The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - When Will We Return To Normal?

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

It's everyone's favourite guessing game -- when will things be normal again?  The Bridge gets into the game today with a pretty good assessment from The Atlantic.  And as this is Thursday, there's a potpourri of "stuff" from drones flying masks into remote islands in Scotland to dating apps demanding your vaccination status and a lot more.

Hi there, Peter Mansbridge here, and you are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Today, the guessing game we all love to play. When will we achieve a return to normalcy? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge. I think it was somewhere back in 1985, the summer of 1985, that the CBC, in its wisdom, decided they wanted a new news program on Sunday nights. And it would come on around 10 o'clock at night. Not around 10 o'clock at come on around 10 o'clock at night. Not around 10 o'clock at night, at 10 o'clock at night. They'd call it Sunday Report,

and it will be kind of a little bit of the National and kind of a little bit of the Journal. The National and the Journal were the two programs that ran during the week, Monday to Friday, for an hour. Roughly 25 minutes for the National, 35 minutes for the Journal, and then, of course, commercials took up some of that time as well. I shouldn't say of course.

I still think and believe today that it's absolutely wrong that there are commercials in any news and current affairs programming on the CBC, the public broadcaster. There should be none. And that argument plays out all the time, played out again just recently at the CRTC hearings. the you-know-whats, to actually say that the CBC has to get rid of commercials, if not through all its programming, but at least through News and Current Affairs. We'll see whether they have the gumption to do that. Anyway. People write and say, you say anyway too often.

It's my transition word. Back to 1985. We decide on Sunday report. It would be a single program, 25 minutes long. And it would incorporate, as I said, kind of an attempt to do the best of the National and the Journal. So in other words, there would be news for about 10 or 12 minutes, and then there would be a feature interview of some kind for three or four minutes, and then a panel, which I'd

been pushing for for some time. I wanted to start a political panel. We didn't have one anywhere on CBC television. This was before CBC News Network. We didn't have one anywhere on CBC television. This was before CBC News Network. We didn't have one. We did not have a discussion anywhere of national political affairs. And as a

person who'd spent the previous five or six years on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, I was very into national politics. And it was an exciting time. There were all kinds of things going on. So we came up with this idea of a Sunday night political panel.

Wouldn't be long. It's only going to be like eight minutes or so. And then we kind of needed panelists. And so I think back to those days, 1985, quite a long time ago. David Halton, CBC's chief political correspondent and a wonderful, smart person. Son of Matthew Halton, the CBC foreign correspondent who'd made his name during coverage of the Second World War. So David was for sure going to be on the panel. We got Jeffrey Simpson from the Globe and Mail

to be a regular Sunday night panelist. And in the next chair, we kind of rotated around mike duffy did it occasionally was a parliamentary correspondent in ottawa for the cbc wendy mesley did it she was also parliamentary correspondent for the cbc and every once in a while we'd have guests who were not necessarily journalists but somebody outside of that i remember the night we had Sheila Copps on, the Liberal MP at that point. She was in opposition to Brian Mulroney, part of the Rat Pack. And she was Sheila Copps that night.

She was great. Anyway, that's how we started that political panel. And on the first night we had the political panel and we had an interview. And it's funny because whenever I see Senator Patrick Lay from Vermont, the U.S. Senator, I think of that opening night for Sunday Report. I think it was the opening night.

He was on. I convinced him to be on. I was back and forth for Washington a lot in those days, filling in occasionally for the Washington correspondent during the week. And it had just been 1985 was the beginning of the Iran-Contra affair, the so-called arms for hostages affair that Ronald Reagan's government got itself involved in a scandal all over north and patrick lahey was the democratic senator from vermont who was the chair

of the senate intelligence committee and so he was running the hearings into Iran-Contra. And he was good enough to do an interview with us that night. And it was crazy because he was at his home in Washington, and there were all kinds of technical problems, and we had to do the interview. We pre-taped it because we knew there could be problems. We pre-taped it and we had to do it like two or three times because we kept losing the line. There were problems.

Anyway, we eventually got in. He was extremely patient and very good-natured and did the interview. And I always think of him because he's still a senator from Vermont. And, you know, just a couple of weeks ago, he was the, what do they call him, the president pro tem of the U.S. Senate during the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. And, you know, Senator Leahy's getting on these days. And, you know, some of the other senators

were giving him a hard time because he was taking a while to make certain decisions about the voting process and so on and so forth. Anyway, whenever I see him, I think of that opening time on Sunday Report. So why am I telling you all this now? Well, because in some ways today is a big day for me in terms of political panels, because that was the first one,

regular one, and there have been a number since, and of course that issue was born out of the Sunday Report panel and continues on today at the CBC. And every network has political panels of some sort these days. They call them all kinds of different names. Well, here on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, we're going to start one today called Good Talk. And we're really looking forward to it.

Totally separate from the bridge. It'll be on 5 p.m. Eastern on SiriusXM. And if you go to SiriusXM.ca, hopefully today, it'll give you some sense of how you can listen to this panel, trying to figure out a way that you can listen to it without having to subscribe, at least for the first couple of shows, so you get an idea of what it's like.

But it's an all-star panel. The regulars are Bruce Anderson from Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth, and Chantal Hébert, one of the most respected best known columnists in the country writes for both the toronto star and for la presse and she pops up on various panels uh including the old at issue panel so chantelle and bruce and myself and occasionally there'll be a fourth.

There won't be today because this is the opening one, and we're kind of setting the landscape, and then we're going to have occasional guests on the panel as well, just like we used to back in the old days on Sunday Report. So that's why I'm telling you that story, and that's why I'm excited to get to good talk which will be available later today it'll also be rebroadcast on sundays at noon which is a good day for political talk sundays at noon eastern on sirius xm channel 167 canada talks talks all right the tease for today's program was that game we all tend to play it's not really a

game but it's a question we ask we ask ourselves in our with our co-workers we ask ourselves with our family friends when is this going to be over when are we going to have some return to normalcy? And that question has taken on kind of a new momentum in the last week or so. Because there's this real sense, barring the variants taking over, and everything I say from here on in has to keep that in mind.

The variants pose a real threat, a real problem, and they could turn everything upside down. But if they don't, if we deal with the variants the same way we've dealt with other things during this pandemic, there is a real chance that we are on, we've kind of reached the peak and we're on the downside, just starting on the downside of the pandemic. And so you start to say to yourself, you know, with vaccines coming on strong, a couple of

new ones this week that seem to be on the verge of being approved, to add to the two that already are, with all that going on, you start to think, wow, you know, like we may actually get out of this. Well, of course we're going to get out of it. We were always going to get out of it. It's just a matter of when we're going to get out of it. So the question is being posed in newspapers and news magazines, you news magazines around the world.

What's the most likely timeline for a return to normal? Well, I've read a lot of these different pieces, and I got to say, I find the best one, the most realistic one, to be in the current edition of The Atlantic. Because it lays out four scenarios as to a return to normal, when that could happen. And they're all, once again, based on the fact that things seem to be heading in the right direction now. But keep your eye on the variant ball

because that could pose a problem. But assuming with some smart preparation and some good luck that we handle a variant, then the question is, okay, so when? When could we be back to some sense of normal? Well, you'll be happy to know all four of the occasions that are outlined in the Atlantic are basically over the next year. All right? And I'll go through them here quickly.

They all say, look, normal is a new normal. You know, assume, as we heard earlier this week in our discussion with Lisa Barrett and Lenora Saxinger, the two doctors, one from Halifax, one from Edmonton, the new normal is going to include a certain life with COVID. You know, masks are going to be, we're going to be seeing masks for a while, maybe a year or two. At different times of the year, summers less likely than winters because summers are, you know, hot weather and produces the perfect conditions for being outside and not

necessarily having to wear masks as often as we are right now which is all the time anyway let me let me run through these first opportunity this the spring of 2021 so like that's soon yeah no another month or so we're going to be into march next week now for the most part as as the atlantic says daily life will continue to be far from normal for the next few months. However, certain things could start to happen this fall if things continue to be looking good. Because the vaccines, the existing vaccines, appear to reduce the risk of severe illness. More and more people will be protected as the vaccinations continue.

And more and more vaccines become available. Not just the two that are out already, but others. We saw the news yesterday on Johnson & Johnson and earlier this week on AstraZeneca to go along with Pfizer and Moderna. So some of the public health experts saying, as we get into late spring this year, a lot of stuff. Smaller gatherings of vaccinated people.

They think that's going to start becoming quite possible. Maybe going to a friend's house for a drink. Mask free and indoors. Maybe. If you're both vaccinated. So that's the first hint. Spring of this year, within the next couple of months. The summer of this year, within the next couple of months. The summer of this year.

Whatever happens in the spring, the Atlantic concludes the summer should be a sublime departure from what Americans have lived through so far. Based on the drop-off in cases and hospitalizations over the past few weeks the experts the atlantic talked to think life could be even close to normal as soon as sometime in may others slightly less optimistic but they generally agree that at some point between june and september the combination of widespread vaccinations and warmer weather would likely make many activities much safer, including having friends and family over indoors, taking public transit, being in a workplace, dining inside restaurants, and traveling domestically. Man, that just seems like I never thought I'd hear that again.

And I'm still very hesitant when I read that. So this is an optimistic way of looking at it, and that's this summer. Fall and winter of 2021-22. That's this coming fall. Now, keep in mind, winter is tougher than summer on the spread of virus.

And so there may be a pullback by the fall, especially if the early indications in the fall are that it's not going to be as clear sailing as the summer was. But at the same time, most of the U.S. population should be vaccinated by the fall. The U.S. and the Canadian population should be vaccinated by the fall. If you believe our governments, everybody who wants a vaccination will have had one by the fall.

But some resurgence of the virus does seem likely in the colder months. It's not going to be as bad, say the experts, as it was this winter, and it was bad, but still some people will get COVID this fall. Which brings us to the spring and summer of 2022. In other words, a year from now. And the Atlantic concludes, the predictions are blessedly simple. Life in the warmer months of 2022 should be normal,

or at least whatever qualifies as normal post-pandemic. And we haven't defined that yet. I still think you're going to see masks, even in the summer next year. There will be people who are going to come out of this slowly and who consider themselves vulnerable, and they're still going to want to wear masks because the virus will still exist. That one possibility is that it will be less likely to make people severely ill and that it will, like the flu, says the Atlantic, circulate primarily in the colder months. Some people would still die from COVID-19,

but the virus wouldn't rage out of control again. Meanwhile, Americans should be able to do most, if not all, of the things that they missed so much in 2020 and 2021. Mask and worry-free. Okay, there's your kind of peek into the future. But please keep in mind, we're dealing with the future here. Nobody knows for sure. That's pretty much the optimistic way of looking at the next 12 months

and the moments where we could be seeing a return to some sense of normalcy. As I said, that's an optimistic view. But this has been kind of a week of optimism. It started, you know, listening to our doctors on Monday. They weren't saying, hey, nothing to worry about. They were saying, things look better. But we are still a long way from out of it. And we have to maintain our vigilance and our procedures that we've been doing pretty well with and we have to hope that the variants can be under control and

some of the early indications from the vaccinations are that the variants can be under control with these different vaccines so we've had that to start week, we've seen plummeting numbers, and in some cases plummeting numbers in terms of new cases, deaths, hospitalizations. There's still an incredible number of deaths. The Americans passed 500,000 this week. Canada's up near 22,000. Can't take those back. Anyway.

Anyway. There you go on that. Still to come today. I love this story. How drones are getting masks to a scottish island as you probably guessed this is a kind of a potpourri day where we're trying to touch base on a number of stories

that I've seen in various articles, magazines, and online vehicles that give us some sense of the world we live in today and whether it's COVID-related or not. These stories kind of pile up on my desk, and I try to isolate one day a week, and it's usually this day, Thursdays, to catch up on these stories. Here's one that you may have heard something about.

But this one is kind of a topic for discussion in various pharmacies in the united states and pharmacies in the u.s are doing a lot more vaccinations um as will pharmacies in canada over the next few weeks and months. But pharmacies in the United States, some of them, the pharmacists, are saying, we should be considering pooling COVID vaccines, that it could save thousands of doses. Now, what are they talking about? Well, this piece is from NBC News. And it states that as millions of people across the country line up for their coronavirus vaccination shots,

health officials are struggling to meet the surging demand, the result of short supplies. We know that story. It's more valuable than liquid gold, truth be told, said Melanie Messiah White, who's the chief pharmacy officer for Inova Health Systems, a non-profit hospital network based in northern Virginia. So what's the answer? Well, they're saying a simple solution could get thousands more people vaccinated each week. But at the moment, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, is kind of standing in the way. The solution is called pooling, and it's not a new concept. Pharmacists have been

doing it for years with everything from flu vaccines to some chemotherapy medications to antibiotics. It involves, that's what NBC is saying, it involves taking what's left over in a drug vial and combining it with what's left in another vial to create a full dose one of the doctors says you know it doesn't look like much at the bottom of a bottle but ultimately in aggregate that adds up to a lot of doses that end up being wasted and we're not allowed to use that additional vaccine. But there are times where there's almost a full dose at the end of the vial, which is heartbreaking to let that go to waste. Now, we already heard in Canada the agreement to squeeze a little more out of those vials than the, I think it was five doses that are in each vial now.

There could be six. This seems to be on top of that even. It'd be interesting to see where that debate goes. Now, here's a little story that I like. I like this story a lot. You know I love Scotland. I love Scotland not just for the golf, which I'm no good at, but love golf. I love golf in Canada. I love golf in Ontario. I love golf in BC. I love golf in Cape Breton. But Scotland's the home of golf.

And I love golf in there. But I love the land, and I love the people. And we've been all over Scotland. Now, one place we haven't been to is the Isle of Mull. It's a little south of the Isle of Skye which we have been to but the Isle of Mull is you know if you look at a map it's kind of northwest of Glasgow it's out there in the

that would be the Irish Sea I guess not a lot of people but COVID goes everywhere right if there are people there there's the potential for problems COVID goes everywhere, right? If there are people there, there's the potential for problems. So the Isle of Mull, which has a ferry and some kind of irregular flight service, has issues about getting masks.

So they're running a trial run right now as we speak. There's probably one in the air right now. They are sending by drone masks and some other cargo being flown between Oban and mainland Argyle on the west coast of Scotland, the mainland coast, and the Isle of Mull. It's only 10 miles. Normally involves a road trip and a 45-minute ferry sailing. This is now only going to take 15 minutes. The trial could pave the way for drones to be used in the transport of medical test samples and other supplies to Mull and probably to a lot of the other islands. They're dotted around Scotland.

Now, normally drones are only allowed to fly within line of sight of the pilot. Well, that's not going to happen here. The pilot's not going to see the drone the whole way on this trip, but we'll be able to see what the drone sees. Anyway, the trial is due to run for a couple of weeks, and they'll make some decisions on it. I love that.

I can see the TV program. I can see the story. Can't you? It'll be on BritBox or one of those streaming services that features British-only films and stories. You know, the people behind the drones to Mull Island. I love those. Shetland's my favorite. Shetland is my,

one of my favorite TV series. If you haven't watched it, I think you can, it's not only on BritBox, on Netflix. It's fantastic. That's, you know, Shetland Islands.

All right, here's your final story for today. Because I got to get organized. I got to get ready for good talk. Coming up later this afternoon on Sirius XM channel 167. Canada Talks. Here's the final one. And I'm surprised this has taken so long to get here.

Have you ever used a dating app I haven't but I hear it's a big deal of course I haven't but I hear it's a big deal and there are all kinds of them different dating apps that are available depending on what exactly you're looking for as a mate? Well, I was wondering in an era of COVID how long this was going to take before it started to happen. Well, it started to happen. The headline in the Washington Post,

on dating apps, COVID vaccinated and fully vaccinated are popping up in profile names. Hmm. So I guess people are having a hard time getting a date in an era of COVID, not surprised, unless they can prove that they are safe. They're healthy. And I guess the easiest way to do that

is to say you're vaccinated and be able to prove that you're vaccinated. And so people are coming up with actual names, screen names, for themselves on these dating apps. And apparently the most popular names are Vaccinate, COVID Vaccinated,

and Fully Vaccinated. I guess that means that you're taking Pfizer or Moderna and you've done both shots. That's the great thing about Johnson & Johnson, right? It's a one-shot vaccine. We're going to talk a little bit about that next week by the way um so i mean what is there to say about this it's kind of obvious that your odds perhaps are better to get a date if you can prove that not only do you wear a mask,

but you're vaccinated. So it kind of adds to your appeal, I guess. But I thought, how how you know what more is there to say in this story well the Washington Post found three pages worth of saying on the issue of

dating apps and how best to portray yourself in terms of the era we're living in and raises all the questions about the era we're living in. And raises all the questions about, that we won't be answering in this podcast, about when's it okay to be intimate.

Because that's part of the story as well. So if you're looking for that story to answer those questions for yourself stephen petro wrote it in the washington post almost two weeks ago now february 13th the headline is on dating apps covid vaccinated and fully vaccinated are popping up in profile names. Does that mean it's okay to be intimate? Filed away. Done my duty. Giving you the information that you need for your day. Now, here's the real information for you for this day,

and that is good talk with Bruce Anderson, Chantelle Hebert, and moi. Comes your way at 5 p.m. Eastern today, that's Thursdays, on Sirius XM, channel 167. So please try and join us today. It'll be rebroadcast at noon Eastern on Sunday, which is, as we say, a good day for political talk. Today's the first show. We're kind of going to lay the landscape out as to what we see,

everything from when there's going to be an election, the state of the parties, what the ballot question could be, how the pandemic impacts the political story right now, both in terms of our health and our economy. So all that coming your way on Good Talk today. I'm excited. Hope you're excited.

Hope you're there to listen. Tomorrow, Friday, I'm excited. Hope you're excited. Hope you're there to listen. Tomorrow, Friday, the bridge focuses on the weekend special. I'm telling you, the letters keep coming in with ideas about great Canadian speeches or phrases within speeches. I'm not going to sit here and read the whole speech, but I will look for sentences that you send in. And there have been a lot of them so far. some doubling up, some people choosing the same one, but there's a nice diversity, a nice variety. So please

get your suggestions in. Try and get them in today if you can. And they'll be part of tomorrow's broadcast on the weekend special right here on the bridge. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again.

Well, we'll talk to you again in a few hours on Good Talk. We'll talk to you again on The Bridge in 24 hours. Thank you.