Juno News - February 20, 2021


Public health officials need to be transparent and accountable


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

193.54839

Word Count

662

Sentence Count

49


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Canadian public health officials are starting to conduct themselves more like politicians than like
00:00:10.320 public servants or straightforward doctors. And that's a big problem. And I think the public and
00:00:15.900 media need to start treating them like the politicians that they're behaving like by
00:00:20.400 asking them some more critical questions and not necessarily taking everything they say at face
00:00:25.740 value. I think more pushback is required now. Back about a year ago when the pandemic first started,
00:00:31.880 take those press conferences with Dr. Theresa Tam. People listened with great interest. They
00:00:36.560 trusted what she said with face value. She commanded a lot of respect in the Canadian public.
00:00:43.180 Things have really kind of changed lately though. I mean, we've learned a lot about coronavirus.
00:00:47.660 There's vaccines that have been developed. Our Canadian doctors and doctors all around the world
00:00:52.060 have learned the therapeutics to treat the virus. We've got data and statistics about
00:00:55.840 just how bad this is in terms of fatality rates. Who's actually being hard hit by the virus? Who's
00:01:01.460 the high risk category? Who's in the low risk category? A lot of information that we should
00:01:05.720 be able to use to evolve our response, to have a better, smarter approach. And yet on Friday,
00:01:12.080 Dr. Tam released modeling that caused a lot of people to raise their eyebrows. Right now,
00:01:17.400 Canada is at about 2,000 cases per day. Good news. It's going down. But her modeling says because of
00:01:23.620 new variants, we are going to skyrocket. You should see this chart. It actually shows the line just
00:01:28.860 shooting up within the next couple of weeks to over 20,000 cases per day or beyond. I don't know how
00:01:35.020 high it goes because the line just goes off of the chart, out of the page. Some media were asking,
00:01:41.060 where did you get these numbers from? They were asking some technical questions. To their credit,
00:01:45.300 Dr. Tam couldn't answer or wouldn't answer, didn't provide that information. Later on,
00:01:51.520 during the day on Friday afternoon, Michelle Rempel, she's the conservative health critic,
00:01:55.360 she was asking similar questions to Public Health Agency of Canada officials. What's going on with
00:02:00.580 this modeling? What are the inputs? Why are you actually concluding things are going to be so
00:02:05.140 outrageous? And they couldn't really answer the question. They said, we'll have to get back to you
00:02:08.900 next week. We don't know. Hmm. They're the experts. They don't know. And Michelle Rempel and
00:02:15.080 others were asking, why is it that there's modeling in other countries that are showing
00:02:18.760 that declines continue for these very weeks that you show rapid increases? And they just
00:02:23.600 couldn't answer the question. And why this really matters is Dr. Tam and Justin Trudeau on Friday
00:02:28.760 were saying, well, look, you know, cases are going to go out of control, which is why we need to keep
00:02:32.840 the lockdowns in place and we need enhanced measures. Now, some jurisdictions in Canada, they don't
00:02:39.040 have a lot of measures right now, but people in say Toronto and Peel region are going, I don't know
00:02:43.080 how it can be more enhanced than it already is. So a lot of people were rather frustrated to hear
00:02:48.200 that. And they're seeing cases decline all over the world and in their own backyard. And they're
00:02:52.600 going, shouldn't this be the time for reopening? Well, you know what? Maybe if public health officials,
00:02:57.220 they have a really good answer as to why not, and they have a really good explanation about what's
00:03:02.120 going on in these numbers, then, well, tell us and maybe we can talk it out. But, well, they didn't
00:03:08.100 give the answers. They dragged their feet. They were evasive. They said, we'll get back
00:03:11.540 to you next week. Sounds kind of like something a politician would do. And I don't think people
00:03:18.500 should accept those sorts of answers anymore. And, well, I don't think they are. I think people
00:03:23.380 are pushing back as they should.