The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - So, Who Is The Real "Idiot" And The Real "Disgrace"?

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Trump versus Fauci, another day another insult. And everything else from Halloween to Zoom.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily here we are at the beginning of week 32 monday kicking off a big, and it is a big week, because Wednesday we'll do the race next door with Bruce, join us from Ottawa, which will be the day before the final debate for the U.S. presidency. Friday, we'll do a special edition of the race next door, second one for the week, based on whatever happened on Thursday. As a result, we'll do a little shuffling around. We'll probably do the weekend special on Thursday night.

But it's Monday. We've got Monday and Tuesday to worry about first. But that'll just give you an indication of what's coming up through the week. We know you love the race next door, and we're looking forward to doing it a couple of times this week. It could be a pivotal week, as they say. So how transparent, if that's the right word even, is Donald Trump? Well, every once in a while we find out exactly what he's thinking and how he acts.

And today was one of those days. Now keep in mind, this is all based on his relationship with Anthony Fauci. Not only America's, but most people tend to say is the world's leading expert in matters that circulate around epidemiology, and especially when it comes down to the basic questions concerning a pandemic. Well, Fauci, he's 79 years old, he's got decades and decades of experience, and he bases his statements on that experience.

And it's acknowledged by those in that field that nobody's better than he is at that. So occasionally he said things this year that Donald Trump hasn't liked, and I think the main reason he hasn't liked him is that Fauci cleans his clock when it comes around to who do the American people trust? Who do they like? Fauci's up at the top. He's up at the top all the time. Who do they trust? They trust Fauci. Now, we shouldn't be that surprised by that because most of these trust surveys, wherever, in whatever country. People at the top are usually doctors and nurses, firefighters, paramedics, police officers.

They're usually up there near the top. Police officers have taken a bit of a hit this year. But the rest are kind of, that's where they end up in these surveys. So it's not surprising that Tony Fauci seems to be the most trusted man in America. Anyway, last night he was on 60 Minutes. He's been kind of gagged lately. The White House hasn't let him's been kind of gagged lately. White House hasn't let him on any number of certainly daily programs because they're afraid of what he'll say.

Somehow it slipped through the cracks that he'd be on 60 Minutes, you know, the most watched program in the United States. So he goes on, he does an interview, and it's all very straightforward in terms of, you know, his feelings about the pandemic and how it's being fought and where they've made progress and where they're still stumbling. Sorry, I'm just having a little late afternoon. Well, I'm actually having warm orange juice. I've never tried that before. It's not bad, really. Anyway, so they asked him in this 60 Minutes interview,

were you surprised that Donald Trump got COVID-19? And he said, oh, no. No, no, no, I wasn't surprised. There he was in all these outdoor and indoor rallies. He wasn't wearing a mask. People around him weren't wearing a mask. There was no social distancing in a lot of cases. So it didn't surprise me that he and a lot of people around him

ended up with COVID-19. Well, that didn't go over very well. Because the old trash talker was out this afternoon. And what did Donald Trump do? He decided to pick a meeting with his campaign staff. It was a conference call. I guess they were from all over the country. He's trying to pump them up, trying to make them

feel good about the final two weeks of a campaign, which everything seems to be pointing in the direction of them getting hammered. And many of them talk about the fact they don't think they're going to win. So it was his job, Donald Trump's job, to kind of turn that around give them something positive to think about so what do we say that's positive let's say let's say Tony Fauci's an idiot let's call him a disaster that'll do the trick that'll get people on side they all want to go out there door knocking for me, waving the old flag. And that's what he did. Tony Fauci is a disaster.

He and people like him are idiots for the things they're saying. Okay, I guess that's a strategy. Now, moving on. Governments across our country, provincial, municipal, different councils are trying to make decisions about what their advice is for Halloween. How parents should look at this. What should we do about kids? And I found it interesting what happened today because I've got to tell you, I'm getting a sense on the part of some officials that the solution to every single thing that comes out regarding COVID-19 is not necessarily lockdown.

We had the lockdowns in the spring. And they worked. And they conditioned us to the kind of life we were going to have to live for a while. And that's the life we're living. You know, washing our hands, masks, social distancing, stay away from big crowds, smile, all those things. Right? And if you do those things, right? And if you do those things, you can be in a pretty good position.

Doesn't mean you will never get it, COVID-19, but it's certainly an indication that you're in a better position not to get it than you would if you did nothing. And these are the basic issues, the basic ways to combat this virus. The list that we always talk about and the one I just went through. Now, there have been some people, and hey, I've been aggressive too on these things,

and I, you know, a month ago I was saying, close the bars. Why did you open the casinos? Let's not have in-house dining. And why is it taking you so long to do something? Lock down that element of it, things. Well, they finally did that about a week ago in Ontario and in other parts of the country. And Ontario, I think, in fact, was lagging behind other parts of the country in doing that. So today, the Ontario Chief Medical Health Officer comes out with guidelines about Halloween,

and especially in the areas that are hot spots, Ottawa, Toronto, Peel region, somewhere else too, I can't remember. But in those areas where he thinks, the chief medical health officer, that basically there shouldn't be a Halloween. You can do certain things. You can keep it in your house, let the kids dress up, share some candies in the house, do that. But this is not the time to be going outside. So kind of a lockdown on

Halloween for certain areas. And you know, for the first time in six or seven months, whatever this is now, 32 weeks. I thought, you know what? I don't think so. That's maybe too aggressive. Halloween is a big deal for kids. It's a really big deal for kids. Kids who, for the most part, have been kind of locked up. Kids who are having a tough time given the new school regulations.

So, what's the solution? Well, maybe it's kind of halfway, you know. Maybe it's kind of halfway. You got to recognize the importance of the day for kids and you got to recognize the issue of safety. I get that. No question about it. I don't think kids should be going up to strangers' doors,

knocking on doors, running around with other kids, passing back and forth candies. I don't think that's right. But part of Halloween is the simple fact it may only be a couple of blocks where kids in their little outfits get to go out with the ghosts and the goblins and have a little bit of fun

with people they know, their immediate family. Perhaps somebody from their cohort at school and their family. Maybe even that's questionable. But the simple fact that they could go out, walk around, see the displays that many people put up in their front lawns, see the lights, do all that. So I was pleased to see that I wasn't alone in that thinking. Isaac Bogoch is an infectious disease specialist and a physician. He's at the University of Toronto.

And when the guidelines came out, he tweeted this. This doesn't sit right. The goal should be to find ways to do things safely rather than cancel. Halloween shouldn't be too tough to do safely. Outside, wearing masks, restricted to family units, distant from others, is about as low risk as it gets. That's from a doctor who's recognizing the fact that, hey, you know, kids only get one day like this a year. Properly done,

they can have it. They don't have to sit in their house. Anyway. I thought I'd mention that because you know I've been sitting here for 32 weeks saying, don't do anything. Don't go anywhere.

Don't do anything. I think there's a way of doing this and being responsible and being safe without having to go a full lockdown. And I quite frankly think that that's what a lot of people, a lot of governments, a lot of officials are thinking here now. Even Fauci in that 60 Minutes interview, I think he was asked at one point, do you think we're going to have to go, it's going to get worse,

we all recognize it's going to get worse as we head into the second wave, or now some people are already calling it the third wave. It's going to get worse. Do we need to go to full lockdowns again? And Fauci immediately went, no, no, no, no. We know how to handle this, and we know how to handle it without going to the full lockdown. Certain things have to be done, and we know how to handle it without going to the full lockdown. Certain things have to be done

and we're doing them. But the full lockdown and the full lockdown is where you stay in your home and you don't leave for anything unless you have to get food. And he's saying those days are done. We know how to handle this. We can fight it and we can beat it by being responsible in all the other ways. The hands, the mask, the social distancing, the avoiding big crowds. You know, all the things that Trump doesn't do. I was on a Zoom call today. I probably do, I don't know, three Zoom calls a week. And this could be with clients.

It could be with people I'm giving a speech to, which was today's. It could be one of the boards I sit on. All those board meetings are done by Zoom calls now. It could be any number of different things. But I do, like, probably three a week. And, hey, I'm retired, so I can only imagine what real people are doing in terms of Zoom calls. So you remember when this started.

I mean, I'd never heard of Zoom 32 weeks ago. And now I can almost figure out how to use it myself and know how to book it and know how to do everything with it. So I'm pretty impressed with myself on that front because I'm not a kind of tech guy. But it was pretty neat at the beginning, right? Not so much anymore. And I found this piece on the National Public Radio website over the weekend.

And the headline is, From the folks who brought you boring meetings, CEOs want to ditch sterile Zoom calls. So it looks like for a lot of reasons, and I'm going to run through some of them here, the Zoom era is getting on people's nerves. Now, I'm not sure whether there's a replacement for this. And keep in mind, there are other kinds of calls other than Zoom calls. Microsoft has a nerve with CEOs lately. JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, he's a huge big wheel on Wall Street. He says there's no

vital creative combustion happening in virtual settings. Zoom doesn't produce creative combustion, is his term, in his board meetings, in his staff meetings. American Airlines CEO Doug Parker finds Zoom meetings awful. Microsoft CEO calls them transactional, where 30 minutes into your first video meeting in the morning, you're fatigued.

That's true. You can get tired on a Zoom call in a way you don't get tired in person. Now, early in the pandemic many were touting the benefits you know people were talking and we talked on this podcast about hey all these companies they don't need all that real estate they've got

people can work from home they don't need offices you know some companies were bragging about how they could operate with no footprint. But now they're starting to think it's a sterile work culture lacking in imagination. What we as human beings need and want and seek is human contact, said the Microsoft CEO. And others are looking at productivity, and they're saying it's dipping. It's got off to a great start 32 weeks ago, but of late,

we're noticing a pattern. And that pattern has productivity dipping, especially on Mondays and Fridays. People slow to get back into the rhythm, and by the end of the week, they can't wait to get out of the rhythm. Now, I think some of that is a hangover from the past, but apparently it's more pronounced now. There was a survey done that found 40% of people who ran businesses have noticed decreases in productivity from remote working staff. Among the same group back in April, 56% rated productivity is excellent. So there you go.

People starting to have second thoughts about just how good is this whole Zoom thing anyway. And, you know, I think some of that is not surprising that people would feel that way. I mean, after all, you know, I think most people would like to go back to the way it used to be. Well, I think those days are probably done. I don't think we'll ever go back to the way it used to be. I think those days are probably done.

I don't think we'll ever go back to the way it used to be. But we're going to be going back to some version of the way it used to be. Hopefully a better version. And certainly better than this one. Okay, two other little things. Here's a little update on vaccines. Every day there's something, right? You'll see a test that sounded promising a week ago

is now suddenly on pause because somebody got sick. But still there is a general consensus that one of these main vaccine research companies is in fact going to have a vaccine probably relatively soon, possibly before the end of this year, which if you recall back in April is when we flagged would be the earliest possibility. Remember when we did that special piece on the work going on at the University of Saskatchewan,

which is still going on, and they talked openly about the world community, how many people were working on this, and that the possibility that somebody would have something before the end of the year. It's starting to look like they were right, long before anybody else was saying that. Anyway, this weekend, the Telegraph, London, the London Telegraph, it reported that Pfizer,

which already has hundreds of thousands of doses of a vaccine at the ready at its Belgian production plant, is committed to delivering 100 million doses in 2020, that's this year, of which 40% are earmarked for Britain. British patients could be receiving the vaccines as soon as the start of 2021, January, February. That's if the tests continue to be positive on this particular vaccine that Pfizer's doing. Now, the reason I kind of circled that and thought, we should read this,

is because it was only a couple of weeks ago that Ottawa struck a deal with Pfizer that if one of its vaccines was deemed successful and safe, that Canada would get X number of million doses. So I'm extrapolating here. That Pfizer, if they're that confident, which they seem to be in the telegraph, that they are literally within weeks, I mean, whatever, we've got two and a bit months left in this calendar year, and they're saying they'll have it ready before the end of the year.

They've already got hundreds of thousands of doses at the ready, and they'll have 100 million doses before the end of this year, 40% of which are earmarked for Britain. That leaves 60 million doses. We only need 35 million Pfizer. Remember our deal. I'm not sure if the Pfizer one is one of these ones where you have to have two doses. Whatever the case, that's interesting. Now here's your last piece for this day. I love this story. Have you got a shed in your backyard? Okay, sorry.

Do you have a backyard? Or are you living in an apartment or a condo? Well, if you have a backyard and if you have a shed, you might be interested in that story. If you have a backyard and you have room for a shed, you might be interested in this story. This all goes within a kind of a, it's kind of related to the whole issue of working from home.

The Wall Street Journal has got a piece on outdoor sheds. They call them sanity sheds. They call them sanity sheds. This is where you take your old shed, sitting in the backyard, it's full of junk, and, you know, gardening equipment that you haven't used in 15 years. I don't know how many of those little pruning things I've got. Because when I need it, I can't find it. So then you end up, you know,

trying to find a cheap pair of Canadian tire. And you come back and suddenly there's 15 of these pruning things in different parts of the shed, but you just can't find them because of all the junk in there. Anyway, the Wall Street saying, Wall Street Journal is saying that one of the big, hot, new things right now is converting your afternoon, your garden shed into an office space. And that's where you go to do your work.

You literally get away from home to go into your shed. I mean, you've obviously got to hook it up for power, perhaps. Make sure the Wi-Fi reaches there. A burner for a kettle so you can make some tea or hot orange juice. I've got the corner on that market now. And not only that, if you don't have an old garden shed, there now you can buy these kind of compartmentalized small sheds that are workable as offices. This according to the Wall Street Journal.

Now, I don't know. For much of the last 32 weeks, I've sat outside and I've written a lot. You know the book's coming out in a couple of weeks, Extraordinary Canadians, and of course, on my website at thepetermansbridge.com, you can pre-order that book. But get ready for there's going to be a pretty heavy-duty publicity campaign

by Simon & Schuster and by Indigo and Amazon and... Costco. I guess Costco is big time into Extraordinary Canadians. They really are going to push this book. Anyway, I went outside and I wrote a lot outside. I found it invigorating to be, of all outside, but also to be outside of the house to write. And I've also written a considerable amount for my next book, which will

come out a year from now. And I'll tell you what that's about when we get around to announcing it. Anyway, so I know you probably want to get going right now and go out there and start working on your shed, if you have a shed, if you have a garden. If you do, I think it's an interesting idea. Okay, a reminder, Wednesday, the race next door with Bruce Anderson joins us from Ottawa.

It's the day before the final presidential debate. So Wednesday, we'll have the pregame race next door, and Friday, we'll have the, oh, my God, what happened in that thing last night edition of the race next door Thursday we'll either do the weekend special or something else and we'll save the weekend special for

Monday it's getting close only a couple weeks away from the US election it's going to be something and it's been given us something else to talk about other than COVID-19. And as important as that is, and as much as we will keep talking about it, it's been nice to have something else

to talk about as well. All right, my friends, that will do her for the Bridge Daily. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for for listening we'll be back in 24 hours you Thank you.