Covid has torn apart our social fabric (Feat. Dr. Matt Strauss)
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Matt Strauss returns to The Candice Malan Show to discuss the devastating effects of the Canadian Pandemic. Dr. Strauss is a former professor of medicine and a former global journalism fellow at the University of Toronto. He was one of the first public health officials in Canada to call for an end to vaccine mandates and has been a vocal critic of Canada s pandemic response. He has written several op-eds calling for the end to unscientific mandates.
Transcript
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The COVID pandemic and the reactive government policies have torn apart our social fabric.
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Many Canadians will never trust authorities or experts, including doctors, ever again.
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I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
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Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast.
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So the health scares associated with COVID have mostly passed, but many Canadians are still trapped in their own form of COVID purgatory.
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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.
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Many have been excommunicated by their friends and their family.
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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.
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Countless Canadians feel excluded and alienated.
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They feel ignored and marginalized and doomed to failure.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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Now, whether you call these elites, whether you call them the Laurentian elite, the expert class, the gatekeepers,
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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.
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So how did we get here and how can we work towards rebuilding our civil society?
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We need to rebuild our civil society at this point.
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We need to demand more liberalism and more democracy out of our liberal democracy.
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So joining me today to have this conversation and to help me work through some of these ideas,
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I'm very pleased to be welcomed once again by Dr. Matt Strauss.
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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
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and some of the topics that we discussed last time.
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So, Dr. Strauss, thank you so much for joining the program.
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So for those of you who don't remember the previous episode we had with Dr. Strauss,
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he is the acting medical officer of health for Haldeman Norfolk.
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He's a former professor of medicine and a former global journalism fellow with the University of Toronto.
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He was one of the first public health officials in Canada to call for an end to vaccine mandates.
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He has been a vocal critic of Canada's pandemic response, written several op-eds calling for an end to unscientific mandates.
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So, Dr. Strauss, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about, I mean, you worked on the front lines.
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You saw firsthand the effects of lockdowns, the sort of unintended consequences of government policies,
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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.
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So I was hoping you could walk our audience through a little bit of what that looked like,
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some of the worst things that you saw as a doctor working in the ICUs,
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and some of the things that maybe Canadians aren't even really aware of what was going on during COVID.
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I spoke last time I was on your show about, in a single week, admitting multiple elders from nursing homes
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who were starving to death because their families were banned from the premises in the name of social distancing,
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And they almost died of starvation in Canada in 2020, 2021.
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Some things I didn't get to speak about were the obvious worsening of addictions problems.
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I saw some folks who quite literally drank themselves to death,
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and unlike starvation, that's not necessarily something we can fix when you get in.
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So I did see some younger folks, mid-30s, mid-40s, who died of alcohol.
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And, you know, in taking the stories from them, it was very clear they lost their job,
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they'd been shut in for three months, people aren't supposed to live that way,
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I had read about catatonic depression as a medical student.
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That means depression is so severe that you're in a coma.
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I don't generally look after folks for depression because I'm not a psychiatrist.
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But if you're in a coma from your depression, you do often come under the care of a medical doctor.
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One man, after six months of not leaving his house,
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whose wife said was a perfectly lovely gentleman, 35 years of marriage,
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he tried to strangle her, then he collapsed and fell into a coma.
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I saw a woman who tried to kill her grandchildren after being locked in with them for three months.
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And when she sort of came to, out of whatever that state she was in,
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I have looked after serial killers and I've learned a little bit about the prison system in Canada.
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And Paul Bernardo gets an hour of sunlight a day.
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So if you're a serial killer and you're in our federal prison system and you behave badly,
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Isolation is considered a punishment for the very worst of the worst.
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And so the ravages thereof were just visible all over the system.
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I hate to talk about this, but I had a colleague, a friend, a wonderful ICU nurse who died by suicide
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last summer and her obituary pointed out that the effects of lockdowns have been very difficult
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So I saw, and then in terms of the public commentary, it was all,
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everyone stay home for the sake of our healthcare workers.
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But all of this was very hard on healthcare workers.
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I would say that every time I went to the hospital, there was a new rule about, you know,
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masking and checking in and you can't, you can no longer have potlucks.
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At a hospital I'm familiar with, the nurses received an email from the management
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on Christmas Eve saying the management was going to walk around and make sure nobody was
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So there were just all sorts of inhumane things.
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I saw patients of mine who the healthcare team had to fight for them to get to see their
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I had patients who were between life and death in the ICU for three months.
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I had patients whose families were not allowed to visit them for the duration.
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I was at a time when patients from Scarborough were being transferred elsewhere and Scarborough
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And so their families were not allowed to come visit.
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And one of the worst things I saw was a young indigenous man with a disability and a severe
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medical problem flew down from a reserve and his, his mom came as his translator and she was kicked
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So she, she'd flown in and when she arrived, she was told there's no hospital visitors.
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And she was kicked out at four in the morning in a strange city where she didn't know anyone.
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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
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sorts of miserable things that I call Russian novel levels of despair.
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Um, and none of these things make it to the CP24 news crawler.
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Um, they were, they were breathlessly reporting cases of COVID and deaths from COVID and those
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Um, my background, I came to medicine with a degree in English literature, my background's
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And, and I, I think that some things can only be expressed humanistically and maybe some of
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those folks in those terrible situations will write novels about what they went through.
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Um, but I think it'll be many years before we fully grasp what, what was perpetrated on
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And so, I mean, some of it, you can sort of chalk up to, okay, there was this novel virus
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and no one knew where it came from or what it was capable of doing.
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We looked at what was happening in China and we kind of just make their response, right?
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We saw mass lockdowns and, and, and people getting arrested for being out in the streets
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This is in sort of early 2020 and I was watching it unfold in social media is sort of in disbelief.
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And then it just seemed like it was a matter of time before we imported that sort of, uh,
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not to be hyperbolic, but sort of an authoritarian approach to, you know, controlling everything
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and everyone to help prevent the spread of disease.
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Why do you think that that was our reflective, uh, approach as a society, um, in terms of just
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sort of like the absolutism of everything's about COVID.
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You mentioned CP24 with their time taker, but it was like a, it was like a scoreboard,
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And we were only hyper-focused singularly on COVID, all of the kinds of misery that you're
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And it was, it was our own system that was perpetrating it.
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It was us doing it to one another, to fellow Canadians.
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What was it about our culture or healthcare system or institutions, um, that allowed that
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and that, and that led that, and that enabled sort of two years of, of the elites and the
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people in charge of our society, not only justifying it, um, but sort of scolding anybody
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Um, I, I, probably textbooks will be written, um, or, or at least PhD theses will be written
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A few things that I can point at is this is the first pandemic we've gone through with
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And I don't think we're, we were, we were only starting to get a handle on how damaging
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to our, uh, individual psychologies, uh, Twitter and Facebook and Instagram were, um, so I remember
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the H1N1 flu pandemic, um, in 2008, 2009, and it wasn't as deadly, not as many people died.
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I fully acknowledged that, but I remember I was a young healthcare worker.
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I was 25 and as a 25 year old, H1N1 was more deadly to me than COVID because COVID is extremely
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deadly to folks who are elderly and not so dangerous to folks who are younger.
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When I got H1N1 from my work at the hospital, uh, the only thing the hospital asked me was
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There was, there was no talk about isolation and quarantine and getting swabbed.
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Um, so I think similar to how people often talk about how the, the rate of child abduction
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is much lower now than it was in the seventies, but fear about child abduction is much higher
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now because we all have cable news and anytime any child is abducted anywhere in the English
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speaking world, it's broadcast on CNN, uh, just about 24 hours a day.
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Um, I think the fact that we were all having a device ringing in our pocket, letting us
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know when there was COVID in our, in our country, in our province and in our town, how many were
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I don't think, um, I don't think we were ready for that amount of stimulation.
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The other thing I will say is, um, it, it's become clear to me that communist China is just
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as bad as any authoritarian regime that has ever existed.
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Um, they have 1.5 million Uyghurs in concentration camp.
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They, you know, they shot protesters, uh, at Tiananmen Square.
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And yet our elite class, uh, has been cozying up to China all along.
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So it's a bit, well, it's not exactly a coincidence that, um, COVID started in China, uh, but because
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it did, we had the opportunity to pattern our response off of the Chinese response, which
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was deadly because that is a very evil regime and we shouldn't be patterning anything off
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And yet the world health organization receives a lot of money from China.
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And while this was going on, Taiwan had a much more liberal democratic approach to COVID-19
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that was actually much more successful than China's.
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They, they just did not, they didn't certainly didn't weld people into their homes.
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Um, and it was very upsetting to me that instead of co-opting the Taiwanese response, uh, the
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world health organization sort of, uh, COVID-star, uh, Bruce Alward, he gave this famous interview
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where he refused to even acknowledge the existence of Taiwan.
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And because the question was asked, he, uh, pretended that his laptop wasn't working
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So I, I think there, there, there was a problem with us misunderstanding the threat that China
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The thing I will say is we'd all been a little bit deranged by American politics and Donald
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Um, but when he started, um, Saying things about hydroxychloroquine and the like, everyone
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Um, and, and then, and then after that point, anything that Trump said was the worst and
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Well, I think, I think you're right about a little bit of the Trump derangements or spilling
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onto it because it seemed to me at the time that the news media in the United States really
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had an interest in drumming up just how bad everything was to try to humiliate Trump, to
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try to, you know, derail him and make sure that, that he wasn't reelected.
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And, and because of that, we sort of just, uh, it's, it all snowballed a little bit.
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I want to pick up on something you mentioned about Taiwan, not locking down schools.
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And you mentioned how H1N1, uh, was, was more deadly for, for, for younger people.
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Uh, you know, it seemed like we knew, I mean, True North had a report that came out over
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a year ago in April, 2021 about how more Canadians died under the age of 65 from depression, suicide,
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drug overdose, alcoholism, um, then COVID, uh, we, we, we kind of knew who were the vulnerable
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ones and who was sort of generally more, more safe.
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And so rather than taking it targeted approach, we, we, we just sort of continued to lock down,
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lock down, lock down right up until even 2022, we had lockdowns.
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Uh, it's, it seemed like the, that the people in charge in this country were just not learning
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And why is it that our political leaders and public health leaders to this day, continue
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to sort of, uh, drum the idea that, that, that the solution to COVID is by locking down our site,
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our site, including little kids and, and, and people who don't, uh, really pose a big, uh, risk
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I do think there's a bit of a generational issue.
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Um, I, I only recently became aware you, you wrote a book on, on generations screwed.
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And I, I do think that baby boomers are at great risk of death from COVID or they were
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Um, so, and it happens to be the case that baby boomers run our society.
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Um, so I, they were frankly, they were right to be scared.
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Um, I don't think they were right to scapegoat the younger generations who were trying to make
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a living, um, or just trying to, uh, enjoy their lives.
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Um, and I, I think it's something dark and unfortunately natural about human psychology,
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that if you have a mortal threat, it's much nicer to scapegoat, um, 20 year olds having
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a picnic at Trinity Bellwoods park, um, than it is to consider the ways that, I mean, so another
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thing to mention, but besides the age issue, um, perfectly healthy elders were at much less
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risk of death from COVID, um, than, uh, folks with multiple medical problems.
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And so in my own experience working as an ICU doctor for, um, the first year and a half of
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the pandemic before I went to a less clinical role in public health, um, the youngest person who was
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perfectly healthy that I met who was critically ill from COVID-19 was 76, but, um, everyone else had
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multiple medical problems and, and I, I'm sorry to say, I think there is a role for personal
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responsibility. And, and I, but I can understand how rather than looking at, you know, could I get
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in shape? Could I stop smoking these sorts of things? It's much nicer to blame the 21 year olds
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Certainly for me, one of the breaking points, uh, just personally, because, um, my family and I,
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we just bought a new house in Toronto. We were right across the street from a park and, you know,
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they would put the tape up on the playground, um, every day, you know, if anyone cut it down,
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they would come back and they would wrap it up. And it was so demoralizing for my little son to
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want to go to the park and sorry, sweetie, we can't go on the swings today because the
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government said no. And then one day I was sitting in a park with my son in Toronto and these trucks
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literally drove onto the park. This is Trolley park in Toronto and picked up the, um, the, the,
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the, uh, picnic tables and the park benches and took them away because they just didn't want anyone
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congregating in the park. And, you know, this was in like April or May, it was still pretty cold out.
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It wasn't like it was like, you know, warm spring. It was still kind of chilly. And the fact that they
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were kind of just punitively saying like, no, you could not come in this park and this picnic table
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is somehow going to, uh, you know, cause people to get COVID or something. It was just so mean-spirited
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and so like sort of the epitome of the mindset of these sort of just mindless bureaucrats who are
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carrying out these ridiculous orders that somehow having benches in parks is going to contribute,
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um, to COVID. I, I, I want to continue on the, the topic of little kids though, because
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I know, you know, there's an Ontario election going on. No one's paying any attention to it.
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It's not very interesting, probably by design, but they, the one, one comment that sort of stood
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out, which the Ontario liberals and their leader, Steven Del Duca said that he wanted to make COVID
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vaccines mandatory for little kids to attend public school. That it would be part of the
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regular, uh, vaccine regime for little kids. And, you know, to me that that's like the perfect
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thing to drive people away from public schools, because it's like, you know, no matter what you
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say about COVID vaccines and COVID and, you know, all four vaccines and all that kind of stuff, it's like,
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you know, the idea of, of giving a little kid a vaccine when they don't really, there's no risk.
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There's not a real risk of that child getting sick or dying from COVID. Um, it, it just seems
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really unnecessarily divisive. I want to know your opinion on that.
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Yeah. Well, the first thing I would say is COVID-19 is not a risk to the vast, vast majority of
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children. Um, that influenza, since the beginning of the pandemic has been a greater risk. So if you
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get influenza as a child, it is riskier to you than COVID-19. Um, that said, there are children who
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are medically fragile, who have a very significant medical problems and, um, COVID can be a significant
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problem for them. Uh, what we know at this point is that two doses of vaccine does not prevent you
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from passing, um, COVID on to someone else, such as a medically fragile child. So I absolutely think
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that if I was a parent of a child with medical problems, I would be in a, in a terrific rush to
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get them vaccinated. Um, the, I think throughout all our thinking about the pandemic, the idea of
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risk benefit analysis has been sorely lacking. So yeah, there may be some benefit to getting more
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children vaccinated for COVID. Um, but what is the risk? It's something like only half of the children
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in this country and in this province are vaccinated. So kicking half of the children out of public school
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is that, how do you weigh that against the sort of one in 500,000 chance that, um, any child dies
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of COVID-19? Um, I think obviously that's a, in addition to being a mean spirited policy, it's also
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likely to significantly backfire. And if you have, um, a generation of children who are even more
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unschooled than they are after two years of school closures, two years of school closures on and off,
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um, I think the, the social problems and the, and the personal health problems that those children
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might experience far, far, far outweigh the benefit that they might get from a COVID vaccine.
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Well, I can't imagine a better way to galvanize people against public schools, because like you
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said, if half the kids aren't vaccinated, um, you know, this is more likely just going to drive
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people away from public schools and maybe they'll go find a, you know, a, a, a better set of, uh,
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educational tools for their kids, or maybe they'll go to independent schools, or to your point,
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maybe they'll fall through the cracks and, and be part of the growing number of people who just don't go to
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school, which is, is, is really sad and scary. And, and again, these, these kinds of issues
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are just never really mentioned. I want to shift because this, this sort of reminds me, I don't know
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if you, if you deleted it, but there was a piece in the Toronto Star that just attacked you. Um,
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and it was written by their sports writer, Bruce Arthur. I don't, I don't know why he, he chose you
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to, to kind of go after, but he, he really, you really bother him. And, and he, he let you hear it.
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And, uh, you're not, you're not alone. You're in good company, uh, myself and many, many others,
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uh, have been, um, the target of Bruce Arthur's, uh, you know, snarly, uh, opinions, but one of the
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things, uh, that he, he, he was really upset that you said was that you would sooner give your child
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COVID than McDonald's happy meal. And, um, I thought this was kind of amusing because I, I think that
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people need to take greater responsibility for their own health. I think that one of the things we
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didn't really talk about at all during COVID, uh, was this idea that, you know, the, a lot of people
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who were sick and, and had severe, um, cases of COVID had underlying health issues. They were obese
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or they weren't taking care of themselves in a healthy way. And that was never a discussion. It was
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never a topic that, that there's some individual responsibility and making sure that you're healthy,
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you're eating right, you're exercising all this kind of stuff. And so I thought it was amusing that you,
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that you made that point, but he, he mentioned that you deleted that tweet. So maybe you, uh,
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you had a change of heart on that, but, um, I, I, I just want to know what, what your reaction is to
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Bruce, Bruce Arthur, writing about you in the Toronto Star trying to take you down, saying that
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you're not qualified, uh, to be the medical officer and, um, kind of picking apart some of your, um, things
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that you've written on Twitter. Well, let me address the tweet first. That tweet was part of a long
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thread in which I looked at the data regarding childhood obesity, which is epidemic and on the rise.
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Um, uh, and I, I know that these critics of mine were acting in bad faith because they always took
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the conclusion of that thread rather than the data and the scientific papers that were linked
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in that thread, um, to show that if you're obese on your 18th birthday, you are twice as likely not
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to make it to age 30 as somebody who's a healthy weight on their 18th birthday. Um, that's, that's
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extraordinary. That's crushingly bad. And I feel awful for those kids. By the way,
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if you're an obese child, you, you didn't do that to yourself. That was neglect. Um,
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and, and not merely parental neglect, but our whole society is built, um, in ways for children
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not to be healthy. Um, my wife is Dutch. I will be Dutch soon. Um, after three years of marriage,
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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.
00:28:16.520
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.
00:34:46.440
Right. That is Dr. Matt Strauss. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.