Juno News - Leave the kids alone

00:00:00.000 One of the things that should be crystal clear as we look back at the one-year anniversary of

00:00:10.780 the pandemic in Canada is that so many of the restrictions we had on kids and kids' activities

00:00:15.920 were excessive. Do you remember when the playgrounds were roped off for several months?

00:00:20.160 I mean, that was kind of an absurd thing looking back. We now realize there was no reason to do

00:00:24.620 that at all. Okay, well, we didn't know what we were dealing with and, you know, we learned our

00:00:28.540 lesson and they took that caution tape off the playground. All right, good idea. So we're

00:00:32.420 progressing, right? Well, kind of, but there's a lot of people who still want us to regress on multiple

00:00:38.520 fronts when it comes to restrictions, particularly when it comes to kids in a way that, I'm sorry,

00:00:43.540 I just think it is unacceptable. And so many pediatricians and child welfare advocates,

00:00:48.000 they're stepping forward as well and they're saying, leave the kids alone. We got to cut this

00:00:52.240 out. I'm talking about conversations now in March of 2021, where they're saying we may need to close

00:00:58.020 the schools again for, for what? For fears about some third wave or, or new variants getting out

00:01:04.560 of control or what have you? Hearing conversations about how, well, we don't know if children's sports

00:01:09.640 leagues outdoors can occur in places like Ontario. What are you talking about? Outdoor sports with kids

00:01:16.560 two summers in a row where you're not going to have children's activities? We're getting to the point

00:01:22.240 now where, where good news abounds. We're seeing that vaccination rates are increasing. Good news

00:01:27.980 about long-term care facilities in Ontario. They got about a hundred percent of long-term care

00:01:32.300 residents vaccinated. And because of that, in the daily numbers, we're seeing that there's many days

00:01:36.740 where there are zero new cases among long-term care residents, zero deaths among long-term care

00:01:41.240 residents. And, and that was of course, where the pandemic was playing out most tragically, most

00:01:45.740 acutely. So you want to turn around and you want to take this good news and you want to use it to argue

00:01:50.720 that children should be denied a second summer in a row. This should not be acceptable to anybody in

00:01:57.220 Ontario or anywhere else in Canada where you're hearing people push these arguments forward.

00:02:01.540 If there are high-risk persons who, who even after, uh, they are vaccinated or other people are

00:02:07.580 vaccinated in Canada, the vaccination rates continue, the cases go down, they still feel skittish about

00:02:12.300 things. Okay. Well, they need to adjust their own personal risk assessment, but leave the kids alone.

00:02:18.020 We need to stop these arguments that somehow we, those people who bizarrely believe, and well,

00:02:23.320 sadly, some teachers unions voices have played a role in this, that children are the secret super

00:02:28.140 spreaders of the virus that has been debunked. That has been, uh, proven not to be true. Many times,

00:02:33.520 many studies, bottom line, we're progressing. We're heading in a good, positive direction.

00:02:39.980 Leave the kids out of it, please.

Juno News - March 14, 2021