Juno News - October 25, 2020


FUREY： Politicians continue to lockdown Canadians


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

193.97212

Word Count

886

Sentence Count

58

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I want to take a moment today to talk about this feeling out there in the air in Canada
00:00:09.840 that more lockdowns, more restrictions, are kind of inevitable. It seems like we're creeping in
00:00:16.640 that direction, does it not? What you hear federally, provincially from your mayor,
00:00:22.120 trick-or-treating, it's just not safe. So says, well, in Ontario, they're saying that.
00:00:26.240 Not so much in other provinces, but they still want you to know it's risky business.
00:00:30.000 And conversations about what region will be shut down next, what things are going to be restricted,
00:00:35.280 that's where the momentum is at. We're not talking about, hey, let's get this thing reopened.
00:00:39.460 We're talking about, well, is this thing trustworthy? Should we shut that thing down?
00:00:44.040 Even though, and here's the strange thing about this whole conversation, even though what's going on
00:00:50.360 out in the community, medical experts even, are suggestions that things are actually going pretty
00:00:56.420 well, a lot better than we thought they would be. There were concerns that back to school would be
00:01:00.640 atrocious, that there would be people seriously ill because of it, maybe a few teachers dying or
00:01:05.460 something. I mean, I hate to say it, but that's just what people were predicting. That thankfully
00:01:10.080 has not yet come true. And it does not even seem we are on the pathway towards a scenario like all of
00:01:16.160 that. Meanwhile, medical experts stepping forward. I spoke to a guy who runs the coronavirus ward at a
00:01:21.620 downtown hospital in Toronto, St. Michael's Hospital. And he says, hey, things are actually
00:01:26.280 going pretty well. We are improving. Treatments are a lot better. It used to be you go into the ICU,
00:01:31.780 things were dicey. Now, more and more people are leaving. They're getting hospitalized, but they're
00:01:36.380 getting better. We're treating them well. So it's kind of a good news story when you look at a lot of
00:01:41.120 indicators. And yet it's not from the way a lot of politicians and officials are discussing. Ontario
00:01:47.800 Premier Doug Ford on Friday, he said quite a statement. He was being asked about reopenings
00:01:53.340 and so forth. And he said, look, if we get to a thousand cases a day, there's not going to be an
00:01:57.700 economy anymore. Yikes. What do you mean? Is that just a passive observation? Was that a threat that
00:02:03.820 he will lock things down if they get to a thousand cases per day? And just for reference, Ontario's
00:02:09.160 hovering close-ish to that right now. I mean, some days it's 690, 750, 850. They've hit over 900 a couple
00:02:17.380 times. So it's not inconceivable to be within a thousand cases, to be over a thousand cases
00:02:22.060 coming up in a week or two from now, even though most people will still be going out and about
00:02:26.220 their daily lives and they won't have still known a single person who has been infected with
00:02:30.320 coronavirus even mildly, let alone severely. How did we get to this point? I think inertia
00:02:37.460 is playing a big role in this. What do I mean by that? Government inertia and the inertia of very
00:02:44.180 large institutions is a very powerful thing. So you get the ball rolling in one direction.
00:02:50.020 And even if a lot of people, even in that operation, don't think it's a good idea anymore,
00:02:55.860 it's just so hard to turn things around. That's what you're set on. That's where you're headed.
00:03:01.500 Think about something like, say, corporate welfare. Liberal, conservative, NDP, well, not so much
00:03:06.740 liberal, but NDP and conservative all agree corporate welfare, not good. And the leadership
00:03:10.480 races, they say, we've got to ban it. Year after year, whoever gets into power, they're still
00:03:15.340 bowling it out and they're proud about it. And they're smiling at the press conferences and so
00:03:18.880 forth. They just can't stop doing it because, oh, well, I don't know what happens. And well,
00:03:23.560 this other jurisdiction's doing it and we don't know what's the alternative and so forth. They're
00:03:27.600 just stuck in a rut doing it. There's a similar thing here with the restrictions and lockdowns.
00:03:32.820 Well, what else would we do? Do you have a better way and so forth? There's a major nervousness about it.
00:03:38.080 You know, back in February when people such as myself proposed, you know, there's this crazy
00:03:43.100 thing happening in Wuhan and it's in Italy and Iran now and it just looks awful. We don't want it
00:03:47.340 here. Maybe we should ground some planes or maybe even quarantine people who are coming back from
00:03:52.080 Wuhan. And people told me that it's xenophobic and unconstitutional. No, we can never do it and so
00:03:58.160 forth. Those were the very people who are now saying lockdown thousands of times more than just
00:04:03.920 quarantine one single flight from Wuhan. It is, it is incredible. So how do we deal with this
00:04:08.620 inertia? I think you just have to keep pushing, keep prodding, keep asking the questions because
00:04:14.900 that inertia, it's so heavy and so powerful and slow moving, but it's difficult to push back. So
00:04:20.540 you just got to keep pushing back and you got to keep bringing up those points and more and more voices
00:04:25.340 and slowly, slowly they can stabilize and slowly the momentum heads in the other direction.
00:04:32.660 We shall hope. We shall see.