Juno News - April 26, 2021


Do 75% of Canadians want to get the COVID-19 vaccine？


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

183.25694

Word Count

853

Sentence Count

41


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Dr. Theresa Tam's office, the Public Health Agency of Canada, has just put out a new report
00:00:11.420 saying that harsh restrictions, lockdown measures, will need to remain in place in Canada well into
00:00:17.760 the summer, throughout the summer, unless 75% of Canadians get their first dose of a COVID-19
00:00:25.840 vaccine, or unless 20% of people are fully vaccinated, so have the full two doses. Oh, and by
00:00:32.720 the way, mask wearing and social distancing are going to need to remain in place even if those
00:00:37.260 metrics happen and beyond for many months or whatnot, continuing after that. Now, this is going
00:00:43.500 to be really frustrating for a lot of people to learn about, to reflect upon the idea that for the
00:00:48.720 second summer in a row, well, there's not going to be much of a summer. No outdoor sports leagues, no
00:00:54.100 barbecue gatherings, and so forth. That's what Dr. Tam is saying. I don't know where they got the 75%
00:00:59.240 from, but let's unpack whether that's even a viable target or not to hit. 75% of people. Now, a lot of
00:01:08.340 people are going to look at it from the question of securing doses. So it's the job of the federal
00:01:12.500 government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to go and get those doses of vaccines. And then it's the job
00:01:17.400 of the provincial governments to do the rollout, to get the shots into people's arms. And I think
00:01:23.180 some people think that's the entire question. Okay, well, we got to get 75%, you know, by the
00:01:28.460 summer. Uh-oh, we're pretty much into May. Can we do it? It's sort of a timeline question. It's a
00:01:33.020 rollout question. Okay, fair enough. You can talk about it from that angle. But the other question to
00:01:38.220 ask is, do 75% of Canadians even want to get the vaccine? Now, look, I'm not saying whether one should
00:01:46.020 or shouldn't or different opinions on different types of vaccines. And there's people out there
00:01:50.500 conversing, uh, throughout social media and in news stories and so forth about this or that vaccine
00:01:55.860 and, and, and blood clot issues from AstraZeneca and so forth. I'm offering no perspective on all
00:02:00.560 of that. If you want to get the vaccine, go ahead, go out and get the vaccine. But just from the broader
00:02:05.780 sort of bird's eye view question of, of what percentage of people actually want to get it. And I thought
00:02:12.600 back last summer, I remember reading a story about how the BC nurses union, a number of years ago,
00:02:19.500 went to court to fight against a ruling that said nurses in BC had to get the flu shot.
00:02:27.240 And that's very interesting. So you have healthcare workers, healthcare professionals
00:02:31.360 who are willing to go to court to say they don't want to face a mandatory vaccine. And when I read
00:02:39.160 that story last year, I thought this idea that we're going to have a hundred percent of people
00:02:44.140 getting vaccinated, 90% of people vaccinated. It ain't going to happen if you have healthcare worker
00:02:50.080 unions going to court to fight so they don't have to take a flu shot, which has been in existence
00:02:56.120 for decades now. Back in about November, there were a number of polls of healthcare workers.
00:03:01.420 Mostly the ones I read were in the United States asking doctors, nurses, and other professionals,
00:03:05.780 do you want to get the coronavirus vaccine? And it found that about 25% to a third of people in that
00:03:11.120 line of work were saying, no, we're going to take a pass on this. Now that was November. And I think
00:03:15.360 some of that was because they just wanted to say to others, okay, you jump first, you get this
00:03:19.780 vaccine. And I want to see if there's any immediate adverse side effects. So perhaps some of those,
00:03:25.520 some of those people who said they didn't want to get it, maybe they've decided they will get it
00:03:28.820 now. But I also think there's probably a cohort of that among healthcare workers alone who are saying,
00:03:35.100 no, we're just not going to get this for whatever reason. I'm not here to unpack those reasons
00:03:39.320 right now. But just to basically reiterate the point for those people who think this sort of
00:03:46.540 100% vaccination take rate is actually a thing that if you've got healthcare workers who are having
00:03:55.560 legal battles to not be mandated to take the flu shot, well, I think that just tells us that a 90%,
00:04:02.240 80%, perhaps even 75% take rate in the general public to get this new vaccine, this coronavirus
00:04:09.800 vaccine, I don't know if it's going to happen. So if we're talking about metrics for how we can have
00:04:16.320 a second summer, whether summer will be under lockdown or not, and Dr. Tam is using these high
00:04:21.960 levels, you know, 75% or more, I don't know, we got to take a closer look at just what people actually
00:04:29.760 want out of this vaccine, and whether it's even a viable target to talk about rates that high based
00:04:36.880 on what we've seen before. What do you think?