The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Why Can't We All Be Nova Scotia?

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Why is Nova Scotia doing so well against Covid? We have the answer. And the fascinating history of the Bibles that have been used to swear in US Presidents.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the Tuesday, week 45 episode of The Bridge. And if you were with us yesterday, which I hope you were, you know I told you that today, the day before the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States and the goodbye Donald Trump, the 45th President, that on this day we would talk about the history of the Bible being used on inauguration days. Who's used it? Who hasn't used it? Which Bible? What's the history of that particular Bible? It's actually a fascinating story, and I'm going to tell you parts of it

because it strikes the heart of some elements of U.S. history. Some of the good, some of the bad. And we'll go over that, but in a moment, because first of all, we're going to do something else. And we've got a special guest to help us on it. It's about COVID. It's about the reason we actually started this podcast 45 weeks ago. When we went into the first of what's been a series of lockdowns in different parts of the country over the last 45 weeks and with no end in sight to some of those lockdowns. So here's what I want to talk about, because if you follow the numbers, and I know many of you do, you've seen something that's been consistent since this story started, that one particular part of the country does much better than

the rest of the country. Talking about Atlantic Canada. Now, I know the North also has low numbers, Nunavut and Northwest Territories, Yukon. But the four Atlantic Canadian provinces have been very consistent from the get-go on this. While from Quebec, west of BC, it's been tough sledding at different times and continues to be right now. So the question is, how come? What is it about Atlantic Canada that shows the numbers much lower? Now, obviously, there are fewer people in Atlantic Canada than there are certainly in central Canada.

There's less travel to a degree than in other parts of the country. But still, these are low numbers. So what's the difference? Why is it that way? You know, last summer I thought about this. We mentioned it a couple of times. We didn't really do anything with it because we kind of assumed that at a certain point it was going to catch up to Atlantic Canada. Well, it hasn't caught up to Atlantic Canada so far.

Why? So, it was time to find somebody who could give us that answer. And as you know, on this podcast, we've been lucky enough to talk to a number of different epidemiologists, infectious disease people about this story about COVID-19. And they've all been great. And part of the challenge for them is they talk a different language than the rest of us do. And for us to understand it, they've got to kind of take it down a notch or two. And so many of them have been able to do that. And that's why you see them popping up in different television newscasts and radio newscasts, quotes in papers and online. Well, today, obviously, if we're going to talk about Atlantic Canada, we're going to go to Atlantic Canada to talk to somebody.

And who did we pick? Well, we are lucky enough to be joined by Dr. Lisa Barrett. Now, Dr. Barrett is an infectious disease expert. She's an assistant professor at Dalhousie's Faculty of Medicine. So she knows her stuff. And she's in constant contact with other infectious disease experts in different parts of the country, including our friend Isaac Bogoch, who's with us every once in a while. So I sent Lisa an email and I said, would you mind? And she said, she'd love to. And here's the result of that conversation. So Dr. Barrett,

I don't want to make this sound too simple, but for a lot of my listeners who have watched for months and listened for months to the numbers in Atlantic Canada being so much lower than everywhere else, consistently lower than everywhere else, the odd spike here and there, but really nothing to speak of compared with what they've been living through. So what is it Atlantic Canadians and Nova Scotians in particular, we've got a great track record here. What are you doing that we're not doing? I think we can break it down into a couple of different domains there. And you said it, Nova Scotians are the first and the foremost. They have truly picked up and run with everything that they've been asked to do at a very, very high fidelity rate. And so they have done what they needed to do consistently over time and all of the things all the time. So not just a bit, some of the time. So number one,

Nova Scotians can't say it enough. And it's not just a thing that I say it's true. People do what they're told. I look out on a highway next to my house. And even now, when we come into periods of time or weeks, when we're supposed to be on a closer to home, not lockdown, but closer to home order. There's nobody on that highway most days, most of the time. And that's pretty amazing. So Nova Scotia is number one. But then it comes back to, I think, definitive early and science based policy decision making. And that's not luck. Yes, we have fewer numbers. That's been brought up before. Yes, we're islands of sorts. Yes, we're on the edge of the continent

and water bounds one edge of us. But, you know, doing things such as expecting that we get to know cases, bringing in knowledge that this virus doesn't jump, you need contact and telling people if you are in contact with each other, you need to wear masks and mostly stay home if you can. It was very important. And that didn't change weekly. That was a long term plan over the course of this pandemic. Restricting travel. And if you came in, there was an obligate Q14.

That was not a mild suggestion that was a very strong suggestion and that has never let up outside the atlantic bubble and even when parts of our bubble started to look even the least bit risky we shut down back and forth communication through travel without testing except for people who had to be there for essential work. So early definitive policymaking around lack of contact, lots of quarantine, and of course, testing has become the latest thing. We are doing a lot of testing. We've recognized the science around asymptomatic transmission for this virus. And therefore, if a virus transmit when you're asymptomatic, you got to test people who are asymptomatic transmission for this virus and therefore if a virus transmit when you're asymptomatic you got to test people who are asymptomatic and we've done a lot of that and

are going to continue to do a lot more of it as we go forward with a plan for safer COVID living. So I think that's a lot of the things that we've done that have been a bit different than some of the other provinces. I want to talk about science in particular in a moment and the acceptance of science, but let me just pull you back just a moment to some of your opening stuff. Was there, in terms of the public, was it sort of, you know, early sign-on or like immediate sign-on to some of these things, whether it was not travel, whether it was, you know, obeying the quarantine rules, whether it was, you know, washing hands, wearing a mask, all about stuff. Was there early sign on and very little resistance? Well, if there was a lot of resistance, I A, didn't see it and B, didn't hear a lot about it.

Instead of people wondering, can I go walk my dog when the people in the next community can walk their dog? It was, well, there's a reason for this and we're going to go with it. So there was a lot less. What can I do? Push the boundaries and a whole lot more. Let's just call it a call. Call it quits until we're told we can do something. And I did see a lot of that. Again, the highway description, going down to a local store where there's almost no one, people make appointments to go out to do retail activity a lot of the time. And that was early, consistent, a little bit more challenging now, I think for people, a little bit less buy-in. But I think the other thing was that there was a huge amount of consensus among the government and policymaking folks from the premier's office to public health.

And the same message came out all the time, consistently from those folks and from our community-based people who were sending out messages, everyone had the same message. School boards had similar messages. Teachers unions had similar messages. Retail, our restaurants in the last wave just around Christmas voluntarily shut down to make sure that we were going to take our wavelet and make it small. So huge amount of community buy-in, even 10, 11 months later. Wow.

That is remarkable, especially when you live like I do in a province like Ontario, but we've seen it in Quebec. We saw it and have seen it in Alberta and to some degree in BC, where there was this assumption when the numbers all started to go down, as they really did in Ontario, like in July and early August, the numbers were really low. And there was almost this feeling like we've got it. We've got it beat. We can relax. And demands for a lot of relaxing on the part of different areas that had faced restriction. It doesn't sound like if you're going through that, you're not showing it yet. But it sounds like people have just said, hey, this isn't over.

I don't care what the numbers are. It's not over. They're telling us to still do this and we're just going to do it. Agreed. Also, a lot of the messaging we've sent out is that zero cases diagnosed doesn't mean zero virus. And 10 cases with a virus that's going to spread easily and spread without symptoms means that you probably have 10, meaning 20 or 50, depending on how your restrictions are at the moment.

And I think people have taken that to heart a fair bit. Newfoundland is a little different than Nova Scotia. They've had very, very few cases. PEI, very similar to Newfoundland, very few cases. So sometimes zero cases probably does mean close to zero virus for those folks. But we're a little different with our connection with New Brunswick, which is directly connected to Quebec, Ontario. So I think here people have been very, very cognizant of the fact that they've worked darn hard and they do not want to go back to the beginning again. And I think we're all aware as well that, so I think there's been a different

approach in Ontario. You didn't go back to the beginning when you went into wave two. You didn't go back to ground zero for wave one in the way you approached it, which arguably might not have been a terrible idea. I'm not certain what the right answer is, but people didn't go back in their heads to wave one behavior. And here, the minute we saw cases go up to that one day of 37 or 39, whatever it was, November 24th, people just started to launch back into a mindset of, okay, this is not good. We do not want to go back to a long-term lockdown. Let's shut this down. And you could feel that palpably around, I believe. And what happened here was there were people saying that. That's what we should do.

But the government wasn't with them, at least initially. That's a whole separate discussion. Let's move into what's happening now. Because the equation has changed to a degree. The numbers haven't changed, but the discussion changes somewhat as you enter into an era of vaccines and once again this discussion about science and the acceptance of science not just by governments but by people so how is that entering the story in Nova Scotia?

Well again what's the science say about the virus? This was a new virus. Now we know really, really contact and staying away from people just like any other respiratory virus. It's pretty darn effective if people do it. P.S. We had nothing but hand washing distance and masking before. And people got down to, as you mentioned, even in Ontario, very low numbers with that strategy. But we don't know necessarily yet that it prevents spread from one person to another. There may still be some low level infection that happens with these vaccines. And we certainly don't know yet if we're going to

talk science about what the role of vaccine is after only one shot, as opposed to the recommended two for the current vaccines. So if you're going to talk about science and what we're going to do here in Nova Scotia next, we are not backing down on the idea of masking, hand washing and distancing, period, despite bringing in additional layers of protection through testing and vaccine. So that's number one. And part of the go forward plan will be that as we get out and about a bit more and start our safer COVID living, that we're going to keep that in place as a key and core part of the science of the virus.

That's important. Number two, testing. Again, not new science, but completely now concrete is the idea that there's asymptomatic spread. And therefore, you're going to have to do all kinds of testing of people without symptoms to keep this at bay. Cases are going to come in. Things are going to continue to change and evolve. The virus is going to continue to change and evolve. You've got to test in order to find it early or else you miss the boat. And if you miss the boat, cases go up too fast to manage. So that's the next part is that we're going to continue to ramp up and diversify our testing strategies, not just where we do them,

how many we do, but also who does them. And this is going to come into engagement, which is, I think, a big difference in Nova Scotia that we've already mentioned that intersects with science. The testing is going to be a lot more run by people in the community. So testing for people by people is a big part of how we've done things in the last two months in Nova Scotia, and that's going to continue to expand because engagement is how we're going to get to number three, which is our late protection layer with vaccine. So we're not assuming that vaccines are going to provide protection from either spread or infection for many months yet, despite vaccinating a lot of people. We're going to assume that we're going to need six to eight months and that we're going to need to do the vaccines the way they were described and the way the immunologists tell us that they work before we use that as any layer or blanket of protection because we have the epidemiology to be able to do that. And it's based on science, not an experiment of going away from the way vaccines were supposed to be delivered.

Sounds to me like there must be a good little debate going on behind the scenes between the epidemiologists and some of the public servants who are running these things and the politicians about especially this whole two-dose, one-dose thing. You seem to be being very careful in the words you're choosing here, but clearly you believe that they should stick with what the original plan was, what the tests were, what all the testing that was done on these vaccines, two-dose, at least Pfizer and Moderna, a two-dose vaccine, that they should stick with that and not be changing the rules in the middle of the game? So for full disclosure, I'm an infectious disease doctor, but I'm also an immunologist. And immunology is what I do for a living in the research end of my world. So immune systems work in a certain way. Companies don't like having two shot vaccines. It complicates delivery. It makes them less attractive in a competitive world, especially if there are other one shot vaccines that are coming forward.

And so if they have decided and when they did the initial trials and in the animals, it looked like you needed two doses to get really high levels of immunity that lasted quite a while, which is what we're looking for, especially if people are, for example, older and may not mount as much of an immune response. You want to get as much as you can squeezed out of your vaccine protection. If they decided to go with a two-dose vaccine regimen, you can be pretty sure it wasn't because they just wanted to make extra money on a second shot. And the immunology that we have available to us to date does suggest that the best immunity with this vaccine does come from two shots. And so because there is some math modeling that would suggest if you are in a situation where cases are uncontrolled, then you might

want to vaccinate to get some partial immunity that might reduce transmission from person to person. That's a good idea, sort of, but you would have to worry about some generation of viral resistance. If there's lots of replication of virus going on in the community, that's a really great way to add immune pressure and generate some viral resistance potentially. And also we don't have the data. And so if you're going to go with not giving the second dose at all, which may be a plan in some provinces or delaying, which is a plan potentially in some other provinces, then I think people have a right to know when they're getting their first shot and that the other is going to be different than what the science suggests. That should be a consenting process because that is experimental.

And I think people should know that. Last question. And really, it's kind of asking you whether other parts of the country have been doing the same thing that I've been doing in this interview, which is asking those who seem to be succeeding in this, this, this stage of the battle against the virus, how they're doing it and learning from that experience. So does Nova Scotia and the other Atlantic Canadian provinces, is there a constant sort of discussion going on with the other provinces?

Are they sort of calling up and saying like, how are you doing this? Certainly collegially, you know, in the academic world, in the infectious disease world, we talk to our colleagues all the time. The premiers have their premier's meetings. The chief medical officers of health have their meetings. The Public Health Agency of Canada talks to all the provinces and territories. Everyone talks a lot. I do worry a little bit that people in bigger places see a big problem and think that solutions that worked in smaller places aren't applicable. And I think that's a bit of a logical fallacy. You can break any big place down into a group of communities and engage them. And

I think if there's a couple of themes from what we've just talked about, it's nothing is possible without engagement of people. Nothing is possible without science and innovation and a consistent message. And you can do that in any of the provinces that we have in Canada, because Canadians do have a whole lot of similarities in a lot of ways, I think, despite their differences and the need to customize. But if we let people lead this a little bit more, if we consider it possible and desirable to do things definitively for the next number of weeks and not just roll out vaccine and hope it works. I think this is possible. So we can talk till the cows come home,

but that's not super helpful. People need to get up, leave their office and go and do some of this stuff. They need to be starting to think about engaging people. They need to start staying home. They need to give people support to stay home. They need to make sure that their communities have what they need eventually to start testing a lot. That's not impossible. It's not even close to impossible. People just have to want to accept that these small place solutions can work. You just do it jurisdiction by jurisdiction at a time. Dr. Lisa Barrett in Halifax today. This has been a fascinating discussion.

I really appreciate it. And I hope we'll be able to do it again, you know, when we're clearly on the downside, when the rest of us have caught up to you. And I hope we keep ahead of our wave in Nova Scotia because, you know what, none of us are looking up yet. We are still, in our opinion, in the dead middle of this. Thanks so much. Thank you.

Well, I thought that was a really, really good kind of breakdown of the story. And for us, no matter where you are in the country, to understand the differences that are at play, why the numbers may be different, and why the discussions and the debates and the arguments, if you will, are different in different parts of the country. So I think it's really, a really interesting discussion. And I thank Lisa Barrett for her time on that. Because I thought it was absolutely well worth it for us. I hope it was worth it for her, because I know she's under great demand. And just to remind you, she is an infectious disease expert, and she teaches at Dalhousie's Faculty of Medicine. Now, topic two. As promised yesterday, I wanted to talk the Bible that will be used tomorrow at the inauguration of Joe Biden. But before we talk about that particular Bible, we kind of got to talk about how the Bible plays a role in that ceremony

every four years. Or not. You know that when Joe Biden stands there tomorrow at noon, 12 noon on the dot, that's when the transition takes place. 12 noon, January 20th. That's always the time of the date. Well, when he's sworn in

as 46th President of the United States he's you know he'll take his oath he'll raise his right hand while almost certainly placing his left hand on a bible now nowhere does it say in the u.s constitution that you have to have your hand on a bible but most presidents have done exactly that. So I found this great article in, wait for it, Town and Country magazine. Town and Country. They've got a story on George Washington.

He was inaugurated as the first president of the United States on April 30th, 1789. Where was it? It wasn't at the Capitol building in Washington because that wasn't even built yet. It was under construction. So was the whole city of Washington. So where was the capital of the United States at that point? This is kind of like Canada. The first Canadian It was Kingston. For a time, I think it was even in Montreal. Anyway, in 1789, on April 30th, that was when they inaugurated their first president,

April 30th, 1789. He was in New York at the Old City Hall. And for his oath, Washington chose to use a Bible borrowed from the St. John's Lodge No. 1, the oldest Masonic lodge in New York. The Bible was opened to a page at random. Nobody thought about, like, what page should he be at. They just sort of opened it at random, and that became the page. After he took his oath, Washington kissed the Bible. Now, that Bible took on some historic significance, obviously, because it was the first one.

And many of his successors have used his Bible. Warren Harding, Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, all chose it for their inaugurations. Some of them also used a family Bible as well. George W. Bush wished to use it in 2001, but due to the Bible's fragile nature and the threat of rain, he was not able to, like his father had, and opted instead for a family Bible.

Now, it's unclear how many presidents actually used the Bible. There's no doubt that some did not. the Lincoln Bible, which is stored at the Library of Congress in Washington, is the one used by Abraham Lincoln at his first inauguration in 1861. President Obama was the first president after Lincoln to use it in both of his inaugurations. 2009 and then again in 2013. I was at both of those. For his second inauguration in 2013,

he also used a Bible belonging to Dr. Martin Luther King. In 2017, Donald Trump also used the Lincoln Bible. It was in a protective box. As well as a family Bible given to him by his mother in 1959, or sorry, 1955, two days before his ninth birthday. So there you've heard about the Washington Bible and the Lincoln Bible. Most presidents have opted for a family Bible. Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the Roosevelt family Bible,

the same one he chose when he was sworn in as governor of New York in 1928 and again in 1930. He used that Bible for each of his four presidential inaugurations, though it was open to a different passage each time. Notably, in his first inauguration, Dwight Eisenhower used his personal West Point Bible in addition to the Washington Bible. And in 1961, John Kennedy used the Fitzgerald Family Bible from his mother's family. Dating back to the 1850s, it contains handwritten pages of the Fitzgerald Family Record.

It's now housed in the JFK Presidential Library and Museum, which is located in Boston. Now, not all presidents have used a Bible at their inauguration. John Quincy Adams' recollections of his 1825 inauguration indicate he was sworn in on a law book. And in 1901, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was hiking in the Adirondacks when he received word that President William McKinley, who'd been shot a week prior, was now not expected to live. By the time Roosevelt got to Buffalo, where McKinley had been shot and was being treated,

McKinley had died and the nation had treated. McKinley had died, and the nation had been without a president for about 12 hours. Roosevelt was quickly inaugurated at the home of his friend Ansley Wilcox, and the rushed ceremony did not include a Bible. A couple more pieces from this fascinating Town and Country magazine article. Likewise, Lyndon Johnson did not use a Bible when he was sworn in after JFK's assassination. With Jacqueline Kennedy by his side, Vice President Lyndon Johnson took the oath in a conference room on Air Force One. It was 2.38 in the afternoon, Dallas time, on November 22, 1963. Kennedy had been pronounced dead at 1 o'clock.

A Bible could not be found. So a Catholic Missal, a liturgical book that contains the rites for Catholic Mass, which was found in JFK's bedroom aboard the plane, was used instead. Which brings us to the question about tomorrow. What will Joe Biden use? Well, this is what we think he'll do. At both of his vice presidential inaugurations, those were in 2009 and 2013,

standing next to President Obama, Joe Biden used a Bible that has been in his family since 1893, and he plans to use it again tomorrow. He also used it each time he was sworn in as a U.S. Senator. It's five inches thick with a Celtic cross on the cover. Biden's son, Beau, who passed away in 2015, also used the Bible for his own swearing-in ceremony as Attorney General of Delaware and helped carry the Bible to his father's 2013 ceremony.

So there you go, a little slice of American history, how the Bible has been used, various Bibles have been used, during the inaugurations of U.S. presidents. All right. Tomorrow, right here on the bridge, we are looking forward to a special guest as we talk about what Joe Biden will inherit when he places his hand on that Bible and takes the

oath of office. We're going to look forward. What happens now? What is the world that Joe Biden inherits? What are his challenges? What are his strengths in trying to meet those challenges, what are his weaknesses in trying to meet those challenges. Because there's no doubt that while we have been focused considerably over these last few days on the events of January 6th

and what they have meant to the U.S. and what they will mean to an incoming new president. Ian Bremmer is going to be our guest. He's the president of the Eurasia Group. He's in New York. And he's going to be good enough to join us tomorrow to go through some of these possibilities that Joe Biden will face.

Some of the realities that he'll face right away and some of the possibilities of how he's going to handle those realities. Looking forward to that discussion. That, of course, is on Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Bruce Anderson joins us from Ottawa. Ian Bremmer will join us from New York. Looking forward to that for sure.

All right, that's it for this day, this Tuesday of week 45. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back again in 24 hours. Thank you.