Juno News - December 14, 2020


More Canadians are starting to question the lockdown


Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

207.74612

Word count

683

Sentence count

27

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

As the cold weather begins to set in, more and more Canadians are starting to question the restrictions that we are living under right now, and whether or not they are entirely necessary. Are we catching coronavirus from each other in the brief, brief encounters we have with strangers in public places?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 I think as the winter really sets in, more Canadians are going to start asking some more
00:00:08.940 critical questions of the various restrictions that we are living under right now and whether
00:00:13.280 or not they're entirely necessary. You know, I got to say, I've had it pretty good when it comes
00:00:18.700 to shopping experiences during the pandemic. I haven't had to wait in too many lines, or if I've
00:00:23.380 gotten to the store and there is a big line, my day has been such that I've said, okay, well,
00:00:26.960 forget about it, go run your other errand, come back here later, that kind of thing. When I have
00:00:31.060 been in line, it's been beautiful summer weather, so no real complaints. Well, the other day, I went
00:00:35.960 to the grocery store and because of the logistics of my day, I pretty much just had to commit to going
00:00:40.320 and get what I needed, whatever the lineup situation was like, and I got there. Sure enough, there was
00:00:45.620 a line. And this is December in Canada, so it was not warm. It was cold and it wasn't snowing, but it
00:00:52.660 was raining. Now, I'm not personally complaining because I knew I wouldn't be there for all that
00:00:56.440 long and I had my gear on and so forth. It wasn't really all that bad of an experience for me,
00:01:01.260 but I got to thinking. I was looking around the line and a couple people ahead of me, there was
00:01:05.240 a lady who had her small daughter and she was sort of clinging on to her mom's legs there. 1.00
00:01:08.940 I looked back a little bit. There was an older lady who was really trying to pull her coat around 1.00
00:01:12.880 her and so forth and just trying to brace herself for the next few minutes of cold. And I looked around
00:01:17.200 and I thought, really? Really? Are we going to be doing this for the next few months? Are we going to be
00:01:22.380 doing this in January, in February, and minus this, minus that, with the wind just howling and
00:01:28.380 hitting up against your cheeks and giving you that frostbite feeling that nobody wants to be standing
00:01:32.840 outside for? Well, it looks like, based on the way a lot of officials are speaking, yes, we are going to
00:01:38.540 be doing that for January, for February, throughout the Canadian winter. And yet, more and more we learn,
00:01:45.140 is coronavirus transmission really happening in stores? I had that front page story in the Toronto Sun,
00:01:51.080 0.1%. That was the percentage of cases that Ontario had chalked up their coronavirus cases to for retail.
00:01:59.440 Oh, and by the way, that wasn't just shoppers getting it from each other. That included employees in the
00:02:04.460 back room, in the storeroom, before and after the store had opened and closed, having their lunch break and so forth,
00:02:10.140 hanging out, in close contact, without masks. Are people really catching coronavirus from each other
00:02:16.620 in these sort of fleeting, brief encounters, passing by in an aisle at a grocery store, or even at the
00:02:22.440 checkout, where, when I went the other day, the same lady was there at the checkout, who has been there
00:02:27.840 working eight-hour shifts, day in, day out, for years, and definitely since the pandemic began in March.
00:02:33.800 And that I know of, that lady has not at all gotten sick. The federal app that Justin Trudeau is always
00:02:39.520 encouraging everyone to download. You know what actually makes it kick in, which, what makes it
00:02:43.820 register contact? 15 minutes of close contact within six feet. 15 minutes or more. Are you ever
00:02:50.980 actually that close to someone for that long in a stranger situation in public like that? That's
00:02:56.700 normally family and so forth. So why are we doing all of these restrictions around grocery stores
00:03:02.420 and elsewhere? Does it add up? That's my question to you. And I think that's a question that more and
00:03:09.060 more Canadians are going to be asking themselves and each other, and yes, the politicians and public
00:03:13.480 health officials, as the cold weather really sets in.