Juno News - Covid has torn apart our social fabric (Feat. Dr. Matt Strauss)

00:00:00.000 The COVID pandemic and the reactive government policies have torn apart our social fabric.

00:00:05.820 Many Canadians will never trust authorities or experts, including doctors, ever again.

00:00:10.740 How did we get here and how can we fix it?

00:00:12.420 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:14.280 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.

00:00:30.240 So the health scares associated with COVID have mostly passed, but many Canadians are still trapped in their own form of COVID purgatory.

00:00:38.740 Some may even call it COVID hell.

00:00:40.620 They can't get on an airplane, they can't get on a train, they can't visit their loved ones, they can't go see family, they can't leave the country, they can't even flee if they want to.

00:00:48.920 Many have been excommunicated by their friends and their family.

00:00:52.240 Many have lost their business, lost their livelihoods, many have lost their jobs, despite having contracts or unions that were designed and supposed to protect them.

00:01:01.640 Countless Canadians feel excluded and alienated.

00:01:04.400 They feel ignored and marginalized and doomed to failure.

00:01:07.440 Worse, some feel targeted, harassed and singled out by their government and by cynical politicians for the crime of making a health choice that the elites don't approve of.

00:01:19.260 So while some political leaders are interested in the plight of these types of Canadians, including those who came out to support the trucker convoy,

00:01:27.880 the much more popular opinion among politicians and elites in our country is to use these marginalized Canadians as a scapegoat, as a target, and as a punching bag.

00:01:39.720 Now, whether you call these elites, whether you call them the Laurentian elite, the expert class, the gatekeepers,

00:01:45.320 there is a powerful ruling class in our country that is maddeningly out of touch with the concerns and the anxieties of the typical working Canadian.

00:01:55.880 So how did we get here and how can we work towards rebuilding our civil society?

00:01:59.640 We need to rebuild our civil society at this point.

00:02:01.820 We need to reconnect as Canadians.

00:02:03.940 We need to demand more liberalism and more democracy out of our liberal democracy.

00:02:08.300 So joining me today to have this conversation and to help me work through some of these ideas,

00:02:12.640 I'm very pleased to be welcomed once again by Dr. Matt Strauss.

00:02:16.620 Dr. Strauss was on the program as a previous guest, and I wanted to invite him back today to dive a little bit deeper into some of the conversations

00:02:23.060 and some of the topics that we discussed last time.

00:02:25.900 So, Dr. Strauss, thank you so much for joining the program.

00:02:28.860 Pleasure to be here.

00:02:30.080 So for those of you who don't remember the previous episode we had with Dr. Strauss,

00:02:34.060 he is the acting medical officer of health for Haldeman Norfolk.

00:02:37.520 He's an ICU doctor.

00:02:38.820 He's a former professor of medicine and a former global journalism fellow with the University of Toronto.

00:02:43.820 He was one of the first public health officials in Canada to call for an end to vaccine mandates.

00:02:48.700 He has been a vocal critic of Canada's pandemic response, written several op-eds calling for an end to unscientific mandates.

00:02:56.600 So, Dr. Strauss, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about, I mean, you worked on the front lines.

00:03:02.220 You were there.

00:03:02.820 You witnessed it with your own eyes.

00:03:04.320 You saw firsthand the effects of lockdowns, the sort of unintended consequences of government policies,

00:03:11.080 and in many ways how the prescription, the supposed cure, was worse than the disease in terms of lockdowns being worse than the pandemic itself.

00:03:20.200 So I was hoping you could walk our audience through a little bit of what that looked like,

00:03:25.980 some of the worst things that you saw as a doctor working in the ICUs,

00:03:29.520 and some of the things that maybe Canadians aren't even really aware of what was going on during COVID.

00:03:34.400 Okay, well, so I saw some horrible things.

00:03:39.200 I spoke last time I was on your show about, in a single week, admitting multiple elders from nursing homes

00:03:44.760 who were starving to death because their families were banned from the premises in the name of social distancing,

00:03:49.680 and so there was no one to feed them.

00:03:50.860 And they almost died of starvation in Canada in 2020, 2021.

00:03:58.280 Some things I didn't get to speak about were the obvious worsening of addictions problems.

00:04:05.840 I saw some folks who quite literally drank themselves to death,

00:04:09.200 and unlike starvation, that's not necessarily something we can fix when you get in.

00:04:14.560 So I did see some younger folks, mid-30s, mid-40s, who died of alcohol.

00:04:21.940 And, you know, in taking the stories from them, it was very clear they lost their job,

00:04:25.600 they'd been shut in for three months, people aren't supposed to live that way,

00:04:28.460 and they turned to drink and never recovered.

00:04:33.820 I had read about catatonic depression as a medical student.

00:04:38.400 That means depression is so severe that you're in a coma.

00:04:40.580 I don't generally look after folks for depression because I'm not a psychiatrist.

00:04:46.520 But if you're in a coma from your depression, you do often come under the care of a medical doctor.

00:04:51.060 And like I said, I'd never seen a case.

00:04:53.060 I saw two in 2020.

00:04:55.160 One man, after six months of not leaving his house,

00:04:59.040 whose wife said was a perfectly lovely gentleman, 35 years of marriage,

00:05:03.100 he tried to strangle her, then he collapsed and fell into a coma.

00:05:06.060 I saw a woman who tried to kill her grandchildren after being locked in with them for three months. 0.88

00:05:13.260 And when she sort of came to, out of whatever that state she was in,

00:05:17.620 she said that wasn't me.

00:05:18.640 She couldn't believe that she'd done it.

00:05:21.760 We, you know, working in Kingston,

00:05:25.440 where all the federal prisons are,

00:05:28.100 I have looked after serial killers and I've learned a little bit about the prison system in Canada.

00:05:33.940 And Paul Bernardo gets an hour of sunlight a day.

00:05:37.960 So if you're a serial killer and you're in our federal prison system and you behave badly,

00:05:43.980 you get put in isolation.

00:05:45.740 Isolation is considered a punishment for the very worst of the worst.

00:05:48.860 And we did that to all Canadians. 1.00

00:05:51.700 And so the ravages thereof were just visible all over the system.

00:05:57.140 I hate to talk about this, but I had a colleague, a friend, a wonderful ICU nurse who died by suicide

00:06:02.860 last summer and her obituary pointed out that the effects of lockdowns have been very difficult

00:06:09.960 on her mental health.

00:06:12.620 So I saw, and then in terms of the public commentary, it was all,

00:06:16.800 everyone stay home for the sake of our healthcare workers. 0.51

00:06:20.220 But all of this was very hard on healthcare workers.

00:06:22.580 I would say that every time I went to the hospital, there was a new rule about, you know,

00:06:28.200 masking and checking in and you can't, you can no longer have potlucks.

00:06:32.000 At a hospital I'm familiar with, the nurses received an email from the management

00:06:36.640 on Christmas Eve saying the management was going to walk around and make sure nobody was

00:06:41.740 having a potluck on Christmas Eve.

00:06:43.060 And if you were, you'd be fired on the spot.

00:06:45.820 So there were just all sorts of inhumane things.

00:06:49.580 I saw patients of mine who the healthcare team had to fight for them to get to see their

00:06:56.060 loved ones before they died.

00:06:57.700 I had patients who were between life and death in the ICU for three months.

00:07:01.160 I had patients whose families were not allowed to visit them for the duration.

00:07:04.580 I was at a time when patients from Scarborough were being transferred elsewhere and Scarborough

00:07:09.640 was considered a red zone.

00:07:11.520 And so their families were not allowed to come visit.

00:07:14.160 And one of the worst things I saw was a young indigenous man with a disability and a severe 1.00

00:07:22.600 medical problem flew down from a reserve and his, his mom came as his translator and she was kicked

00:07:31.020 out of the hospital.

00:07:31.680 So she, she'd flown in and when she arrived, she was told there's no hospital visitors.

00:07:36.860 And she was kicked out at four in the morning in a strange city where she didn't know anyone.

00:07:39.540 And I, I'm sorry to say, I don't know what became of her, but so I guess I would say I saw all

00:07:46.340 sorts of miserable things that I call Russian novel levels of despair. 0.98

00:07:53.400 Um, and none of these things make it to the CP24 news crawler.

00:07:58.240 Um, they were, they were breathlessly reporting cases of COVID and deaths from COVID and those

00:08:02.060 things are important.

00:08:02.700 Um, my background, I came to medicine with a degree in English literature, my background's

00:08:07.260 in the humanities.

00:08:07.880 And, and I, I think that some things can only be expressed humanistically and maybe some of

00:08:13.500 those folks in those terrible situations will write novels about what they went through.

00:08:16.680 Um, but I think it'll be many years before we fully grasp what, what was perpetrated on

00:08:21.620 our population these last two years.

00:08:23.880 And so, I mean, some of it, you can sort of chalk up to, okay, there was this novel virus

00:08:29.380 and no one knew where it came from or what it was capable of doing.

00:08:32.660 We looked at what was happening in China and we kind of just make their response, right?

00:08:36.820 We saw mass lockdowns and, and, and people getting arrested for being out in the streets

00:08:41.040 in Wuhan.

00:08:42.040 This is in sort of early 2020 and I was watching it unfold in social media is sort of in disbelief.

00:08:48.720 And then it just seemed like it was a matter of time before we imported that sort of, uh,

00:08:53.400 not to be hyperbolic, but sort of an authoritarian approach to, you know, controlling everything

00:08:58.800 and everyone to help prevent the spread of disease.

00:09:03.200 Why do you think that that was our reflective, uh, approach as a society, um, in terms of just

00:09:09.820 sort of like the absolutism of everything's about COVID.

00:09:13.060 I know the news media were drumming it up.

00:09:14.500 You mentioned CP24 with their time taker, but it was like a, it was like a scoreboard,

00:09:18.060 right?

00:09:19.060 Like a score count.

00:09:20.060 And we were only hyper-focused singularly on COVID, all of the kinds of misery that you're

00:09:24.460 describing.

00:09:25.460 It's inhumane.

00:09:26.460 And it was, it was our own system that was perpetrating it.

00:09:28.500 It wasn't a foreign mysterious virus.

00:09:31.500 It was us doing it to one another, to fellow Canadians.

00:09:36.260 Why was that the approach?

00:09:37.260 What was it about our culture or healthcare system or institutions, um, that allowed that

00:09:41.780 and that, and that led that, and that enabled sort of two years of, of the elites and the

00:09:46.820 people in charge of our society, not only justifying it, um, but sort of scolding anybody

00:09:52.060 who, who stepped out of line.

00:09:54.500 Um, I, I, probably textbooks will be written, um, or, or at least PhD theses will be written

00:10:02.540 to answer this question.

00:10:03.540 A few things that I can point at is this is the first pandemic we've gone through with

00:10:06.940 widespread social media, uh, use.

00:10:10.180 And I don't think we're, we were, we were only starting to get a handle on how damaging

00:10:15.140 to our, uh, individual psychologies, uh, Twitter and Facebook and Instagram were, um, so I remember

00:10:21.660 the H1N1 flu pandemic, um, in 2008, 2009, and it wasn't as deadly, not as many people died.

00:10:29.460 I fully acknowledged that, but I remember I was a young healthcare worker.

00:10:32.540 I was 25 and as a 25 year old, H1N1 was more deadly to me than COVID because COVID is extremely

00:10:38.780 deadly to folks who are elderly and not so dangerous to folks who are younger.

00:10:41.900 When I got H1N1 from my work at the hospital, uh, the only thing the hospital asked me was

00:10:47.820 when can you be back?

00:10:48.820 There was, there was no talk about isolation and quarantine and getting swabbed.

00:10:53.420 Public health never called me.

00:10:55.020 Um, so I think similar to how people often talk about how the, the rate of child abduction

00:11:01.420 is much lower now than it was in the seventies, but fear about child abduction is much higher

00:11:05.500 now because we all have cable news and anytime any child is abducted anywhere in the English

00:11:09.960 speaking world, it's broadcast on CNN, uh, just about 24 hours a day.

00:11:15.060 Um, I think the fact that we were all having a device ringing in our pocket, letting us

00:11:18.660 know when there was COVID in our, in our country, in our province and in our town, how many were

00:11:22.880 in the hospital.

00:11:23.880 I don't think, um, I don't think we were ready for that amount of stimulation.

00:11:29.280 The other thing I will say is, um, it, it's become clear to me that communist China is just

00:11:37.880 as bad as any authoritarian regime that has ever existed.

00:11:42.020 Um, they have 1.5 million Uyghurs in concentration camp. 0.97

00:11:46.340 They have, uh, mass censorship.

00:11:48.100 They, you know, they shot protesters, uh, at Tiananmen Square.

00:11:52.400 And yet our elite class, uh, has been cozying up to China all along. 0.86

00:11:58.040 So it's a bit, well, it's not exactly a coincidence that, um, COVID started in China, uh, but because

00:12:05.520 it did, we had the opportunity to pattern our response off of the Chinese response, which

00:12:12.120 was deadly because that is a very evil regime and we shouldn't be patterning anything off

00:12:16.380 of what China does.

00:12:17.780 And yet the world health organization receives a lot of money from China.

00:12:21.620 And while this was going on, Taiwan had a much more liberal democratic approach to COVID-19

00:12:26.840 that was actually much more successful than China's.

00:12:29.540 Um, so they, they barely closed schools.

00:12:31.120 They, they just did not, they didn't certainly didn't weld people into their homes.

00:12:35.580 Um, and it was very upsetting to me that instead of co-opting the Taiwanese response, uh, the 0.92

00:12:41.840 world health organization sort of, uh, COVID-star, uh, Bruce Alward, he gave this famous interview

00:12:47.520 where he refused to even acknowledge the existence of Taiwan.

00:12:49.740 And because the question was asked, he, uh, pretended that his laptop wasn't working

00:12:53.460 and, uh, ended the interview.

00:12:55.620 So I, I think there, there, there was a problem with us misunderstanding the threat that China 0.92

00:13:01.960 portends.

00:13:02.960 The thing I will say is we'd all been a little bit deranged by American politics and Donald

00:13:07.240 Trump.

00:13:08.240 Trump supporter.

00:13:09.240 Um, but when he started, um, Saying things about hydroxychloroquine and the like, everyone

00:13:16.920 really panicked.

00:13:17.920 Um, and, and then, and then after that point, anything that Trump said was the worst and

00:13:22.240 all of Canada had to, had to be against it.

00:13:24.180 So those are three things I can point to.

00:13:25.720 I think there's many, many others.

00:13:26.960 Well, I think, I think you're right about a little bit of the Trump derangements or spilling

00:13:30.840 onto it because it seemed to me at the time that the news media in the United States really

00:13:34.840 had an interest in drumming up just how bad everything was to try to humiliate Trump, to

00:13:39.560 try to, you know, derail him and make sure that, that he wasn't reelected.

00:13:43.040 And, and because of that, we sort of just, uh, it's, it all snowballed a little bit.

00:13:47.960 I want to pick up on something you mentioned about Taiwan, not locking down schools.

00:13:52.000 And you mentioned how H1N1, uh, was, was more deadly for, for, for younger people.

00:13:57.160 Uh, you know, it seemed like we knew, I mean, True North had a report that came out over

00:14:02.120 a year ago in April, 2021 about how more Canadians died under the age of 65 from depression, suicide,

00:14:08.920 drug overdose, alcoholism, um, then COVID, uh, we, we, we kind of knew who were the vulnerable

00:14:15.880 ones and who was sort of generally more, more safe.

00:14:19.320 And so rather than taking it targeted approach, we, we, we just sort of continued to lock down,

00:14:24.360 lock down, lock down right up until even 2022, we had lockdowns.

00:14:28.600 Uh, it's, it seemed like the, that the people in charge in this country were just not learning

00:14:34.920 from the mistakes that we had made.

00:14:36.920 I mean, uh, did, did, do you observe that?

00:14:40.040 And why is it that our political leaders and public health leaders to this day, continue

00:14:45.320 to sort of, uh, drum the idea that, that, that the solution to COVID is by locking down our site,

00:14:51.560 our site, including little kids and, and, and people who don't, uh, really pose a big, uh, risk

00:14:57.240 of, of getting very ill from COVID.

00:15:01.720 It's hard to read other folks' minds.

00:15:03.320 I do think there's a bit of a generational issue.

00:15:06.280 Um, I, I only recently became aware you, you wrote a book on, on generations screwed.

00:15:11.160 And I, I do think that baby boomers are at great risk of death from COVID or they were 1.00

00:15:15.640 until they were vaccinated.

00:15:17.080 Um, so, and it happens to be the case that baby boomers run our society. 1.00

00:15:21.320 They're in the positions of power.

00:15:22.440 They own all the wealth.

00:15:23.640 Um, so I, they were frankly, they were right to be scared.

00:15:27.000 Um, I don't think they were right to scapegoat the younger generations who were trying to make

00:15:32.440 a living, um, or just trying to, uh, enjoy their lives.

00:15:37.640 Um, and I, I think it's something dark and unfortunately natural about human psychology,

00:15:43.480 that if you have a mortal threat, it's much nicer to scapegoat, um, 20 year olds having

00:15:49.720 a picnic at Trinity Bellwoods park, um, than it is to consider the ways that, I mean, so another

00:15:56.200 thing to mention, but besides the age issue, um, perfectly healthy elders were at much less

00:16:03.320 risk of death from COVID, um, than, uh, folks with multiple medical problems.

00:16:09.400 And so in my own experience working as an ICU doctor for, um, the first year and a half of

00:16:14.920 the pandemic before I went to a less clinical role in public health, um, the youngest person who was

00:16:21.640 perfectly healthy that I met who was critically ill from COVID-19 was 76, but, um, everyone else had

00:16:29.080 multiple medical problems and, and I, I'm sorry to say, I think there is a role for personal

00:16:35.400 responsibility. And, and I, but I can understand how rather than looking at, you know, could I get

00:16:41.080 in shape? Could I stop smoking these sorts of things? It's much nicer to blame the 21 year olds 1.00

00:16:45.000 for having a nice time at the park.

00:16:47.240 Certainly for me, one of the breaking points, uh, just personally, because, um, my family and I,

00:16:51.960 we just bought a new house in Toronto. We were right across the street from a park and, you know,

00:16:56.280 they would put the tape up on the playground, um, every day, you know, if anyone cut it down,

00:17:00.920 they would come back and they would wrap it up. And it was so demoralizing for my little son to

00:17:06.200 want to go to the park and sorry, sweetie, we can't go on the swings today because the

00:17:10.120 government said no. And then one day I was sitting in a park with my son in Toronto and these trucks

00:17:16.520 literally drove onto the park. This is Trolley park in Toronto and picked up the, um, the, the,

00:17:23.240 the, uh, picnic tables and the park benches and took them away because they just didn't want anyone

00:17:28.040 congregating in the park. And, you know, this was in like April or May, it was still pretty cold out.

00:17:32.680 It wasn't like it was like, you know, warm spring. It was still kind of chilly. And the fact that they

00:17:37.000 were kind of just punitively saying like, no, you could not come in this park and this picnic table

00:17:42.200 is somehow going to, uh, you know, cause people to get COVID or something. It was just so mean-spirited

00:17:48.040 and so like sort of the epitome of the mindset of these sort of just mindless bureaucrats who are

00:17:55.320 carrying out these ridiculous orders that somehow having benches in parks is going to contribute,

00:18:01.080 um, to COVID. I, I, I want to continue on the, the topic of little kids though, because

00:18:06.200 I know, you know, there's an Ontario election going on. No one's paying any attention to it.

00:18:09.720 It's not very interesting, probably by design, but they, the one, one comment that sort of stood

00:18:14.600 out, which the Ontario liberals and their leader, Steven Del Duca said that he wanted to make COVID

00:18:19.160 vaccines mandatory for little kids to attend public school. That it would be part of the

00:18:24.040 regular, uh, vaccine regime for little kids. And, you know, to me that that's like the perfect

00:18:32.360 thing to drive people away from public schools, because it's like, you know, no matter what you

00:18:36.360 say about COVID vaccines and COVID and, you know, all four vaccines and all that kind of stuff, it's like,

00:18:41.080 you know, the idea of, of giving a little kid a vaccine when they don't really, there's no risk.

00:18:46.200 There's not a real risk of that child getting sick or dying from COVID. Um, it, it just seems

00:18:52.680 really unnecessarily divisive. I want to know your opinion on that.

00:18:56.520 Yeah. Well, the first thing I would say is COVID-19 is not a risk to the vast, vast majority of

00:19:04.600 children. Um, that influenza, since the beginning of the pandemic has been a greater risk. So if you

00:19:10.360 get influenza as a child, it is riskier to you than COVID-19. Um, that said, there are children who

00:19:16.280 are medically fragile, who have a very significant medical problems and, um, COVID can be a significant

00:19:23.240 problem for them. Uh, what we know at this point is that two doses of vaccine does not prevent you

00:19:29.160 from passing, um, COVID on to someone else, such as a medically fragile child. So I absolutely think

00:19:35.640 that if I was a parent of a child with medical problems, I would be in a, in a terrific rush to

00:19:40.600 get them vaccinated. Um, the, I think throughout all our thinking about the pandemic, the idea of

00:19:47.800 risk benefit analysis has been sorely lacking. So yeah, there may be some benefit to getting more

00:19:52.840 children vaccinated for COVID. Um, but what is the risk? It's something like only half of the children

00:19:59.240 in this country and in this province are vaccinated. So kicking half of the children out of public school

00:20:04.200 is that, how do you weigh that against the sort of one in 500,000 chance that, um, any child dies

00:20:11.640 of COVID-19? Um, I think obviously that's a, in addition to being a mean spirited policy, it's also

00:20:19.640 likely to significantly backfire. And if you have, um, a generation of children who are even more

00:20:26.120 unschooled than they are after two years of school closures, two years of school closures on and off,

00:20:30.920 um, I think the, the social problems and the, and the personal health problems that those children

00:20:35.000 might experience far, far, far outweigh the benefit that they might get from a COVID vaccine.

00:20:38.600 Well, I can't imagine a better way to galvanize people against public schools, because like you

00:20:42.200 said, if half the kids aren't vaccinated, um, you know, this is more likely just going to drive

00:20:46.840 people away from public schools and maybe they'll go find a, you know, a, a, a better set of, uh,

00:20:52.040 educational tools for their kids, or maybe they'll go to independent schools, or to your point,

00:20:55.160 maybe they'll fall through the cracks and, and be part of the growing number of people who just don't go to

00:21:00.040 school, which is, is, is really sad and scary. And, and again, these, these kinds of issues

00:21:05.800 are just never really mentioned. I want to shift because this, this sort of reminds me, I don't know

00:21:11.800 if you, if you deleted it, but there was a piece in the Toronto Star that just attacked you. Um,

00:21:17.400 and it was written by their sports writer, Bruce Arthur. I don't, I don't know why he, he chose you

00:21:22.040 to, to kind of go after, but he, he really, you really bother him. And, and he, he let you hear it.

00:21:26.920 And, uh, you're not, you're not alone. You're in good company, uh, myself and many, many others,

00:21:31.560 uh, have been, um, the target of Bruce Arthur's, uh, you know, snarly, uh, opinions, but one of the

00:21:38.200 things, uh, that he, he, he was really upset that you said was that you would sooner give your child

00:21:43.240 COVID than McDonald's happy meal. And, um, I thought this was kind of amusing because I, I think that

00:21:49.480 people need to take greater responsibility for their own health. I think that one of the things we

00:21:53.720 didn't really talk about at all during COVID, uh, was this idea that, you know, the, a lot of people

00:21:58.360 who were sick and, and had severe, um, cases of COVID had underlying health issues. They were obese

00:22:04.520 or they weren't taking care of themselves in a healthy way. And that was never a discussion. It was

00:22:08.840 never a topic that, that there's some individual responsibility and making sure that you're healthy,

00:22:13.160 you're eating right, you're exercising all this kind of stuff. And so I thought it was amusing that you,

00:22:17.720 that you made that point, but he, he mentioned that you deleted that tweet. So maybe you, uh,

00:22:21.720 you had a change of heart on that, but, um, I, I, I just want to know what, what your reaction is to

00:22:26.440 Bruce, Bruce Arthur, writing about you in the Toronto Star trying to take you down, saying that

00:22:29.160 you're not qualified, uh, to be the medical officer and, um, kind of picking apart some of your, um, things

00:22:35.160 that you've written on Twitter. Well, let me address the tweet first. That tweet was part of a long

00:22:39.240 thread in which I looked at the data regarding childhood obesity, which is epidemic and on the rise.

00:22:45.480 Um, uh, and I, I know that these critics of mine were acting in bad faith because they always took

00:22:51.240 the conclusion of that thread rather than the data and the scientific papers that were linked

00:22:56.200 in that thread, um, to show that if you're obese on your 18th birthday, you are twice as likely not

00:23:01.160 to make it to age 30 as somebody who's a healthy weight on their 18th birthday. Um, that's, that's

00:23:06.520 extraordinary. That's crushingly bad. And I feel awful for those kids. By the way,

00:23:10.920 if you're an obese child, you, you didn't do that to yourself. That was neglect. Um,

00:23:15.800 and, and not merely parental neglect, but our whole society is built, um, in ways for children

00:23:22.360 not to be healthy. Um, my wife is Dutch. I will be Dutch soon. Um, after three years of marriage,

00:23:26.600 I get a passport and their whole society is built around active living. And we, we could do that here.

00:23:31.560 We just have chosen not to. Um, so it is, it's, it's just a fact that McDonald's is more of a health

00:23:40.600 risk for children than COVID-19. COVID-19 is a one in a million chance of killing a healthy child,

00:23:45.160 less than that. Um, and it is also a fact that probably one day I will give my daughter COVID-19,

00:23:50.360 um, because it's everywhere. I, I may have had it. I, I don't know. I, um, we, we may have already

00:23:55.480 exposed her to it. I don't know. But, um, also it happens to be the case that my wife is vegetarian

00:23:59.880 and I can't imagine a situation where we'd be taking a toddler for a hamburger. Um, so yeah,

00:24:05.880 a very bad faith criticism. Now it seemed to me that, um, many folks were taking that line of

00:24:14.200 thinking as a personal attack on their parenting skills, which was not my point. Uh, and as a writer,

00:24:19.240 you know, people are taking things the wrong way. Then I, I, I, I failed in my purpose. So I took down

00:24:24.120 that tweet. It was obviously causing more, um, uh, emotion than, uh, action, uh, regarding that piece,

00:24:32.360 uh, from Bruce, I think, and actually there's a bigger social issue where people confuse credentials

00:24:39.960 with qualifications. What qualifies me to do my job is that I'm quite good at it. And the COVID-19

00:24:43.960 mortality, um, in Haldeman Norfolk, since I came to the position has gone down relative to other

00:24:49.320 jurisdictions. So I've, I've been successful, uh, and that's what qualifies me. Um, how I came by my

00:24:55.400 qualifications were, uh, my, my work on the philosophy of science. I'm currently enrolled in

00:25:00.680 graduate school. Uh, my 10 years as a critical, uh, care doctor, um, the, my experience teaching, uh,

00:25:06.760 dozens, if not hundreds of medical residents and, uh, students. Uh, so I don't have the credential

00:25:14.040 that, uh, Bruce seems to think is, is most necessary, but credentials are not qualifications.

00:25:19.960 And then obviously there's, there's just the great irony of the Toronto start dispatching

00:25:23.400 its sports writer to assess my qualifications. Like, I don't think he's qualified to, um,

00:25:27.320 to look at my qualifications. And then the last thing I'll say is I spent a year and a half working

00:25:31.560 as a frontline doctor in this pandemic. I know what COVID-19 is. I've seen what it does to people.

00:25:36.040 And I, I frankly have taken care of more, um, desperately ill people with COVID-19 than Bruce ever will.

00:25:41.720 So I, um, I didn't really paint, I didn't really take his criticisms too seriously. Let's leave it

00:25:46.440 at that. Yeah, fair enough. I wouldn't either. And I don't think that he deserves, uh, more,

00:25:51.320 but I, I will just say that I, I, I tend to agree. I don't, I don't judge other people's

00:25:55.240 parenting styles or whatever, but my kids have never had McDonald's happy meal. Uh, they have

00:25:59.240 had COVID, they were fine. Um, but I think that when I, when I, when I say personal responsibility,

00:26:03.720 I'm obviously not meaning that little kids need to have personal responsibility, but obviously

00:26:07.480 their parents, uh, need, need, need to focus on making sure that the kids are eating healthy

00:26:12.360 and getting outside. And that's, that's important for everyone. And, um, yeah, I'd be interested to

00:26:17.800 learn more about the Dutch, uh, philosophy because one of the things that just seemed totally absent

00:26:23.640 to me was this idea that, you know, things like getting outside, getting fresh air, you know, this

00:26:30.040 is part of going back to my frustration with them taking away the park benches at Trolley Park and trying

00:26:33.960 to block off the trails. It's like, let people get outside, get fresh air. Um, not only is it

00:26:39.720 better for their health, but you know, we're talking about people suffering from depression

00:26:43.640 and alcoholism, uh, let them have social connections, let them, you know, for, for me, I, I loved going to

00:26:50.280 the park because sometimes I bump into friends or other parents or, you know, just getting fresh air.

00:26:54.680 And the, the fact that they were trying to deter that and, and, you know, finding people and taking

00:26:59.240 away the park benches, it would just showed complete reversal. I remember at one point the health,

00:27:03.240 uh, uh, the health, health minister, Patty Haju, um, told people not to take vitamin D supplements,

00:27:10.520 uh, which to me was just so absurd. I think, I mean, you're a doctor, I'm not, but I think

00:27:15.320 given the climate and the, you know, the, the lack of sun in the winter, I, you know, me and my family,

00:27:20.520 we always take vitamin D. That's, and, and, and for me, I mean, I was pregnant for most of, um,

00:27:26.920 the initial COVID lockdowns. I had a daughter in November, 2021. And the first thing that your doctor

00:27:33.000 recommends when you're pregnant is to start taking vitamin D when the baby's born and put them on

00:27:36.920 vitamin D supplements. So, you know, this idea that the top health officer of the country was

00:27:41.880 telling us not to take a vitamin D just seemed really strange. Um, I, I did want to ask you about,

00:27:47.960 um, one, one of the recent, uh, positions that you've taken that's also been controversial,

00:27:52.280 Dr. Strauss. And that is that in April, you vouch for a new antiviral drug made by Pfizer called,

00:27:58.360 uh, packs the void. Um, and, you know, you, you, you said that you were excited about this. So

00:28:03.720 I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about this drug and whether you think it will

00:28:08.360 help us, uh, finally end this pandemic and, and, uh, and how it would do that.

00:28:12.920 Dr. Yeah. So the, um,

00:28:16.520 the randomized control trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at the benefits

00:28:21.800 of packs of it for folks who are unvaccinated and have some other risk factor for having a bad time

00:28:25.880 with COVID-19. Um, and it found that I, uh, hopefully I have the numbers right off the top

00:28:32.440 of my head, the rate of hospitalizations, um, for these individuals, if you gave them

00:28:37.640 packs of it versus a sugar pill went down from 6% to 1%. So, um, if you give it to 20 people,

00:28:44.760 you say one hospitalization, uh, the study was not intending to look at deaths. Um, they didn't

00:28:50.200 think they would have enough, uh, a large enough sample size because death is still even in this

00:28:55.400 unvaccinated and, and, um, uh, higher risk population, uh, is still uncommon, but they,

00:29:02.920 what they ended up seeing was I think 12 deaths in the, in the, uh, I think it was 600 people who got

00:29:08.760 the sugar pill and zero deaths in the 600 people who got the packs of it. So we don't see medicines

00:29:16.920 that are a hundred percent effective at preventing death very often in clinical methods, uh, medicine,

00:29:22.760 certainly not for infectious diseases, certainly not, um, uh, for an infectious disease that's

00:29:27.960 only existed for two years. So this is a, a stupendous result. And, um, I, I was very excited

00:29:37.320 about it because it, I mean, my, my, my life's work is saving lives. That's what I've spent the

00:29:43.640 last 10 years of medical practice trying to do. Um, and so I was very excited to make sure that as

00:29:49.160 many people who qualify for this medicine, get it. And I was concerned that there was a bit of

00:29:53.560 gatekeeping going on. You use that word. So I will too, um, we're, uh, initially the government

00:29:59.160 wanted, uh, for this medicine to only be delivered to COVID assessment centers and for, uh, you know,

00:30:05.640 an infectious disease specialist to, um, to assess you and decide whether it was necessary. And it just

00:30:11.880 seemed like we were reinventing the wheel. We already have a way of, of getting medicines out to

00:30:15.720 people. It's called family doctors offices and pharmacies. Um, so rather than trying to run

00:30:19.880 all of this through hospitals and COVID assessment centers, I just felt very passionate, like,

00:30:23.240 send us a box of this medicine. I've talked to the family doctors in our town. They understand

00:30:26.680 well, every physician in Canada, if they're not totally incompetent is constantly having to learn

00:30:31.000 about new drugs and new treatments and how to apply them. And that's part of all of our, um, our

00:30:35.480 professional competency upkeep. So, um, I'm, I was really glad that ultimately the, the

00:30:42.440 provincial government decided the right thing and send it out, um, to each community and doctors

00:30:47.080 are prescribing it, uh, all over the place. Interesting. Yeah. It seems like, uh, there,

00:30:51.560 there was a lot of sort of controversy around alternative treatments and, you know, the idea

00:30:57.000 of natural immunity versus, um, taking, taking drugs. It seems like that kind of conversation is

00:31:02.680 passed. I just, just to sort of wrap up the interview and, and, um, ask you, I mean,

00:31:07.880 what do you think it'll take in Canada to move past this? Uh, you know, we've, we've talked about

00:31:13.240 a lot of the just major problems that have presented itself or a pro or failed approach,

00:31:17.480 the sort of, um, maliciousness that we've been treating, uh, one another and the divisiveness.

00:31:22.760 Uh, you know, there's so many Canadians that still feel like they're in the midst of it because

00:31:27.320 they can't travel or they, they don't have their job. They don't have their livelihood.

00:31:30.360 Uh, obviously it's a huge, huge question and we have our work cut out for us as a society. It might

00:31:35.640 take us a decade to get past this, but what are, what are some things that you think, uh,

00:31:40.920 our leaders need to do and, and how can we start, uh, to mend our, our, uh, very frayed, uh, social

00:31:47.240 fabrics in this society, in this country? The mandates have to go away. They're completely unscientific.

00:31:53.480 Um, they're obviously cheap politicking. Um, and I, I don't, I'm not a, I'm not a politician. I'm

00:32:02.920 not a political scientist. I don't know how to make this happen, but it, it needs to happen.

00:32:08.040 Uh, frankly, there's, there should be a lot of apologies. Um, that's a good way to, to mend fences.

00:32:14.360 Um, and I think the, I, we talked about it last time, but it's just the basic issue of civility.

00:32:22.440 How do we disagree with someone? If I think something about the vaccine and you think something

00:32:26.280 different, how do we talk about that? Um, I, so even at, at, at the university that I worked at,

00:32:33.720 the, um, the chief of medicine said, if you, if you believe in a focused protection

00:32:38.760 plan and you sign the great Barrington declaration, you're a, you're a Trump supporter who wants people

00:32:42.840 to get sick. And that's, that's, so if even at the academy, and another thing he told us was,

00:32:51.480 if you have concerns about the vaccine, keep them to yourself, which is a, a hell of a thing to tell,

00:32:57.160 um, a hundred physician scientists. So, um, I, I think maybe it's civics education, maybe it's

00:33:06.280 liberal arts education, like getting back to enlightenment ideals of free inquiry and

00:33:10.760 respecting other humans. And, you know, you go your way, I'll go mine. Um,

00:33:15.240 um, so I, there's maybe some philosophical work that has to be done. I, I think there's,

00:33:21.960 there's problems with the whole cancel culture thing. And the idea that if a, if a professor

00:33:26.520 disagrees with you on a point of science, you have to have a petition to get them defenestrated,

00:33:30.760 um, such as was attempted with Byron Brindle, uh, and, and was attempted with me. Um, it's no,

00:33:36.280 it's frankly not a coincidence that they don't work at university anymore. Um, although that particular

00:33:40.120 attempt wasn't successful. Um, so yeah, I think there's a lot of rebuilding to do just in terms

00:33:46.520 of what is a civic society, what are enlightenment values and, and how do we cue to them, um, the

00:33:51.160 next time our system gets a shock like this. Well, uh, again, I'll just repeat that we definitely

00:33:55.800 have our work cut out for us, but I, I will definitely echo a lot of the things you say.

00:34:00.040 I think, you know, we, we could all make attempts to, to build bridges with those we disagree with.

00:34:04.760 And for me personally, I used to love Twitter. I used to have so much fun going on there and just

00:34:08.840 kind of ripping at stupid things that liberals would say. And I, I've stopped, I like, I'll stop 0.98

00:34:13.080 myself even when I see a dumb tweet from a journalist that I just really want to, you know, 0.53

00:34:17.720 pick apart, but it's like, you know, this is kind of mean-spirited and it's not really 0.90

00:34:21.880 a productive conversation here. It's just kind of dunking on someone because,

00:34:26.200 you know, they, they said something stupid and there's a more productive way to, 1.00

00:34:30.200 to go, go about this, this disagreement. And that's why, uh, you know, I, I like longer form 0.99

00:34:36.680 conversations. So I, I really appreciate you coming back on the show. Uh, Dr. Strauss,

00:34:40.520 it's always, uh, very, uh, clarifying to hear from you. We appreciate your time.

00:34:44.840 Thank you for having me.

00:34:46.440 Right. That is Dr. Matt Strauss. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:34:58.680 Thank you.

Juno News - May 31, 2022

Covid has torn apart our social fabric (Feat. Dr. Matt Strauss)

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