, but it doesn't have that explosive capability, for example, like COVID-19. The way people get it are direct contact with an infected individual or being in close physical proximity with an individual, and perhaps it's transmitted through droplets. Now, it is related

to smallpox, and certainly there were airborne cases of smallpox, and certainly out of an abundance of caution, what we're doing if we see patients in a hospital setting is we are using airborne precautions and putting on N95 masks. But that's not thought to be the main mode of transmission. It's thought to be really very close proximity for prolonged periods of time or direct contact. The big question here is is is it sexually transmitted does it so the short answer is we don't know yet but that's currently being evaluated and of course it doesn't have to be transmitted sexually to be transmitted during the act of sex that's also close still now it is that's close physical contact for i'm not going to make a funny joke but a a period of time, maybe a longer or shorter period of time, but it is close physical contact. That's an ideal way for this virus to be transmitted.

What's really interesting though, is there are two other infections that were not thought to be sexually transmitted that were number one, Zika virus and number two, Ebola virus. So yes, the studies are ongoing now to see if monkeypox can be transmitted sexually. And that would be a very important question to answer because what we found with, for example, Ebola virus and Zika virus is someone might not have overt signs and symptoms of this infection. They might have long since recovered, but they can still have the virus in their semen and they can still transmit it to other people uh and and that's why for example with these infections it's recommended that people wear condoms for a period of time even after they recover i'm not saying that's the case with monkeypox we just don't know but that's an active area of research right now it'll be a very interesting finding regardless of what it shows

let me ask you this if the last couple of years hadn't happened, I think we can all agree we wish they hadn't. But if we had not been challenged by COVID-19, if the last couple of years had just been like the couple of years before it, and this came along, would it be getting the attention that it's getting now? Or is it getting the attention it's getting now, monkey simply because we've just been through covid 19 i think certainly it's amplified because of covid 19 but i still think it would be getting a lot of attention we don't have this infection in canada it is not endemic to canada and this outbreak is unusual and it's unusual because it's so large and it involves multiple countries where the virus is not normally found yes it's not unheard of for a case of monkeypox to be exported from a central or West African country to somewhere else in the world, but it's never been to this scale. So what likely happened was a case or maybe a couple of cases were exported. It started amplifying in the community. It went

unrecognized and it's probably been circulating for, I don't know, a month, two months or so. And that's why there's so many cases popping up in many parts of the world. Watch Canada. I mean, even though we have less than 30 confirmed cases at this point, that's going to grow. This is going to grumble along for a while. Many cases are mild. It might be a little hard to detect. It requires people in the community to come forward and not have shame, stigma, discrimination for them to actually come forward and seek medical care and do the appropriate contact tracing. There's a longer incubation period. It's about a 14-day incubation period, sometimes a little longer, sometimes a little shorter.

This is something that we certainly can get under control. We absolutely can and have the tools if we play this right. But even then, it will grumble along. Even if you do everything right, this is going to be set up to be grumbling along for months. Are we playing it right? I don't know.

That's what's really frustrating is I'm not entirely sure. What you want to see here is very close, sorry, a very strong public health response. Like this is where you want to overshoot, right? You want to do it, go fast and go big and quell this quickly. You already have it in a population of men who have sex with men. Again, it doesn't have to stay restricted to that cohort. And again, no stigma, no value judgments, no discrimination.

We're just calling it how it is. And what you would do in a situation is, and this is already happening by the way, is outreach to community leadership from the gay, bisexual, men who have sex with men community, bringing them into the fold, working with community leaders, empowering individuals, involving them in the outbreak response, but really having a very strong outbreak response and really focusing on vaccinating higher-risk individuals

and close contacts, ensuring people know where to get care, how to get care, reaching out to healthcare workers to know what to look care, how to get care, reaching out to healthcare workers to know what to look for and how to make diagnoses quickly. Quite frankly, there's a playbook for an outbreak response and outbreak management, and this doesn't have to veer from the playbook. It's a new infection for Canada, but the playbook is the same. You just have to do it, and you have to do it quickly. And at this point, you're not sure that we are doing it

quickly enough or quickly at all? Well, Quebec started to vaccinate, so I think that's certainly a start. I'd love to hear more details of what Ontario's plan is, and I know we're going to start vaccinating in Ontario soon. Vaccinating specifically against monkeypox yeah so the the smallpox vaccine is the exact same vaccine as

the monkeypox vaccine provinces have access to it they can get the vaccine now does everyone in the general public need this no absolutely not again we're time stamping all of our conversations but as of today you would definitely not need to vaccinate the whole population. You just need to vaccinate people who are close contacts or people who are at very high risk of getting this. And again, there's good local public health has good outreach to communities that are disproportionately impacted and at risk for this. These are the communities where you go and offer a vaccination. And again, you just don't want to let this amplify or rumble along, because if it does, it's just going to be harder and harder to get the genie back in the ball.

Okay, last question, and it's not surprisingly on COVID. Where are we? We're doing great right now in the sense that this wave is abating we know there's going to be future waves but this wave is abating and depending on where you are in the country well actually i think almost everywhere in the country is seeing lower and lower cases for example this week versus the past few weeks uh it doesn't mean that it's gone but it certainly is getting better and the metrics are all there percent of positive cases are down uh hospitalizations are down icu stays are down the wastewater surveillance is you know almost all headed in the right direction so we're doing we're doing really well as we're heading into the late spring and the summer months we know what's on the horizon you don't you know we've been through

this for two and a half years you know there's going to be a spike in cases probably in the fall sometime. We know we can prepare for it. We know what the variants are already. There's the BA4 and BA5 that are already starting to circulate in the United States. We've had a couple of cases in Canada. Maybe that's going to be the variant that's going to dominate soon. But I think the two things to watch out for are what is the vaccine plan and will we have a vaccine program before a predictable rise in cases to protect either the general population or populations that are most at risk and uh you know not to complicate things but

you know you look south australia is having a pretty nasty flu season and shaping up to be a pretty nasty flu season it's not a perfect indicator but it is an indicator for how our flu season is going to go in the fall and winter and you have to start to think about how are you going to roll out influenza vaccines plus or minus covid vaccines at the same time. So I think the preparation for the fall should really start right now. Those can't be mixed, in other words, like getting one vaccine that covers both those areas? Well, you know what's neat is the companies are actually working on combining them both into the same vaccine.

We don't have that yet. It would be nice. It certainly would be. Regardless, I mean, no one wants to get two shots if you only have to get one, but you can get the COVID vaccine and the flu vaccine simultaneously. So I think that's also pretty helpful. In the meantime, enjoy the summer, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. I think we're going to have a great summer. I hope so. I'm looking

forward to it. I'm banking on that. Aren't we all? Dr. Bogoch, as always,

thank you so much for this. My pleasure. Have a nice summer. Dr.

Isaac Bogoch from the University Health Network in Toronto helping us out on the issue

of monkeypox. Now, I don't know about you, but if you listen closely to that, I know it was a challenge for some because of the kind of way he was in a hollow room, right? As I said, he was literally almost out the door on his way to Europe for a conference. But if you listen closely to that, between the lines, I'm hearing a medical practitioner who is concerned that we're not taking this seriously enough. And when I say we, he's not talking about you and I. He's not talking about the public.

I guess it's you and me, right? Whatever the case. He's talking about governments and authorities. Sounds to me like he wishes we were already into. For vulnerable groups, we were already into vaccines on monkeypox, which is the same vaccine as smallpox. Now, not a week from now, not two weeks from now, but now,

as apparently Quebec is. So other parts of the country. That sounded to me, maybe I'm misreading, but it sounded to me like that's what he's saying i thought this is um this is a situation of concern and we should be concerned anyway i leave that as it is we're going to take a quick break come back with two issues one of which has a pet issue of mine but I haven't talked about it for a while. And so we'll update you on that. But first, this.

And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here in Stratford, Ontario. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM Canada, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. All right. I don't know how often some of you travel internationally, seeing some of the airports around the world. We're already carving out a reputation for ourselves as a country with a system of airports that is totally screwed up right now in the post-COVID world.

And we talked about this at length on Good Talk on Friday, so I'm not going to talk about it again at length. But I will just say the weekend didn't seem to improve anything. The horror stories coming out of major airports like Pearson in Toronto have not been good. Now, they haven't been good in some overseas airports either. Similar situations of delayed flights and big lineups at security areas. A lot of this to do with the fact that during COVID, airport authorities laid off people in huge numbers and they haven't got them back.

And as a result, the passengers are back, but the ability to process them properly is not. And so you've got a crisis situation in a lot of different areas and very irate passengers. And it's still going on. seven weeks after it was clear that things were going to be winding up as opposed to winding down in the amount of air traffic passengers so a mess there which has to be cleared up however that's not what i was going to talk about if you do travel internationally and if you go through as most big international flights do through through Heathrow Airport in Britain, you may have noticed at one end of the airport, I think it's the southern end, but I'm not sure, but at one end of the airport, you will pass by a hangar where outside is a Concorde, the supersonic Concorde jet that was flown by British Airways and

Air France until a terrible accident in Paris about 20 years ago. When a Concorde crashed, a lot of people were killed, a couple of hundred people, I believe, and the plane hasn't flown since. But you pass by it, it's like almost a museum relic, right? In some ways, the Concorde still looks like the plane of the future, but when you pass by it at Heathrow, it's a plane of the past. Supersonic air travel was going to improve everything. You know, it was, I think, 1947,

the year before I was born, that the first person to fly at supersonic speeds took place. Remember that guy's name? The U.S. Air Force captain. Really the first person with the right stuff.

Chuck Yeager. Right. Never picked to be an astronaut. But in some ways he already was an astronaut. Because he'd flown at supersonic speeds and very high. Risked his life. Amazing guy. Anyway, in the last 20 years, no supersonic jetliners.

Well, it looks like they're coming back. There's certainly talk of them. And a couple of companies at this time, which is a crucial time in airline revenue, because it was decimated by COVID, which has put pressure on companies to find more revenue sources as they slowly recover. As climate change accelerates, carriers are facing pressure to expand their operations while keeping carbon emissions to a minimum. I'm reading from a story in the Washington Post

that's talking about supersonic travel. And it reports on two companies, one a Canadian, that's in the game. Just in the last week or so. Bombardier, the Canadian business jet manufacturer, announced that it has successfully tested a small private jet at supersonic speeds. It's called the Global 8000. It costs $78 million per jet. And another company, Boom Supersonic.

Now, it's based in Colorado. It's relatively new. It was only founded a couple of years ago, 2014, actually. It hopes to have a supersonic jet called the Overture in the skies by 2029. And later this year, the company will break ground on its production facility in north carolina now that's a long way from completion right but it is making people think about it and boom technology has put out lots of glitzy pictures of what their plane could look like and it is making people think about it. And boom technology has put out lots of

glitzy pictures of what their plane could look like. And it is, you know, they all look a little like the Concorde did, just updated and slicker. Not the most comfortable plane in the world to travel. I never traveled on the Concorde.

But obviously I talked to a lot of people who did. And while I was fast, you know, like London to New York in three hours, or I guess the other way around, New York to London, because you got the wind currents going with you. It was three hours. It was closer to four hours the other way. But, you know, kind of cramped quarters.

Great menus. Lobster, the whole bed. But kind of a small cabin. But I guess if you're going that fast you can live with a little more cramped style prices you know five to ten thousand dollars

for for business class and I guess all they have was business class but it's interesting to see because we you know twenty years ago

we thought we'd never ever see that again we'd never ever see that again. We'd never see supersonic travel for passengers. But looks like it may be coming back. Trying to fit, you know, supersonic travel in with the challenges of today on fuel consumption, on climate issues, environmental issues, all of that. Okay, here's the other story. I love this one. You know, I'm old enough to remember, as some of you listeners are, I know, because I keep getting letters saying, we were born in the same year. Now, mind you, I also get a lot of mail from people who kind of call me grandpa.

That's okay, too. It's nice to have the cross-section of ages out there but i can recall back in the i guess it would be the mainly the 60s and 70s especially the 70s where i would do a lot of travel across the prairies manitoba saskatchewan alber. And I was traveling by car most of that time. And in those days, no cell phones, right? So if you're on the highway and you're doing long distance travel, you know, from Winnipeg to Regina or Regina to Prince Albert or, you know,

Regina to Calgary, Regina to Saskatoon, any of that, of which I was doing constantly. No cell phones, no way to communicate, and if you're driving along and suddenly, you know, I've got to talk to so-and-so. What do you do? Well, what we did then was you look for a pay phone. And, you know, you'd see that phone box next to the highway or at a gas station or in town in some little community

you're driving through. And you'd, you know, you'd get in there, you'd tumble out, and in the summer you'd fight the bugs that had come in there because of the lighting in the little phone booth. I bet you'd make your phone call, and you'd feel connected, right? Well, how often do you look for those phone booths now well you don't need to but have you ever kind of looked for them where are they a lot of them are gone here's an end of an era in the new york times last week week ago today i think it was the last remaining payphone in New York City was removed.

With the advent of cell phones, payphones across the world have vanished. But one still had remained on 7th Avenue in New York City until it was removed last Monday. The removals began in 2015 and replaced them with a digital billboard that offers free high-speed Wi-Fi to the streets of New York. Boy, talk about the end of an era. They have a picture in the New York Times of a crane lifting up one of these phone booths. It was, in fact, the one that I just spoke of,

the last one. So I was wondering, well, you know, how much is that happening in different parts of the world? So, I checked out United Kingdom and happened to see a piece by my old friend Mark Phillips, who was in the Ottawa Bureau back in the days of the late 1970s, early 1980s with Brian Stewart. I was there. Mike Duffy was there. There was a bunch of us in that Ottawa Parliament Hill Bureau.

And Mark was one of them. And he ended up going to CBS in the, I guess it was around the mid-1980s. And he's still there. Well, he's actually a little older than I am. So he's in kind of semi-retirement mode, does features every once in a while. And he did a feature not that long ago on what's happened to the famous British payphone boxes. You know, those red boxes. Those famous little postal boxes. And it was a fascinating story because while there are still a few,

there aren't many. Most of them have been removed mainly because they, A, weren't being used or B, they'd been vandalized. But what they're doing with them, they're taking them and they're refurbishing them. They're coming back with a second life. You got phone booths, you know, you say telephone at the top of those red British phone booths. Some of them now say defibrillator because that's where there's a defibrillator. Some have been turned into little, you know, not bookstores,

but you know how occasionally people will put out in front of their house a little box with free books to encourage reading? Some people are buying these and turning them into little kind of mini libraries for books. So they're coming up with some interesting ideas of what to do with the old phone booth so of course that led me to ask the question what about canada and you know what there's actually data on that numbers from the Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC,

show payphones are disappearing. There were nearly 94,000 across the country in 2012, compared to just over 36,000 in 2018. So a drop of almost two-thirds. That's according to the CBC. Blog TO, in January of last year, reported that Bell currently operates approximately 4,500 payphones just in the Greater Toronto area. So that was a year ago. And it also said there were 31,500 payphones in 2019 across Canada.

Now, this figure is something I found fascinating. This doesn't sound like a good business proposition. How much do you think the average payphone in Canada in 2019 generated in revenue? What do you think it generated? A payphone in a year generated. Was it $1,000 a year? $500 a year? $100 a year? or somewhere in between.

Here's your answer. Generated an average revenue, a payphone in Canada, in 2019 when there were 31,500 payphones, they generated an average annual revenue of $374. That sounds like a losing proposition to me. I'm sure it costs a lot more than that to have somebody go check it every once in a while or empty the pay box. So there you go. There's everything you needed to know. And I know many of you were saying, woke up this morning and you said,

how many pay phones are there in Canada? And just how much do they generate in terms of revenue? Well, now you know, thanks to the bridge and those people who say, we don't discuss what you want. Well, there you are. There you are. Now you know. All right.

Tomorrow, we'll go back to the serious topic of Ukraine. When Brian Stewart drops by, and he'll bring us up to date in one of his 10 or 15 minute commentaries on what's not being discussed about the conflict in Ukraine and he has been amazingly bang on in terms of the sense of where that story is over these last couple of months. So we greatly appreciate, and I know you do as well, having Brian come by. Wednesday, Bruce Anderson will be by with Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Thursday is your turn, your letters, so

don't be shy. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. And on Friday, It's Good Talk with Don't be shy. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. And on Friday, it's good talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. That's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.

You've been listening to The Bridge, and we will be back in 24 hours.