The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - "When Is This Going To End?" And .... Why 4000 Steps A Day Should Be Your Minimum Goal.

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Okay if we are in this for the long haul we have to do more than hide inside the house sitting on the couch watching Netflix.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the Bridge Daily. I don't know what the weather has been like for you where you are on this day, but I can tell you here in the heart of southwest Ontario, it's been for the most part a gorgeous day, a gorgeous early spring day. So not overly warm, in fact cool perhaps, but blue sky, gorgeous blue sky. And as a result, when you spend a little time in your backyard or your front yard, if you have a yard, you're getting a chance to see early spring in action. You're seeing things going on in your garden and coming up in your garden.

So that's a nice kind of day to spend when you're trying to distract yourself from some of the other things that are going on. And we all know what those are. So anyway, I spent time outside today, which was a real treat because the last few days have been kind of gray and overcast and rainy, kind of depressing days with the depressing news we've been having. So getting outside was a nice treat. Cynthia took it seriously.

She was out for a couple of hours doing some basic gardening, cleaning up stuff that had been accumulated in the flower beds over the winter months. I didn't do that. I'm not very good at that, but I did watch. I did something else as well. And that was spurred on by our friend André Picard. Now, I don't know whether you read The Globe and Mail,

whether you follow it online, or whether you pick up André's Twitter feed. If you follow it, you know, online or whether you pick up Andre's Twitter feed. If you don't, you should. He's probably, you know, we got a lot of good health journalists in this country, but he's kind of like a part. He is a classic. He's really good.

And he's forever pushing out information. A lot of it is information he gets, stories that he does. And the fact is he also pushes out others' work. When he admires somebody else's work, he makes sure that his followers see it by putting it out as well. And so today he put out something from the New York Times. And that column is about what we should be doing every day in terms of some basic, very basic exercise. And it struck me as interesting on my own situation. So I'll tell you what it was. You know, first of all, most of us have on our phones, smartphones. I know I have it

on my iPhone, an iPhone 7, getting old there. And it has one of those kind of like health apps. So you can track how many steps you do a day. And it's been a long time since I looked at it. I used to look at it a lot. I used to, I think, average anywhere in the sort of 10 to 15,000 steps a day. Mostly around 10. That sounds better. Just kind of stretch it out a little bit.

10 to 15. On occasion, I'd do 15, especially if I was golfing. So I look at it today, spurred on by this article that Andre had retweeted from the New York Times. And I was shocked to see that I was averaging in these last three weeks about 1,000, 1,500 steps a day. So a dramatic drop. And the dramatic drop because of isolation, self-isolation. Taking that very seriously, as we should. But most days, staying at home,

kind of hard to do 10,000 or 15,000 steps when you're in your house. But that's the argument of this piece that Andre retweeted, and you should read, is that there are ways of doing it. You know, you can walk around your backyard a hundred times, or around your living room more than a hundred times. You can find ways to up your step count. And why is it important? Listen to this stat. This is from the New York Times piece. For every 4,000 steps per day, the risk of dying from heart disease or cancer drops by 50%. 50%. Now, I don't have any way of checking that fact, other than it was the New York Times, by their health correspondent,

and retweeted by a person who I admire as one of the best, if not the best health correspondent in Canada, Audrey Picard. So 4,000 steps. So what did I do? I started stepping it up, man. I was stepping it up. Around about the backyard,

once I'm finished the podcast, I'll take a walk down the street, my weekly walk down the street to find the mail where you know there's no home delivery here anymore and one of those boxes respect physical distancing if i bump into people along the way or at the mailbox that'll all part and today i'm going to do over 4,000 steps for sure. And maybe spend a little more time walking outside in the days ahead as we start to look for better weather and find safe ways to take that walk. I'll get that number up. But that's a pretty simple thing, right? Increase your step count. We've all

been, you know, for the most part, stuck at home. And we're not doing what we need to do for our body to do some basic exercise, getting a momentum going for it, for our health in the long run, not just because of the virus, but our basic health. So there's one for you. 4,000 steps a day. Make it a goal. Check to see what you're doing now. You might be surprised.

Maybe you're doing great. And if you are, good for you. If you're not, maybe we should step. Make it a goal. Check to see what you're doing now. You might be surprised. Maybe you're doing great. And if you are, good for you. If you're not, maybe we should step it up a little bit. Got an email yesterday. And now I usually, you know, save emails at the end of the week. And I will this week as well. But there's a couple of things I do want to address. I got an email yesterday from my good friend Steve Paken, who works for TVO, the Ontario Public Broadcaster,

but is known nationally as well because he's written a number of books about politics. His most recent one was about Bill Davis, the former Premier of Ontario. Well-respected. He's done a number of the national debates, political debates, for federal elections over the years. So you probably know Steve.

Anyway, Steve dropped me a note because he'd been listening to The Bridge. He claims to be a loyal bridge listener. He said he was listening to the bridge last week, and I'd mentioned Hugh Siegel because somebody had written in about Hugh and his basic income plan. I don't want to get into that, but I did say when I was talking, when I mentioned Hugh Siegel, for those who might not remember him, I said, you know, he's a former senator, and he worked on Parliament Hill for many years and was well-liked and well-respected,

and is a former senator, and I sort of speculated, well, he must have stepped down when he reached 75, which is the obligation. Steve said, and wrote, said, Peter, Hugh stepped down from the Senate because he found he wasn't getting anything done there, that he could find other ways, better ways to get things done, and he stepped down when he was like 63 or 64 years old.

And even today, he hasn't hit 70, he's 69. So there you go. We correct that. Now, Hugh Siegel was the chief of staff to Brian Mulroney when Brian Mulroney was prime minister for part of his tenure there. He was also chief of staff to Bill Davis. That name comes back. The former Ontario premier.

My feeling about Bill Davis is he was part of an era of amazing premiers. You know, you think of who they were, whether you agreed with them or not, isn't the point. It's that they were pretty amazing people. And we all, as Canadians, got to know all of them. There was Rennie Levesque, Bill Davis, Peter Lougheed, Alan Blakeney, and the list goes on. There were quite a few. And Pierre Trudeau was the prime minister during that time. So first ministers' conferences, which used to be televised,

were a big deal. These were rock stars in the living room. And of all of them, the only one left standing is Bill Davis. Turned 90 in the last year. Lives in Brampton, Ontario. If you know anything about Bill Davis, you know he's from Brampton, Brampton, Billy. Well, Bill Davis ties into this story, too, because he's been, for quite a few years, a snowbird in the winters in his retiring years. He's been in Florida.

Well, he was in Florida until about, I guess, a week or 10 days ago. And then he came back. He's in isolation, like all those who are taking this responsibly. But Steve was talking to him the other day. He says he's in good spirits. 90-year-old Bill Davis. So we correct Hugh Siegel and we remember Bill Davis, as we should. Now, here's the other thing I want to, I got to, you know, as I think I told you, I got a lot of letters two days ago on the podcast on truckers. I hope if

you haven't listened to it, you listened to it. And last night I talked about farmers. These two professions that are at and near the front lines of this fight. And it's a really important fight that they are both waging. But they have challenges too in this fight. I touched on some of them in both cases, for the truckers and for the farmers. I got a lot of letters last night from farmers and those who represent farmers on some of those issues. I'm going to save them until the end of the week

because I think they're important, and I want to read some of the letters because they're good. It's been great touching base with some of these people in the trucking business and the farming business that we tend at times perhaps to unfairly forget and we shouldn't. And it's times like this

that makes us realize how important they are to the Canadian fabric and how important they are in this fight we are going through right now. So Friday, they'll be part of the letters, and I look forward to reading them. I want to close on this point.

I think if there's one thing we all share right now, it's first of all the desire to recognize those who are at the front end of this fight, to recognize those who are in real difficulty here, to try to share the pain with families who have lost people and families who are going to lose people. We know that's going to happen, and it's going to happen for a while. So the underlying question that many of us have is, how long is this going to go on? What's the best guesstimate? I kind of shudder when I hear those questions.

We know we're in a pandemic. We know there is no cure. We know there is no vaccine at the moment. And as a result, it's awfully hard to predict these things. You hear the scientists every day. You hear journalists, good journalists, asking questions of our political leaders that kind of often center around that question, how long? Well, you know, I have some frustration with that question

because nobody can be specific. You know, we watch, I was hoping I could get through a week without mentioning his name, but you watch Trump in the States, who's had a different answer to that question every day for the last six weeks. And we're supposed to take him seriously? We're supposed to compare anyone else to him? Because like yesterday, he had some, you know, some pretty depressing forecasts about the numbers, both in terms of the, those who are going to suffer from this, those who are going to die from this, and how long it may take.

Of course, the numbers were different than they had been the day before, and the week before, and the month before. And suddenly we're supposed to take him seriously, like he knows? Of course he doesn't know. There's a lot of political spin going on coming out of there. And elsewhere.

But I think the question about how long is this going to go on is, you know, I thought some of the answers I heard today in the Canadian briefing from both political people and from health officials is the right answer. We kind of hold the key to how long it's going to go on by staying at home, by being isolated. When you have to go out, that you still stay isolated. That you keep your physical distance from anyone.

And with any luck, you don't even see anybody else. So we're the key. Because if that happens, we will eventually see a flattening of the curve. That doesn't mean it's over. That just means we're capable of fighting it on a one-on-one basis against the disease, that the hospitals won't get swamped and overwhelmed. We'll still have to keep a degree of isolation. But first of all, we've got to get to that point. Well, how long will that take?

Well, it will take as long as it takes for us to be convinced we're part of the solution. So there's my answer to how long. I don't know. Could be a couple of months. Could be more than that. You see, the concern in Asia right now is that it's coming back. Second wave is already coming back. They didn't get much of a reprieve, if that's the case.

So while it's important for us to feel hope, and I feel hope, when I see how people are working towards the goal of defeating this, I feel a great deal of hope. I feel good. But I'm not circling a date on the calendar to say, okay, you know, I should book my tea time for that day, because this is all going to be gone. Well, I don't know that. Nobody knows that. Nobody knows that. Yet. But we carry on the fight.

And we stay focused. And if we can, we keep listening to the bridge. All right? So why don't you do that? And why don't you think of this? Because I'd like to do this for this weekend. I'd like you to, I'd like you to tell me one thing that you're doing that's helping you get through all this. Whatever. You're learning to play chess. You're taking up knitting. You're doing whatever you're doing, I'd like to hear from you. And we'll run through some of these.

Sort of, you know, what you're doing and why you're doing it. What attracted you to this idea of doing something? Because your ideas can become somebody else's ideas too. We'll share some of that. So why don't you drop me a line? The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. I'm really looking forward to reading some of those.

And we'll deal with them later this week on the podcast. So please send them along. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been the Bridge Daily. And of course, we'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.