Juno News - Are Canadians aware of the facts about COVID-19？

00:00:00.000 What do Canadians actually think about coronavirus facts and statistics? What did they actually know

00:00:12.460 about what's going on right now? And I asked that question genuinely because I was reading this

00:00:18.380 recent poll in the United States by Gallup poll. They're one of the largest pollsters in the U.S.

00:00:23.220 in the world. And they spoke to 35,000 Americans and they asked them a number of questions to gauge

00:00:28.760 the American perspectives on what they think is happening versus what is actually happening.

00:00:34.740 And there was one question about hospitalization rates. And they asked, if you get coronavirus,

00:00:40.320 what are your odds of winding up in the hospital? Now, the answer to that question is one to five

00:00:44.620 percent. That's the hospital rate, depending on where you are in terms of first wave, second wave,

00:00:50.520 different demographics and parts of the country and so forth. That's the top line rate.

00:00:53.780 Now, Gallup found that about 40 percent of Democrats, 30 percent of Republicans, so I guess

00:00:59.140 a third of people over a third of all respondents, they said 50 percent or more that that was your

00:01:05.600 chance. You had basically a one in two chance of being hospitalized if you got coronavirus. That is

00:01:11.420 just massively wrong from what the actual facts and statistics show. What would the Canadian response

00:01:18.440 be? I think it would be pretty similar or maybe even worse because we have a real problem here in

00:01:23.580 Canada when it comes to breaking down the actual facts, the context and the nuance in a way that

00:01:29.940 I think is really damaging to people. And it's certainly affecting levels of support we have for

00:01:35.260 lockdowns and sort of the psychological toll this is taking on people. I was reminded of a story that

00:01:40.980 was up on the CBC website not too long ago where it quoted two older Canadians who were in their

00:01:46.160 70s and they were talking about various different concerns about the pandemic and they said,

00:01:50.820 look, the truth is, if we get this virus, odds are we're going to wind up taken up in a hospital bed

00:01:56.140 and we're going to be dead. And I thought, I don't know if these folks have any underlying

00:02:02.100 conditions or what have you. They seem to be pretty healthy. They didn't mention anything, but

00:02:06.060 that's not what the facts show at all. Why did these folks think that? And not only why did these

00:02:12.140 folks think that, but why did CBC run that quote? I mean, I can tell you there are many times where

00:02:17.540 you're speaking to a source for a story and they're saying many interesting things, but

00:02:20.660 you know, maybe one or two lines they'll say, you go, oh, I don't know about that. That's not,

00:02:24.820 you know, really an accurate line. So you don't put it in the story. Why did this journalist think

00:02:30.300 it was appropriate to quote these older Canadians who were just wrong? And it's just right there in that

00:02:36.960 CBC story. And there's no attempt to fact check that statement they made that, well, we'll certainly

00:02:42.120 encourage and enable other readers to read that and think that statement is true. So it would be

00:02:46.880 really interesting to get some polling done. We got a lot of polling in Canada about political

00:02:51.100 support, who supports liberals, conservatives, and so forth. We got a lot of polling, but do you

00:02:55.560 support lockdowns and so forth? And actually a lot of Canadians really do support lockdowns. I think

00:03:00.060 maybe one reason they do support lockdowns though is because they don't actually understand

00:03:04.480 the facts and statistics. And it would be really interesting if a Canadian pollster went out into

00:03:09.980 the field and started asking some basic questions about perception versus reality. It would be really

00:03:15.680 curious to see the results of that poll.

Juno News - March 24, 2021