The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - When You're Winning A Fight, Don't Let Your Opponent Off The Mat

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

Maybe I'm being overly cautious but it's not over yet folks.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge Daily. Here we are on hump day of week 20, we're at Wednesday. And it's a gorgeous day here in southwestern Ontario. Has been anyway. Let's hope that continues for a few days as we're heading in towards a long weekend. You know, there is a saying in sports, and it also translates into politics and in fact into war. That when you have the advantage over your opponent,

when you have the foot on their throat, step harder. Don't let up. Don't let up. Don't let them back in the game. So, here we are. This podcast originates in Ontario. Just one of the provinces that has done pretty well lately

in the fight against COVID-19. We were concerned about 10 days ago, but came back, numbers are good. And today, for the first time in months since mid-March, when the pandemic was just taking root in Ontario, for the first time since then, the number of new cases dropped below 100, quite a bit below 100, down to 76. So, the battle that's been raging, Ontario's doing pretty well.

At the same time, they kind of let their foot off the gas a bit. As they move into phase three for Toronto, the biggest city in the country. Means in-restaurant dining will now be allowed, as of this Friday. Certain other restrictions lifted. Is that a mistake? Well, we saw how you voted last week. You didn't like that idea. In fact, you wanted areas that had already lifted in dining, in-house dining. You wanted them to reverse course. You wanted bars closed. That's not what's happening.

The Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, said, we're doing this, but we're ready to switch back right away if there's a problem. And whatever you do, don't hold private parties, big ones. Because that seems to have happened in a couple of places. Anyway, remember that saying. When you have the advantage, don't let up. If anything, put your foot down on the pedal.

Go harder. Today, the foot came off the pedal a little bit. Is there going to be a price paid for that? Well, I guess we're going to find out. A lot of reaction to yesterday's podcast on masks, and almost all of it, if not all of it, positive so far. So far. Also some good stories from people who are concerned about not enough mask use.

And some of those letters may end up on the weekend special this Friday. But I saw a piece today that's worth including in today's podcast because it's kind of, in some ways, it's a follow to yesterday's mass story, but in a kind of, a little bit of a lighter vein. The headline in the New York Times, we'll be wearing masks for a while, why not make them nice? Hmm.

About a month ago or six weeks ago, we talked about the move toward designer masks. Well, it's going full throttle now. And this story mainly comes out of Japan. There's some great parts to it. So let me read a little bit of it. Inventors have dreamed up masks with motorized air purifiers, Bluetooth speakers,

even sanitizers that kill germs by heating the face. Covering. He heating the face covering. Heating the face covering, sorry. Hopefully not the face. But heating the face covering to over 200 degrees. In South Korea, the electronics giant LG, you know them. They make a lot of TVs. Some of you may have an LG TV in your TV room. Well, LG has created a mask powered with fans that make it easier to breathe.

In boutiques, pattern masks are showing up on mannequins, exquisitely paired with designer dresses. An Indian businessman said he spent $4,000, $4,000 on a custom mask made of gold. And a French costume designer has filled Instagram with phantasmagoric designs featuring everything from peterdactyls to doll legs. I don't know what a peterdactyls to doll legs. I don't know what a peterdactyl is.

But there's one on a mask for sale in India. The coronavirus has driven a rapid evolution in mask technology, said Yukiko Edea, an expert on masks at the Environmental Control Center,

a consulting company in Tokyo. When there's demand, the market reacts quickly, she said. People are wearing them all day, every day, so we're seeing improvements in things like ease of wear and ease of communication, she added, citing a mask with a clear front that allows people to see the wearer's facial expressions. A number of people have raised that, actually, saying, why can't we have an effective mask where you can still see the face? You know, today I had to go into the bank to do a little banking. And I was wearing my mask, and as soon as I walked in the door,

I thought, I'm wearing a mask into a bank. And I was carrying a bag and wearing sunglasses, like I thought, oh my gosh, this is like, I never thought I'd be doing this in a bank. But there I was, doing exactly that. Anything more in this article that's worth mentioning? I think so. Tayusuke Ono, the chief executive of a tech startup donut robotics remember we talked about them last

week and this is why we did said he envisioned a world where people could be wearing masks on trips abroad for the next 10 years or more if that happens they will demand that their masks do more than just protect them from viruses, he said. So his company is building a mask that serves as a combination walkie-talkie, personal secretary, and translator. Remember that from last week? It can record its user's voice, projecting it to someone else's smartphone. All the better for social distancing, or transmitting it from Japanese into a variety of languages.

So masks are going to get, hopefully, they're going to get and give better protection, but at the same time they're going to offer so much more. About 10 years? We're going to offer so much more. About 10 years? We're going to be wearing masks for 10 years? Now, some countries, especially in Asia, have been wearing masks for a long time. You know, they warn them through the various epidemics that have affected us over the last 20 years. They also wore the mask. Remember the Fukushima nuclear reactor accident or earthquake?

I guess it was an earthquake that caused all kinds of problems there. And people, because they were concerned about radioactivity in the air, were wearing masks. So it's not uncommon and has not been uncommon to see masks in different places in Asia. But it also appears that they're going to get a lot more, a lot more interesting in what they offer aside from just protection. Here's the other headline on COVID-19 today in terms of its impact on business.

This came out of a meeting in Paris. Reuters files this. Global Airlines cut their coronavirus recovery forecast on Tuesday, saying it would take until 2024, a year longer than previously expected, for passenger traffic to return to pre-crisis levels. That's interesting because we were assuming, and had been assuming from some of the things

coming out of various airlines in the last month, that they were on the road to some form of mild recovery this year. But that does not appear to be happening. In an update on the pandemic's crippling impact on air travel, the International Air Transport Association, IATA, cited slow virus containment in the United States and developing countries and a weaker outlook for corporate travel. Lingering travel, you know, and that's interesting. I just, you know, like I was, one of the things that I do in my busy little post-retirement life is documentary work.

And I had a trip planned for this month and another trip planned probably for next month. Both of those have been put aside for now. So that's a minor kind of example of corporate travel, but I am assuming there's a lot more going on for IATA to say, changing their forecast. Lingering travel barriers, this article goes on to say from Reuters, and new restrictions in some markets are also weighing on nearer-term prospects. Cutting IATA's 2020 passenger numbers forecast

to a 55 percent decline, sharper than the 46 percent drop predicted in April. The second half of this year will see a slower recovery than we had hoped, said Brian Pierce. He's the chief economist for IATA. June passenger numbers were down 86.5% year on year, the organization said, after a 91% contraction in May. So there was a little bit of a pickup between May and June, but barely worth mentioning. None of this helped by a surprise move by Britain to quarantine arrivals from Spain,

which has created a lot of uncertainty. That is clearly going to be an issue with the recovery, said Pierce. So there's your update on airlines. I know that you're probably less interested in that than I am. You know I have a bias towards airline stories. Love them. Now, this one kind of dovetails with some of the things that you especially have talked about in these last couple of months

in the letters. I've had some, like, incredible letters from parents and from those trying to maintain a home situation through this pandemic. The headline on this story, from Sarah Boesveld, Canadian writer, for the Mars website, capital L, small a, capital R, capital S.

The headline is, The COVID-19 pandemic has created a ticking time bomb for working parents. After months of dealing with closed daycares and helping kids with remote learning while also meeting increased work demands, many working parents are reaching their breaking point. Some of you have told me about that in your emails, and others have told me that directly, person to person. This is a great article, and you should look it up on the Mars website.

But I'll read a couple of lines from it. The COVID-19 global pandemic has created a ticking time bomb for working parents. Their childcare options have been ripped away in the interest of public health and safety. They've become de facto homeschool teachers, and their work expectations have, in many cases, ramped up as companies pivot to the new realities of doing business during a global pandemic. As uncertainty still looms over what the next school year will look like, working parents are reaching their breaking point. Workplaces are not set up for dual working families, nor single parents, for that matter,

says Jennifer Hargraves, founder and CEO of Telfent, a job board and virtual networking platform. But this massive disruption does present an opportunity. That's the chance to institute true flexibility for the long run. COVID has catapulted employers' institutional mindsets about flexible work into the future, Hargrave says. This can only be a good thing for now,

or for how we work and how we measure productivity. It can be utterly transformative for tech companies trying to adapt to uncertain future in the short term and beyond. Well, then the article goes on to list a number of ways that could be. I'm not going to read them all. I'll read the headline from each one. It'll give you some idea of what's in here, and you should look up the piece because I think you'll find it very worthwhile. How flexibility can fix an unsustainable status quo. The

importance of talking to your employees. Stop measuring productivity in hours or face time. Turn meetings into living documents. Trust your employees and work with them to prioritize. Show leadership on flexibility. How employers can take care of their working parents. So Sarah Boesveld's got a lot in this article, and I think a lot that many of you would find worth reading. If you have trouble, if you want to see this and you have trouble finding it, let me know and I will get you the full link to the piece. But you shouldn't have any

trouble finding it. It's a good piece, and I know it's a piece that fits in with a lot of what many of you have been writing about and showed your concerns about. Now, we all learned a lesson yesterday, right? See the latest wacko thing that the President of the United States put forward yesterday when he started praising this doctor who he certainly made it sound like he knew all about,

who had said some stuff about hydro... What is it again? Chloroquine. Hydroxychloroquine. That's not it. You know the one I'm talking about. The one he thinks is a cure-all. Well, she apparently said it was a cure-all. She also said you didn't need to wear a mask. Well, Trump quoted her in his comments at the White House yesterday. And he tweeted about her the night before. So did his son. Both tweets were pulled by Twitter. Because it's just simply not true. And at his news conference yesterday,

Caitlin Collins from CNN, who's terrific, said, do you know anything about this doctor? She has theories about sex with aliens and all kinds of weird stuff. And so suddenly, from the President of the United States, who only moments before had talked about how smart this doctor was and how much he thought of her, suddenly said, I don't know anything about her, and left, walked out, mid-question, in terms of a follow-up from Collins. I don't know anything about her, and left, walked out, mid-question, in terms of a follow-up from Collins.

Well, the lesson in that is, obviously, every day you can pick up something with another theory about what works or doesn't work, some study that hasn't been peer-reviewed, what it could mean. And you've got to take these things with a grain of salt. I saw one today that had to make me laugh. And the more I read it and realized, in fact, there was no real hardcore evidence for it,

but nevertheless it made a headline on the wires. It is an actual study from a university in the UK, in the United Kingdom. University of, I don't know, it had some affiliation with Oxford, which sounded like, really? Anyway, here's the headline. Men over six feet tall are twice as likely to catch coronavirus, according to a new study. If you're over six foot tall, this study, not peer-reviewed,

but still getting some attention in the UK, says you're twice as likely to catch coronavirus. Now, the reason I thought, what am I supposed to think about this? Because I'm exactly six foot tall. I'm not under six feet. I'm not under six feet I'm not over six feet so does that mean that I'm

half as likely to catch COVID-19 as somebody one centimeter, one half centimeter taller than me. Apparently. Apparently. Okay.

Easy lesson there. Easy lesson is when you see a headline like that, move on. It's crazy. There's a virus out there, whether you're 6'10 or 5'10. If you sniff that virus, the odds are you're going to be susceptible to being infected. All right. So a little bit for everybody in today's podcast. I go back to the beginning.

You've got your foot on the throat of your opponent. Don't let go. End the fight properly. Don't give your opponent a chance to jump up

and take another run at you. That's where I am on all this. Be careful out there. Wash your hands. Wear a mask, and stay socially distant. Okay? That's it for Hump Day on Week 20 for The Bridge Daily.

We'll be back tomorrow. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thank you so much for listening, and we will be back tomorrow I'm Peter Mansbridge thank you so much for listening and we will be back in 24 hours Thank you.