Juno News - February 02, 2021


A big-picture conversation about COVID-19 is needed


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

203.8681

Word count

643

Sentence count

19


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Dr. Kelly discusses the dramatic decline in coronavirus cases across Canada in January 2019, and why she believes there may be a seasonal component to the decline. She also talks about the need for a more holistic approach to understanding the data, and how to make better decisions about what to do about it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Here in Canada, we really need to start having more of a big-picture conversation when it comes
00:00:09.600 to the ebb and flow of coronavirus cases here in our country and all around the world. A
00:00:14.100 conversation that I hope should empower us to make informed decisions about the things we
00:00:19.120 actually need to do to both protect those persons who are most at risk of having a serious outcome
00:00:23.880 of getting COVID-19 and also to liberate those low-risk persons who are living under,
00:00:28.140 well, in some parts of Canada, some very tight lockdown restrictions right now. So in Canada,
00:00:34.040 you don't hear it echoed all that much, but throughout the month of January, we have seen
00:00:37.380 quite a precipitous drop in the volume of daily cases. You see it goes up in November and December
00:00:42.800 and then in January, it goes down. What's going on there? Well, I've had a number of infectious
00:00:47.400 diseases specialists here in Canada tell me that they believe seasonality plays some role in this.
00:00:52.660 They don't know exactly how much, but they say, yes, there is a seasonal component to this. And
00:00:56.880 even those doctors out there who are saying, no, we got a lockdown more, I guarantee you that if the
00:01:01.200 host on that radio or television program or what have you did ask, do you believe there is some
00:01:05.940 seasonal component to this? I think pretty much all of them would say yes. The other thing you will
00:01:10.920 hear from the officials is that, well, the case is fury. The reason they're going down in Ontario and
00:01:15.300 all across Canada and so forth is because the lockdowns are working. Okay, but then how do we also
00:01:21.180 account for the fact that there are jurisdictions that aren't really locked down that are seeing a
00:01:25.540 similar January decline in daily cases? So you can put up a graph of Florida and yes, they saw an
00:01:30.700 increase in November, December, and then in January, bam, their numbers have been going down as well.
00:01:36.220 Now, the other thing that we need more broader, I think, contextual information about is here in
00:01:40.740 Canada, there's a lot of concerns about these new variants because they are new to Canada. You hear
00:01:45.620 the UK variant, you hear the South Africa variant. Those are things that we're seeing alarming
00:01:49.800 headlines about. Now, one thing that I think is instructive to at least calm people's concerns
00:01:55.260 who think these new variants mean, oh man, this stuff's going to be massive, exponential,
00:01:59.760 uncontrollable growth right away and we'll never turn around from it is to look at those case charts
00:02:04.760 from both the UK and from South Africa. Now, the UK, big increase. Again, November, December,
00:02:11.000 it really got up there and oh look, throughout January, they have seen a major decrease, precipitous
00:02:16.600 decrease, similar to what Canada saw throughout January. South Africa, guess what? Same thing.
00:02:22.060 So it's very interesting to see that the places that the UK variant came from and the South Africa
00:02:27.180 variant came from, well, the UK did not have this UK variant spike that it could not turn around under
00:02:33.720 any scenario that they are getting things decreasing and under control again. So I just think we have to
00:02:39.320 keep all of these things into perspective, talk about all these different numbers to have a much
00:02:44.660 more robust, fuller picture of what is going on rather than just being so tunnel vision about one
00:02:49.760 particular set of data or one particular way of looking at things as unfortunately we have become
00:02:55.740 here in Ontario, in Canada, all across the country in the ways that we discuss this virus, in ways that
00:03:01.440 I think if we go in a slightly different direction, we could be empowered to make perhaps some smarter
00:03:06.740 choices for the benefit of all our fellow countrymen.