The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Bridge Goes Daily

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

Over the weekend some of you emailed asking that "the bridge" go daily for a while through the COVID-19 story. So I'll give it a try for a few days and see whether you find it helpful. I'll talk about one issue a day -- could be five minutes, could be fifteen (like today!) but I'll try to keep it to the point. Let me know how you feel - themansbridgepodcast@gmail,com

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with The Bridge Daily. That's right, not just The Bridge, but The Bridge Daily. In the last few days, some of you have been writing suggesting, you know, why don't you try something like you did during the election campaign where you're doing a daily version of the bridge? So I thought, yeah, why not? Well, this is how it's going to work, okay? We're going to give it a try for a few days and see whether or not it's worth it and whether you think it's informative for you. So we're going to do a bridge daily. And they'll be short, probably kind of in the five or six minute range.

There's so much information out there right now. And it's changing so rapidly that I think the way to handle this is to do something short on a daily basis and focus on one issue and give you some context, at least the way I see it, on that issue. So each day it'll be different and it'll be focused on one particular area. Some of it will draw upon history, some of it will draw upon facts, some of it will current facts, some of it will draw upon information I've got through talking to some of my sources.

Hopefully it'll all be something that's useful to you. So with that in mind, let's get started with the first edition of the Bridge Daily covering the COVID-19 story. Here we are with a story that is continuously bombarding us with facts and figures, mainly figures, lots of figures. You know, the infection rate, the death rate, the recovery rate, broken down by provinces, by countries, by regions, by continents. And constantly we're looking at these numbers. They fly by us. They increase dramatically, as has been the case in the last couple of days here in Canada. And we're trying to get some sense

of what does that really mean and where could it go? Well, here's one that's actually been intriguing me for the last few days. Whenever you look at the overall list of the countries that have been affected by COVID-19 and the numbers of their citizens who have been infected, always at the top of the list is China. That's because that's where it started. And China had to deal with this, and by the time they got over basically lying about it and started aggressively pursuing a way to stop it,

they seem to have leveled off their numbers at the moment but that number at the top of the list when you look at the world list the last time i looked at it earlier today was 81 000 all right and the number of new cases each day now is basically down to a trickle in China. So 81,000. There are issues about whether to believe that number. Some people don't, but it has been accepted by authorities that that's their number. 81,000, and that's the number that different international organizations use. So think about that for a minute. That's a big number. We look at that and go, wow, 81,000 people infected with COVID-19. But think about a little more. This is what puzzled me all weekend.

China has 1.4 billion people. So really, is 81,000 a lot? Well, let's break it down. If you'd say the infection rate was going to be 10% in China, that would be 140 million. If you said it was going to be 1%, that would be 14 million. If you said it was going to be one-tenth of 1% of their population, it would be 1.4 million. What's the infection rate?

81,000. So, really, are we talking about a huge number in China? If you believe it, if you believe them, Are we talking about a huge number in China? If you believe it, if you believe them, their number is, you know, in the fractions, fractions of a percentage. If you were to take their number, their infection rate, and say, okay, this is what's going to happen in Canada. Canada's got a population of 35 million.

10% would be 3.5 million. 1% would be 350,000. One-tenth of 1% would be 35,000. So you go down even further than that into the fractions, and you're talking about 10 or 15,000 infected. Well, we know that's just simply not going to be the case. We're climbing at a rapid rate right now. This is just the infection rate. So, what does this number really mean? Well, there's a couple of ways of looking at that Chinese number. They're lying to us. That's one way to look at it. They're not giving a true and accurate reflection of how COVID-19 hit their country. That's one explanation.

The other explanation is, let's say the number's right, or is close to being right. That could be an indication of, this is just the first wave. Their people are starting to go back to work, so say the releases from the Chinese government. If they are, but the disease is not dead,

and it's not unless there's a vaccine or a cure, and there's no indication that either of those takes place, then it's just going to keep coming back in a second wave, in a second wave and a third wave they may have you know stunted the growth or blunted the surgeon in cases as the attempt to do to allow hospitals not to be overrun like we're witnessing or is happening in Italy but there are more cases coming back and And then the number that we end up looking at could be a lot more realistic given the population of that country. So anyway, I don't know the answer to this question

about how their infection rate relates to their population rate, and neither do the experts I talked to today who are equally puzzled by it. And they come up with those possible solutions that I've outlined. But nobody has the direct answer to it. But it's a lesson for all of us about numbers, and not just about China's numbers, about all these numbers that are being thrown at us on a daily basis. They can be overpowering. They can be confusing.

And sometimes they can be out of context to what the real situation is. We are in a very difficult moment. Not just our country, other countries as well. You can see it. You see what's happening. You've seen what's being asked of everybody. So keep that in mind when you're listening to the stories that come out on a daily basis. Be careful about those numbers and about what they mean and what they don't mean. All right, that's the first edition of The Bridge Daily. I want to end each day with, you know, some reminders about how we deal with things ourselves in this situation. I mean, currently, there are kind of three main areas that are talked about by the various public health experts.

Social distancing. Keep your distance. If you have to be out, keep your distance. Six feet, they say, two meters. And don't get into any conversations that last more than 10 minutes, even at six feet. You've got to keep moving. You've got to keep moving. Self-isolation, especially if you've either been in contact with somebody who is sick or you think is sick, or if you're in contact with somebody you think has been in contact with somebody who's sick or look sick, isolate,

go into a self-isolation mode. I'm still in it from last week, as I told you about in our podcast over the weekend. And the simplest of things, wash hands. There have been times, I think, that I've washed my hands more in the last couple of days than I've washed my hands in the last couple of years. Not true, of course, but I just have washed my hands all the time. And I'm in isolation.

I'm not out shaking hands or meeting people or touching things or other people may have been involved. I'm in my home. But I'm washing my hands all the time. And I think it's wise. Now, because so many of us are in some form of isolation right now, and you're being asked to stay home, and some of you are working from home, here's another thing you might keep in mind and it's something we did as a first in our home just today we had a family meeting about how we're going to handle things how are we going to spend our days if we're going to be in

isolation as a family for a few weeks or. We better have a plan of how to conduct our days. It can't all be sitting around watching the best movie on Netflix, because there's an awful lot of them out there. You know, you want to exercise your mind, exercise your brain. Read a book. Read a good book. Write. Write your experiences down. Make a book. Read a good book. Write. Write your experiences down. Make a diary.

Exercise. Anyway, sit down as a family and figure out how you're going to do these things. Also, it wouldn't hurt to throw in a short conversation about what are you going to do if somebody in the family gets sick. What is the plan about what are you going to do if somebody in the family gets sick? What is the plan? How are you going to handle this? All things to think about. All right.

As I said, this is the first of the Bridge Daily podcasts. And I hope you think it's worthwhile. And if you do, write me. TheMansBridgePod Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. And if there's an issue, a issue, you think that I might want to talk about, throw that in there too. I've got a few that will last me a few days. But I'm always happy to listen to a few more.

So I'll be looking for them from you at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. This is Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge Daily. We'll talk to you again in, well, 24 hours. Thank you.