The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Who Will You Trust When The World Returns To Some Sense Of Normalcy

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

This is a potpourri podcast today -- from deciding on who to trust, to reservations about returning your kids to school -- and everything in between.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, that is kind of dependent in some form on the entertainment industry, where you're packing a lot of people into relatively small places, then you're going to find this interesting. I certainly did. I come from Stratford, Ontario, as you're already bored of hearing. And one of the main things about Stratford is the theatre, where through the spring, summer and fall months, hundreds and in some cases thousands of people are packed into the theatre to watch great performances. Not this year. It's not happening. Just like it's not happening at the Shaw Festival.

Just like it's not happening at the Shaw Festival. Just like it's not happening in theaters in Toronto and Vancouver and Halifax and Charlottetown. Not happening. We're not going to put people in theaters this summer. So the assumption is, of course, and the hope is, that things will be better by next year's theater season. But that's a guessing game, right? You don't know at this point. We don't know where we're going to be. A month from now, six months from now, 12 months from now.

We don't know what the situation will be exactly. But there are some things you can sense and test out in terms of the public's willingness to go into situations like that, including dyed-in-the-wool theater goers. What better place to get a sense of that than New York, Broadway, right? New York and London, the best theater centers in the world,

most people would argue. Toronto, close. Stratford, working its way up there. But anyway, if you're going to test out people's feelings towards all this, when are they going to go back? How are they going to go back? Will they go back? Some interesting data

was on the front page of the New York Times today. A Siena College Research Institute poll found that Broadway theater goers who are hesitant to return mainly worry that the people around them won't follow the rules. That's an interesting reason why. Why? They're worried about whether people around them will follow the rules that are put in place for going back into a theater. Which shows that having a broad sense of trust in one another, says the New York Times,

having a broad sense of trust in one another on top of trusting the institutions is key in economic recovery. So if you translate that down to, say, the Stratford level, it's not necessarily a lack of trust in the Stratford Festival, and you can put in any name of any theatre anywhere there. I'm just trying to be local. It's not a question of a lack of trust in the theatre. Who they assume, one assumes,

are going to have stringent rules in place governing their own operations, disinfectants, masks, whatever the case may be. The concern on the part of these people surveyed is not that. It's trusting the other theatre goers. Now that story comes out at the same time that The Economist is running a story about a similar phenomenon with the reopening that's going on in China,

a society that seems to be returning to a more solitary society, a less fun way of life. Now, is that what it's going to be like? Where we're going to be alone, this isolation that we've been going through for the most part over these last few months and the social distancing that's kept us apart from others? Is that what we're going to be like? Are we going to be a more solitary

society? Are we going to be more alone than the old fun way of life? You know, for sports fans, these last couple of days have been celebrating the first anniversary since the Toronto Raptors won the Eastern Conference Final. Leading up, you know, there'll be a whole other celebration going on in a few weeks' time when they celebrate the firstas and had the hugging and jumping up and down and back slapping and cheering and out there in front of the arena, the scenes that were going on. You know, you think back to that, you see those pictures being played here at the anniversary time, you go, are we going to ever do that again? Are we ever going to be like that again? You know, I've told you, I have season tickets to the Raptors.

I have season tickets to the Leafs. I don't know whether I'm ever going to be at another game. What's that going to be like? What's it going to be like the first game you go back to? Are we all going to be sitting there in masks? Are we going to be distant from each other? Are there going to be certain season ticket holders that don't get to go? You only get to go on sort of odd-numbered days or even-numbered days,

and the people who sat beside you are at the other game? I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do. But it's hard to look at those pictures and wonder, man, what is our society going to be like? How different is it going to be? How is it going to change us? Right?

So we don't know. It's a good one to think about, though. Not just for us to think about, but for the people who have the difficult decisions and choices that have to be made in anything, whether it's entertainment or otherwise, that has something to do with putting a lot of people in a confined space. How are they going to handle it? And they better start thinking about the way people

are thinking on this as well, as is pointed out in that poll of theater goers just released today. You know there are all kinds of, it's funny, before I'll just start, I didn't talk about polls too much because I don't have a lot of faith in a lot of polls. However, we're trying to gauge people's opinions. We do it every Friday. Be listening to your mail, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

Make sure you write. We have a lot of dedicated listeners who write every week. But we want to, you know, we like to spread it out. I know we have a lot of dedicated listeners who feel shy about writing. Don't. Go ahead. Let me know what you're thinking, especially on these topics that we cover. Anyway, that's our kind of poll, right? That's the Bridge Daily's poll.

It's listening to all of you. And every week we try to listen you know i try to put in whatever anywhere between 20 and 50 of your comments questions or thoughts and we get a lot of new people every week and i appreciate that and i also appreciate hearing from those who are kind of regulars uh nevertheless moving on. This is once again another survey. The Morning Consult poll is one that's regarded well in the U.S.

They had a poll out this week, and it's on this issue we discussed, I guess it was last week, maybe the week before. All these weeks start to flow into each other, right? About partisanship. These are interesting numbers. Boy. What this poll shows is that the nonpartisan response to the COVID-19 outbreak has turned at this point.

High concern over the virus polls at 73% of Democrats, 43% of Republicans. A 30-point gap. 16% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans said they were more concerned about the economic impacts than the health impacts of the outbreak. A 39% gap. And listen to this one. for Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus is currently minus 73 for Democrats and plus 72 for Republicans. A 145-point gap. And, I mean, what more do you need to say? Is there a partisan divide in the U.S.? Absolutely.

Not so much here, whether federally or provincially. The numbers, for the most part, for governments in power, parties in power, doesn't matter their stripe. Most obvious is, you know, liberals in Ottawa, conservatives in Toronto, but it goes across the country. Conservatives, NDP in BC. People are pretty happy with the kind of leadership they've been getting.

And the spread is generally in favor of, not generally, is in favor of the party and the government in power. That's not to mean, and neither do those other numbers in the states, that doesn't necessarily mean, well, it probably does mean it in the states, but it doesn't mean it here,

that that means you're going to vote in a particular fashion. It means you're satisfied with the leadership you're getting at the moment. The majority of Canadians. Not everybody's happy, and you know that, and we hear that. But everybody's gone up in their popularity. And the most striking ones are Trudeau in Ottawa, Ford in Ontario, Legault in Quebec.

And when you think Legault and Ford, man, they're having problems with this virus. But their popularity, the way they have handled it, has been popular with their citizens. So there you've got, you know, a liberal, a conservative, and somebody who used to be a Bloc Québécois, or a Petit Québécois. Anyway, interesting. Now the final question that comes up today the final issue that i want to talk about today is one that i know is on the minds of a lot of you

either about your children or about your grandchildren and what is going to happen when and if they go back to school and what is the risk factor for them when they go back to school. And what is the risk factor for them when they go back to school? And we've heard some difficult things to hear in the last week or 10 days about the spread of this virus and the challenge it's presented, especially in a very, very limited, low number of cases in the U.S. of a rare inflammatory disease in young kids. And that was, there wasn't a parent who heard that or a grandparent who heard that who wasn't

worried. So let me give you something not to worry about. Well, I shouldn't say not to worry about, but something that will make you feel more comfortable about kids and school. Very good piece in the Ottawa Citizen. All right. It's titled, Children Do Not Appear to Be COVID-19 Super Spreaders. It's a piece written by Elizabeth Payne at the Ottawa Citizen. So I'll read a couple of sections from it because this is something we can all feel a little more comfortable about as we, in some cases, prepare or contemplate the return at some point to school.

For most, the earliest that may happen is in the fall. But nevertheless, everybody's worried about it, right? You're worried about it. Here's the piece. Children are neither highly susceptible to COVID-19 nor the super spreaders people feared they might be according to mounting research. Despite some rare but serious complications, those are the ones I

mentioned a moment ago, children in Canada and around the world are the least affected by COVID-19. There is a lot we don't know yet, but what we do know is that there are fewer children infected compared to adults, and the children are less severely effective if they are infected, said Chio, that's one of the hospitals, one of the famous, world-famous hospitals in Ottawa, infectious disease physician Dr. Nicole Lassaux. The lighter impact of COVID-19 on children and teens was unexpected, she said. It has surprised everybody. The good thing is at least there is one group that isn't getting hit so much. Now, there have been cases of severe illness among children reported around the world. And doctors in Canada and elsewhere are on alert for cases of a rare hyperinflammatory syndrome

that appears to be related to COVID-19. That's what I mentioned to you a moment ago. They're on the alert for it. Across Canada, children under 19 made up just 5.69% of all confirmed COVID-19 cases as of May 25th, just a couple of days ago. A total of 34 children have been hospitalized for treatment related to COVID-19 in Canada. 34 in Canada. And just two of those children required intensive care.

More than 6,500 Canadians have died from the disease so far, none of them children or teens under 19. None of them children or teens under 19. None of them. The reason the impact on children has been so surprising is that it does not follow the typical pattern of seasonal influenza in which children are often severely affected and can act as super spreaders, said Lasseau. With seasonal flu, schools often become epicenters of infection and children bring it home to their parents and their grandparents. It does not appear, says Lasseau, it does not appear that so far with COVID, the epidemiology appears to be different. Now, here's another part of this story,

and this is how it directly relates to schools. Okay? Once again, this piece is from Elizabeth Payne. She wrote it for the Ottawa Citizen. It's getting some attention around the world, I might add. Because she's, you know, done a lot of research on this, and part of it is down near the end of the story. Early data suggests that where schools have reopened,

they have not become centres of COVID-19 outbreak. In Australia, hundreds of students and staff were tested after a handful of students and staff tested positive for COVID-19. The infection did not spread despite the contact at school. And here's a quote. It suggests that closeness of contact wasn't enough to get other people infected. Now, as Elizabeth concludes in her piece, it'll be difficult to keep children physically distant in school,

and especially daycare. But it's a question of balancing risk and taking every precaution. Even then, one of the doctors she talked to conceded that not all parents will be willing to accept any risk that their children could get COVID-19. And I get it. I get it. I get it. If I had a kid who was five or six or seven years old, my grandkids are mostly older than that. One is kind of in that range.

And you've got to be worried. You've got to be thinking about this and trying to determine, what am I going to do? What am I going to do when they say, okay, everybody back to school? But in the end, it's a parent's decision. Well, it's been easy these last couple of months to make that decision. What's it going to be like in the fall when they say, school's open? The rules are going to be a little different, but school's open.

What are you going to do? I know there's a lot of teachers who listen to the podcast, and I know that for some of them, they've been going through different emotions on this over these last couple of months, and now they're getting in their head, trying to make determinations about how they're going to feel for this fall. You want to share those thoughts?

Hey, love to hear from you. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. And I'm going to once again drop the name of extraordinarybook.ca. That's the site. Or you can get it on my website, thepetermansbridge.com, where all the past podcasts are listed. But also, there's a special page linking to extraordinarybook.ca, which is the name of the book, sort of the name of the book,

Extraordinary Canadians, co-authored with Mark Bulgich, where we're going to, we have this book coming out on November 10th, and we're very excited about it. We want you to be excited about it too. It's going to highlight a number of Canadians whose names you may not have heard of before. Some you will have heard of before, but most you won't have.

But they're amazing, and they're inspiring, and they will tell you stories of courage, dedication, and how, in many ways, we are Canadian. So extraordinarybook.ca is where you can find out more details on it. And the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com is, of course, where you can send me your thoughts or questions or comments on anything you've heard on the podcast, or, quite frankly, on anything else as it relates to the story that we continue to cover and discuss together.

All right, marching into the end of the week, the end of week 11 as we go. Tomorrow, the Thursday broadcast or podcast, and then Friday, of course, is devoted to the Your Thoughts, and we look forward to hearing them. I've got a couple of things coming up on Friday. I'm doing a special Zoom cast with McMaster University with some of the staff and alumni there.

I don't know how many little faces there are going to be on the screen for that one. And then I'm doing another one that's centered for the most part in Western Canada. I'll tell you more about it maybe tomorrow, but it's going to be kind of interesting. It's another Zoom thing, but it's for students who have, it's kind of a convocation for students who have been attending something called Pandemic University, where they've been honing their skills in everything from journalism to the arts. And they're having a bit of a convocation party by Zoom on Friday night. I'm going to join into that late Friday night and have a chat with them as well.

So anyway, there we go. That's the Bridge Daily for this day, for Wednesday, for Hump Day in week 11. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. And you know we'll be here again in 24 hours. Thank you.