In this episode, Dr. Teresa Tam, the new infectious disease chief at the Canadian Public Health Agency, talks about the new coronavirus, C.O.V.19, and the challenges faced by public health officials and infectious disease experts.
00:00:00.000The other day I found myself reading Dr. Teresa Tam's biography, her profile, on the Canada Public Health Agency's website,
00:00:12.660talking about the various titles that she's held, the position she's held, and the publications and research papers that she's written for over the years.
00:00:20.340Pretty impressive list. Hats off to her, and no wonder she got the job.1.00
00:00:24.620You know what I didn't see in that publication list, though I didn't see that she had authored any sort of report or study or thesis on coronavirus, on COVID-19, for obvious reasons.
00:00:35.120Because this thing is brand new. We only realized it was around in December, in early January, when people started talking about it.
00:00:41.360So we can't blame anybody in the infectious disease community for not being an expert in this particular illness.
00:00:48.040Here's the thing, though. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and many other officials out there are doing a lot of appeals on science, evidence, and the experts,
00:00:57.220as they justify the various measures they're bringing into our lives to beat this thing down.
00:01:01.740Now, public opinion polls show that Canadians are largely in support of them.
00:01:04.960Leger showed that over 90% of respondents said they back these social distancing measures.
00:01:10.660Because we see there's a lot at stake, and we certainly want to do things to protect the most vulnerable.
00:01:14.500I get all of that. But there's a little problem with these appeals to evidence and experts at this very moment right now.
00:01:21.440When, and here's the thing that Canadian public officials are not acknowledging, experts are seriously divided over this.
00:01:28.780All across the world, within countries, even within different medical associations, there's disagreement as to the basic nuts and bolts of COVID-19.
00:01:36.900Just how deadly is this thing? Just how is it spread?
00:01:39.620We know more now than we did, say, back in the beginning of January, back on January 25th, when the first case in Canada was reported.
00:01:47.220But there are still many questions that remain unanswered.
00:01:51.180And part of the challenge is that there's a great certainty that comes from Trudeau, from TAM, from others,
00:02:03.240The evidence, the science, says the opposite.
00:02:05.660No, they don't. Or at least some very temporary science that is only ironclad truth for about 15 minutes until new stuff comes along and we change gears.
00:02:16.320So, I think that if there's one thing we could see differently right now, we don't want to be browbeating people about,
00:02:22.080You must follow the science when the science is very quickly ever-evolving.
00:02:27.340And there's a debate between virologists, between epidemiologists, between infectious disease experts about the very basics of this.
00:02:35.360Things are going to be changing day by day, week by week.
00:02:38.420That's okay, because that is the nature of the thing.
00:02:41.560But I think Canadians should also be allowed to be a part of this conversation
00:02:45.200as they look around and assess what all these different experts are seeing around the world.
00:02:49.660And is it okay for us to challenge our own public health officials based on our readings of everything going on around the world?