Juno News - June 28, 2021


Canada can follow Singapore's approach to COVID-19


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

192.77637

Word Count

733

Sentence Count

34

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 A pretty amazing announcement was made in Singapore the other day when it comes to how
00:00:10.340 they're going to evolve their response to COVID-19. They're going to head in a new direction. And it's
00:00:15.860 a direction that Canadians should pay attention to and ask themselves, hmm, why can't we do this
00:00:21.420 here? Little hint, we can. So what's Singapore doing? They are going to learn to live with
00:00:27.340 COVID. That's what their government ministers are saying. Basically, they say, look, we got to
00:00:30.960 acknowledge that this is an endemic seasonal illness, meaning this thing's not going away.
00:00:35.720 They're saying they're not doing this zero transmission thing anymore, that COVID zero
00:00:39.920 thing that some people really pushed for, which means get to zero cases of this virus, complete
00:00:44.940 elimination, eradication. This is not a virus that you do that for, as more and more experts are
00:00:51.140 saying. This is something that's going to be around in some sense for the rest of our natural
00:00:55.980 lives. So what are you going to do about it? Well, Singapore, like most other countries,
00:00:59.120 has been doing a vaccine rollout. And they say, first of all, you have to embrace the fact that
00:01:02.980 these vaccines have been bringing down hospitalizations and deaths just drastically. So,
00:01:08.300 you know, if there's no progress after vaccines, what was the point of doing the vaccination rollout?
00:01:14.200 They say what they're going to do is basically stop quarantining travelers, stop quarantining close
00:01:19.940 contacts of people who test positive. And here's the interesting one. Stop reporting daily case
00:01:26.160 counts, at least with the fanfare they do. Now, the truth is when it came to influenza,
00:01:30.540 Public Health Agency of Canada does produce data on influenza, seasonal influenza. If you want to talk
00:01:35.820 about the various cases, the hospitalizations and so forth, you're free to do so, which is how,
00:01:41.220 for instance, a lot of pediatricians were able to determine that COVID-19 is actually less severe in
00:01:46.400 kids than the flu is. Because they had something like 1,500, on average, hospitalizations from flu
00:01:52.900 with kids in previous years in Canada. And the COVID hospitalizations are only about 1,300. Although,
00:01:58.960 I should note, story, an item that I actually broke a few weeks ago was that only about a third of those
00:02:04.600 COVID hospitalizations were actually for COVID, people suffering from having the symptoms of
00:02:09.840 coronavirus. In fact, many of them were a kid coming in for, say, a broken arm, and then they test
00:02:14.860 everyone for COVID who comes in. And they found out, oh, this kid had asymptomatic COVID. We didn't
00:02:19.320 know that. Zero symptoms. Not spreading it to anyone. But anyway, they tally him on the hospitalizations
00:02:25.300 list for COVID. Anyway, I digress. But part of the reason I guess I point all that out is once you
00:02:30.460 stop reporting the daily case counts, I mean, that's a thing that stops, I think, driving a lot
00:02:36.080 of the calls for, oh, okay, maybe now we can reopen. Oh, no, we've got to lock up again, and so forth.
00:02:40.400 But if you approach it in a more evolved and balanced way that Singapore is discussing doing,
00:02:46.660 maybe you talk about doing other mitigating measures to protect the vulnerable, for instance,
00:02:51.880 which the vaccine rollout, that was pretty much the part of it anyway, as opposed to this idea that
00:02:56.560 we have to shut down low-risk activities in perpetuity for low-risk individuals. Anyway,
00:03:03.680 lots to see there in the latest announcement for Singapore. Really admirable to see a country sort of
00:03:08.680 take that leap and want to talk about doing things a better way, and also just embracing all of this
00:03:13.900 knowledge that we have learned the past year and a half. One thing that is so frustrating in the way
00:03:18.900 that so many people here in Canada talk about the virus, and not just regular folks, but even doctors
00:03:23.460 on the news and television, radio, and so forth, is they act like we don't have the information about
00:03:28.320 who is most at risk, and who has been most hard hit by this virus, and where it actually transmits,
00:03:34.040 and so forth, but we do. We have reams of information, so let's just embrace that big data
00:03:39.140 and make smarter choices so we can get on with our lives in a responsible fashion, which it seems
00:03:44.800 like Singapore plans to do. Good for them.