The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Ides of March

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

A listener letter prompts an informative discussion about kids and vaccines with infectious disease specialist Dr Lisa Barrett from Dalhousie University in Halifax.  Plus what Zoom fatigue is doing to your brain and the simple way to deal with it.  

Hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge, where today our focus is on kids and vaccines. Ah, it's the Ides of March. Beware the Ides of March. Beware the Ides of March. You got somebody whispering in your ear that you too are not invincible? Well, you're certainly not invincible if you haven't had your vaccine. And a lot of people still haven't had their vaccine. Lots of Canadians are waiting and they're getting anxious and they're getting more anxious by the day.

And the finger pointing is going on. You name it, it's going on pretty much everywhere. You got the feds saying, you know, we're having real supply problems. You got the provinces saying we can't deliver because the feds aren't given to us. And then you've got the, you know, the next level down, the municipal level, they're getting, you know, I was on, I was looking through Twitter this morning and the poor mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson,

is just getting hammered. Like, hey, it's not the mayor's fault. He's trying to get organized on the local level on where to distribute vaccines if the vaccines come in, if they're distributed to the local level by provinces. And Watson's problem is not unlike problems that other municipal leaders across the country are facing. And I don't know, it's kind of understandable. A lot of people are very anxious these days, those who want the vaccine, you know, are lining up either by the age or by the circumstance.

It's different everywhere. You know, different provinces have different categories. I don't know, I still don't kind of get that. I mean, we're Canadians. Can't we all operate under the same rules, regulations, protocols? I realize we're a big country. I realize things are different in different parts of the country. But still, it creates this anxiety out there.

Anyway, I'm going to do a few calls today on the whole vaccine thing again and see, you know, maybe we'll deal with it again tomorrow in terms of how it's operating, how the rollout is actually really going. The numbers have picked up. There's no doubt about that. In the last week or 10 days, are they going to continue to pack up or are we on another slowdown this week?

It's an anxious time. And it is the Ides of March. I always used to love that as a kid. I loved that story of Caesar, you know, trotting through the streets of Rome on his chariot and a guy behind him whispering in his ear, you're not invincible.

Because the crowds were cheering, everybody loved him. You're not invincible. And that whisperer was right. The knives were out. We all know what happened next. All right. We got lots of mail here at the bridge.

Don't you love how I say we? The we is me. I'm we. And lots of mail comes in to me. And I read it all. I promise you, I read it all. I don't end up reacting to all of it, but I read all of it as it comes in

to themansbridgepodcast.gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. And I try to take the best letters, as you know, on the Fridays of the weekend special and read them, and they give us a great sense of the country. Every once in a while, there's a letter comes in that actually takes it to another level in terms of, I've got to do something beyond just the weekend special with this letter.

And I gave you a hint last Friday. Got a letter from Laura Martin in Springwater, Ontario. Isn't that a wonderful name? Springwater. Well, Laura has two kids, and I guess they're pretty special. Well, all moms will say that about their kids, right? My kids are special. Well, Laura's got two kids.

One's 10, one's 7. She says they've been doing school from home for an entire year. And boy, oh boy, have they risen to the occasion. Laura couldn't be prouder of them. But they are, understandably so. They're kind of over it. You know, they're ready to get back to some sense of normalcy. Hey, kids, we're all feeling that.

But Laura then adds a number of questions, and they all relate to vaccines and kids. You know, when will kids get vaccines? Will they ever get vaccines? What impact will those vaccines have? So the questions were all really good, and Laura suggested, hey, Mansbridge, you're not smart enough to answer these, so will you talk to one of your infectious disease specialists

and ask them to come on the program and answer them? And I thought, that makes sense. So as you know, at the bridge, we have a number across the country who we have been dealing with, and they're all terrific. And I decided on this one that I'd ask Lisa Barrett, Dr. Lisa Barrett in Halifax, infectious disease specialist, works out of Dalhousie university whether she would handle these for me and she said absolutely

and so i sent her the list of questions because i thought it was a good idea to you know give dr barrett a kind of heads up on the kind of questions that Laura was asking. And then we could have a conversation. And that's exactly what we did. So I'm going to play that conversation and play the answers because I think this is really interesting. It's not just good for people with kids. It's good for, you know, grandparents trying to understand what their kids are going through with the grandkids.

And some of the questions that are going to be asked and are being asked. So here we go. Here's my conversation with Dr. Lisa Barrett out of Halifax. All right, Dr. Barrett, you've seen some of this list of questions from Laura Martin, and they're pretty good. They're pretty good questions. So let me go through them and see whether you can try to answer them. When will children under 18 years of age be able to get a jab?

I'm assuming that someone is studying the various vaccines in children under 18. How's that research going? Is that happening? Yeah, and I'm assuming by the jab, we're talking vaccines. So great question. Tons of work being done. And no doubt, I can tell you that any company that puts together a vaccine very quickly, as soon as they demonstrate that it's safe and that it works in adults, moves directly into staged studies and trials in children, starting with the ones that are closest biologically and in age to adults where the work has already been done and then moving in timeframes downward. So all the vaccines that are approved in canada right now are doing clinical trials in young adults into children the um oldest set which is uh for pfizer would be 15 uh downward 12 to 15 and then for the other vaccines would be 12 to 17 because the pfizer is

approved down to people age 16. Those are all undergoing trials at the moment. There haven't been any significant safety signals, which is really great. We haven't seen the data on how well they work yet, but no reason to think that kids are going to biologically respond very differently, even to the mRNA. And then the youngest trials that are already going on are down into age seven for one of the vaccines. So all going on now. When can kids expect that we might get some approval? I'm hopeful for the fall, particularly for sort of high school, late junior high sort of kids.

And then into the very, very early new year, maybe late 2021 for elementary school and younger kids. Okay. She follows that up with, if they can't get a vaccine this year, what will the world reopening look like for them? Can we take them on a much-deserved vacation, say, in 2022, if they don't have a vaccine? Yeah.

So I'm going to hope that by 2022, down to below school age children will have access to this vaccine. And I don't anticipate that won't happen. But if it did, that whole question around travel really isn't just about kids. That's really about people. And what we need are for people to have high numbers and percentages of people vaccinated wherever they're going, as well as where they live, because it's all about community spread. And I know we're all familiar with that term at the moment, but really it comes back to the fact that community spread doesn't happen if cases are low. We have the ability to test people especially with variants going to be circulating in the next year or two and then in addition to that have a high number of people vaccinated so if those three things exist community spread stays low and then hopefully

we'll be able to start thinking a little bit in 2022 about some travel but that's the thing you really got to look for not just vaccine rates it's that community spread idea and case numbers so keep testing keep vaccinating into 2022 and hopefully we'll get a little bit of vacation time somewhere safe here's an interesting one because i guess in some ways it deals with this whole herd immunity issue if 70 of the adult population has already received a vaccine will children under 18 even need one yeah so 70 of people getting vaccinated is the number we've chosen based on other viruses other infections and how they work and when we achieve the ability to bring cases down to a very controllable level

for that herd immunity to exist. We're estimating it with this virus. It may be that we need 80% of people just to kind of throw that out there. We may need a very high number of people vaccinated to achieve true herd immunity. But with respect to the question that this person really quite astutely asked just because the adults are vaccinated doesn't mean that the children can't be holders or if you will incubators of virus and therefore act as people who could spread from one person to another and so yes kids are going to need to be vaccinated in order for us to get to true and really safe immunity in our communities. And two, until that happens, we really should be mindful of the fact, not letting go of this part, that this virus does spread without symptoms. And that actually may be more frequent when people are vaccinated. So until we can show that the infection rate goes down,

not just transmission and serious disease, it could be that people have even fewer symptoms after they're vaccinated, but may still be able to spread to others. So until we can show that definitely, definitely everyone needs to be protected and you don't get herd immunity unless you get all the people and PS people under 18 are people so gotta get it. You kind of touched on this a little bit earlier but maybe you can go a little deeper into it what will back to school look like this fall? That is probably the most talked about question outside who's next to get vaccine in canada and the world we still and the reason we talk about it a lot is we still don't have great data on what makes the safest situation for kids we do know that when cases are low in the community and we don't have community spread

it seems to be that schools are a reasonably safe space if i had all the things that i would like as an infectious disease doctor based on all the data we have i would have kids that are not vaccinated going back into a space that is as safe as possible to do that no to low cases in the community people that are around them that are adults are vaccinated so their chances of running into virus are very low and then when they are in school settings offering opportunities for various types of outside activities where possible masks if needed for a little bit longer and then also to support that back to school with testing, especially for the older kids and maybe for some younger kids.

There's some emerging information that says until we're all vaccinated, that that would be a really great way to make this the safest place possible. But then they could still be in the same space, which is the really big, important social part, I think, particularly for kids in younger age groups with different developmental needs. Laura's kids, like a lot of kids in this country, are spending parts of their day anyway on play dates virtually with their buddies. Should they keep used to that or can we see an end to that soon? I'm hoping that's going to become something that can become far less frequent. Back to the same things around school, the things that make playdates safe are safe communities with low rates of virus. I really struggle with situations where we get the cases low and then watch them go high again and just worry about hospitalizations and deaths.

I think that's important, but I also worry about our ability to safely let our kids get back together. So outdoor activities, people that are vaccinated around, so the adults making a really great effort to protect their kids by getting vaccinated but really we've got to work super hard to keep the cases down and then i think the bubbles can get a little bigger in person and that includes some play dates so could we be seeing that into the summer i think we will particularly as people can be outside um but until we get everybody vaccinated it's going to be a little bit different still, maybe a little less frequent and a lot more outdoors. And maybe that's a silver lining to getting everybody outside again, not just adults, but kids outside. It's a participation ad in action. Boy, there's a term from the past. Yeah. You know, most of us are focused, and understandably so, on the present, you know, looking at the situation today and what it might

be like a month from now or two months from now. Laura's next question is one I certainly haven't been thinking about, but I bet you have been. Are scientists and doctors and researchers worried about long-term health issues with COVID in kids? For example, are there concerns like those who had chickenpox getting shingles as adults? Yeah, so I think there's a lot of concern about it, a lot of monitoring that's going to happen for kids and adults who get this coronavirus. It's a little bit different biologically.

The one thing that is good about coronaviruses compared to some of these other viruses, for example, the chicken pox shingles situation, is that once you have that infection in your body, it never actually goes away. I don't know if people know that. I don't think we advertise that too much as infectious disease doctors that we're walking around with all these infections all the time. But our body does a great job of controlling those. They're part of evolutionary change in our bodies. But this coronavirus, unlike chickenpox and some of the other cold sore viruses and the like, those viruses stick with us for life

coronaviruses do not so when your body has dealt with this infection it has been dealt with and therefore it's a little bit different we are not sure what the long-term side effects might be from an inflammation perspective but definitely we know that coronaviruses do not actually induce a long-term infection in and of itself. So not that kind of problem like you'd see with shingles. Great question, though. Well, here's another one, if you don't mind looking into the future. And it's Laura's last question. Are we worried about what our health care system will look like for our kids as they become adults?

COVID pushed the system to the extreme. Then there will be the obvious onslaught of backlogged medical care that will need to be caught up once it's safe to do so. And in the next few years, a huge portion of our population will become seniors, need more care, and put unbelievable stress on a system that has just emerged from the largest global crisis in over 100 years and we seem to constantly be trying to chip away the budgets that will allow us to even adequately educate and provide health care for our literal future so there you know that's another really good question it's a big one in terms of policy and where governments place their money and their research and their thinking.

But she may have something there. Not just something. You know, I remember it was about eight weeks into the pandemic, and I thought this is going to go really poorly. Fortunately, it hasn't. You know, it's been devastating, but we've gotten further faster than I thought, to be honest. But I thought, I hope this turns into a time where we can all look not just at one system or one thing about health, but have people start thinking of their health as something not separate from them done to them by a system but something they protect they propagate with the help of health systems and change that

frame entirely so that our system gets rebuilt so i think she is on to something but to do that it's going to take a very large shift and not funding all the things that we used to fund but do something totally different that makes health um not just something to be protected by governments for people but done by people and that's going to take a totally different kind of budget and thinking but i wonder i wonder if people are ready to start doing it i see bits and pieces of it when i hear statements like this particular question that if people are ready to start doing it i see bits and pieces of it when i hear statements like this particular question that maybe people are ready to start doing something real and big and different in canada about health and how they view each other and communities so well i would love to see that people maybe you worry about governments because

you start throwing this stuff on the table. We're talking federal-provincial conferences and the different regional tensions that that produces and differences of opinion on the way to go forward. I mean, we do live in a federation and federalism has been put to the test in the last year or so and some people are concerned about how it's done. I'd be guilty if I didn't ask you as a final question, quite apart from all the great questions that Laura asked, just sort of where your head's at right now in terms of what we're facing.

I mean, I find myself, because all the focus on vaccines and for a while the decreasing numbers, although they seem to have popped up certainly in Ontario in the last little while, the decreasing numbers, although they seem to have popped up certainly in Ontario in the last little while, I find myself continually sort of putting the brakes on about getting too excited that we're close to the end of this. And, you know, reminding myself, whether it's masks or socially distancing or what have you, just constantly telling myself that. But where are you in a general way where's your head on the situation that we're in

from the pandemic perspective i think i think of this as day plus three of year two of the pandemic. And that's as close as I can come in one sentence to saying, we ain't there yet. We're not going to be there today, tomorrow, or the next day. And I use that to frame my own personal behavior, my own personal expectations, as well as my science and infectious disease expectations because this is year two and it's likely we'll be looking into a year three to make things optimized even further with this particular pathogen but to our last little snippet of conversation there, I think we've got a lot of work to do that the pandemic has brought up, has let bubble to the surface, some issues that are going to be year three things that we're going to have to

deal with. I think, I think our governments, whether they want to or not are going to have to look at things differently. And that's going to be year three. Year two is just going to still be getting the do done. Hope you're right, Dr. Lisa Barrett. And as always, terrific context. And your understanding makes us understand a little more. So thank you once again.

Oh, happy to be here. I love Sunday chats. Oh, I can't say that. You can say, hey, you're the doctor. You can say whatever you want. Take care. Bye. Dr. Lisa Barrett in Halifax.

Always good to talk to her and always good to hear from you as well. So I hope, Laura Martin, you got at least some of the answers that you've been wondering about in terms of kids and vaccines. When we come back, switch a topic. We're going to talk about Zoom fatigue and how Zoom has affected your brain. All right, I'm assuming that most of you, if not all of you, have at one time or another in the past year done a Zoom call. I do. I don't know a couple a day for the variety of different things i'm

involved in not just the bridge but boards that i sit on documentaries that i'm working on conversations that i'm having on various subjects. I mean, there's a lot of Zoom. And that has brought on the phrase Zoom fatigue, right? You've heard that. Well, there was an interesting piece over the weekend on CNN's website, and it was titled, How This Year of Working on Zoom Has Affected Your Brain. And I thought, oh, geez, do I really want to read this?

Do I really want to know how my brain has been affected by Zoom calls? But I plowed on. I thought maybe I should. And there was actually, there are actually four or five things in here that are kind of interesting. And things that, you know, you might want to consider. And they kind of title each of these different things. And the first one is called Fight or Flight Survival.

And they compare Zoom, that's kind of neat actually, to being on an elevator, a crowded elevator, where you know what it's like. You've been there, or you used to. I haven't been on a crowded elevator in more than a year. You get on the elevator, and if it's crowded, people usually keep their eyes to the ground, right? You don't sort of sit there and look at everybody on the elevator, look at them in the face. You kind of either look down on the ground

or you look up at the blinking floor-changing lights. So they compare Zoom to that that to being on an elevator because on a zoom call you smother everyone with your gaze so they're staring at a camera it stimulates a confrontation and triggers your flight or fight instincts. Never thought of it that way. That's an interesting way to think about it. The next one is non-verbal internet cues. We feel so distant from others on the call that we overcompensate and people speak, like I've got to check this because I've never thought of it this way, but it may well

be true. You overcompensate and people speak 15% louder when interacting on video compared to in-person interactions, according to this study that was done at Stanford University. So this is not just some, you know, unheard of study. This is Stanford. And they've listened to Zoom calls, and they find that people talk louder on Zoom than if they were in person, 15% louder.

Now, I love this one. It's called constant mirror and self-evaluation. Imagine if you had an assistant following you with a mirror so you could constantly see your own face. It's not narcissism. It's what happens on every Zoom call. And if you find yourself staring at that one little box that contains your own face, you're not the only one.

Have you done that? Have you been on a Zoom call and you end up looking at yourself? Come on, admit it. Obviously, you look at the other people. But do you find yourself returning all the time to check out your own face? The constant self-evaluation can make you more stressed, and science says the effects are worse on women.

They mention a separate study that concludes that long periods of self-focusing can prime women to experience depression i don't know i try not to look at myself maybe that's after years of training on television i didn't used to watch programs back because i couldn't stand looking and seeing myself and the fact that every day there was less hair there than there had been the day before. And here's the final one. Zoom fatigue traps us in a box. This can limit our mental ability.

We stay still so we don't leave the frame. And this causes our minds to act differently than when we're able to move around. In fact, draws the conclusion of the Stanford University team, people who are walking, even when it's indoors, come up with more creative ideas than people who are sitting. So video conferences literally stop us from thinking outside of the box. Now, that's really interesting. And I'll tell you why. Because a lot of the interviews, all of the interviews that I do for The Bridge are done by Zoom.

So I talk to Dr. Barrett just a moment ago. And I'm sure you've seen Dr. Barrett on television. She's been on all different networks at different times. She has this fabulous painting behind her all the time. And so that's kind of how she's known for the painting that she has. But she sits still and she talks. She moves around. She moves around in her chair.

And the shot is kind of a wide shot. It doesn't really matter to me because I'm just using the audio. But I can, you know, I talk to Dr. Isaac Bogoch a lot, so do others. And he's in Toronto. And he's a infectious disease specialist as well. And usually when I talk to him, it's his off hours, at least off from work. And we have a good chat and he's in his kind of office at home and yet he'll walk around. I'll see him walking around in his office while he's talking to me.

And maybe that's why. Because he's more engaged walking around than sitting down. It stimulates his brain. He's thinking all the time. So what do we do about Zoom? It's not going to disappear anytime soon. In fact, when this is all over, I'm sure we're going to be using Zoom and its competitors a lot.

The most helpful change, says the study, that you can make when video conferencing, collapse that self-image box so it's out of view. It'll be like a weight taken off your shoulders. In other words, don't look at yourself. Move your picture out of view. It'll be like a weight taken off your shoulders. In other words, don't look at yourself. Move your picture out of it. There you go. Zoom fatigue.

What it causes, and how to fix it. So I might keep that in mind. Alright, it's just Monday on the bridge. We've got lots coming up. Tomorrow, a special edition of the bridge. Aside from the regular edition of the bridge, we're going to talk to Caleb Dahlgren.

You know that name? Caleb was one of the survivors of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash almost three years ago now. He's got a book coming out. He's a fabulous young guy. And he has an incredible story to tell that goes beyond just the bus crash. As tragic and as horrifying as it was.

So Caleb Dahlgren, tomorrow on a special edition of The Bridge on SiriusXM. Aside from the regular edition of The Bridge. Wednesday is Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. We haven't decided what we're going to talk about yet, but every week it's a winner. Thursday, Potpourri. Friday is the weekend special.

Your letters on anything you want to talk about. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. That's where to send them. Okay, but for today, you got it. That's it. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Thanks so much for listening.

We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.