The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Was Wuhan An Accident?

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

New questions about what happened in Wuhan China in 2019 and whether Covid was caused by a lab accident.  And an important interview with Dr. Lisa Barret who raises the question of whether we are protecting vaccines enough.  And of course there's always hockey.

Hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Today, vaccines will help protect us. But first, we have to protect vaccines. Are you still trying to find ways to get into the world of crypto? Well, look no further. BitBuy is Canada's number one platform for buying and selling Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. BitBuy has launched a brand new app and website with a new look, lower fees, and new coins. Bitbuy is your one-stop shop to get involved and super easy to use for beginners. Visit bitbuy.ca or download the Bitbuy app. Enter referral code PODCAST20 to get $20 free when you make your first deposit.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here once again. Hope you had a great long weekend. I know I did. Weather was pretty good here in southwestern Ontario. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good. And it's going to continue to be, you know, not too bad for the next few days. So we're into it. We're definitely into spring. Maybe even early summer. That's all good. But there are still questions out there about all kinds of things. And today we'll try to answer some of them. You know, one of the constant questions ever since COVID-19 started was how did it start?

You know, we pretty well know where it started. Everybody seems to agree, even China agrees, that it started in Wuhan. That's a city in China where there were a number of potential explanations. There are those who believe that it was born out of natural causes, that it became a problem as a result of the live market in Wuhan, where they sell everything from fish to bats. And bats was one of the potential areas that many people thought that the coronavirus started. There are others who saw something else. Wuhan is the only city in China where there is a

major world-respected, world-regarded virology lab where they do all kinds of studies. The Wuhan Institute of Virology. And some people thought there could have been an accident in that lab, and that's how it started. Now, that's been a kind of consistent theory for the last couple of years, that that's potentially where it started. Now, the Chinese say they didn't discover that the coronavirus, COVID-19, was going to, with interviews with members of the WHO who had concluded that they had no evidence that there'd been an accident in the lab or that it started in the lab. But I can remember watching interviews at that time with a couple of the experts

with the WHO that did mention, you know, in November 2019, there were a couple of incidents of sickness on staff members in the lab. But we don't connect that sickness to COVID. It may have just been a mild case of the flu. There were two or three incidents. But it was out there. They mentioned it.

Well, now over the weekend, a U.S. intelligence report was leaked to, I think it was the Wall Street Journal. journal and they say we deeply suspect that those incidents were in fact the first incidents of the coronavirus now nobody's putting a name to that and the chinese aren't accepting that as something of validity. However, the thing that's kind of topped that from kind of the middle of the news to near the top of the news is the fact that Tony Fauci, Dr. Fauci, says he has not accepted any explanation yet, and he's deeply suspicious of those examples of a sickness within the lab before the Chinese announced that they had a problem in December of 2019. These sicknesses were reported in November of 2019. So he's suspicious of those.

He's not saying, hey, it started in the lab, but he's not saying, no, it didn't start in the lab, which is the conclusion of the World Health Organization. So that has this whole question of where did it start raising its head once again. The Chinese, I mean, there is deep distrust on the part of China on the issue of the pandemic. There's no question about that.

There has been since the beginning. And after this weekend's report, that distrust has gone up a notch. We'll watch this, see where it goes. And we'll see what difference it makes. The fact is, the pandemic has swept around the world.

Hundreds of thousands of people have died. More than 25,000 have died in this country. So where's our situation? Well, the hot spot now is Manitoba, and it's an ugly story in Manitoba. And there are times at which it looks like the government doesn't know what it's doing there.

Now, we've seen these moments in other provinces in the past little while, in Ontario, in Alberta, even in Nova Scotia, in the famed Atlantic bubble. We've watched this over the last few weeks. And so keeping in mind that in many parts of the country, things seem at the moment to be doing well, there are parts where it isn't, and especially so in Manitoba right now. But in Nova Scotia, interesting case to look at. As you know, we have been talking to infectious disease specialists

in different parts of the country over the last year, and one of them is in Halifax, in Nova Scotia, at Dalhousie University. Dr. Lisa Barrett, she's been fabulous for us. We talk to her every couple of weeks. And the last time we talked to her, they were right in the middle of their spike. And she was working near around the clock in terms of helping deal with this. So, time now to check in, to see where they are, what they've learned, and also to talk to Dr. Barrett about the big picture of where we kind of are right now.

Because it was, I don't know about you, but I found this a peculiar weekend for a number of reasons, which I'll explain to Dr. Barrett and we'll see what she thinks. So let's get this started. Dr. Lisa Barrett in Halifax, Nova Scotia. So the last time we talked, things in Nova Scotia seemed to be kind of at a knife's edge. It could go either way, and that was just two weeks ago. So where are we now in Nova Scotia? Well, from a case number perspective, we've come down a fair bit, kind of in the realm of below or around 50 cases a day with significant community spread still.

So I'd take that as the right direction, but certainly not under control, given all the community spread. Still have, you know, almost 80 people in hospital around the province. And many of those people have to 20 some odd, 28 are in ICU. So not out of the woods that way yet. However, things are still shut down from a policy perspective and likely to be that way until at least a week and a half, at least into June. So while we are headed in the right direction and not changing policy bits, May 24th weekend had a lot of people out generally in very small groups, but quite social groups. So that was in combination with a lot fewer people getting tested every day at the asymptomatic testing sites. So it will be interesting to know whether that decrease in cases is partially because we just don't have as many people tested

in the last number of days. Well, I want to talk about some of that. Certainly, there's a kind of May 24th weekend thing in a minute. But let me just ask you this, because while it wasn't expected, it was never ruled out as a possibility for Nova Scotia, and you were always warning of that very possibility. Through this, what have you learned like what surprised you in terms of how this has been dealt with over these past couple of weeks what have you learned through this well I think we've solidified the fact that we're not that special in Nova Scotia. Let's all be clear.

The air is no different. And if you bring virus in and don't keep it in one place, house or space, it's going to move. So I think we've made that very clear to Nova Scotians. We've made it clear that we also aren't special in preventing hospitalization. Although I will say the people we've had in hospital are doing quite well from a mortality perspective so far. So whatever we're doing, it seems to be going okay. And the third part is that there is some benefit to the testing plan. We could have had a long tail to our coming down, if you will, of the case numbers, the way most other places have seen. So the uptick is often the upslope of the epidemic curve with variants is very quick because of the

way it spreads. But the downslope tends to be quite slow and the slope of it is very shallow, if you will. And ours has been pretty, pretty fast on the downslope as well. And I think part of that's because we managed to find probably about 13, 14% of our cases through no symptoms testing that would have traveled forward much more quickly. So I think we've solidified the place for testing, at least in my opinion. And we've also hopefully learned that we're no different than anywhere else. When there's virus, there's spread if we don't do the right things. You know, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about one particular patient that you talked about the last time you were with us, because it was a gripping story you told of a relatively young person who

was having real difficulties breathing and you know all of you guys were pretty worried how did things work out there? You know he I mean he was scared Nothing worse than not being able to breathe. We've all had a moment or two in our lives for various reasons where you can't breathe. Nothing worse than that feeling. He was scared. He actually did well and went home just a few days ago, in fact, and had gotten treatment. We had put him on some medications that we use Tocilizumab for COVID. And he went out the door very, very, very grateful

and swiftly back to good form and good personality. But boy, what an instructional thing for him. And, you know, several of his family members and, and friends had also been positive. So none, none of them had come into hospital, but certainly they were all very grateful to have him home. And he was, he was feeling pretty grateful as he walked out the door. I bet all of you were feeling pretty good about it too. Yeah. Okay.

Let me talk about this weekend because i've i've found it pretty odd listen um you know the last week or two have given us reason nationally to feel uh kind of better about the situation uh the vaccine distribution the rollout in different parts of the country has been extremely good. Lots of new vaccines coming in. However, you know, as you say, it's still out there. It's still in the air. And yet here I was this weekend here in my little town of Stratford, Ontario, watching a lot of people not wearing masks, walking around in the outdoors, which they've been encouraged to do just that.

But it just looked, it suddenly looked very different, even the way it looked even a week ago. So there was that on the one hand. Then there's watching what's been going on in the States over the last week where suddenly, you know, thousands, and I mean thousands of people turning up at, you know, NBA championship basketball games. Thousands of people at the golf tournament that, you know,

Phil Mickelson proved that you can be 50 and still go to the golf tournament, which was great. And then I watched the BBC News last night, their main newscast, and COVID, the first COVID item didn't come until 20 minutes into the newscast. And I was suddenly thinking here, we're all acting like it's kind of over. I mean, and it's all seemed to have happened very quickly

that this new attitude has taken on. How do you feel about that? I mean, you're somebody who's always been very cautious in the advice you give us and looking at that scene, what's right about that picture. What's wrong about that picture. Yeah.

So this really is the artful part of pandemics right now, because you've got to mix a whole bunch of science and fact with a whole bunch of human behavior, which arguably, hopefully we should have been doing before this, but we didn't necessarily. says there's still virus out there. And as we get lots of people with one vaccine, our risk of transmitting to other people, particularly outdoors, is lower. And that's true. And it's mostly true for now. And I think that people really want to hold that close. And in the UK, we've watched people get together, do things,

and it hasn't led to catastrophe in at least the first few weeks of doing that after people have been fully vaccinated, not with one dose. So then that brings you back to what we do right now. And this is where my take on this is that there's a risk stratification, a risk benefit ratio. And the virus right now is still out there. And because we still have a lot of cases globally and nationally, the virus is still changing. And so looking backward and at just today and what the risk is today and what the virus match to the vaccine is today is great. But we better be darn careful as we go forward that we're keeping track of what the virus is doing in response. We're going to this ability to go out without masks, to go out with partially vaccinated people, is giving virus opportunity. Not saying we shouldn't do it, but again, the cautious part of

me says we're offering opportunity, and are we okay with that? Because the virus itself will take any opportunity to change, to mutate, to take any advantage we give it. So we just should be mindful as we go forward that it may take this opportunity as we open up more and perhaps a little quickly while cases are still spreading in the community. We should be very careful because vaccines, we've got to give them a fighting chance. They protect us.

We should protect them. And opening up a little too fast it's really kind of like sending out your best weapon all by itself with no backup sometimes so we just shouldn't do it too fast i'm a little worried that with a lot of community spread still that we are opening things a little too fast and making our vaccines have to work harder than they should by giving virus opportunity and by sending them out as the only tool. Why would we take away a simple tool like a mask in easy situations? That's going to help protect our vaccine as we go forward. So that's a complex answer, but I think it's nuanced at this stage.

There's no easy right or wrong. If it were me and I was holding all the reins, I'd suggest easy things like masks are easy. They don't hurt us. They offer some protection to our vaccine at a time when we haven't completely suppressed virus. And maybe not a bad idea, especially if you're going to put people together in larger circumstances for a little while. And I don't see a really great reason not to do that at this point.

So I would say let's be mindful, keep an eye on it, but it might be a little early to send our vaccines out without any protection. Yeah, in fairness, because I mentioned all the American situations, they seem to have a kind of a tiered situation in some of those arenas that if you've had both doses, you're in one particular area where they're pretty well jammed together. if you've only had one dose or if you just have uh you know proof that you've tested you know negative in the last 48 hours you're in

another area so they seem to be doing some things to try and keep things but they are in an enclosed building yeah and so okay so you notice if you look at the CDC and their map of community spread, that has not fallen off the map, so to speak, the way the UK's did after they had that many people with two doses, because there was so much more community spread there at parts of the heights in some of these states. Again, why would we test our vaccines this way so early when we can do something so easy for a few more months? So I'm mindful of the fact that we may be burning a resource here without a good reason. And our vaccines are great, but I'd like to keep them that way instead of chasing mutants for a long time like we have done with the flu. We have good tools now. We have opportunity. And a little piece of me says that it's a little too early and we're going to look back in three months and go, oh, geez.

Now, who thought this was a good idea with all this community spread to do this at that point? So it's good to pause and wonder if there's maybe having people together and just leaving the masks on for a bit longer or slightly smaller groups for a little longer. That might be a bit prudent. What would be a red flag for you at this moment? If it sort of goes on as I just earlier described, what would say to you, okay, you know, fine, that was a test, but this is not working and this is why it's not working there's a red flag yeah any any increase in case numbers in a given region um especially in a partially vaccinated population would be a very very bad sign but guess what to see that people are going to have to keep testing and they're going to have to make robust no symptom testing

surveillance plans both for the genomics the how fast the virus is mutating and for the case numbers or else unlike flu which is more symptomatic we're going to be way behind before we figure this out with this virus. And we've learned that before. I don't think we need to learn that lesson again. Last question, and it's on the second doses situation. I know there are different vaccine and the AstraZeneca thing still is a question mark about how they're going to move these second doses

out on AstraZeneca. But how critical is it in Canada for us to get that fully vaccinated number up and quickly? Because it's still, I mean, we're doing great on first doses. Second doses still, you know, double vaccines, still very low, still in single digits. Yeah, I mean, it's incredibly incredibly important because people it has nothing to do honestly with the science it's incredibly important because people are acting like they've had two doses and they're seeing all around them in different countries people who've

had two doses doing two dose things and they've got one dose and they want to do two dose things and i think that human behavior part will be outstripped quickly by policy. You can make whatever policy you like. We're all tired. That's not a negative comment on Canadians. It's where we are. And if people act like two dosers and they're one dosers, we're going to, again, run into some trouble. So I think it's incredibly important for us to keep this pace, to keep that pressure on the manufacturing distribution and rollout very, very quickly, not at a leisurely pace. And we're going, I suspect, if we're going to be very, very successful, we're going to have

to offer the right incentives to all people without worrying about, you know, it not be, you know, we shouldn't have to incentivize people or people should just want to do this. We're going to need to work hard to get to certain populations and make sure that we reach them in the way they want and need to be reached. It's not good enough to just get the 70%. That's easy. Dr. Lisa Barrett in Halifax, as always, thanks so much for this. No problem. Happy to be

here. Stop acting like you've had two doses if you've only had one dose. Good advice. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, the latest, the latest data on the work from home debate all right peter mansbridge back again with uh the bridge. And one of the things we've talked about, boy, I think since the first week we were on in March of 2020, is what was it going to be like if we went back to work? You know, would things change as a result of the whole experiment of working from home? And there's been a robust debate on that,

and there are people who feel, you know, I really want to get back to work, and it's damaging not to be at the office. And there are those who say, no, this is working. This is working on all kinds of levels. And so we've been marking this, especially in the last six weeks or so, as we get closer to that decision for a lot of workplaces and a lot of employees. And there's some new data

out. You know, these things don't always tend to agree with each other, these various studies that have been going on. And there's some new data that's in the Columbia Journalism Review, the current edition, and it's interesting. Here's their conclusions. Once again, the Columbia Journalism Review. Employees aren't eager to go back full-time. In an anonymous survey, the Los Angeles Times Guild found that only 1.4% of respondents,

1.5%, want to work in the office five days a week. The most popular alternative was coming in two days a week. That was around a third of respondents. Almost as many people, 28.2%, said they prefer not to be there at all. I do all the work that I need to do, but if I do it in six hours, then I don't feel like I need to just be like sitting there, said one person. Whereas when you're in the office, there's more of that performance aspect of work, where you kind of have to look busy, even if there's nothing to be busy with. The biggest factor in not wanting to return to the office full time, commuting.

That's interesting. I think we talked about that a little bit at the beginning of this experiment. We'll call it that. But it's interesting that for the people surveyed in this study, commuting was the biggest reason for not wanting to return. A respondent to the LA Times survey remarked that my therapist and I determined that my commute was a major contributor to my anxiety issues. Another described the trek as soul-crushing.

Someone said it didn't make sense to spend 15 hours a week commuting when there are no good stories to be found at my desk. That's so true. You know, I can remember back when I was working in Ottawa in the 1970s, early 80s. And one of my fellow reporters, one of my colleagues, was Mike Duffy, who was a reporter, young reporter in those days in the Ottawa Bureau, just like I was. And Duffy used to break stories all the time and there was another thing about him that you noticed he was never in the office especially in the mornings now most of us thought he was just sleeping in and I'm sure on some days he was but in other days when the question would arise Duffy why weren't you here

for the morning meeting we used to get together every morning and talk potential stories. And Duffy would say, there are no stories in the office. And of course, he was right. What Duffy used to do was haunt the halls of Parliament when he wasn't sleeping in. But he would haunt those halls. He'd talk to people from MP's office, from Senator's office, when he wasn't sleeping in. But he would haunt those halls. He'd talk to people from MP's office, from Senator's office,

from the Prime Minister's office, and he'd come up with stories. And it was hard to argue with him because he was delivering as much or more than anybody else in the Bureau. But so when I saw that phrase by this LA Times reporter, there are no good stories to be found at my desk, I get it. Matt Pierce, a technology reporter at the LA Times and president of the Guild, called the survey a damning indictment of what commutes do to workers, how much it hurts their physical and mental well-being,

how much it impedes their family life, and in fact, how much it impacts their productivity. So there are a number of things in this study, but here's how it concludes. Well, I think you get it how it concludes. It concludes by saying, you might want to think about this a little longer before you make a final decision. And it seems, as has been drifting towards in these last few months, some kind of halfway measure may be the answer. This kind of hybrid method of how we're going to work in the future.

Some of it at work, some of it at home. Of course, this all depends on the type of job you have, the kind of profession that you're in. But it appears there's going to be some change. It's a tough call on the businesses, on the companies, and the employer. Because it impacts everything. It impacts their cost of operations. How big an office do they need?

How many desks? How many phone lines? How many internet connections? You name it. All of this has an impact. So that decision, not made yet on the part of a lot of companies, but they're considering it. And it's an interesting decision that's going to affect the lives

of literally millions of people across North America, both in Canada and in the United States. And not just employers and employees. It's going to affect families. It's going to affect home life. You can't work in your living room. You have to have some space in your home to work

if you're going to work from home. All right. That debate will go on, and I encourage you to write in about it, as many of you have been doing. You can always reach me at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Hockey. I know some of you are expecting me to say something about hockey.

Well, as I said on Friday, in the Stanley Cup, there's a reason they play best of seven. As I said on Friday morning, they don't play best of one. They play best of seven. My team, my current team, the Leafs, are up two games to one. But you don't play best of three in the Stanley Cup. You play best of seven. There's a long way to go in that series.

Now, my other next favorite team is the Winnipeg Jets. They play best of seven. And it's done. It's all over. They crushed the mighty Oilers. Four games to none. Now, come on. Did anybody think that would happen?

There were diehard Jets fans, no doubt about it, who felt they could beat Edmonton and Connor McDavid. But four games to none? I don't know anybody who thought that. I don't know anybody on the Winnipeg Jets team who would have thought that. But they did it. And good for them.

That may well have been their Stanley Cup right there, no matter what happens going forward. The history of those two teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs where always Edmonton beat Winnipeg through God knows how many decades now. But not this year. And good for them. Good for those players.

Good for Paul Maurice, the coach. He's had a rough year. A lot of people second-guessing Paul Maurice. And we know Paul. He used to be the coach of the Leafs. And what a series that team and that coach has had. So congratulations to the Jets. Take a pause.

Take a break. You could have a week or 10 days off before your next game. So use that time wisely. All right. Time for us to say goodbye for the day and to push you forward into the week. Of course, tomorrow's Wednesday. Smoke mirrors and the truth. The old radish farmer, have you been looking at his Twitter site? Man, oh, man.

Is he growing those radishes or what i'm sure we'll have a moment to talk about that tomorrow friday the weekend special and in between all kinds of goodies so that's it for this day I'm Peter Mansbridge thanks for listening to The Bridge on this day we'll be back in 24 hours