The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Why Aren't Boosters Available Right Now For Everyone?

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Dr. Isaac Bogoch has been one of the most listened-to guests on The Bridge all year. His expertise and advice on COVID 19 has been instrumental for many people from governments to ordinary citizens understanding how this virus is circulating and what to do in confronting it.  So with the Omicron variant quickly marching it’s way through the public, what now? 

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday, Isaac Bogoch is here, the latest on COVID. And welcome to another week. For me, this is probably going to be the last week before I take a little bit of a break at the end of 2021 and come back to you fresh as a daisy in 2022. But what would Monday be without getting the latest situation on where we are on the pandemic, where we are on COVID-19, where we are on booster shots? Booster shots are a big deal right now. That's what they all tell us. But in certain parts of Canada, you can't get a booster shot yet if you are below 50.

They say you'll get them the beginning of 2022. They even have a date. They've got bags of booster shots available. What are they waiting for? You can't have it both ways. You can't tell us that you've got to have a booster and yet at the same time not give you the ability to have that booster.

We'll raise that question, among others, today with Dr. Isaac Bogoch, who once again is going to spend a few minutes with us in a very busy schedule that he and all the other epidemiologists and the doctors and nurses who are involved in pandemic care across the country, they're stretched thin and they are tired. They are exhausted. And it's part of the situation we'll talk to Dr. Bogoch about. And Dr. Bogoch, of course, in Toronto, he's part of the University Health Network. He's at the University of Toronto as an epidemiologist. He's part of the science table that advises government, doesn't make the decisions itself,

but advises governments on what kind of decisions they perhaps should be taking. And we've been extremely lucky on this program, as other programs have been, that the epidemiologists in this country have been so willing to give what knowledge they have to the public through various different media outlets. And for the bridge, Monday has been that special day pretty much throughout this year where we've had different epidemiologists

from different parts of the country giving us their sense of where we are. And that's what we're going to do with Dr. Bogoch in just a moment. So this has been a very popular part of this podcast, a part of the bridge, a part of its SiriusXM Canada Channel 167 programming over the past year, the Monday discussion. And it gets

repeated, it gets picked up and talked about on on social media Twitter especially people really respect these doctors and what they have to say about the current situation so enough from me let's let's get to the discussion because we all know what's at stake here right now. The Omicron variant is out there. We're still kind of unclear exactly the impact of it, but there's no doubt that around the world, countries, doctors, hospitals, patients are reacting to it and trying to latch onto every single piece of information

that's out there to deal with the way they are living through this latest twist in the COVID story. So let's get the latest. We've tracked Dr. Bogoch down once again, and sometimes in the hospital, sometimes he's at home. He's not in the radio studio, so he's kind of had to adapt to the sound a little bit, but there's no question you can understand everything he has to say.

So let's latch on to the conversation with dr isaac bogach okay so we're 21 months into this and some of us are are into the uh full mode of of changing our lifestyles once again we're you know we're canceling holiday travel plans canceling holiday office parties uh we're watching otherlling holiday travel plans, cancelling holiday office parties. We're watching other countries like Britain just over this weekend saying we're into a really risky situation. Things could be really dicey here. What's your take? Where are we? Well, I mean, this variant is really transmissible.

It's in every continent around the world, excluding Antarctica. It's here in Canada, and it's spreading rapidly. It is spreading rapidly everywhere in the world, and of course, here in Canada. In Ontario, for example, we had maybe a case in November, and now it represents probably about 10% of all cases. That data is from a couple of days ago, and it's probably way out of date because this has a doubling time of probably somewhere in between two to three days. It's going to be the dominant variant in Canada in a matter of weeks, maybe on the short end of the spectrum. It might even be the only variant in canada with a bit of time as well this thing is really transmissible and it's taken over fast now one of the early

indications was that we would spend a couple of weeks trying to study this thing and in those first couple of weeks some of the suggestions are that is it's very transmissible as you just explained but that it's that it's milder in its consequences than we feared is that an accurate take on what we know so far i i hope it is but hope isn't good enough i mean when we look at the severity or the clinical impact that this has you know there have been some uh data emerging from from South Africa that perhaps this is a more mild variant. And that would be incredible if it was, but I think it's worth exploring that a little bit further. Why would it be considered more mild in South Africa? Well, there's several reasons. One is that

when we look at who's impacted, who's infected in South Africa, there's more younger people impacted. And we know younger people just don't get as sick versus older people, regardless of the variant. So that might be one reason. A second reason is that, sadly, South Africa has been hit very, very hard by a couple of enormous waves of COVID. And there may be significant rates of community-level protection

because people have had infection in the past. So those people who are getting infected when they're reinfected have already seen COVID before and have a primed immune system. They're just not going to get as sick. The third reason is that sometimes hospitalizations and deaths, not sometimes all the time, hospitalizations and deaths are a delayed metric. It can take a few weeks before we start to see that rise. And maybe it will rise with a bit of time in South Africa. And then the fourth reason is, hey, you know what? Maybe it is a more mild variant. Maybe it just doesn't cause the same degree of clinical illness. But I think some people might be a little more confident on this than I am. I truly don't know.

And I think it's premature to suggest that it's more mild. We can all hope that it's more mild, but hope is not a strategy. And we need to plan quickly to redeploy or deploy third doses, because we do know that three doses of a vaccine are better than two. Two still help, but three are better than two. And based on everything we know now from emerging laboratory data from different labs all over the world, from emerging epidemiology from South Africa and other outbreaks, different continents, it's pretty clear that we need to get third doses in fast. So I think we're going to watch that unfold in Canada from coast

to coast. We'll probably watch an accelerated third dose strategy and we'll probably watch the provinces roll that out over the next week or two well once again some provinces have got it rolled out fully for you know all ages right now on third third doses others not so fast i mean you look at ontario the most populous province and we have a situation where third doses are available now for those 50 and over, but there's a huge population in that younger group, obviously, and they're not till January 4th. I don't get that. If the situation is such a challenge right now

and we want to get third shots, a booster shot, into as many arms as possible, why are we saying, know get ready but uh we're not going to do it until january 4th for you guys right i think there's a few points for starters we take a step back from a couple of weeks ago i think in general canada's strategy for delta was very reasonable we had a data-driven, measured approach where we gradually expanded eligibility for third doses that made total sense. We've chatted about it maybe a few weeks ago where we said, you know what, they probably could have expanded it a little bit faster to community dwelling seniors. But in general, it was a reasonable approach. But over the last,

we've only heard about Omicron for a few weeks now. And I would say it's really the last week where the writing was on the wall that this is indeed was more transmissible. It did chip away at immunity from either prior vaccination or prior infection. And that three doses would be necessary and better than two doses. And I really, you know, obviously some provinces are faster at adapting than others. Watch. I would be shocked if we don't see a pivot in most provinces, if not all provinces to at least a more urgent third dose strategy.

And I think we're going to see provinces ramping up capacity for third doses quickly. I also think they're going to, you're going to see changing policy for expanding eligibility for third doses to 18 plus. And, you know, yeah, certainly you have to give provinces a little bit of time because they, you know, they're not as nimble as we'd like them to be, but I wouldn't be surprised if we hear announcements in various provinces either this week or early next week for expanded eligibility is it a supply issue i mean no no we've got the vaccines we definitely have the vaccines and we sort of have the ability to

administer them. Now, I can't comment on much of the country, but I know, for example, in Ontario, during the initial vaccine rollout, there was tremendous capacity to get needles in arms quickly. And there were several days where we had well over 250,000 vaccines administered per day. When you look at the rate of vaccination, that's about as fast as anyone has done it on planet earth. Like it was extraordinary how fast we were able to

vaccinate when we had, you know, Jupiter aligned with Mars and we had the vaccines and we had, you know, all hands on deck with the vaccine clinics and the, you know, these mass vaccine centers and community-based clinics and pop-up clinics and door to door and pharmacies and family medicine. Like it was, it was incredible. It took some time, but it was pretty incredible. Now we don't have that anymore. And in fact, not only do we not have that, like that, a lot of that infrastructure was dismantled, but on top of that,

we're in the midst of a bit of a health care crisis in terms of we don't have a lot of people working as many people as we need working so you know expanding capacity is a bit more of a challenge right you're you're trying to squeeze water out of a rock here uh but, I think we're going to actually see some expansion of capacity, we're going to use all resources that are available, because they're behind the scenes, there certainly is chatter that there is a more urgent need to vaccinate to boost capacity, and to do that quickly. So I think we will see redeployment of we'll see resources shifted towards the vaccine strategy in many provinces as they should. I mean, this variant is here, it's expanding quickly,

and we should be providing first, second, and third doses with a degree of urgency. And I, you know, let's, I can't wait and see, but I think if we wait and see, we'll see that this week and next week. Third shots are clearly the one of the major tools in the toolbox but there are others and i want to just check in on those uh masking is obvious but is it are we gonna have to put the masks on more often than we have been is it not is it something beyond just an indoor situation now for masking should we be wearing masks as often as we can?

I mean, so I don't know enough about Omicron, but I would highly doubt that we're going to see significant transmission in outdoor settings. I think, you know, pick a good mask, like a good quality mask. And people say, well, what's a good quality mask? We go on the Public Health Agency of Canada website, and they talk about well-fitting masks and high quality masks, not flimsy little cloth masks, like decent quality masks. We talk about actually wearing them consistently in indoor settings. Masks are very helpful. And again, there's other tools as well. There's no silver bullet. There's no one thing that's going to get us out of this pandemic.

It's going to be a multitude of interventions, right? Good masks, better ventilation in indoor settings, vaccination, of course. Obviously, rapid tests, I think, are completely underutilized in Canadian settings. And there's been, for whatever reason, I don't know why, but there's been a big outcry for more rapid tests this week that seem to make the news cycle. But, you know, even when it's not popular

and in the news, many of us shouting behind the scenes to like deploy these things. These are extremely helpful. And again, it's not going to solve the problem. It's just going to be a helpful additional tool

to create a safer indoor space. But when you put all that together, you know, if you're, for example, thinking about having a Christmas dinner, a holiday gathering, right. If everyone's vaccinated, if you've got better ventilation in the room, you know, by opening some of the windows up, if people have taken a rapid test before they got there and everyone tests negative, you know, I just can't expect people to wear masks at dinner,

but like, those are three very helpful tools that will create a much safer indoor space. Now, is it going to be perfect? No, of course not, but it's going to be really,

really good. And you'll have a pretty significant degree of safety having, you know, small gatherings. If you, if you do that, one of the issues though, I don't mean to blab on and on.

One of the issues is with rapid tests, they're, they're expensive. Very, very expensive. Oh, it's just ridiculous. I mean, how have we not figured this out over the last year? Other countries have done a really good job just flooding their countries with rapid tests. It's not a matter of just throwing rapid tests at a problem and expecting the problem to go away.

You obviously have to have lower barriers to testing lower barriers to accessing these tests but also informing people like here's how you use them here's what you do with a positive test here's what you do with a negative test and here's the test i mean i think it'd be great ontario not to i mean i'm sitting in ontario i don't mean to be ontario centric but i just know this province a bit better than others i mean there's a very innovative approach that they're taking here with over the holiday break. They're sending about 11 million tests home with every,

every student's going to take them five rapid tests for use over the holiday break. That's brilliant. That's a really smart approach. Get the tests in people's hands. What were the barriers to the test? Explain how to use them, you know, test negative before you go back to school in January. That's really going to help. People say, well, are they going to use it perfectly? What if they don't use it?

You haven't mandated it. That's not the point. The point is enable people to make good decisions for themselves. And you can watch that benefit magnify the population level. Not everyone's going to use it perfectly. That's great. People don't wear condoms perfectly. We don't say don't wear condoms.

We have to approach this with a harm reduction mindset. And I think deploying rapid tests at the community level and giving people instructions on where, when, how to use them, I think would go a long way. There's been a suggestion that there are literally millions of rapid tests available or in storage by governments in the country that haven't been deployed yeah i mean i i don't know the number but if that's the case that's a problem right they're not doing anyone any good collecting dust put them in the hands of the public show people how to use them and uh and we'll see a lot of good come of it of course nothing's perfect even if you use the test perfectly, they're still not going to be perfect every time.

It's just a helpful piece of a much larger puzzle. And it's an important piece. It's funny. I'm glad that there's momentum. I'm glad that this is being discussed publicly because maybe that would be enough to move the dial and to really get these into more widespread use. And, you know, for example, Ontario's approach

with sending these millions of tests on the students, maybe that's a program that we can build on and extend that to the general community. I think it would be a wonderful idea. You talked about ventilation before, and I want to just probe that a little bit because, you know, there are still what we used to call super spreader events

out there in terms of, you know, sporting events, indoor sporting events, whether it's hockey games or basketball games. And we've already saw something last week in one of the Toronto Raptors games where there was a, clearly was some kind of a case because they warned everybody everybody was at the

game that they should be looking for symptoms and prepare to self isolate. Is it time to rethink that strategy in terms of those, those big indoor events, even though they are restricted to those who are vaccinated? Yeah. I mean, everything should be on the table. And obviously we cannot lock down we should not lock down we i really think that that would be the last option and but you know when you've got a very transmissible variant you've got sadly significantly, significantly limited healthcare capacity, like really limited healthcare capacity.

You know, I think at least we should have these discussions of, you know, do we need to scale back on mass gathering events? Yeah, it probably would help a little bit. It probably would help a little bit. It's interesting. The flip side of the coin, and I mean, listen, just for debate, I'm not saying I agree with this. I have these conversations with my friends and colleagues all the time. And you can look at different models and different projections. Some more fatalistic approaches, is that even going to do anything? Is that actually even going to help? Apart from sending a message apart from

signaling that we're taking this seriously and that's what we're doing? Will that actually help? Like if you look at where we're at on February 5th, let's say February 14th, Valentine's day, it'll be optimistic on February 14th. Will we be anywhere different if we take that approach and restrict capacity versus if we didn't in terms of this variant sweeping through? I don't actually have an answer to that. I don't know. I don't know.

And I would not speak confidently on it. I mean, but I will say that we have a very precarious health healthcare system, especially our ICU capacity. And we cannot be in a situation where we overwhelm our healthcare system. We cannot. We know what happens with that. We're still dealing with the surgical backlog from wave two and wave three, and we're nowhere near dealing with that. And if you overwhelm your healthcare system, you're in a tough spot, right? For starters,

you might have to break out that triage protocol and say, who's going to get life-saving therapy in an ICU versus who isn't. You might have to cancel again, surgeries across the board because you need all hands on deck and all convert all those available beds and resources into an ICU. And, you know, I'll remind people that this problem, you know, Ontario, for example, I don't mean to be Ontario centric again. It's just, I know this province pretty well. You know, we have about 14 and a half million people here,

but it only takes about 400 people admitted to ICUs in a population of 14.5 million. It only takes about 400 patients with COVID-19 to be admitted to the ICUs for us to really be stretched. And that's a problem. Like, that's a problem. Alberta, remember Alberta during their massive wave in the spring in Saskatchewan, they had about 175 patients, only 175 patients in their ICUs with COVID-related illnesses, and their healthcare system was essentially imploding. They were shipping, Saskatchewan was shipping patients out of the province. It was bad.

In contrast to that to the United States, my friends work in a hospital in boston when they had search capacity they had one hospital that had 175 patients on a ventilator they just converted a lot of their hospital into an icu so one hospital in boston had the same icu capacity as an entire canadian province if that doesn't describe the limitations that we have in our icus from coast this is is a Canadian-wide problem. I don't know what it is. This is a big issue.

Obviously, we don't want anyone to get COVID. We've got to take steps to limit community transmission, protect individuals, protect communities. We should also have a vision that we really need to work in a way where we don't overwhelm our healthcare system because we'll have to make some very challenging decisions if we do.

And those are not easy decisions to make. Who's going to get ICU care? Who isn't? Canceling surgeries again and having to deal with that. Like this is, this is, this is, this issue should be front and center on Canadians' minds.

Not a, ah, you know what, let's be laissez faire, let her rip and see what happens. That's not, that's not an appropriate approach. When I searched the landscape looking for an angle that perhaps is positive on this this is what i come up with if if the uh what we've said all along is that

there are always going to be variants and and and often too often i guess variants of concern but there can be a pattern in the way these things flow out. Delta was really bad. If the pattern continues on Omicron, that suggests that it may be milder. Is that a good sign on the overall chart of looking at COVID? I mean, is there the potential, as these various variants come out that things start to decline

in terms of their, you know, in terms of how serious or mild that particular variant is? Yeah, I mean, that would be amazing. That would be absolutely amazing. Everyone would be ecstatic if that was the case. If this causes more mild illness, that would be obviously the best,

best, best case scenario. And like we said earlier, maybe it is, maybe it will, maybe it won't. I just don't know yet. And I don't think it's fair to speak confidently on that matter because it's just not clear, but that would be an amazing scenario. And it doesn't have to be that scenario.'s not like this is i'm a bit over my skis here but when we look at like how viruses evolve we have to think about it's it's not like there's a one-way street toward evolving toward a more mild illness that's not the case it will evolve in a manner that's reflective on the evolutionary pressures that are placed on this virus. So it doesn't have to be more mild.

It can evolve to be, you know, variants that are more significant. In fact, we saw that happen with alpha. Alpha variant from the UK was causing more significant illness than the original virus that emerged from Wuhan. And I mean, he got pounded with alpha. Remember that our third wave was alpha. That was our worst wave yet. That was awful. That was awful.

So, you know, what I'm trying to say is viruses don't have to evolve to be more mild. They can go the other direction as we've seen happen. You know, fingers tightly crossed that this Omicron is more mild, but it's too soon to tell for some of the reasons we outlined. If that's the case, though, you know, great. Is that the right word? Yay. We're going to get smoked with a mild variant, which I guess would be the best case scenario. It's coming. It's here and it's rapidly expanding.

I really hope it's mild, but again, hope is never a strategy. We have the tools. We have to deploy these tools to protect you. Let's, let's, let's think about it this way. What if we're wrong? What if we're wrong? And what if this really is a mild case? Uh, okay, great. You know, everyone's going to get a third dose anyways in, in, in January and February. And now you're just giving them their access to their third dose

in december okay like being wrong is still okay because we're basically accelerating eligibility for third doses and expanding third doses that so you we can't hope that this is more mild we have to prepare that this might not be an act accordingly. Last quick question. If there's been a theme throughout many of your answers here today, it's been still not sure. You know, we still don't know enough. We're still waiting for more knowledge on this.

I'm not sure whether i you know i praise your openness on that or i worry because we still don't know fair enough it's true right like we have to we just have to be honest right we don't have all the answers but you know what's incredible is over the last week we certainly got a lot of answers, right? You had laboratory studies from multiple labs around the world, all demonstrating decreased neutralizing antibody activity, which basically means it's going to be people who get infected or reinfected more readily. We also had emerging epidemiologic data from South Africa and emerging outbreak data from various significant outbreaks. So there's an outbreak in Oslo, there's a few outbreaks elsewhere in the world. So we know a lot more about this right now than we did a week ago. And I think based on all that, really about a week ago was when many people started to say, okay, yes, we knew what the genetic mutations were, but now we're actually watching this virus behave.

And it's clear that you need a third dose. It's clear that two doses are helpful, but three doses are better than two. from this last week. And that's why I hope we start to see provinces guided with a more of a sense of urgency to get an expanded third dose program running. And I know that that's actually what they're doing. Obviously, they're not front and center saying it, but I think we will hear those announcements this week and next week. And hopefully they telegraph it because I think there's people who are anxious and worried about when they're going to get their third dose. And I think people are going to get their third dose much sooner than they expected.

Hope you're right on that one. Me too. Listen, thanks very much. This is probably our last conversation before the year end. I know you're going to be working all through the holidays. We wish you luck. and we obviously thank you

and your colleagues for doing just that. In the meantime. My pleasure. In the meantime. Take care. Yeah, take care. We'll talk to you soon. All right, be well.

Dr. Isaac Bogoch. And, you know, he never holds back, right? He doesn't pull any punches on how he feels about certain aspects. And he gives us, you know, he's certainly given us strong hints in the past, and I think he's just done that again on this issue of third shots, booster shots. For those parts of the country where they're still waiting for young people under 50 to have access to what appear to be a mountain of supplies on the vaccine to get them into arms.

Supply isn't an issue. The issue sometimes becomes the delivery and exactly how that's done. And that's probably a conversation for a different time as well. And probably not with a, with a doctor like, like Isaac Bogart, but more in terms of somebody who understands how the delivery system works in different provinces,

because I think the people are starting to ask some serious questions about that. You know, who actually has the vaccines? Where can you get it done? How is it determined which, you know, pharmacies get it? Which doctors get it? What have you? Anyway, it's pretty clear from what Dr. Bogoch had to say that something is imminent in terms of that. And it may have already happened by the time you hear this program.

But if it hasn't, it's about to be, which would seem to be the case, at least from what Dr. Bogoch has had to say. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, something about the time person of the year. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, beginning of another week. I'm Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario today. You're listening either on SiriusXM, Canada, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform.

I know some of you were having some problems last week, and so did we, actually, in terms of getting our analytics, in terms of podcast listenership and on certain podcast platforms. I think those problems have been, you know, that's nothing to do with us. We put it out there and the various different platforms, and there are all kinds of them. It seemed like some of them were having some issues at the latter part of last weekend, getting the podcast up and available. Hopefully that's all being straightened out.

It seemed to be over the weekend. All right. Every year about this time since 1927, Time magazine has had what they first initially called the man of the year. It's now the person of the year, and has been for a while. But in 1927, it was Charles Lindbergh. And over the years, it's been, you know, it's usually been, well, not usually, but most often being American presidents

or Soviet leaders or Russian leaders now, as in the case of Vladimir Putin, or different world leaders. Angela Merkel, my fave, was the person of the year just a couple of years ago. But also, well, just before I leave that, the assumption has always been, oh, they must be fantastic, whoever these winners are. Well, they're not always fantastic because the criteria for the award is not necessarily a person who's done good. It could be a person who's done ill but has had a huge impact on the year because of that characteristic. I mean, let's not forget, 1938, Adolf Hitler, the Chancellor of Germany at the time, the

Nazi leader, the man who was about to plunge the world into a huge conflict, was the time man of the year at that point. So it's not always necessarily good. Sometimes it's not so good at all. This year, it's Elon Musk, who is the time person of the year. They just announced that earlier today. And why not? You know, on the basis of, you know, his move on electric vehicles,

he was out there and has been made extremely rich as a result of it. But while some people used to laugh at electric vehicles, they're not laughing anymore. In fact, every major auto manufacturer, it seems, in the world is coming out with their versions of electric vehicles. And some of them are looking pretty spiffy and more and more people are moving from traditional gas-powered vehicles to electric vehicles there are questions about how much the world is ready for electric vehicles in other words battery life and charging stations and all that but every day those situations get better. So Musk has made his mark there,

but he's also made his mark in space. Right? He has a vehicle that is pretty amazing, actually, in terms of going up into space and even more so in the way it comes back from space. It can land on a ship in the middle of the ocean. Is that his, or is that the other guy's? Jeff Bezos. The Amazon guy.

He's out there as well. Now, he's a former Time Person of the Year. I think it was 1998 or 1999. Jeff Bezos was the Person of the Year. So the two guys who are at the forefront of so much change in the way we live have both been voted to that category. Now, there's always been this aura around time because of its place for almost a century now

as a leading magazine, periodical, news-making thing in our lives. Is it still that? Not so much, but everything's changed in the news landscape, right? But the thing that hasn't changed is the interest, the excitement to some degree, of this annual announcement But the thing that hasn't changed is the interest, the excitement to some degree, of this annual announcement about the person of the year. So today, congratulations to Elon Musk,

who has both his fans and those who aren't fans at all. But he's not there because he's the most popular guy in the world. He's there because of the impact he's had on the world. All right. Looking ahead for this week, Wednesday, of course, will be Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. And Friday, a special edition of Good Talk with Chantel and Bruce because we are going to have a shy away from calling it a contest,

but we are going to have sort of our year end. It'll be our last Good Talk of the year. And so we're going to have a good sense of how those two determine certain aspects of the year who did well who did not so well but a lot more than that so good talk on friday will certainly be one you want to hear as well as smoke mirrors and the truth on wednesday on thursday um we're going to take a crack at your kind of year-end comments

and thoughts and letters. So kind of a mailbag year-end edition. So if you've got some thoughts, get them in now. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Also, this is your last week and maybe your last day uh to send in a note if you want a um book plate signed book plate for your copy of off the record i've got a just a couple of them left a few left uh there was a big rush on them on the weekend remember please send in your um proof of purchase

of the uh the book that's a publisher's requirement. And I will get it in the mail to you, assuming it can get there on time. There have been hundreds and hundreds of those requests in the last couple of weeks. I expect for late shoppers, you might want to get them in today. And tomorrow, the bridge will be back tomorrow.

And who knows? Might be a potpourri day. I got a lot of stuff. I got a ton of stuff that I haven't got to in the last couple of weeks. And we might want to get to that. All right. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge.

Thanks so much for listening. Always good to know that you're out there listening to whatever it is we have to say right here on The Bridge. Take care. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.