The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What’s Really Behind These Latest Travel Restrictions?

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

What was really behind the latest travel restrictions imposed by Ottawa, and whatever happened to the excitement surrounding vaccines?  Two key stories The Bridge looks at with two special guests -- both who focus on science not politics.  Dr Lisa Barret in Halifax and Dr Isaac Bogotch in  Toronto.  And then for some thing very different, will you need a covid sniffing dog to get you into a Leafs (or Habs, Jets, Senators, Flames, Oilers, Canucks) game?

Hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge, and you are just moments away from today's episode of The Bridge, where we'll try to answer a bunch of questions, including this one. What's really behind all the new COVID travel restrictions? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday, it's February. Welcome to all of them, and welcome to our latest audience. Joining us from SiriusXM, Canada Talks, channel 167. And we're so happy to have you with us on this special first day for you. Now, perhaps some of you have listened to The Bridge before.

It's a podcast, has been for the last year and a half. But for those of you who haven't, let me give you a snapshot as to who we are, who I am. Some of you may remember my name, Peter Mansbridge. I used to be the host of The National, was for, you know, 30 years on the CBC. Well, this is not The National. All right, that's the first thing you got to get your head around. This is not The National. The National is still The National. They do a fabulous job at the CBC. And the CBC are good friends of mine. I still work for the CBC at times. I do documentaries for them, feature-length documentaries. So no problem there with that relationship. Let me tell you who

we are, what we do. This started really as, well, it's kind of a hobby. In the summer of 2019, I thought, all this stuff about podcasts, I've got to give it a try. And so, in fact, that's exactly what I did. I started one here in Stratford, Ontario, in my little office area of the house. Got a little kind of a broadcast kit and started doing a podcast. And the whole idea was, once again, it's not a newscast, was just to be kind of laid back, be Peter, be that Peter that they didn't see on television, talk about issues of the day, have the occasional guest, ramble and rant whenever I wanted to. And so we did that through the campaign of 2019, the election campaign, did that on a nightly basis, and then kind of stopped. You know,

weekly, every couple of weeks, I'd say something, do something. And then COVID hit, as we all know, almost a year ago now. March of last year is when it really took hold, and that's when we started doing, once again, a daily Monday to Friday podcast, The Bridge. And it became, like, quite popular. Surprisingly so, given what it is. It's just a ramble every day. But it became popular, and it started to garner a certain degree of interest on the part of other media organizations, to the point at which we've worked out this wonderful arrangement with the good people at SiriusXM. And getting the opportunity to be on Canada Talks, Channel 167, is a great opportunity. So that gives you kind of the background as to who we are, who I am, and what we do.

And while it started as a result, you know, in a serious form because of COVID, we still deal with COVID quite a bit, and we're going to today on a couple of key issues. But that's not all we talk about. We talk about a number of other things. And the week is kind of split up with some extra special programming. On Wednesdays, we have a segment that we call Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson, the political analyst and pollster who's based in Ottawa, joins us, kind of co-hosts that show on Wednesdays.

Occasionally, we have a guest. This week, we have a guest with us, with Bruce and I, and that's Bob Ray, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations. Looking forward to talking to Ambassador Ray. Fridays is a show we call the weekend special because it's really your show. We get to hear from you. All week you can write letters to me at the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com,

the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, and give me your thoughts, your comments, your questions about the issues of the day. And occasionally I'll throw out a question I'd like to hear you answer. And the beauty of that podcast, broadcast now, is the fact that it gives us a sense of Canada because our listeners are really from coast to coast to coast,

and we hear from them all the time. And they capture a sense of Canada and who it is we are as Canadians and as a country. And I love reading those letters. So that's Fridays. Every day in between, who knows what might pop up. So let me talk about today's Fridays. Every day in between, who knows what might pop up. So let me talk about today's show. And to do that, let me start by going back in my life. When I was a kid growing up, I don't know, 5, 6, 7, 8 years old,

like many of you, I guess, my parents had dreams about what I might turn into someday. And I guess they never pressured me, but I guess if there was a thought, I think my dad wanted me to be a lawyer. That's what he'd always wanted to be. He loved the cut and thrust of debate, and so do I. So he wanted me to be a lawyer. My mom wanted me to be a doctor. And, well, let's put it this way. I'm not a doctor, and I'm not a lawyer, and I never had the marks to get either into law school or med school.

In fact, I never had the marks, period. And so when I left high school, I went and joined the Navy and had a great time, which eventually, and this is a whole other story we'll get into someday, I ended up at the CBC. So what was it about being a doctor, say, that my mother was so impressed by? Well, part of the reason was she was impressed by the fact that doctors have the public trust. And they really do. And they always have had the public trust.

And it kind of goes with this whole issue of frontline health care workers. It could be doctors, it could be nurses, it could be paramedics, firefighters, police officers. There's this sense that they are trusted by the public. And, you know, that is backed up. Every once in a while you'll see public trust indicators done by research firms looking at who does the public trust, which professions are those that the public trusts. And at the top of the list, almost always, are nurses, doctors.

They're always up there with very high ratings as opposed to some other professions. I won't get into it, but let's just say journalists are not having a good time on the trust factor these days and they've got to work at that. And that too is a subject for another day and I'm sure we'll get into it. But let me focus on doctors and the reason why I'm talking about this.

Today, in talking about COVID, we're going to address a couple of things that have really bugged me in the last few days, since the end of last week. I thought about it a lot over the weekend. Two areas. One are these new travel restrictions that the government's put in. You've heard about them. You know, we can't go to the Caribbean or Mexico anymore, and there's all kinds of quarantine actions that face you

when you come back into the country, including staying at a hotel at your own expense for a number of days while they wait you out to see whether you're brought back anything with you. So my question is, okay, why now? Why is this happening now? So that's one question. The other question surrounds vaccines. Hey, a month ago, we were all singing the Hallelujah Chorus about vaccines, and for good reason. A couple of companies, Pfizer and Moderna, had come up with an acceptable vaccine that was going to do all kinds of wonderful things. And it will do all kinds of wonderful things, but there have been so many issues around the rollout. Right? What happened?

What's gone wrong there? So that's the other question that has been bugging me the last few days. So, you know, I could go to, you know, some political figure, and I've got nothing personally against politicians, but I could go to some of them, or I could go to science for some answers. And that's why the first two guests on today's broadcast are doctors,

and doctors that I've got an enormous amount of respect for. I've talked to a lot of doctors over the last, what, 10, 11 months, and they've all been great. These two are, you know, certainly special in my mind I think they're terrific So who are they? Well, in a couple of minutes we'll talk to Dr. Lisa Barrett She's in Halifax She's in the Atlantic bubble, right? And we'll talk to Dr. Barrett about the vaccine question

But first up I want to talk to Dr. Isaac Bogoch. He's in Toronto, University Health Network. He teaches at U of T. I mean, these doctors are amazing. They do so many different things. They do doctorish stuff, obviously, and they have patients. They're both experts in infectious diseases, and so therefore they're called upon to talk about and advise on COVID-19. They sit on various committees. They're still doctors, don't forget. And they've got families.

They've got kids. And yet the two of them have been working if not every day, certainly parts of every day for most of the last year. You know I talked to Dr. Bogoch over the weekend and I said, you know how's that getting along with your family these days? And he said you know I'm so happy. This was Sunday, you know, I'm so happy. This was a Sunday afternoon. He said, I'm so happy. I just had a chance to spend two hours on the Toboggan Hill with my kids.

Well, you know that for so many people, so many Canadians, that's a normal part of the weekend. Even these days, with all the restrictions placed on us, getting outside, having some recreational fun under the right conditions, is kind of par for the course. Here was Dr. Bogoch going, I'm so, so happy that I managed to pull this off. He tries to section out, and I'm sure Dr. Barrett's the same way, a part of each day with his kids. And for him, it's, you know, it's around the supper hour. They try to have dinner together and he tries to help with schoolwork every day, as well as all these other things. You know, his day, and I'm sure Dr. Barrett's no different, is kind of like 5 a.m. Every day. Every day.

For the last, well, the last year. All right. Let's get to the interviews, right? Remember, we're going to talk travel restrictions and we're going to talk vaccines. Let's get it going with with Dr. Bogoch. All right, Dr. Bogoch, what was the latest travel restriction thing all about?

Like, was that smart? Well, for starters, the Public Health Agency of Canada has said that you should avoid all non-essential travel, and they said that in March of 2020. So this basically provides teeth to the recommendation that we've had for almost a year. Why now? Why now? Exactly. Why now?

Do we assume that it was just, you know, that was the recommendation almost a year ago. They didn't follow it or people didn't follow it. So they're now doing it a year later or almost a year later. I see several possible reasons for this. One is it's never too late to turn around when you're going down the wrong path. And, you know, this truly will provide some, I don't know how much, but some incremental level of protection, especially with importing circulating variants. That's important because they're here. And the fewer we have imported, the better,

because it will make controlling the epidemic in Canada more challenging. So certainly that it does provide some incremental benefit. Is that what it's all about, really? Is it all about those variants, you know, the virus mutating? They're worried now. They're really worried, and they're pulling in all the stops or trying to do something to stop that? Yeah, that's probably some component of it.

I think there was another component of pressure from the provincial governments, and we heard very vocal Quebec and Ontario provincial governments saying, you know, why aren't you doing something? Why aren't you shoring up these borders? And I think a lot of it was certainly political pressure. I think a third thing too was they were nervous. I mean, March break is around the corner. We know Canadians were traveling a lot internationally,

and I think they're probably nervous about tons of Canadians going away for March break and then coming back with COVID-19. And I think we can't forget in all of this that throughout all this, we've had the Quarantine Act, and we've also had more recently ensuring that people have a negative test 72 hours before they return to Canada. Those policies, well, of course they're not perfect. They cushion the blow for Canada significantly. Even the Quarantine Act, yeah, it's not perfect, but that really cushioned the blow

for Canada over the last almost year that we've had this. So this adds incremental level of protection at a time where there are variants of concerns circulating and emerging globally, and at a time where we are at a position where we can, we can get our epidemic under control in Canada, this should not by any means detract from the much, much, much larger task, which is getting the infection under control in Canadian settings, right? Safer workplaces, safer schools,

reducing community transmission and rolling out vaccines on a mass level. What about double masking? I mean, the masking story is a fantastic one. A year ago, there was kind of debate about whether or not there should be masks. Then it became masks. Now it's double masks. What's next? You know, triple masking? I mean, I'm not making light of it.

I was double masking myself in the last couple of days. But why double masking? Yeah. So, so for starters, I mean, I think we have to remember those January, people were asking, should we be masking in January and February of 2020 when we had, you know, zero to five cases in the country. And obviously no one needs to mask with that. I think that those are, that's totally reasonable. And of course we saw mask policy and

attitudes change with time. And that was, that was great. As long as it evolves in real time. Now we're hearing, should we double mask? I think the key thing here is like anything else, let's be open-minded to the data. Let's be careful and let's be skeptical. And we can be three things simultaneously. The key here is number one, are people actually wearing masks in indoor settings where we know the vast majority of transmission is occurring? And we should be definitely, that should be, you know, our biggest priority. Priority two is, are you wearing the right masks? And, you know, Public Health Agency of Canada talks about triple layered masks or even surgical masks in those settings. You know, clearly those are really good. The third point is, are you wearing your mask correctly?

Meaning, is it fit? Is it over your nose and mouth? Or are you doing one of those, you know, chin mask wearing kind of bits, which is clearly not the right way to do it. And as long as we're doing those three things, I think we'll be okay. People are talking about bigger and better masks. Honestly, I think at this point in the game, I'm not entirely sure if that's the right way to go. As long as we are using the public health

agency recommended masks, and we're wearing them right, and we're wearing the right places, I think we'll protect Canadians. Having said that, things change. Data changes. Maybe we'll adjust that. Maybe those recommendations will change but for now i think the phiac has has it right let me go back to travel again for a moment because you know everybody compares the situations in other countries whether it's new zealand or australia or some of the countries in southeast asia often these countries like new zealand australia i, they are islands. They do have an advantage of some sort, especially in New Zealand.

But, you know, when you look at Canada, it's a huge country. We're focusing on international travel. You get it. But what about domestic travel? I mean, we've got a lot of movement here, even with the lack of usage of airlines, at least as much as the airlines would like to see them used, is domestic travel an issue? Yeah, I think if we're asking the question,

how do we better control this virus in Canada and in the various provinces, I sort of think of it as a buffet approach, and you can sort of select different things from the buffet table, and each one will provide incremental levels of benefit. But at the end of the day, if you prevent people from moving around and if you prevent people from coming into contact with each other, it's going to add incremental benefit. So, you know, certainly, you know, interprovincial travel restrictions. Yeah, I mean, they'd help.

There's other places around the world who are talking about travel restrictions in and around your house and only allowing people out of their house for certain periods of time during the day. That also helps. But I think we have to balance that with asking ourselves as Canadians, what are we accepting of? What are we willing to do? And with any public health intervention, there's a cost and there's a benefit. And are we willing to pay the price to do that? I think the other very important point that often gets left out of these conversations is that of equity. So whenever we're imposing these public health restrictions, there are people that are disproportionately impacted, not just by the virus, but by policies to curb the virus. These are lower income communities.

These are racialized communities. And we have to think about how these policies will disproportionately impact those. We still have essential workers. We still have essential workplaces open. And will these policies that we have to curb the virus transmission disproportionately impact them? Often the time is yes. So yeah, of course we can think about adding restrictions and whatnot. We also should be simultaneously thinking about adding support, support, support, creating safer workspaces, supporting communities that are impacted by the virus and by policies to curb the virus's spread. Last point, quick one on the variants one more time. The variants are already in Canada, right? I mean, they have proven cases of the UK one.

I think at least a cases of the UK one. I think at least a few of the South Africa, I'm not sure about Brazil, but they're already here. So are these travel things happening too late? Are they thinking the next variant down the road? Yeah. I mean, great point. Like I think the big one is the variant discovered in the UK,

this B.1.1.7 variant, which is going to be a problem in Canada. We have to take it seriously. It is more transmissible, and you have to truly work harder to keep that under control compared to, let's just call it garden variety COVID-19. You truly have to work harder to keep that under control and from spreading. It's here, and there's community transmission, and that's a problem. And it's going to continue to be a problem. Luckily, the vaccines work against this. So the goal is hold the fort, buckle down as best as you can to prevent this transmission in the community

and then vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate as swiftly as possible. But of course, those travel measures do a couple of things. Number one, they prevent the introduction of that variant and potentially other variants, which have potentially other problems like decreased vaccine efficacy. So, you know, obviously, the prior travel measures were really, really good, but they're not perfect. These current

travel measures add incremental protection, but we still have to appreciate that they're probably not going to be perfect. And they don't, they shouldn't detract from working our butts off to keep community transmission low. While we have an opportunity to vaccinate as many people as possible. Let's leave it at that for, for this week. It's always great to talk to you, Dr. I don't know how you guys deal with all the things you do, including having to talk to the media every once in a while.

Good luck on the front lines of all this. It's quite something to watch, and we really appreciate the hard work that you and your colleagues do. So thank you. My pleasure. Have a great day. So there you go, Dr. Isaac Bogoch from the University Health Network in Toronto. So let's switch from Toronto to Halifax. You know, we were talking about islands there with Dr. Bogoch. Well, in some ways, you know, Atlantic Canada has been an island. They call it the Atlantic bubble. They've been extremely successful.

Other areas, if they haven't already learned from Atlantic Canada, should be learning from Atlantic Canada. And one of those advocates for the way Atlantic Canada has performed has been, you know, our next guest, Dr. Lisa Barrett from Dalhousie University, but also like Dr. Bogoch, working, you know, any number of hours every day on a variety of different things as they all relate to the battle against the virus COVID-19.

Want to talk to her about vaccines? So let's get it started. All right, Dr. Barrett, you know, in a month we've gone from, you know, seemingly jubilation to like real worry. What happened? Well, we've been talking about vaccine as the thing that's coming for about, oh, I don't know, almost a year now. And suddenly we have been told that when vaccine comes, the world will be right, not immediately, but very soon, that this was the way to get where

we wanted to go. And now we're talking about delays in manufacturing. We're talking about potentially virus that may or may not respond as well. We're talking about populations of people that may not get access. So I think we've taken the soundbite of the vaccine Kool-Aid being the all answer. And we all drank it because we needed to at the time. And now we need to reconsider what the actual facts are around how much the vaccine does and if we are in a disastrous state without it so in many ways it was it was false hope um well it wasn't false hope it was misplaced hope well i think i think we all wanted one answer and i put myself in this bucket as well, even though I know the science and I know the details, we all wanted one answer. We wanted a one-pronged answer that wasn't hard, it wasn't

behavioral, it didn't take things away from us. We were getting something that would help us. And after that shot, all we had to do was wait for it to work. Our bodies would do the rest. And it was never going to be that easy. And I think coming back to that reality and understanding what we can do while we're figuring out the vaccine bits, both getting more and rollout is going to be a little bit difficult. Has the rollout been bungled somehow? I mean, I realize that anything like this is obviously, there are going to be issues because we haven't done it before, anything like this. But it just seems that on every level or something's seemingly gone wrong, you know, governments either haven't ordered the right stuff or enough of the right stuff or on the conditions that they should have ordered it. Companies are kind of running out of supply.

They're having problems at plants. You know know it's kind of one thing after another is is that is it fair to say it's been somewhat bungled I actually don't think it's fair I think it's headline worthy when something changes and I think this isn't a headline explainable situation do I think we ordered the right things in large quantities? I actually think we did a pretty good job of that. And I think the vaccine task force nationally did a pretty good job of that. Do I think that we have looked at all of the options in terms of strategizing implementation of the rollout in the most innovative ways possible? No, I think we could do better at that to make it faster,

you know, using different resources in each province. So I think that's been a bit of a delay. But right now, not much you can do about the fact that companies who are brand new to making something are having difficulty meeting demand globally. There is a COVAX, an international WHO-supported collaboration of companies that want to buy and keep each other in the price loop so that one country doesn't get access before another. Canada's part of that, and I think we should stay part of that. I don't think that it would be a great or Canadian idea to go and, because we are getting short of vaccine, decide that we need to go and pay more and take it from other countries, if you will. There's only a finite supply. And that comes back to understanding what vaccine

can and should do and what our other tools are in the toolbox to either contain or mitigate right now. Well, I guess that becomes the key because so many of us want, we want the vaccine like yesterday, even though there's been this, you know, it's been explained to us, the age groups and those most in need, et cetera, et cetera. Everybody wants it fast. We should be, it sounds like you're suggesting we should be less, you know, fascinated with when we get the vaccine and more

fascinated with how we deal with life in the interim in the meantime absolutely and when I say that we should have a plan for vaccine that looks at things from a population perspective and a science perspective I don't say that as an Atlantic Canadian I've watched the headlines start to swish up over and you notice I keep saying headlines because they only take into account about one eighteenth of the complexity of this topic. And it really generates confusion and fear in people. And it's not the way we need to go right now. And right now, we need to figure out what vaccine does, remember what other tools we have in our toolboxes to help people, and then think about without thinking provincially about where we need to

send the vaccines that we have to the places we need. And that doesn't just mean sending them to places with high case numbers, because the science may not suggest that that's the best idea all the time. You know, the last time you and I talked, it was a couple of weeks ago, and this issue of whether or not you had to take, or whether or not you should absolutely take the two doses, you should take the two doses, but whether you had to do them within the prescribed time limit was up. And you were very clear. Listen, the tests were all done on whatever it happened to be, 28 days between the two

doses for one particular vaccine. And you should stick to what obviously worked in the tests. I'm wondering if you still feel that way, because there seem to be an increasing number of, you know, experts who are saying, we better get this out there as fast as we can because of the variants we should be vaccinating as many people as we can and just hope that second dose gets here in time do the two doses at the time that they're supposed to be given to promote the generation of the best immunity that we know of at the moment, and also give it to people who have vulnerability that can't be changed. And that means age and or places where there's been no natural immunity

because the cases have been low. Those are considerations. And secondarily, when you're talking about spreading the vaccine out, yeah, maybe consider people who are older to be at the top of your list no matter where you are, but you just can't leave out other groups or areas because they haven't had cases. And that's not, again, it's really tough because I live in Atlantic Canada, but I say this as an immunologist, several parts of this haven't really been discussed nationally or well in the public domain. And we need to start having more conversations about morality or the right thing to do and prevent deaths.

There are longer term implications here in moderate term. And P.S., back to our original part of this conversation, there are other tools in our toolbox to help contain cases in places with high numbers of virus in people than just the vaccine. And right now, P.S., we don't have any more. So we better come up with going back to plan A. Yeah, no kidding. Listen, as always, Dr. Barrett, you sorted out a lot of this stuff for us, and we appreciate your time.

Oh, thanks. I'm sure we appreciate your time. Oh, thanks. I'm sure we'll talk again. We sure will. Bye. And we sure will, for sure, Dr. Lisa Barrett, and before her, Dr. Isaac Bogoch. All right, more to come, including COVID sniffing dogs. Really?

Is that how you're finally getting to get to go to a Canucks game an Oilers game Flames game Senators Habs Leafs game is that what it's going to take So, do you like hockey? I like hockey. I'll admit it. I'm a big, huge hockey fan. And in the last, you know, few weeks, it's been great to see hockey back. It's not quite like the old Saturday nights, but it's still pretty good. Now, I'll also admit, I'm, you know, I'm a fan of a couple of teams, the Leafs, Toronto, and the Jets from my time

living in Winnipeg, but mainly a Leafs fan. And I'm a season ticket holder for both the Leafs and for the Toronto Raptors, the basketball team, the 2019 world champs. But so what? I'm a season ticket holder. You can't go to the games. So that's an essential part of the whole sports experience that we're not getting so what's going

to change that well i imagine it's going to be a stage process over the next probably few years before we ever see again what we used to see in the arenas of this country but in the meantime they're testing out a few ideas and i was was watching with interest last, I guess it was Thursday night, the Miami Heat, the NBA, that home game, and they decided they were going to allow 1,500 fans in the arena to watch the game. But those 1,500 fans were going to have to be checked out by COVID-sn sniffing dogs.

And that's what they did. The fans all had to line up socially distant. They had spots outside the arena. And the dogs would go by them. And if the dog kept on walking, they were fine. If the dog stopped and walking, they were fine. If the dog stopped and sat beside them, that wasn't a good sign. That meant they were going to have to be tested and they weren't going into the game.

So that's, they're going to test this a few times, I imagine, but is that the possible way of the future? Apparently they've tried it in various places in the world. They've certainly tried it in airports, apparently in Chile and Finland and in the UAE, the United Arab Emirates. They're trying it in some studies that have been done in Germany and they were able to sniff out, I think it was some incredible number,

like 90% or 94% of those who had COVID. So that could be the way of the future. If you want to go to a game, you have to be sniffed out first by one of these special dog sniffers. You know, I was talking last week with a friend of mine in the travel business, and they were talking about just how devastating COVID has been for them. We know cruise lines all over the world have had to stop. There are a couple trying right now in different exotic places.

But for the most part, there are no cruises and there are ports in different areas of the world where they're stacked up with the cruise ships of the past waiting. In some cases, still with their crews on board, waiting for the possibility of opening up again. But the travel business, tourism in general, has, as we all know, been really hit. So has the wedding business.

And I saw this little story of interest in the New York Times over the weekend about weddings and how so many had to be cancelled in the summer of 2020. I'm sure you may well have had friends or relatives who had weddings scheduled, had to cancel them because they couldn't get people together for the normal wedding celebrations. And so they're trying to reassess for this coming summer, the summer of 2021, from this moment on the 1st of February, man, things don't look good about that possibility. But still, if

you're going to have a wedding, you got to plan it. And so I imagine a lot of people are trying to plan it. And there are two conflicting arguments. And here they are, as expressed in the New York Times over the weekend. You've got one argument from a fellow by the name of Keith Willard. He's a wedding planner in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He's among those who are opposed to requesting guests be vaccinated because that's the latest thing. It's not good enough just to be able to say, I have a negative test. Some wedding planners are suggesting you've got to have a vaccination

and you've got to be able to prove you've been vaccinated. Well, Keith Willard's not a fan of that. Here's what he says. I know in this day and age it seems that everyone feels they have the right to ask almost anything from their guests, suggesting vaccination is a totally different story. Guests should be allowed to make decisions that make them comfortable. That's Keith Willard's argument. Now, put that against this

from Lawina Bayer. She's an expert on civility in the workplace. Where does she come from? She comes from Calgary. And the New York Times tracked her down. She said that if there were high-risk guests, their health was worth risking perceived bad etiquette. She said it was acceptable to ask people to vaccinate, recognizing that some guests might choose not to attend. So the Times figured, well, we've got to get more than just those two people. We've got to get, let's hear from science. So they did a survey of 700 epidemiologists. They did this in December.

They found that the doctors were still worried about the longevity of immunity, the mutation of the virus, and vaccine distribution. All things we've talked about today, right? 3% of the epidemiologists said they have attended or would have attended a wedding or a funeral within the month before the survey. And half of those surveyed said they would not return

to the pre-pandemic normal until at least 70% of the population were vaccinated. 70%. Well, even by the most optimistic guesses and surveys 70% ain't going to be reached this summer it's going to be late summer or early fall

under the best of scenarios where that'll be reached finally I like this Nathan Ochoa a wedding videographer in Seattle where that'll be reached. Finally, I like this. Nathan Ochoa, a wedding videographer in Seattle, told the Times that some of his clients had already been requiring current COVID-negative tests from guests and vendors, and that he would happily embrace couples

who stipulate getting the vaccine when available. This is his closing comment. With how dangerous weddings can be with close proximity to one another, stipulate getting the vaccine when available. This is his closing comment. With how dangerous weddings can be with close proximity to one another, the open buffet line to the open dance floor at the end of the evening, it's terrifying not knowing if grandma is going to be alive in two weeks or not. I guess that's really the story, right? That's how you sum it up.

Okay, final thought for this first day of February, first day for our good friends at SiriusXM, Canada Talks, Channel 167, who have joined us on the bridge and all our podcast listeners from coast to coast to coast and and in different parts of the world we've had letters and emails from all over the world we even had one last week from a guy on a ship in the north atlantic who loved it he was tuned in he was like engaged in the conversation of the discussion we were having. Anyway, this is from, you know how we always like to say, everybody gets 15 minutes of

fame. Right? That's what we like to say. Well, I guess in many ways that happens. And you see somebody do something and everybody's talking about them and you go, well, is that their 15 minutes of fame or are we ever going to hear from that person again? So the last time that conversation came up in earshot of me was on Inauguration Day.

Remember Amanda Gorman? Amanda Gorman was that fabulous young poet who spoke at Joe Biden's inauguration, and she was a rock star on that day. And in the days immediately afterwards, she popped up on all kinds of shows. She turned down the invitation from the bridge. We're still working on that.

Anyway, the debate was, okay, so what happens after those first couple of days are over? Will we ever hear from Amanda Gorman again? Will that be a name we remember a couple of weeks from now? Well, it's a couple of weeks from now, now. And I think most of you knew exactly who I was talking about as soon as I mentioned her name. And you're going to know more after the end of this week. Why? Because according to BuzzFeed News, Amanda Gorman will be the first poet to ever perform during a Super Bowl. That's right.

Amanda Gorman, 22 years old, will honour three people who have served their communities during the coronavirus pandemic. And she will do that at the Super Bowl, which I believe is this Sunday.

And if things go the way of the team that I'm going to be cheering for, they'll be the underdog. But if they do, they'll probably rename the Super Bowl and call it the Brady Bowl. Don't you think that would be fair? All right, big week coming up. Tomorrow, I'm going to focus on, as I said, we don't do COVID every day.

We do all kinds of different issues. Tomorrow, I'm going to pull one sort of out of the hat of my particular interest. Because there have been a couple of new reports on the issue of the Arctic ice melt. And I think there's some things that we tend not to talk about on this story, and I want to talk about it. And so I'm going to spend a bit of time tomorrow on that. And I'll tell you some, you know, people like, apparently they like to hear from me on things that have happened

in my career, different little moments and anecdotes, and I'll tell a couple on that one. So that's tomorrow, Arctic ice melt. It's actually the overall ice melt, not just the Arctic, but the Antarctic as well, and the impact that's going to have on a number of different areas. Wednesday, Bruce Anderson will be here with what we used to call a podcast within a podcast, kind of show within a show. We call it Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. And our guest this week is going to be Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Ray.

Looking forward to talking to Ambassador Ray with Bruce Anderson on Wednesday. So there you go. That's the bridge for this first day of February. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You know, thank you so much for listening. We'll be back again in 24 hours. Thank you.