Juno News - September 09, 2020Provinces begin to rollback reopening
Episode Stats
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Summary
Dr. Bonnie Henry's decision to roll back some reopenings is not a cause for alarm, and it's not a reason to be worried about it either. She was pushing the envelope in the first place, and there's no reason to worry about it anymore.
Transcript
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It might be dismaying for a lot of people to see the news that in British Columbia they are now
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beginning to roll back some of the reopenings that they have done in recent months. Dr. Bonnie
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Henry, their chief medical officer, you're probably familiar with her, she's been idolized all out of
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proportion. They paint murals about her and there's glowing memes about her online. I don't think it's
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healthy to idolize a public servant quite like that but I get the point they think that BC has
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done pretty well and they'd like to acknowledge Dr. Bonnie Henry. Well oops not so fast there. BC had
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been doing well now the cases are surging and Bonnie Henry says some of these reopenings we've done
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well we have to walk them back. Banquet halls shut down. Nightclubs shut down and this is really the
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first big issue from a public health officer. The first big announcement that yes we're going to
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start rolling back the reopenings we're heading back into lockdown and it makes you wonder uh-oh
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what's next what are we going to see lockdown again got to shut down the schools this that and the other
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I say pause. Hold on a second. Putting this into context Bonnie Henry's decision not that big of a
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deal. Why? Because we were already pushing the envelope in the first place with these reopenings. Banquet
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halls, nightclubs, large group gatherings, people in close quarters talking close to each other
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yelling at each other and so on. I mean we always knew that that was going to be the place where
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if there were going to be super spreader events it would happen. In Ontario one banquet hall wedding
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related to 23 cases of coronavirus. That's quite a lot when you talk about the daily count just being
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120, 140 cases. 23 cases from one event and I don't blame the provinces for pushing the envelope on all
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this because we had to do this. We can't just find ourselves at this level of safety and go okay well
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society we're gonna we're gonna shut down our social and economic activities to this degree and
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there we go not not step out into society any further. No you had to keep trying you had to
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keep pushing and we have we've pushed and then we found okay the banquet halls they're not quite
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working out. So that's all right and it doesn't mean we have to start coming up with a laundry list
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of things that we have to shut down again. I think it was totally reasonable push as much as you can.
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Uh-oh okay we've hit this breaking point where it's clearly causing spread we've got to bring
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it back. So I think the main message is this is not a cause for alarm. We're gonna move into the fall
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we're gonna see there's a few cases at schools a few cases here and there of course. It's to be
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expected. Humans are gathering more than they were back in March and April and the thing's gonna
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spread a bit. It's gonna keep doing that until there's a vaccine that's widely used or or whatever
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brings this thing to its end. We always have to remember the original goal flatten the curve
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so we don't overwhelm our hospitals with people in ICU beds. We never got close to that happening