Juno News - A third lockdown is not the answer to a third wave

00:00:00.000 Despite the fact that coronavirus cases here in Canada and in countries around the world has

00:00:09.840 plummeted massively, there's a great deal of attention being put to the conversation of

00:00:14.080 will there or won't there be a third wave? Well, I don't know whether cases will continue to

00:00:18.680 plummet or whether they will rise again, but I think there's a number of points that need to

00:00:22.740 be made on all of this. First of all, when I hear people talk about this third wave,

00:00:27.340 it's almost done with the assumption that a third wave means a third lockdown and you got to shut

00:00:32.200 her all down again and you got to close the schools down completely, shut down every store.

00:00:36.520 But that's actually not what experts are saying. Increasingly, we're hearing more and more experts

00:00:41.880 and public health officials basically say if there is some sort of third wave, well, we have to evolve

00:00:47.600 our approach. For example, over 100 Canadian doctors, many of them pediatricians, they've

00:00:52.960 signed an open letter saying schools need to open and they have opened now across Canada and they

00:00:57.720 need to remain open even if there's a third wave, even if community transmission arises. The only thing

00:01:04.300 that would justify closing schools again, because we know kids themselves are not hard hit by

00:01:09.540 coronavirus, the only thing that would justify closing schools again is if we learn that the kids

00:01:15.260 were directly put at risk of harm because of schools remaining open. Otherwise,

00:01:19.980 the option for in-class learning must resume. Another interesting point of evolution on this

00:01:25.880 discussion, I was speaking to Dr. Kareem Kurji the other day. He's York region's chief medical officer.

00:01:31.200 That's a part of the greater Toronto area, just north of Toronto. And he said, look, we've learned

00:01:36.140 from the data that the indoor social gatherings, that's the problem. That's where transmission is

00:01:41.000 occurring. Retail outlets, places like that, there's no transmission occurring in those or very

00:01:46.540 minimal amounts. I mean, the data has always showed that, but now they're starting to internalize it

00:01:51.240 and say, look, if these places aren't a problem, why would you shut down stores again? And these

00:01:56.660 sorts of facilities, he encourages people to, to minimize their outings and so forth, take basic

00:02:01.580 precautions. But he's saying, look, if cases rise again, we're not really planning to shut them again.

00:02:07.100 He said, we're not planning on moving backwards. Really nice to see an attitude like that because

00:02:12.400 there's some officials out there and, and some epidemiologists and other doctor voices out there

00:02:17.940 in the media who want to take as much of a doom and gloom perspective as possible. But look, we are

00:02:22.340 almost a year into this. We have learned so much. And even when we did the first lockdowns, and by the

00:02:27.940 way, that was not in the plans I've written before about all of these emergency management plans should

00:02:32.680 a pandemic come to Canada, none of them talk about widespread lockdowns. And they all actually talk

00:02:37.940 about a scenario that's much worse than we're facing now, higher death rate and so forth and

00:02:42.680 higher percentage of people getting infected. None of them say you do lockdowns, but despite all

00:02:48.080 of that, the original argument for lockdowns, as we know, you know, you just flatten the curve. You do

00:02:52.620 it for a bit to do that, to grab your bearings, to learn about the virus. Well, we've learned quite a

00:02:57.320 lot in this past year. Can we not take what we have learned and mature our response, evolve our response

00:03:03.660 to have a better reaction? Should there be a surge of cases again? Should there be a third wave in

00:03:08.540 Canada? And it's heartening to see that many doctors are stepping forward and saying, yes,

00:03:13.120 yes, we do. A third lockdown does not have to be the answer to a third wave.

Juno News - February 25, 2021