Juno News - March 28, 2020


Is Canada ready for a second wave of coronavirus？


Episode Stats

Length

11 minutes

Words per Minute

201.55893

Word Count

2,379

Sentence Count

4

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 if you've left the house at all in the past couple of days then you probably had an experience that
00:00:11.640 was similar to what happened to me this afternoon when I went to Walmart to pick up a couple of
00:00:15.240 supplies you see I'm the designated person in my household that is generally doing the errands and
00:00:20.460 leaving the house when something is required but today I went to Walmart and it was probably the
00:00:26.580 most surreal experience I've ever had in my life it's very hard to describe because on one hand
00:00:33.580 it was very somber very serious people were definitely taking the social distancing quite
00:00:39.100 seriously people weren't really talking to one another they you know very serious there was
00:00:45.280 nothing you know it seemed like they were just all business they wanted to get in and get out
00:00:48.780 and it kind of felt like the end of the world had happened already and somehow we're just continuing
00:00:55.840 kind of like if you're playing a video game and you fail the main objective and a menu pops up and
00:01:01.840 says you know mission failed do you want to continue playing or restart the game and so we're just kind
00:01:07.700 of continuing to play and this is you know this is just our life now this is where we're at and so
00:01:13.160 obviously it gives you a lot of time to think and you know the main the main thing anyone can really
00:01:17.660 think or talk about is this virus but it got me thinking about a couple things and the first is
00:01:25.300 the overall numbers and what that means so I wanted to pull back up the ncov2019.live website
00:01:33.840 it was a good website that tracks the the deaths and confirmed cases but it got me thinking that
00:01:39.880 there's really two possibilities here so the first is that either it's super infectious and the numbers
00:01:47.580 that we're seeing on the you know on the reporting websites they are just inaccurate because it's
00:01:53.820 simply what's confirmed it's way more contagious than we thought so when you see that Italy has
00:01:58.380 59,000 confirmed cases it's actually you know two three four hundred thousand because this thing is
00:02:04.020 just out of control and a lot of people have much milder symptoms so they're not going to get tested
00:02:08.460 and even if they do have some pretty harsh symptoms they still aren't getting tested because there's not
00:02:12.160 enough tests perhaps to go around in these countries option b is that it's not very contagious
00:02:17.960 in which case then why are we all staying at home and you know that would mean that there's not really
00:02:23.340 any community transmission and we should only be worried about people that traveled now obviously
00:02:28.440 I think it's a I'm not saying it's the second one I think it's a and I think that this virus has
00:02:33.520 actually been around in the west and has been passed along for months probably two or three more
00:02:38.980 months than we actually thought now my issue is that the numbers that the government keeps quoting
00:02:44.740 are a little insulting because they skew the perception on one hand the government is telling
00:02:51.580 us that we need to remain calm and not to panic but when you have a low confirmed number and a death
00:02:58.900 rate the percentage or the fatality rate for the disease is going to be artificially high because we
00:03:04.760 don't actually know how many people have the disease now South Korea has tested a lot of people
00:03:10.220 and they probably have a decent or a better death rate but the only way to actually get a confirmed
00:03:17.120 death rate or the closest thing to it would be to actually test 100% of the population then you
00:03:23.440 could know who has what and what they are dying from and then you would be able to separate it out
00:03:28.320 who's dying from the coronavirus or is it because the virus itself is it because that virus complicates
00:03:34.220 gives them a health complication and they die from other factors they have a comorbidity of something
00:03:38.220 so the numbers are quite insulting and the government really should make up their mind
00:03:44.100 are they going to focus on these numbers and then tell us not to panic when we have an artificially
00:03:50.260 high death rate or do they want to calm everybody down and say that you know a lot of more people
00:03:56.480 probably have it you know we have some timeline we're thinking about when we're going to get over
00:04:00.440 this but you know don't panic and the death rate is not so high you don't need to freak out if you
00:04:05.000 have serious uh you know serious respiratory problems or serious other health issues then
00:04:08.960 obviously consult your doctor or um call in but you know on the other side as well in a globalized
00:04:16.580 world that we live in i really don't know if this is as infectious as people say i don't know how we
00:04:21.920 could have stopped this thing and even now the spread is simply slowing it's you know it's flattening
00:04:25.660 the curve as they say but it's not stopping this thing uh people are still were until recently
00:04:31.420 and are still in many countries traveling back and forth so the time to have dealt with this is
00:04:36.880 really in november or even you know maybe slightly before when it first appeared in china
00:04:41.080 so you know that's a big issue second of all is how many people from this virus are going to die
00:04:49.800 from homelessness from hunger from losing their life savings i mean what we're doing right now is
00:04:57.080 not really a solution and i think our world leaders need to answer what are we doing so this is not
00:05:03.820 going to happen next time the prime minister needs to get out there on his daily briefings and tell us
00:05:08.900 what the government is learning from this issue i mean we are going to have possibly the biggest
00:05:14.720 recession since the 30s if not bigger this might be the biggest global recession to ever hit so far in
00:05:21.660 the history of mankind but what's the plan here what are we you know what are we going to do
00:05:26.740 contagions viruses all these kind of things they get out plagues happen are we just going to quarantine
00:05:32.720 ourselves again you know the next one hits the coronavirus is going to mutate in another year or
00:05:36.340 two and we're just we're all going to quarantine ourselves again we're just going to destroy the
00:05:39.740 global economy so you know i think to put it in a in a real business perspective here what are the
00:05:46.440 learnings if all these people died and we learn nothing they will have died in vain every corona
00:05:53.300 death was preventable except for maybe the first one which even then it probably is preventable don't
00:05:58.700 eat you know weird raw things um but if we learn nothing it will be a travesty for all these people who
00:06:05.900 have to have died and we will just have learned nothing the other point is that until news about this
00:06:12.260 broke until people started talking about the coronavirus you may have had it and never known
00:06:17.380 so you would have never known that you actually had this thing that you were a carrier that you were
00:06:21.640 sick that you were passing it on to other people you thought maybe i had a cold i had a flu you know
00:06:26.140 it just it was you know i was not feeling great and they were really just asking you know you know
00:06:31.580 unless you've been to wuhan don't worry but the first canadian cases happened you know quite early
00:06:37.080 they actually happened near me i live in uh i live just north of toronto and they happened you know
00:06:42.520 not too far from me so it's pretty clear that this thing obviously caught on before um you know before
00:06:48.240 it really became popular in the news to talk about it and that's the other issue you know viruses don't
00:06:53.940 have borders as we are being scolded you know we we can't close the borders okay you're right viruses
00:06:58.720 don't have borders viruses don't know that they are in canada of course community transmission
00:07:04.700 was happening beforehand how did we get it here so early we you know you're telling me that every
00:07:09.920 single case in canada came directly from a person who flew in from wuhan and then spread it around
00:07:16.360 it's just you know the numbers just seem off and the death percentage the fatality rate on the numbers
00:07:22.540 also seem very off and something that's contributing to this is something that the government of ontario is
00:07:27.420 doing and i mean all governments really but a good example here we have the government of ontario
00:07:32.000 so this is the covid19 self-assessment so this is the page that they tell you to go to if you're
00:07:37.640 worried that you have covid19 so i'm going to give uh you know a sort of me in the middle of the road
00:07:43.920 answer and we'll see what they say so we're going to start the self-assessment and first question are
00:07:48.920 you experiencing any symptom any of the following symptoms so okay we're gonna we're gonna say no
00:07:53.440 because these are all severe and for these they probably tell you should go to hospital i mean you know
00:07:57.000 if you have severe difficulties breathing even with no uh pandemic going around you really should
00:08:02.240 go to the hospital um so i can hit no but uh for this one are you experiencing any of the following
00:08:08.040 symptoms or combination fever new cough difficulty breathing for example okay yeah let's just say yes
00:08:13.380 let's just say that i'm hypothetically i'm one of these people um have you traveled outside of canada
00:08:17.720 no uh does someone you were in close contact with have covid19 well first of all how the hell do i
00:08:23.480 know because if they have mild symptoms then and i have mild symptoms i don't know right so i don't
00:08:30.040 know so i'm gonna hit no because i i have how do i know um are you in close contact with a person who
00:08:35.100 with the person who is sick with respiratory problems for example fever uh cough difficulty breathing
00:08:40.140 we recently traveled us out of canada okay so no let's say i don't know um and then self-assessment
00:08:45.860 it is unlikely that i have covid19 but i should still um you know only leave my house so it's not
00:08:53.940 for sure that i have it i might i mean i probably could because it's really super infectious and it
00:08:59.080 went around but they're not going to come and test me about it nor are they asking me to come in and get
00:09:04.820 myself tested and i should just sit at home so it's someone who falls into these categories which i
00:09:10.780 think could be a lot of people you know i had a cold recently was was that simply how i did i get
00:09:18.020 covid19 and it simply presented as a cold if i had a bit of a fever a persistent fever for a couple of
00:09:23.000 days did you know is that covid19 um my colleague candace malcolm she had a persistent fever for a number
00:09:30.360 of days she got tested thankfully she does not have the virus but you know that's scary you you could
00:09:36.000 think that you do and so again it's really just an issue not just with the prime minister as as much
00:09:42.620 as you know he's not necessarily he's really not led um in the greatest way and their messaging has
00:09:48.780 really been a mishmash and you know they're only finally starting to get their act together with some
00:09:52.360 of the economic stuff but you know until more recently you know the numbers were just panicking
00:10:00.980 people because you have any number of confirmed cases and any number of fatalities and you have
00:10:06.020 an artificially high fatality rate and that freaks people out that's like the example that they you
00:10:11.080 know you've seen that example around if there were 100 skittles and i told you three of them would kill
00:10:14.720 you would you eat it okay but what if not even one of them like a fraction of one of them was actually
00:10:20.320 going to kill you right and to put it into perspective when you cross the street when you get out of
00:10:26.180 your house you leave your bed there's a chance you're going to get killed by something so you know
00:10:31.140 the messaging is just panicking people we need to know what we're learning our leaders need to be
00:10:35.620 clear in what the timetable is what they expect us to do going forward and how they're going to prepare
00:10:41.800 for the next one because this one is already happening and we've already pretty much destroyed
00:10:46.440 the world economy for the next couple months so we better better as hell learn something out of this
00:10:50.740 um you know i'm going to be furious like everybody else if we just learn nothing and it will really
00:10:55.520 be a travesty because it means that all those people will have died in vain and uh you know
00:11:01.060 it's not something i hear other people other uh news outlets talking about that's why you know
00:11:05.440 that's why at true north everyone here is committed to telling the other side of the story we are trying
00:11:09.720 to explore issues that you don't hear on other outlets that the media either refuses to talk about
00:11:15.740 or simply just cannot because the position they occupy now obviously you know times are tough and
00:11:21.540 people are struggling but again we are not going to be receiving a media bailout that the mainstream
00:11:26.600 media just got a couple hundred million dollars um and that's why independent media is important to
00:11:31.220 support organizations like true north so please if you uh have a couple bucks that you can uh make a
00:11:36.400 donation please visit www.tnc.news forward slash donate and uh please consider supporting us today
00:11:43.740 thank you so so much and have a great evening stay safe and be well