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.
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?