The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Weekend Special #15 With A Twist -- As U.S. Numbers Explode What's The Danger To Us?

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Public Health Specialist David Fisman gives us a real sense of what to expect in the next three to six months. Then your questions, comments and thoughts.

and hello there Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily it's Friday you know what that means it is the weekend special day day, something a little different on this weekend special, because I woke up this morning, like I'm sure many of you did today, watching this horror story continuing to unfold in the United States, especially in that southern belt, you know, Florida, Texas, Arizona, right through into California, with huge new numbers of new cases of COVID-19. Many states, more states are doing poorly with increasing numbers than there are states that are with decreasing numbers. This is a big problem. How much of a problem is it for us? And that's the question I woke up thinking about today.

I mean, I know we have a closed border. I get it. But they are our neighbor. And they are in serious trouble with the way things are unfolding for them on the virus front. And so I decided to reach back to one of those who's helped us on the Bridge Daily in the past. That's David Fissman. He's from the University of Toronto. He's with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

So I reached out to David again, and that's basically the issue, the question that I was asking him. Now, this runs about seven or eight minutes. It's really good, though. His kind of assessment of where we are, how we're doing, how they're doing, these Americans, the impact it could have on us, and how we have to be realistic about the situation we're in, what we should be expecting, not only for this summer, but this fall. So I want you to pay close attention to this.

I found it a real eye-opener. So here he is, David Fissman from the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health. So, David, you know, things seem to be going pretty well in Canada, but they're not going well in the States, and it leaves one wondering how concerned we should be, even with a closed border. How concerned should we be about what's happening in the States?

Well, you know, I think the situation in Canada is very, very different. And even within the United States, you know, it's a big country and you have a lot of different approaches to this pandemic going on. So I think there are regions within the US that are heading into a bad time. It looks bad now. I think next week, it's going to look a lot worse. In Canada, it's one of the cards we've been dealt is our next door neighbor is a very big place with a very big economy that's intertwined with ours. We can't, you know, we can't do sort of, it's not like conjoined twins where we can undergo surgery and detach ourselves. We're, we're, we're attached. So to some extent,

the U S is going to continue to be our problem is, is, is they struggle with their coronavirus epidemic. That said, the border sort of presents us with opportunities to control disease importation. We can be doing a lot more testing. We can embrace the use of technology, apps, things like that at the border. We can do monitoring of quarantine and isolation in people who do cross the border. So the border is the place where we actually have a lot of control. We can also, we know a lot about how to control spread. And our surveillance systems in Canada are improving slowly but surely. We talked 30,000 tests over the last 24 hours in Ontario.

So we're in a much better place than we were a couple of months ago. And we're sort of along with Quebec. I mean, we're the two laggard provinces within Canada. So I think surveillance will remain our eyes and ears and we'll continue to control this as we need to within the country. We can step things up at the border. A lot of the volume of travel is much reduced. So it's not like we're importing, I don't think, hundreds of cases a day from these hotspots. We don't have a lot of travel relative to baseline volumes from Texas or Florida into Canada at the moment. And we can control what does come in by stepping up at the border.

This disease isn't going anywhere. We're not New Zealand. We're not Taiwan. We're not striving for elimination. It's simply, I don't think it's realistic for us. What is realistic for us? I think what we can do is we can be as good as we can possibly be on control. Right now, when I think we're getting a substantial seasonal assist, you know, the weather is letting us be outside, letting us not be crowded together. We can try to keep disease to the lowest possible level using sort of contact tracing, quarantining of contacts of cases, getting better at that.

We're not very good at that, I don't think yet, but we have a window now to get better. We can react in a nimble way when we need to lock down again. And I think it's almost inevitable that we will need to at some point over the fall need to need to lock down. We can continue to prepare and build capacity in hospitals for what I think is going to be an ugly fall. So we can, we can continue to, you know, be very vigilant and, and keep, keep disease out of vulnerable parts of the country and vulnerable locales.

You know, a lot of this is sort of Sherlock Holmes. You know, you get information from the dogs that don't bark. I think many folks have been extremely concerned about the possibility that this would be introduced into the North, into isolated communities and take a terrible toll there. And that hasn't happened. That's been a success. We don't talk about the Yukon or Nunavut

or Northwest Territories with this thing because there's been no action. We're not talking much about the Atlantic because they've been a tremendous success story. But the US reminds us that if you neglect this, if you're stupid about it, I'll use that word, if you're stupid about it, if you say, well, look at that, we locked down, it didn't happen, everybody back to business,

everybody, you know, everybody gather concerts back on, what have you, you know, go to the beach and hang out, this will bite you. And we don't have to be stupid. I think the politics, although they veer in that direction at times in Canada, are much less toxic and much less divided than they are in the U.S. right now. And I think that puts us strange liabilities that being next door to the U.S. confers on us is not medical or disease-related per se, but it's sort of like, and again, you know, there's some very good responses happening in individual states, New York, Massachusetts. A lot of the Northeast is doing actually quite well and doing smart things.

But the U.S. in aggregate has the largest COVID epidemic in the world and the largest death toll in the world. I think about a third of the counted deaths at this point. They're pushing 130,000 counted deaths. So I think the U.S. almost confers liability upon us by the convenience of, you know, being able to look at Canada and say, oh, well, you know, we're doing well. Look next door at the U.S. and what a disaster that is. That shouldn't be our comparator right now. Our peer countries on this are Australia, Germany, South Korea. A lot of those places are doing better than us. They're being smarter than us. They're learning as they go and they're not

being dogmatic or silly about things like masks, for example. And, you know, I think those are our peer countries and those are our comparators. And I think we want to be in that leading pack. We don't want to be, I keep thinking about this as one, you know, one of those, you watch the Olympics and you watch the, you know, you watch people run 10K on a track or something like that. And you can say, oh, well, that person who finished a minute behind everyone else is still a very, very good runner. That's fine. And they're not with the person who kept getting lapped repeatedly.

But you don't want to say, I finished ahead of the person who got left repeatedly and probably shouldn't have been at the Olympics. You want to be in the pack that kind of crosses the finish line altogether. And that's where we belong. We're a country that has a lot of good stuff, good people, good resources, ability to organize, ability to beat this thing. And we've demonstrated that across the country. I mean, Saskatchewan is as good as Korea. The Atlantic provinces are as good as New Zealand, right? But we want the whole country to be that way. And we don't want these silly comparisons to a country that's really unfortunately struggling. And I think it's somewhat headed

into the wood chipper over the next couple of weeks. I mean, you just look at these curves and it's Lombardy all over again, except Lombardy doesn't have a population of 100 million people as these states do. So I think it's terrible what's coming. All right. Listen, David, I think we'll leave it at that, but that gives us a great overview and a real sense of where we are, what's going right, and what needs improvement. And I really appreciate you taking the time today. Oh, it's a pleasure. All right, I told you. the Della Lana School of Public Health, with a lot of things for us to be thinking about over this weekend and over these next few days and few weeks as we watch the story unfold in the States and we watch the continuing story unfold here in Canada.

What to expect for the summer, what to expect for the fall. So you might want to keep all of that in mind. All right. A shortened version of the weekend special in terms of letters from you with questions and comments and thoughts. So let me get right to it. And once again this week, I'm looking for those, haven't written before, okay? I know a lot of you are getting quite used to writing in, and you've got lots of great stuff, thoughts on all this, but I've given the priority today to first-time callers, so let's get a sense of what they have to say.

Noreen Melba Campbell. And I guess she got interested, based on last night's podcast about travel. So Noreen writes, Yes, we must support our tourist industry in large or small ways if just to support our favorite ice cream shack or restaurant. I consider it a gift to be able to have such a stable country in which to travel. We have one of the most safe and most beautiful countries in the world.

My husband and I have traveled to Cape Breton for the summer. Yes, we have family there. We hope to support our favorite restaurant, the Olive Tree, sail on the Brador Lakes, buy some lobster. Who doesn't want to do that? Drink coffee at our favorite coffee place in Bedeck. It's called Bean There. Get it? Bean There. I hope all Canadians do what they can to enjoy and celebrate Canada this summer. I would be sorry. It would be a sorry thing for most of this to vanish and businesses to fail. And they will if we don't support them. So let's keep that in mind.

Robert Decker writes, For the past month, I've been out the door before 7.30 in the morning for a walk before I turn to work for the day. 10,000 used to be my daily target of steps of mine, but that was not a realistic goal, at least one I could not do in one shot. The 50 minutes I take to walk the 5k loop in Centertown, Ottawa from the Corkston Bridge in Ottawa at Ottawa U to the new Flora Footbridge at Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue, that's in the Glebe. I used to live on Fifth Avenue when I was a kid.

That was one of the first houses we had after we came to Canada. 325 Fifth Avenue. And then we moved to 235 Fourth Avenue. We bought that house. That was the first house my parents had bought in Canada. Anyway, as getting back to Rob, we left him halfway on his walk. My opportunity to get ready for the day, listen to you and other podcasts, something to distract me from my inbox. I average 6,000 steps, around 4.5K each morning.

But I have turned those steps into a challenge of increasing my pace and upping the fitness level of my walks. When I started, I was walking at a pace of under 12 minutes per kilometer. I'm happy to say it's been slowly picking up. As the pace quickens, it might start pushing me to a slow jog. For now, my target is to get to a 10-minute kilometer walk pace. Some days are faster than others. I haven't figured out the relevance between podcast subject and walk pace. Do the really interesting podcasts slow me down? Do they pick me up? Today, as I listened to last week's Thursday and weekend special episodes, they had me clipping along at 10.25 minutes per click. Not a bad way to start the morning.

10,000 steps a day isn't for me, but making sure I get out every morning is. I don't expect to be working from my office again until September. There's plenty of time to meet that target. Well, good luck with that, Rob. As they say, do at least 4,000 steps a day. That's the bare minimum, but I think the 6,000 target is a nice one. Renee Bilodeau, I'm writing to you from Elmvale, Ontario. I absolutely love it here. A great

community in central to Barrie with with Sega Beach, Collingwood, and Midland. I recently went to our local Home Hardware to purchase some paint. As I was standing in line outside the store, I was appalled at what I witnessed. There were about seven people in line, spaced appropriately. However, I was the only one wearing a mask. A store employee was greeting everyone and allowing customers in as customers came out. She had a mask on. She was also offering masks to those who were not wearing one. They all refused. Every one of them. I do not understand. This COVID-19 will be here infecting for years unless we put a stop to it. I wear a mask to protect those around me. Now I realize I need a face shield

to protect myself. The name of the company I purchased from is called the Canadian Shield, made in Ontario. You know, and I got to argue with the thing you say, Renee. I can't understand people who won't wear masks in situations like the one you just explained. They're not hard to get. There's nothing wrong with wearing them. Doesn't make you look weak. It makes you look like you care. And right now, we all need to care. About ourselves and about others.

And wearing a mask is part of that. You know? If you don't want to end up like those places south of the border that are going through hell right now, a lot of it because they refuse to wear masks because they think it makes them look weak. You know, get in the game uh austin spear from edmonton

you get a kick out of this one you ready peter i've been listening to your podcast since the beginning, and I have really enjoyed it so far. I've always found you to be an ultra-professional journalist who presents the news in a fair and objective manner, and it's great to see that you're keeping it up with a post-retirement podcast. Just wanted to share with you that I started listening to your podcast at the same time that I started listening to Will Ferrell's Ron Burgundy podcast. Listening to the two side by side, it almost sounds as though Will Ferrell's is a parody of yours. I know it's not really, and I find that greatly amusing. Hey Austin, if it gives you a few laughs, good on you.

But you are the first person to write in and compare me to Ron Burgundy. Thank you for that. Makes my weekend. It'll make me very popular with my son, who's a huge Ron Burgundy fan. Willie will love that somebody made a connection between the two podcasts. All right. One repeat. Repeat. One veteran of the podcast.

I've chosen one. One to read of the many who have written in again. This is from Carolyn Black. A few weeks ago, you talked about swimming pools being the new toilet paper. Remember, I said here in the Stratford area, which apparently is per capita the highest swimming pool area in the country. I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's what they say here in the swimming pool business. But right now you can't get, certainly an above-ground pool,

you can't get one before September. They're sold out and they're backordered. So Carolyn writes, a few weeks ago you talked about swimming pools being the new toilet paper an unexpected outcome of the pandemic i'm sorry if you've already addressed my question i haven't my husband is on the board and finance committee of his golf club and by all reports things are going great every day is a saturday tea times are books solid memberships are selling very well. A lot of planning and work

and expense is going into keeping things safe at the course, but it's a much better outcome than was expected in the early days. It got me thinking, aside from the expected winners coming out of COVID-19, and we know those winners, Amazon, grocery stores, Shopify, businesses with online models. What are the other success stories of types of businesses doing unexpectedly well during this time? Have you come across any info on that? Well, I understand that RV rental agencies are doing a booming business as Canadians are looking for ways to spend time in the summer traveling, taking their families places if they don't have a cottage,

and a lot of people are trying to rent RVs, recreational vehicles. And good for them if they are, although they've got to learn how to drive them. I've always kind of freaked out when I look at an RV thinking, there's no way I could do that. I'd be totally concerned about having to back up anywhere. You just always have to be going forward, and that's tricky. Anyway, before we close the weekend special,

and it'll be a shorter than usual one this week, a couple of things that I wanted to bring up, which I think you might find interesting. This week, if you're one of those who keeps an eye on the stock market, you have probably noticed it's been a real up and down week. And it's taken a battering on some days and slight recoveries on other days. But the batterings are mostly because of those awful numbers we're seeing in the U.S. on COVID-19 and the forecast, how things are likely to get worse. You heard David talk at the beginning of this podcast today

about how difficult things are likely to get in the States in the next week or two. It's one thing for new cases to be reported. It's another thing when the deaths start to spike up, and they're likely to do that as a result of all the new cases. So that's one of the reasons behind the back and forth in the market. But I saw this statistic today, which I think is important to mention. For those of us, especially in the media, who tend to get fixated on talking about the gyrations in the stock market, and I've been as guilty of this as anybody, this is an important stat. It plays out of the old saying,

what's good for Wall Street is often bad for Main Street. And that's based on these stats. With the wealthiest 10% own 84% of all stocks. And the bottom 75% own none at all. What does that mean? It means a rising stock market, or a falling stock market for that point, is often of little importance to two-thirds of, in this case, Americans. The story came offline, Project Syndicate.

Get that? 10% own 84% of all stocks. The bottom 75% own none at all. So stock market gyrations are of little importance to two-thirds of Americans and yet they get an awful lot of play in the media right now last point and I think this is this is one over time a number of people have asked me about. And I've just been looking for the moment to kind of explain it. You may have seen over time, certainly in the past,

when things were written, could be in a print format in a newspaper or online, when things are written, have been written, about black Americans and white Americans, you would see the B in black and the W in white in small letters, not capitals, right? Well, of late, a number of news organizations have changed in one regard on the issue of black

in the phrase black Americans. have changed in one regard on the issue of black, in the phrase black Americans. The B is now capitalized, as is the A. But if they're talking about white Americans, it's not capitalized. And you may wonder, why is that? What's going on? More and more news organizations, the CBC, I think it was last week,

for its online material, went to the capital B. The Washington Post already does. The New York Times, I believe, already does. The Associated Press has now formalized its style to capitalize B in black and I in indigenous. This aligns with longstanding capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers, such as Latino, Asian American, Native American, committing to honor those whose histories had long been overlooked. All right? So keep an eye out for that.

And you go, well, why not white Americans? Well, white American isn't a race in the same way that we're talking about Asian Americans or Latino Americans. That first word is describing and identifying a race of people. Asian American, Latino American, Black American, Indigenous American. And the same goes for Canadians. So that's why, if you've been wondering,

why is that happening? That's why it's happening. And it's been moving fairly rapidly in these last few weeks, as a lot of things have been moving rapidly and changing. And different corporations and companies and agencies are trying to adapt to this changing world. NASA, the space agency in the States, announced this week that it would name its Washington, D.C. headquarters after Mary Jackson, the organization's first black female engineer

and a pivotal player in helping U.S. astronauts reach space. Her story was memorialized in first a book and then the 2016 movie Hidden Figures. If you didn't see it, it's a good movie. I watched it last year or the year before. Really good. but it's interesting to see NASA's move, making it this week, and whether this too is part of what we're witnessing in terms of the change in recognition that hadn't been taking place in the past. All right.

A shortened, a different version of the weekend special for today. I hope you've learned from it. I hope you've got some interesting things on your mind as a result of it. And I hope you have a great weekend. You know, we're ticking the time away here now, right? We started this podcast in March. Yesterday marked the 25th of June, six months until the day many of us celebrate

on December 25th, Christmas Day. We've been through a lot together in the last 15 weeks. And from the sound of things, there's still a long way to go. But your summer plans, I hope you're able to make some that cause you some excitement about what you can do, where you can go, how you can stay safe, how you'll have an ample supply if you go somewhere of masks in your car that you may need. For wherever you end up going. But for this weekend, the last weekend in June of 2020, the first half of the year,

almost over, Canada Day next Wednesday. But first things first, for the Bridge Daily, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening. We will be back on Monday. Thank you.