The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Where Did All The Airplanes Go? And Some Encouraging News On A Vaccine.

Episode Date: May 12, 2020

If you know me you know I Iove airplanes and airliners - so not surprisingly I'm worried about the future for both. And vaccines -- what's the latest?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge Daily. If you've been listening to The Bridge Daily for the last, well, since we actually started The Bridge itself late last summer, early fall, you've heard me talk a number of times about airplanes and airlines. Because, well, I love talking about both. I guess because I was once in the airline industry, not for very long, but for a couple of years, before I got into broadcasting. Broadcasting has been my first love, and airlines, I think, very much my second love. I'm still fascinated by airplanes and the airline industry in general. In fact, if you were here in my little office studio in Stratford, Ontario,

and you looked around my office at the bookshelves, you'd see all kinds of planes. In fact, there are probably more planes than any other thing, including the various different moments in my broadcasting life. But lots of planes, especially lots of Lancasters, which were my, and remain my favorite plane, partly because that's what my dad was flying in during the Second World War when he was with the Royal Air Force. So I've got all kinds of Lancasters,

little models of Lancasters, including one that's made actually out of an old Lancaster. Founded in an antique store in England. It's made out of bits and pieces of an old Lancaster. So airlines remain a big part of my life and airliners. So I got a couple of little stories that relate to COVID-19 as a result of my passion for airplanes and airlines. And, you know, the first one is how much trouble

that industry is in right now. And that's not surprising because nobody's flying. And really, when you think about it, are you anxious to get on a plane anytime soon? Can you imagine when your next flight may be? We mentioned this yesterday. I can't remember the last time I went this long without being on an airplane. Well, earlier today, one of the heads of one of the big North American airline companies

predicted that before too long, one of the big airlines, didn't name one, but just said one of the big airlines in North America is going to go bust as a result of the fact nobody's flying anymore. And the millions, hundreds of millions of dollars the airline industry is losing as a result of that, well, the two biggest airline manufacturing companies in the world are Boeing and Airbus. Well, we saw some numbers from each of them today. Boeing failed to sell a single airliner last month in April. Now Boeing was already in some trouble as you may recall from those two air crashes that occurred last year with one of its latest models but it was starting to pick up and it had sales on other types of Boeing aircraft but last month they did not sell a single plane.

They received absolutely no orders. And that would have seemed impossible not that long ago. And they actually dropped over 100 orders that they'd had in the past. They dropped them from their backlog, which is now below 5,000, which sounds like a lot of planes, but you've got to think ahead when you're a big, huge airline company like that. Airbus said it received orders for only nine planes in April, bringing its 2020 total for the first four months to 299 planes after the cancellations that they've had.

So neither one of those airlines is doing well. Not surprisingly. In the middle of this. The airline companies, you know, the Air Canadas and the West Jets and all the American airlines are in serious trouble because of the fact there are no passengers. There's something like 28,000 passenger jets in the world. 28,000.

Two-thirds of them are grounded. Two-thirds. You know, somewhere around 16,000, 17,000 airplanes are just sitting on tarmacs or in deserts in different parts of the world. That's a stunning figure. And, you know, they can't just get away with saying, okay, well, here, leave that one at the gate.

We're not going to use it for the next little while. Airports around the world charge as much as, you know, $1,000 a day to park a plane. Well, if there are 16,000 of them sitting around at airports and different places around the world, that's a lot of money. We're talking on a daily rate. And it's not just park them somewhere. You've got to continually service them. There's big maintenance fees for hydraulics

and the various systems that are on our plane. And a little thing like, and this sounds like nothing, but it's important. If you see the pictures, and there's one on the cover art today, if you take a hard look at those pictures, they've had to seal up all the engines on these planes because if they don't, birds nest in them, creating all the problems that can create.

So they have to find airports where they can park. Delhi, India has closed one runway just to park planes on it, as well as some of the taxiways, and they're charging $1,000 a day. Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, same thing. They're parking planes. They've got huge chunks of that airport are just parked airplanes.

So with all these planes sitting on tarmacs in airports, and as I said, in deserts, it's a good place to actually park planes because of the temperatures and humidity and everything. So you've got planes in Arizona. You've got planes in parts of California. You've got planes in the kind of desert areas of Australia, like Singapore Airlines and Fiji Airlines are parking their planes in the middle of Australia.

You know, these planes represent airlines that have revenues of a third of a trillion dollars a year. 25 million jobs are at risk. 25 million. Some of this data I got from a Bloomberg article not too long ago, and it's really interesting to see this stuff. So, I mean, I'm not asking you to feel bad for the airline industry. I mean, many of us have dumped all over airlines in the past for this, that,

or the other thing, from lost bags to bad meals. But this is a huge part of the economy. And the longer it's shut down, and some of the estimates are anywhere up to three years before it could get back to normal if things go right, well, that's going to come at great expense to people, to jobs, to the whole tourism industry, and to the business industry. So many of those flights were about tourism. It's like the cruise ship industry. Who is ever going to get on a cruise ship again?

Now, oddly enough, I saw the other day the cruise ship say, oh, man, we're selling out for this fall. I really, I have a very hard time believing that. But that's what some of them say. People are grabbing these really cheap rates that they're offering. Well, man, it would have to be really cheap for me to grab one.

I'd want to see, I'd want to see a little change in the pattern of what happens on cruise ships. This has hardly been the first time we've seen issues of viruses running rampant on cruise ships. When does it all end? It ends, for sure, when there's a vaccine. How many times have we talked about that in the last eight or nine weeks? We've talked about it lots of times. So today it was interesting listening to some of the major health people testify in the U.S. Senate.

Actually, they weren't there. Some of the senators were there, but they were all talking remotely. People like Anthony Fauci. And one of the areas that was up for discussion was vaccines. What is happening on the vaccine front? Well, Fauci was pretty clear, and obviously he must have been listening to the Bridge Daily from a couple of weeks ago, or was it a month ago,

when we talked to those scientists and researchers at the University of Saskatchewan. Remember? Because they're always being talked about as we're 12 to 18 months away from a vaccine at the best, at the earliest. And the director of the University of Saskatchewan Research Project, who were just wrapping up animal testing on their hope for a vaccine before it goes into human trials, was saying 12 to 18 months was right when it was first talked about, you know, in January. We're four or five months ahead of that now. So the earliest possible time for a vaccine might be late this year,

like December, around Christmastime, we said. That was a month ago. Well, guess what Dr. Fauci said today? End of the year at the earliest. However, he added another twist that is interesting. A couple, actually. The twist he added that was interesting is that as soon as they're pretty confident about one but have not proven it yet, they will begin production.

So when they do prove it, they'll be ready to go. That's encouraging. Because obviously, tens of millions of doses are going to be needed just for the U.S. Now, he also said, as we have known, there are dozens of different vaccine programs going on in different parts of the world. And it's entirely possible, said Dr. Fauci, that more than one will come through at the same time. And the more, the merrier.

The more vaccines possibilities there are, the more production that can take place and the more dosages will be available. Now, the beauty of what's going on in the Vaccine Research Center, centers around the world, is they're not relying on their governments. They're relying on their governments for cash,

but they're not relying on their governments for direction. And instead of making this a your country versus my country thing, they are talking to each other. And that's great to hear. And Fauci kind of indicated that too, but he was talking about eight distinct possibilities. And I think when he was, he didn't make it clear and he wasn't questioned about it, but I think he was just talking about in the US. I mean, there are dozens, at least 40 different centers around the world that are working on a vaccine. High-end places that are working on vaccine research.

Trying to find that one vaccine that's going to work. So if there are eight alone in the States, and we know there are, you know, there's a very successful program going on at Oxford University in Britain. We know about University of Saskatchewan. They're not the only Canadian center that is making some progress. But there are stages to this, and you go through animal testing and then human testing, and then you have to go through a whole process, if you're successful up to that point

of having efficacy trials to ensure that everything's safe. And none of that's a given going into this. Nothing's a given going into this. But there seems to be a confidence on the part of researchers that they could be close. And if they're close, that's going to make, it's a game changer, obviously, on this whole story. But they're not there yet. Now, there was news on the Canadian front on the vaccine research today.

I don't know whether you saw it. I saw it in the Globe early this morning from their Asia correspondent in Beijing, Nathan Vanderklip. This one's interesting on a number of levels because it's the headlines National Research Council that's canada's nrc strikes a deal with china to develop covid19 vaccine in canada okay so i'm not going to read the whole thing but I'll read you the first couple of lines because it's potentially exciting. Canadian researchers are joining the effort

to develop a Chinese vaccine against the deadly coronavirus with plans to begin human trials in Canada of a potential defense against COVID-19 that employs genetic technology from the National Research Council. The trials will bring to Canadian soil a vaccine candidate under joint development by a Chinese company and the country's military. Backed by a state that has urgently sought a vaccine of global importance,

this one has been among the most rapidly developed of numerous candidates around the world. Now the NRC has struck an agreement to support its development in Canada by manufacturing doses that can be administered in human tests and for emergency pandemic use. Okay. So obviously we're going to want to hear more about that to see how it goes. Now, the upside of that is that there are, clearly there are researchers at NRC

dealing with Chinese researchers. That's all good. The Chinese military being involved is going to raise some people's concerns because that's, you know, clearly directly the Chinese government. But it's interesting that China has reached out to Canada as a partner on this one. Relationships between China and Canada have been difficult at best

in the last while. And you know the reasons from the person who is under house arrest in Vancouver on questions about the link between her brother-in-law I mean this gets all involved but it's all to do with high tech. And your phone systems and everything else.

China is holding two Canadians, supposedly on kind of spying charges of some kind. This has made things very difficult between the two countries. But here we have something that's going on here on the biggest story going in the world and the potential for a solution, at least a vaccine solution. And the two countries are together. So obviously we're going to want to know more about that

and watch very closely how that goes. All this at a time too, and I want to mention this because I don't get into this daily Trump's distorted facts, to say it nicely. Trump's lies is another to say it nicely. Trump's lies is another way of saying it. But yesterday at his bizarre presser at the White House on the lawn, he made a number of claims about America standing on testing and he had big signs up leading the world in testing.

Oh, you know, nobody believes that. Not even the American health officials. Don't back him up on that. But that's what he was claiming. And he was trying to suggest that, you know, per capita, America's ahead of anybody else in the world on testing. It's not true. It just isn't true.

In fact, it's not even close to being true. And it's certainly not ahead of Canada. He also made a claim at one point that America's deaths per capita per, I think he said 100,000 population was as low as Germany's. It's not true. It's not even close to being true. But it just sort of,

it's thrown out there as if it is true. And you kind of have to wait until after the fact to hear the truth. I'll tell you, it's certainly nowhere near Canada's. You know, the country's, you know, there's like a hundred of them rated. The country with the worst, you know, any number is bad, right? But the worst deaths per million in population is Belgium, followed by Spain, then Italy, then the U.K., then France, Sweden,

Netherlands, Ireland, than the United States. A 246 deaths per million in population. This is as of 8.30 this morning. Where was Canada? Canada was about half of what the U.S. is. We're at 138. And Germany, we said the U.S. is. We're at 138. Germany, we said the U.S. was doing better then. Germany's 92.

So I don't know. These numbers get thrown around. We all throw them around, and that's part of the reason that the numbers game is not a good one to get into. You can try to make numbers work for you in a number of different ways, but I don't know. I'm not sure what the point is there. And then today with all these different health officials sitting in the Senate hearing,

without saying directly they were contradicting the president, they were contradicting the president. Said there's not enough testing, testing needs to be much better. States that reopen too soon are going to create huge problems. Raise certainly issues about kids going back to school. That we're all kind of listening to here as well, as there are provinces that are sending kids back to school or giving parents the option of sending kids back to school. So health officials don't make all the rules,

but they certainly do give advice to political leaders who eventually make the rules. So there we go. Another day on the COVID-19 story, and another day where there were some things to be excited, it's probably not the right word, but to feel more positive about. When I heard Fauci talk about the possibilities on the vaccine front, I felt much better. When I heard that story out of Beijing by the Global and Males

Asia correspondent, I thought, this is interesting. This has possibilities. Why did the Chinese want to make that deal with Canada? Obviously, you know, the National Research Council has a worldwide reputation. That's one reason. But there are difficulties between the two countries. The fact that the Chinese and Canada got together on this has some possibilities, especially if it works. But like we've warned before, you've got to be very careful with some of the facts that the Chinese lay on the table.

All governments say that. That's not just a Trump thing. He takes it to a whole different level. There's no doubt he's trying to use it for political gain as well. This was a guy in January and February who was praising the Chinese and President Xi is now using them in a different light. And their numbers are hard to believe. When you look at their number

of cases, number of deaths, it doesn't make sense for a country of 1.4 billion people. Numbers seem awfully low. But another thing that happened today, and I'll close out on this. If their numbers are right about this, it's quite telling. Wuhan, the area in China where this all started, a city of, I forget, more than 20 million people, I think. They had six, they haven't had a case in a month. They had six cases over the last couple of days, new cases. So they're concerned, very concerned, that this is the beginning of a new outbreak

because they'd reopened the city. So what have they done? They've ordered, in the next 10 days, 9 million tests to be done in their city. 9 million. I think that's more than the U.S. has achieved in total so far. 9 million in 10 days. And this will tell them whether or not they're dealing with a new outbreak. And the world

will sit anxiously awaiting that news. But first, the world has to believe that they really are testing 9 million people. So that'll be a story to watch. Tomorrow we begin the first of the big project series, the big idea, your big idea, and I've been getting lots of them. Some of them are really interesting, but tomorrow we'll start it off, we'll kick it off with the guy who asked me to consider doing a project like this,

and that's the former cabinet minister, Ralph Goodale, from Saskatchewan. So we will be talking to Ralph tomorrow on his big idea and why big ideas are something that's important for us

to be thinking about right now. So that's the Bridge Daily for this day. Day two of week nine of the Bridge Daily. Thanks for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge, and we'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.