The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Where's My MasterChef Final? Poor Old BBC.

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

The BBC had to open a new complaints page over its coverage of Prince Phillip's death.  How times have changed. And more blunt talk about Covid in Canada this wee with Dr. Lynora Saxinger from Edmonton.

and hello there peter mansbridge here you are just moments away from the latest episode of the bridge where today once again it's the race between the variants and the vaccines And hello again, Peter Mansbridge here. And yes, we will, as we do every Monday and have been doing since last March, when all this began, we will give you a scan of where we are on the pandemic story in this country. And once again this week, the news isn't great, but we will try to break it down. And we have one of our top notch infectious disease specialists to talk with us on that. But first of all, I'm going to tell you a little story. And I know some of you love little stories because they always, or at least the attempt

on my part is to try to tie them into what's going on today. Well, this story deals with, oddly enough, my wardrobe. Back in the days when I was anchoring the National. And as chief correspondent, one of the responsibilities I had was to break the big news to the people, tell them what had happened when something big had happened. And you can run through the list of stories that I was associated with over my many years at the CBC. But one of the ones that, in effect, I never got to do, but always had to be prepared for, was the death of the Queen.

And there was a whole formula, a whole document really, in place as to what would happen if in fact the monarch died. And for the longest time, in fact, back since the birth of the CBC, on both radio and on television, the routine was more or less the same. You go back to, you know, George V and the, you know, that little interim with Edward VIII and then George VI and then Queen Elizabeth. The person who broke the news on the CBC, and this included radio at the beginning, but eventually television, the person who in fact announced this to the nation was to wear a black suit and black tie, white shirt. And therefore, you have to have all of that with you all the time.

You have to have it somewhere, hanging in your office, hanging in your dressing room, hanging in the makeup room. But there had to be one there that you would be expected to immediately change into before you walked into the studio. And for years, it was no different for me. When I started doing the special announcements and special programming, which was in the early 1980s, I had to ensure I had that black suit, black tie, white shirt there somewhere always. And I did. And the routine was going to be you made the announcement,

you played God Save the Queen, and you went into special program for what could be days until the actual funeral. Now, those were in the days when there was one, at least initially, there was only one CBC channel, English television channel, and one French. But the English channel, which was the one I was responsible for, if you will, there was just the one channel. I was responsible for, if you will. It was just the one channel.

So after things started to change in the mid-1980s and we ended up getting a news channel, which was first called CBC News World, now it's called CBC News Network, and then as a result of all the other changes that have taken place in terms of satellite channels and the 500 channel universe and the thousand channel universe and streaming services and you name it all the different options you had including all the different options you had of watching cbc channels so somewhere around 10 years ago, we said, don't you think we should perhaps kind of update this?

What is the plan if something like this happens? Because at some point it's going to happen. Buckingham Palace was constantly updating what they would do when and if the Queen passed away. But we hadn't. And as far as we could tell, our brothers and sisters at the BBC hadn't updated things either in terms of what they would do. Anyway, we decided that there would be a common announcement on all CBC channels,

but then, you know, within moments it would start to diverge. And different channels would do different things, all with respect. There'd still be a man or a woman in a black suit or a black dress to make the initial announcement. But after that, it would be different channels would do different things. We had dragged ourself into the 21st century. Now, I mention all that because it's been really interesting

to watch what's happened in Britain. Because the Queen, of course, did not pass away, but the Duke of Edinburgh did, Prince Philip. And because he was obviously so close to the royal family and the Queen and was such a part of Britain that the decision was made to have almost equal status to the monarch in terms of the kind of coverage that was going to be had. And this was all planned out long in advance. But they never updated it. And as a result, on Friday, within moments of things happening

and the announcement being made by Buckingham Palace that Prince Philip had passed. In this case, it was a BBC female announcer who was brought on set in a black outfit who made the announcement, and they cut to God Save the Queen and into special programming. Problem is the BBC has much more than one channel. They have considerably more than one channel.

And they went into the same programming on all BBC channels, BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Scotland, BBC News, BBC Alba. They all did the same thing. And I'm sure somebody, when they said, okay, all the channels are to take this feed, assumed they were making the right decision. Well, it has not been a popular decision. Brits are all up for getting special coverage on their public broadcaster, but did it need to be on every channel?

That's been the concern. And they've had to set up a special BBC complaints page. Because so many people have been calling in, writing in, complaining. Where's my Top Chef special? Where's the soca? Oh, they're not happy. Actually, it's called the MasterChef final. That was planned for Friday, I think, and it got bounced.

People were not amused. So it's interesting to see that it's not just the CBC that gets it from those who pay for the service and have every right to complain. But clearly the BBC has taken its lumps over the last few days as well and may well continue to do so because it's going to be a week of special programming not on all channels

I think they've backed off somewhat on that but leading up to and including the funeral on Saturday. There's not a lot to compare this with. I covered two royal funerals that of the Queen Mother who was dearly loved and 200,000 people on the streets of London after she passed away. And there were no complaints

about the coverage. And there certainly were no complaints when Diana was killed in that car crash in Paris. You know, I remember flying over the day after we heard the news and

we did special programming for a week. We did the National from London every night. Huge audiences. I think the biggest audiences, perhaps with the exception of 9-11, that we've had certainly sustained over a week. And in that case, millions of people lining the streets. It won't be like that this Saturday. Apparently, there will only be 30 guests in the chapel at Windsor Castle

for the funeral service, and this obviously because of the pandemic. They're trying to suggest that people not congregate in the streets. That hasn't worked so well so far, at least not immediately around Windsor Castle, where there were a lot of people turned up during the weekend, but nowhere near as many as would have if we weren't in a pandemic. So interesting to see that. All right. It's time to move on.

It's time to scan the landscape on the pandemic in Canada. And it's interesting to, before we get into Canada specific, is to kind of look at the global situation, at least in terms of the countries which we most often relate ourselves to. Clearly, one of those is south of the border, which we have taken the liberty of the last year of saying, man, they've got a much worse situation than we do. They've got so many more deaths and new cases. And then the vaccine came along,

and they're doing extremely well on the vaccine. I think the latest number I saw was 70 million people in the States fully vaccinated. We're around 7 million have received at least one dose. Not fully vaccinated yet. And we have lots of debates and arguments about whose fault that is, that we're kind of behind on the, well, we are behind on the distribution of vaccines. In terms of new cases, well, in terms of deaths, nobody comes close to the Americans. They sadly lead the world in the number of deaths as a result of COVID-19.

Their loss, I think, was around 570,000. We're 23,000, 24,000. But new cases is something to keep an eye on. Because right now, per capita, we're kind of even with the Americans in terms of the daily number of new cases. And that's not a good place to be. Because we're seeing an increase in the number of new cases every day in certain parts of the country. Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia.

And most of these tied in some way or another to the variant strains, the British variant, and BC is struggling with cases of the Brazil variant, which is really worrying. In any event, we are in trouble on the variant front, and as a result, we're in trouble on the new cases front. And as a result, there's concern about where we are on all this. So as you know, I've been reaching out each week, and especially on Mondays to a team of infectious disease specialists, people who are working on the pandemic, working tirelessly on the pandemic. We talked to doctors in Halifax, Toronto, Hamilton, and Edmonton. And this week we're going to Dr. Lenora Saxinger in Edmonton,

the University of Alberta. She's helped us out a lot during the last year, and she continues to do so today. So let's bring her in and get a sense from her as to where we are now. Well, Doctor, it seems like in most of the key parts of the country the variants are are doing better than the vaccines are doing and it leaves one wondering about whether or not we have at least momentarily lost control of this thing have we you know i can't say i feel very optimistic looking at the numbers right now um multiple places we're seeing these

numbers just climbing in the face of what would have worked before. Like, honestly, people are doing things that would have brought it under control before, and we're not seeing it working as much. I think there's also a possibility that some people might be less engaged in the public health restrictions as they had been before, just out of sheer fatigue and being fed up with it. But largely, it's a huge

issue with respect to the increased transmissibility of these these strains of the virus well i mean you've pointed your finger basically at the people right saying you know you're you're forgetting what what got us into a good position in the past and you're letting letting things slide is a is it really you know is it all the fault of the people or is there some sharing of the responsibility here by by government certain governments anyway oh i would i would say that it really actually at the end of the day the phenomenon of people being in contact with people spreads the virus but the circumstances in which that happens, actually,

you know, there's a lot of structural issues. For example, people whose jobs put them in a face-to-face position with others unavoidably. And they, you know, for example, don't have support for sick days. They can't take time off to get tested. They have to make choices between rent and groceries and staying home from work to be isolated. You know, those are not fair decisions to be put on people. And I think a lot of that part of it actually was something that was predictable enough that we should have had better structures in place to support. So there's certainly some people who, you know, they're in a tough position and they're bearing the brunt of a lot of the new infections.

There's also some people who become disaffected and don't really kind of believe and they're bearing the brunt of a lot of the new infections. There's also some people who become disaffected and don't really kind of believe the whole COVID thing as much anymore as well. It's a separate problem with a separate kind of effects. Have we underestimated that last one that you just mentioned? This sort of, you know, either they just don't believe in vaccines or they have become afraid of vaccines, given some of the press around especially the AstraZeneca but you know the whole issue of vaccines have we underestimated

how large a segment that that can be you know I think that when you look at the vaccine survey data there's there's a lot of people who are just, you know, pro-vaccine, not a problem. They, you know, look at good resources. They feel comfortable. There's quite a few people, I think, that are reassurable, but they've gotten swayed by some of the very confusing messaging that's come around, certainly some vaccines, but all the vaccines at large. And so for them, it's actually an issue of frequent exposure to not good information could turn things in a bad direction for a lot of those people. And then there's, I think, a small but very impactful core of people who I don't think we exposed to a lot of very, you know, challenging, biased information that can be really, really compelling. And that's a really tough fight

to have. It's a very difficult space to negotiate. And I think that trust is eroded in times of anxiety as well, honestly. Well, one of the ways to combat that, of course, is to have an effective communication strategy, a national one that everybody buys into, not just the national government, but the provincial governments, that they're all in it together, so to speak, which supposedly a year ago, we were all in this together.

Now it seems like depending on which province you're looking at or which government you're looking at, things seem to be going in different directions. Has that been part of the failure on the communication strategy? You know, I do think the fact that the, you know, the healthcare delivery, the pandemic management strategies are all very provincially flavored, adds a lot of confusion to the messaging because of course the

media goes across all the borders very easily and so people say well why are we doing it that way and they're doing it this way why are they saying that and they're saying that and it really exacerbates i think a lot of the trust issues um i think a kind of single party line of truth with you know good um good resources attached to it that didn't have to be you know branded across all the provinces would be a really useful thing and there is there there are some campaigns i think that are very good like the uh 19 to 0 campaign and some other kind of national campaigns but they're tending to be kind of an optional kind of thing, like you can buy into this campaign or not. And I think that the local groups tend to support their own campaigns more.

So you do get a very patchwork landscape of information coming forward. And this is not a great time for a patchwork. I think a more cohesive communication strategy would definitely be helpful right now, because I'm concerned that we're going to start to lose people um in terms of the messaging and what does that result in i mean i i guess what i'm asking is is the situation we're in now as bad as it is is it something that will on its own run its course and you know a month from now six weeks from now whatever we will be

in a better position in spite of the the mess that it seems to be right now i think the short answer is yes we will be in a better place it just depends i think how ugly it's going to be to get there and i think that there's a fair amount of preventable illness and death in younger people that could come in the coming weeks and months if we do things poorly. And preventing that seems extremely valuable to me. I mean, that's, I mean, every single one of those statistics, every number is a person. And I think that it's easy to forget about that when you're staring at the numbers, but I really think that the concerted effort, it's never too late to try to do things better. And I really feel like there's a lot of good things that are going on as well.

It just doesn't make a seamless whole at all, if that makes sense. Well, who is doing it right? I mean, obviously, we look at the Atlantic Canada bubble bubble and they still seem to have an effective strategy there we've seen a similar situations in the north where they seem to have got their act together what are they doing that the rest of us aren't doing i think that i mean there's a lot of there's a lot of good policy decisions that were made early in some places. And I think that actually the geographic layout and the number of new introductions of infection are very, very important. And so, if you can contain and screen people as they come in, if you have fairly minimal cross-border

traffic, and if you have effective test, trace, isolate, you actually are in essence, almost like New Zealand, where they took a really hard line on find and isolate all cases and prevent all transmission. But once you're in a more populated area where there's a lot more back and forth of people, if you're in a province that has a, like, it's actually a pretty porous border with the US. And until recently, the US had 10 times our case rates. Now we're actually starting to go higher than the U.S., which is something I did not think was going to happen, I'll be honest. But all those things mean that unless you took a very early, very aggressive line on test, trace, isolate, it's kind of like the horse is out of the barn and you're trying to suppress. Is it too late for a big philosophic shift on that in the more populous provinces that have

raging bonfires of COVID? It probably is a little bit of a later discussion right now. Right now, I think really we have to be getting the lid on things first, um, and then looking at the feasibility of, of going for a more like zero kind of approach. Um, but right now we, we have essentially, you know, a lot of flames going and we have to try to get everyone on board to do the things that we know will work. Like we're not helpless. We know the things that will work and we really have to maximize the vaccine rollout. And those things will get us through. It will work what in terms of the that stat on test cases is is scary you know in terms of the situation in the states versus here and that suddenly our numbers uh you know they kind of crossed in the last week or two where we're showing per capita i guess more cases than the americans

are there's been so much focus on vaccines um But, you know, you know, the stories we tend to see in the States are places have gone wild and opening up. So, I mean, whatever they're doing is not necessarily going to work here if it seems to be working there. You know, they I mean, it's always tough when you look at a summary number for the u.s because it's like canada there's such different situations across the board but they are significantly ahead of us on vaccine delivery um and i think that is the thing that's making the fundamental difference um i don't think that the public health interventions have gotten any less untidy or less varied i really think the difference there has been the vaccines. So look ahead to me, for me. What do you see?

What do you see? You know, people had been so assuming that by the time we get to May or June, that we're going to be in such better shape. Do you still see that? I think that I see a rougher ride to get there. I do think that we will get through. And I do think that,

especially if we can just really surge on the vaccine delivery, this summer will still be better. It's just, as I said, how ugly it'll be on the way there. And so these next weeks to me, these next kind of two to eight weeks are really, really crucial for getting things back under control. I think people really had seen the vaccines

come forward with a lot of optimism and we're really resting on that. But the variants have really thrown a massive curveball into things. And they're proving very capable of staying ahead of us at the moment in a lot of places. And so, you know, we have to get back to the basics really hard this last push. I think that, you know, it's not unfair to bill it as a last push. I think that's reasonable.

I don't think COVID is going to disappear, but I think it's going to be a lot more containable by the time the summer comes. But until then, we really have to get serious again. And frankly, people are really tired. Everyone who's been doing it, medical and public health, and every individual who's been living this is really tired of it. So it's a really tough sell. But I do think it's a time-limited push that we're looking at. And if we do it right, it will make things a lot better. And who should take the lead on this? You know, I think that it's really challenging because we do see increasing dissension between members of the public in terms of what they think is going on and how serious they think

it is. At the end of the day, public health and elected officials have to do another push and have to make it very cohesive and strong for the next little while. And that makes them unpopular. But I think, frankly, people in public health didn't go into it to become popular this last year, and I don't think it's really shown that because it's kind of an unforgiving business if it's quiet no one recognizes the good job you're doing and if it's not quiet there's a lot of criticism so it's it's a tough job and likewise the elected officials probably

never anticipated this either but you know that's that at the end of the day that's where we have to see a really really strong communication strong support and infrastructure support for what needs to happen. Dr. Saxinger, I appreciate your time as always and knowing full well that you and so many of your colleagues are spending a lot of hours every day and have been for a year now on this and we can't thank you enough and I guess we've all got to join in that final push, as you say. Yep. It'll be okay. Hope you're right. Take care. You too.

Okay. Lenora Saxinger in Edmonton. And, you know, I appreciate all the things she said and the way she pointed us into the proper area to understand this in some context in terms of what's going on, some of the things that, you know, we're doing well and some of those we've got isn't a popularity contest. And as much as we, and I include myself in this, talk about this premier's up or this premier's down in terms of the popularity within their province or the prime minister, same thing, that's really not what's important here right now. What's important is that the right thing gets done.

You can argue about whether they're doing the right or the wrong thing, but whether they're popular or not is not part of the equation. If you're in this for popularity, you're going to lose because, I mean, just look what's happened in the last year. You're in this to do the right thing. And whether you're a healthcare professional, so many of whom are doing, you know, above and beyond the call for doing the right thing,

or whether you're an elected official who is either handling her or his responsibility or not, it's not a popularity thing. It's about doing the right thing in terms of the safety and care and health of your constituents. Okay, before we go, I just wanted to touch base on how some of, you know, we talked about obviously Canada and we talked a little bit about the states. You know, I said I'd mention a few other countries, especially ones where we have a relationship.

In Britain, people are, and I'm reading this from the New York Times over the weekend, in Britain, people are cautiously emerging from more than three months of lockdown, and 47% of the population has had at least one vaccine dose so basically half of the country in new york where at least 34 percent of people in the state have had at least one vaccine there's talk about life feeling almost normal it's not yet, but almost. However, France, where only 14% of the population has received one vaccine dose. You know, all those who are having, you know, spending a lot of time dumping on the Canadian numbers, look around. France, only 14% of the population has received one vaccine dose they just entered their third lockdown India which is and this is where more vaccines are made than any other place in the

world India which has given one dose to five percent of its population now they do have a billion people. Today reported 97,000 new cases. Actually, I think it was last Monday. 97,000 new cases. Close to its highest number since the start of the pandemic. Yeah, we had 7,000, I think, yesterday. 7,500. There are dozens of countries, including Japan, Afghanistan, Kenya, and the Philippines, that have given only a single dose to less than 2% of their populations.

New Zealand and Australia, which are often referred to as doing, you know, close to the best in the world, and part of the reason they, you know, they are islands, New Zealand especially, and they've had a very effective border control situation. And they don't screw around when the new cases are put out. They close down, clamp down very quickly. What was it?

Was it Melbourne, Australia the other day? They had like three new cases and they shut everything down right away. But both those countries are way back in the vaccine rollout. Way back. In fact, I think New Zealand hadn't even done one vaccination two weeks ago. Don't hold me to account on that. I think it was two weeks ago. I don't mean three weeks ago. Don't hold me to account on that. I think it was two weeks ago. I don't mean three weeks ago.

Now, one of the other studies that came out over the last couple of days was a study about blood clotting. And this was in Newsweek. And the conclusion of this, and you know why this has come up, because AstraZeneca, which I have in my veins, many of you have in yours, those of you who have received a single dose so far,

there was a good number were astrazeneca vaccines but there have been issues on astrazeneca as it relates to blood clotting and was it a side effect there was enough reason for concern that the whole process should be stopped or paused or age-determinant. Well, at the end of last week, the European Medicines Agency, EMA, stated that blood clots with low blood platelets should be listed as very rare side effects of AstraZeneca. It came to its conclusion based on a review of

86 blood clotting cases reported in the European Union, 18 of which were fatal. This was based on 17 million vaccinations. Sorry, 25 million. 25 million people receiving the jab in the European Union. And the number of fatalities AZ vaccine for blood clots was four people in a million. Now, keep this in mind. It's unclear whether AstraZeneca had anything to do with those fatalities or even cases because there are lots of other reasons

that people get blood clots and they were still doing this sub-examination of these cases you know you can have blood clots simply by having covid it is one of the possible side effects of actually having COVID. This is before you have anything to do with vaccines. That's one area. Sitting down too much during travel. That's why they tell you if you're on a long overseas flight

or a long transcontinental flight, get up and walk around once or twice during the flight. You got to keep your legs moving. You got to keep your legs moving. You got to keep the blood moving. So the risk of developing blood clots increases the longer a person is not moving. And if you have, I was talking last week about, you know, I've got this ring that monitors all kinds of things about me,

but, you know, so do certain watches and different, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? You know, certain personal devices that monitor your heart rate, et cetera, et cetera. Now, one of the things that those will do every once in a while, I know my ring does, it'll pop up on my personal device saying, time to move around a bit. Why don't you get up and move around?

You know, if you're watching a movie or something, and it's a long movie, like I watched The Right Stuff again for, I don't know, the 10th time last week. And it's a long movie, three watched the right stuff again for i don't know the 10th time last week um and it's a long movie three and a half hours and you know around two and a half hours the thing popped up said time to move around a little bit and that's why it does that uh what else we got here? A couple of other things I wanted to mention. Oh, yeah. Aside from, you know, sitting down.

Sitting down too much. The other areas where blood clots, you know, can come along. Smoking. Obesity. and I think yeah the last one oh that's really the last one it starts to get into such detail on these other ones it's almost

too small a risk anyway it's an important part of keeping things in perspective in terms of this blood clot issue and the concerns at least that one around astrazeneca or vaccines in general and as dr sax, you know, a lot of these concerns around vaccines have received in some part, and certainly in her view, conspiratorial heights, and they're not realistic, and people aren't thinking, or reading, or investigating enough, and they're making decisions based on some wild theories. Anyway, everyone has a right to say no to a vaccine, and everyone has a right to say yes.

And right now, more people are saying yes than are saying no, but there is a significant number of people who are pausing, who are pausing, who are hesitant. And the best thing for them is to read and learn and talk to real experts, not some person you find on the internet who you know nothing about. I think you're going to see a much tougher campaign coming out soon on the part of the pro-vaccine side about why you should be taking a vaccine. It'll be interesting to see how that develops and what impact it may have.

Because there's no doubt there's an issue in Canada on the part of those who are hesitant. All right, finally, last quick point here is I'm rambling. I'm rambling. What food do you think has been the most popular in the last year? And I don't mean like, you know, chicken, steak, whatever, but food in the sense of what you add to your food to make it tastier or more interesting for you.

What do you think's been the most, the one that is suffering the short supply right now because it's been so popular, more popular than it's always been. I'll give you three seconds to make a guess. Your guess is what? Starts with a K. If you're someone who appreciates the phrase, I put ketchup on my ketchup,

you'll be interested and perhaps slightly horrified to hear about the latest supply chain shortage to hit the country. This is the U.S. This was in the Wall Street Journal. Ketchup packets are apparently in short supply right now, and restaurants and fast food chains are struggling to keep up with the demand. 13% increase in ketchup packet prices since the pandemic started i know how to make money 25 increase in production amounting done that's it for the bridge for this monday have a good week i'm peter mansbridge thanks for listening we'll talk to you again tomorrow Tomorrow.