Juno News - June 03, 2021


Canada's COVID-19 response is more divided than ever


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

193.12602

Word Count

826

Sentence Count

42


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 One of the things that concerns me so much right now about our current coronavirus response
00:00:11.180 and conversation here in Canada is just how extremely divided so many people are on what
00:00:18.260 should be done and also on just the basic facts on what is currently going on. You know, you can
00:00:24.880 get in your echo chambers, of course, with any issue and you think that everybody agrees with
00:00:28.500 you and so forth. But, you know, it's not the case. Perspectives and ways of seeing are deeply
00:00:34.760 divided in Canada right now. For instance, take the basic issue of outdoor masking. There are some
00:00:41.160 people out there, myself included, who go, well, I don't really know what the point of wearing a mask
00:00:45.920 outdoors is really in any circumstance. I mean, what's it really doing, seeing as the number of
00:00:50.960 actual proven cases of outdoor transmission are really, really small. And then there are others
00:00:55.860 who, if they see someone who is not wearing a mask outdoors, they don't just think to themselves in
00:01:01.040 the back of their head, oh, well, that isn't a good idea. You should wear a mask on. But they dart out
00:01:05.000 of the way of the person outdoors to avoid them. Two very different pictures, two very different
00:01:11.220 perspectives. And, you know, it's normal, of course, for society to be divided on, you know, things you
00:01:17.000 like, what's better, Star Wars, Star Trek, Pepsi, Coke, and so forth, political reasons, you know,
00:01:22.040 even really contentious things, religious issues, political things, pro-Trump, anti-Trump. I mean,
00:01:27.420 a lot of times you can get by in society without actually having those things brush up against each
00:01:33.260 other. If you're interacting with someone at the grocery store and they are of a very different
00:01:36.900 religion than you or, you know, they're pro-Trump, you're anti-Trump, whatever. I mean, you can make
00:01:41.360 it through that human experience without even being aware of those differences that are, you know,
00:01:46.180 pretty big ones if you got to debating them. But, you know, come on, it's life. Let's just get on
00:01:50.140 with it. But some of these ways of us looking at coronavirus, I mean, you can't make it through a
00:01:56.400 regular human interaction or experience without these things coming up and butting up against
00:02:04.020 each other. And it's concerning. It's worrisome. I mean, yes, I hope more and more people are putting
00:02:09.100 this past them, putting this behind them. But, well, I'm speaking to you from Ontario where Ontario
00:02:14.100 Premier Doug Ford has just said, no, we cannot reopen the schools. He's permanently shut them down for
00:02:19.760 this school year for the rest of June. And, well, he's committed to opening them in September. But
00:02:24.560 then again, one would have thought they would be open by now. So some pediatricians I've spoken to
00:02:29.240 are already concerned. Are they actually going to be reopened in September? Or are they going to be the
00:02:34.060 same sort of shifting of goalposts that call even that sort of stuff into question? But what's
00:02:38.900 interesting in all that, to me, I've done a lot of writing on the coronavirus in kids, coronavirus
00:02:43.880 in schools issue, looking at a lot of studies, speaking to experts, getting reports that, you know,
00:02:48.180 no other media has had and so forth. To me, it's just a no-brainer that you reopen schools.
00:02:52.360 British Columbia, the kids do not have masks and so forth. So Ontario schools, you reopen them and
00:02:56.860 they certainly don't need to have masks in the playground, which is something that was mandated in
00:03:01.640 Ontario schools the last time around. And yet, and yet, here we go talking about the division.
00:03:07.580 I see a lot of people online who are saying, it's not worth it. You just can't reopen the schools.
00:03:13.100 It's going to send coronavirus cases haywire too dangerous, even though I would say the data does
00:03:18.260 not show that at all. And there you go. Another example of something so deeply divided that people
00:03:24.300 want to shut down the in-person education system and other people say, no, we got to get it reopened
00:03:30.860 right away. A year and a half into this and this division is being more keenly felt in our daily lives
00:03:38.360 than, again, political disagreements about, you know, the former president or religious issues
00:03:44.160 and so forth. And this is worrisome. Can we put this past us in just the weeks and the months ahead
00:03:49.840 as cases receive, vaccination rates increase and so forth? Or are these, these very, these very strong
00:03:56.360 divisions, are they going to linger for a while? And are they, are they going to leave people split
00:04:02.700 and disconnected for some time to come? I hope the answer is no. I hope we can all sort of come
00:04:07.780 together, but I don't know. People have been so split. You're going to think it might be unfortunately
00:04:12.760 a bit of a hurdle to reconcile that moving ahead.