The pandemic has caused chaos and tragedy — but these 7 things are BETTER now
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Summary
The flu pandemic has killed more than 300 Canadians, and nearly 3 million people have been thrown out of work here in Canada. But silver lining? Here are 7 things that are actually better now than they were two months ago.
Transcript
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Hello, my Rebels. Today, I try and find seven silver linings in this crisis, not really things
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that are better. I think everything's actually worse, but changes in our attitudes and mindset
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that if we can keep them going after the crisis is over, maybe that makes the world a better place.
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Anyways, let me invite you to become a premium subscriber to Rebel News. Just go to rebelnews.com.
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It's eight bucks a month. You get the video version of this show and Sheila Gunn-Reed's show
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and David Menzies' show, too. All right, here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, the pandemic has killed more than 300 Canadians and nearly 3 million people have been
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thrown out of work here. But silver lining, let me tell you seven things that are actually better now.
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It's April 7th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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Closed the doors to flights from Wuhan, strictly screened anyone else coming in from China,
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ramped up factories to produce tens of millions of masks a day.
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Despite being just across the strait from China, despite having nearly a million Taiwanese living in mainland China
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and going back and forth, they have managed to keep the toll of the virus to almost zero.
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Five fatalities so far in a country of nearly 25 million people,
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Flights from China continue to land every day, even today.
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Even the special government repatriation charters, they have people on them with the virus.
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There isn't a single Canadian factory that makes the N95 masks.
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Those are the ones that screen out 95% of particles.
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By my math, we're approaching a 20% national unemployment rate,
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I understand in Alberta, it might already be touching 25%.
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But you've heard me say all those things these past weeks,
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and I've been critical, first, at how Trudeau didn't actually stop the virus
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from just walking in through airports and at Roxham Road.
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And, second, how the cure could wind up worse than the diseases.
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And you throw three, four million Canadian families out of work into poverty,
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you're going to see a lot more death and destruction than 300 flu victims, I'll tell you that.
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But let me take a few minutes and try to look at the silver lining of these dark clouds.
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But let me tell you seven things that I think are better now than two months ago.
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Canada is not better now than it was two months ago.
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Number one, we're finally enforcing our borders.
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In fact, bizarrely, Trudeau has loosened the qualifications to become a foreign,
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temporary, foreign worker, low-wage worker in Canada.
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We have record unemployment, and he's literally making it easier
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so that low-wage, low-skill foreigners can come in to reduce wages even more.
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And Trudeau literally passed an order exempting people who were coughing with a fever from his foreign entry ban.
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He'll let in foreigners who have a fever and a cough just as long as they say they're claiming refugee status.
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As David Menzies shows us every day, there are planes landing regularly in Vancouver and Toronto directly from China.
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And all they say, they all say that they're screening on the foreign airport side,
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but no screening when they land here in Canada.
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I was just wondering, sir, can you remember what the customs officials were telling you
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Did you see anyone, any agents giving masks, the kind of masks that you and I are wearing?
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The border, I'd say, is 50% more impermeable than it was two months ago.
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There used to be a dozen Chinese flights a day to each of Toronto and Vancouver.
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But more important, Canadians know we can do it.
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We know that other countries in the world are doing it to save themselves.
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And we have finally moved past the race hustler, Teresa Tam, calling us the racists for wanting
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to be safe from people arriving from high virus countries.
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Here's how the Taipei airport in Taiwan meets everyone regardless of race, but mainly people
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They know that if they have a strong border around their country, it means they don't have
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to have strong borders within their country, as in everyone locked in their own houses
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So point number one, borders are in vogue again.
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And for deep, normal, simple, obvious reasons, expect more of that.
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People won't be able to write it off as racist anymore to talk about borders.
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Point number two, countries act in their own interests, including in supplying crucial
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There's a lot of fake news about the U.S. banning exports of N95 face masks to Canada.
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It wasn't true, but I suppose the underlying point is true.
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The U.S. absolutely could ban exports to any country in an emergency.
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As I showed you yesterday, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Chinese government
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has just seized materials from three Canadian-owned medical supply factories in China.
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And of course, so many medicines are made in China too.
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Maybe it's time to get some of that industrial production back in Canada so we're not at any
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I read a story the other day, I think it was in the Dallas News, about a U.S. mask manufacturer
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in America who charges about 10 cents per mask.
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They're not the N95 mask, but they're regular masks.
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He's getting phone calls and emails every minute, he says, with people wanting to order
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He can't answer them all, of course, but he says he's been through this before in past epidemics
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He says, as soon as the panic is over, though, those same hospitals go back to ordering their
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Because instead of paying 10 cents a mask that he charges, they might only charge two cents
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And if a hospital uses, I don't know, a thousand masks a week, by gosh, they're saving 80 whole
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And putting aside quality issues and contamination and counterfeits and all the China specialties,
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they're putting their supply chain at the whim of China.
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So now that it's panic time again, they want to buy from this Texas manufacturer again because
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He never could expand enough to make a million masks a day or 10 million masks a day.
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America needs probably 100 million a day because those American hospitals kept switching back
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But hey, they saved that $80 a week, didn't they?
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So maybe this buy America, buy Canada, buy Canadian will take root in a lot of things.
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Maybe you'll just come to terms with spending an extra 5% on a cell phone made in Canada,
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So maybe it's not actually even more expensive.
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Point three, and it's related, we are realizing the true nature of communist China as compared
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Taiwan was the first country to guard against the coronavirus because they knew that China
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Taiwan actually sent its own doctors into Wuhan very early to see for themselves, to investigate
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They didn't mess around, and since they're prepared, they can now help us.
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They're shipping masks around the world to its allies, and they're shipping mask-building
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Unlike the Soviet-style Chinese government, which lies to its own people, lies to itself,
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What beats me is that Canadian and American media republish obvious Chinese lies without
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any skepticism, like the claim that China has no more cases of the virus, except for dirty
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I might remind you that China also claims that not a single person was killed at Tiananmen
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It's a reminder about lying dictatorships and the risks they pose to all of us, and as
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I've shown you before, instead of warning the West about the virus, China kept quiet and
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had its expats in Canada, the United States, Australia, ship back to China our medical supplies
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Globalism has failed, both as an ideology and institutionally.
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What I mean is that the idea of open borders is obviously deadly when it comes to unscreened
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people with viruses, but also the open borders approach to global trade, where if you can
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save a few pennies per face mask or per pill of medicine, you then move all your factories
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Imagine if a factory owner had listened to Trump three years ago when Trump told companies
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Anyone who did that would be so well positioned now.
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I understand why factory owners set up factories in a communist dictatorship.
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The math of globalism is wrong, but also trusting foreigners with foreign loyalties is wrong,
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at least when it comes to each nation's own national interests.
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I recommend to you Keyan's biography of the president of the UN agency called the World
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Health Organization, how he was installed in that position by China, how he's not even
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a doctor, how in his previous life he oversaw a brutal repression in his home country in
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Seriously, why would we listen to him, part of a globalist institution?
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And why would our Canadian health authorities, like Dr. Tam, listen to him and the UN and China?
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Remember this Canadian officer with the World Health Organization?
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Right, because I'm actually curious on talking about Taiwan as well, on Taiwan's case.
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We decided to give Dr. Alward another call to follow up.
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And I just want to see if you can comment a bit on how Taiwan has done so far in terms of
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And, you know, when you look across all the different areas of China, they've actually
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So with that, I'd like to thank you very much for inviting us to participate.
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And good luck as you go forward with the battle in Hong Kong.
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He's from Newfoundland, actually, who works for the World Health Organization now.
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Maybe that he's that nasty a guy in his own life.
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I think that was a good man who has been corrupted by the globalist World Health Organization.
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Let's get out of the UN and the World Health Organization like Taiwan got out of it.
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We've been reminded these past weeks of the importance of blue-collar work and blue-collar
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Nobody is missing their gender studies professor right now.
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Nobody is missing the countless think-alike, clickbait journalists who have been laid off in
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What I care about is the guy at the factory making toilet paper, the farmer in the field
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picking his produce, the guy driving the semi-trailer truck bringing both of those products to my
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local grocery store, to the guy stocking the shelves at my store, to the gal working the
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And anyone still working to fix things, whether it's plumbing or furnaces or mechanics, the things
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My heart breaks at all the people who were commanded to be unemployed, waiters, anyone
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I'm sorry they were sacrificed by the one-size-fits-all government lockdown, which brings me to my next
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How unessential so much of government has turned out to be.
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But the things they're supposed to do, they refuse to do.
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Service Canada, even federal food inspectors in Alberta, just plain refusing to go to work.
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Oh, but staying on the government payroll nonetheless, you bet.
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If we manage to get along without all these bureaucrats and government officials for so long,
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I thought it was quite something that Trudeau announced that he was hiring Amazon to ship
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Canada Post still gets huge subsidies and special privileges, but apparently they aren't
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I think there will be lots of people who question just how excellent their government schools
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are when they discover what their kids can learn homeschooled with workbooks and the
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And my last point, that this really is a crisis.
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It's a health crisis that has been magnified into an economic crisis by politicians that will
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soon, I fear, become an over-policing and civil liberties crisis.
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And although they allow some health information to be shared between health insurance companies
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and border control to determine which Taiwanese are at risk for the virus and therefore need
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Oh, and people who were quarantined upon return to China, to Taiwan, were checked up on by authorities
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The number of people who were actually quarantined under law is measured in the tens of thousands,
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not the tens of millions as we've done here in Canada.
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What's not as bad as what we're going through now?
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Well, the theory of man-made global warming is just not.
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No advocates for the theory of man-made global warming that we're all going to die.
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They don't stop living freely because of global warming.
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Global warming is a fake crisis, a luxury, a hobby.
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This coronavirus is a real crisis, or at least we certainly made it into one.
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When we finally get out of it, I think it could change how we look at flim-flam men,
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con artists like Greta Thunberg and her pageant mom and showbiz dad and her PR team hucksters
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who are trying to sell us and tell us that we're all going to die from global warming
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and we should all shut down our economy to save the planet.
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I think we've just had our fill of panic and crises.
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And we've also tasted the destruction that comes from it.
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These seven points, none of them are tangible things.
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Putting your own country first and reestablishing borders.
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Making things that are important, making them in your own country,
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even if they cost eight cents more than making them in China would.
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Respecting the work of people who actually do something important,
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Realizing the many institutions we value are simply coasting on an old reputation
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and they didn't respond well in this crisis at all.
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Even if Al Gore, David Suzuki and Greta Thunberg tell us to have one.
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Seven changes in our thinking that I hope will stay even when we're through the worst.
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Well, Canada seemed to ignore this pandemic for the longest time
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and only very recently started to close off border travel
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and to this day has not done mass testing and face masks are hardly available.
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A country that seems to have known what was coming, perhaps from experience,
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and has taken public health steps that have not shut down its economy
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We've been trying to learn more about Taiwan's approach.
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I think one of the most important factors is it has been banned
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because of discrimination from communist China.
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And in my view, they've made better decisions as a result.
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But today we speak to an expert on the ground in Taiwan
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who has generously agreed to be interviewed by Skype despite the time zone difference.
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May I introduce to you Dr. Peter Chang, a public health expert in Taiwan
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who has taught around the world, including universities in the United States,
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Yes, it's also my great pleasure to talk with you.
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Let me start by asking, how did Taiwan know this was going to be a serious question?
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It was like we saw a problem off in the distance,
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but we all sort of thought we were in a different reality over here.
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How did Taiwan know to take steps as early as late December?
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Well, we have been working on this virtual issue for many years.
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Actually, I would recall a history of not being well-informed
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And when we get out of SARS, we find we are just like orphanage.
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You know, there was no one care about what's going on in Taiwan.
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And we have to take about actually four months after the other countries
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So we have been quite cautiously about what's going on,
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and we got 400 cases, including 71 kids were killed by antivirus.
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And I was, by the time, working in the health ministry,
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and we find out we didn't get anything from outside of the country.
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having declared polio eradication in the region.
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Taiwan was the last one getting the polio in 1983.
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And there was a problem that we cannot prove it to WHO
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And we had to call Australian international experts
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to come to Taiwan to observe and do an evaluation,
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So, you know, we are not new to see the situation.
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and we don't know how to handle the situation in China,
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about observation of this particular unusual pneumonia.