Juno News - January 21, 2022


Science and policy experts are putting forward a real reopening plan. Will politicians listen？


Episode Stats

Length

16 minutes

Words per Minute

174.7597

Word Count

2,800

Sentence Count

175


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome back to the Andrew Lawton Show.
00:00:10.880 I mentioned at the beginning of the program here that all of the science tables, the science
00:00:15.980 advisory committees have tended to approach the pandemic with a one-track mind that looks
00:00:21.920 at getting case counts down, even at the expense of economic welfare, mental health care, effect
00:00:28.700 on children, child development, all of these other things which are absolutely critical
00:00:33.420 and I think by and large have gone ignored or certainly undervalued through the course
00:00:38.200 of the pandemic.
00:00:39.080 Kids being pulled out of school yet again in many provinces is a great reminder of this.
00:00:44.200 Well, all of these science advisory committees have had this narrow focus, so there's now
00:00:48.340 a private sector alternative, if I can call it that, a group that's assembled together
00:00:53.280 to bring together experts, scientific experts, and public policy experts to achieve the lofty
00:00:59.320 goal of exiting the pandemic.
00:01:01.360 This is the Canada Science and Policy Committee to Exit the Pandemic, which launched yesterday
00:01:06.660 and the co-chair of this is Irvin Student, who again, I'd use the whole show if I wanted
00:01:10.720 to give him a proper introduction.
00:01:12.180 He's a Rhodes Scholar.
00:01:13.920 He's done lots of work.
00:01:15.200 He's a former soccer pro.
00:01:16.580 He's of course helming the Institute for 21st Century Questions, but in this context, he's
00:01:21.640 the co-chair of the Canada Science and Policy Committee to Exit the Pandemic.
00:01:25.640 Irvin, it's good to talk to you.
00:01:26.720 Thanks very much for coming on today.
00:01:28.780 It's a real pleasure.
00:01:29.680 Thanks for having me, Andrew.
00:01:31.260 One of the big things we've been so mired in for the last two years has been how we
00:01:36.800 live through the pandemic.
00:01:38.360 It was originally going to be, as you know, two weeks and then a couple of weeks longer,
00:01:41.900 and now we're looking at basically the third calendar year of the COVID era.
00:01:46.920 Why have the discussion now about what it means to exit this whole thing?
00:01:51.640 Well, we're not having a discussion and we're not searching for meaning.
00:01:55.280 We're actually meaning to exit.
00:01:57.200 So we've struck up a national committee, properly national, across all the province,
00:02:03.140 all the regions, all the territories, to choreograph and exit from the pandemic for
00:02:09.000 the entire country in the coming months.
00:02:11.460 And I do mean in the coming months.
00:02:12.920 What we've done with the new Canada Science and Policy Committee, which is based out of
00:02:17.060 the Institute for 21st Century Questions, one of Canada's leading think tanks, is that we brought
00:02:22.020 together the two solitudes, the two intellectual solitudes of this pandemic, the scientific and
00:02:27.680 medical community and the policy committee community and operating in silos and in solitude.
00:02:34.580 We've had disintegration on the ground.
00:02:36.300 We bring them together.
00:02:37.500 We need to map out a holistic exit across the systems of society, across our multiple crises
00:02:43.220 and practically.
00:02:45.120 I mean, we mean business.
00:02:46.260 We're not there as a science experiment.
00:02:47.920 We're not there for narcissism or fun.
00:02:49.740 We're there to exit because otherwise the country will not survive.
00:02:53.200 A lot of the science advisory committees that we have giving their guidance to provincial
00:02:58.580 governments right now are digging deeper and deeper into lockdowns and into restrictions.
00:03:04.080 What is it that your experts are seeing that they aren't?
00:03:08.280 Well, first of all, we make several shifts that I think are missing.
00:03:14.200 First of all, we bring together again the scientists and the policy people.
00:03:18.540 One of my fundamental diagnoses of our catastrophes, and we have multiple catastrophes in the country,
00:03:23.200 is that the politicians are illiterate on science, but the science and medical community stinks
00:03:28.740 at public policy.
00:03:30.080 So we bring them together.
00:03:31.700 We try to make up for each other's weaknesses and advance each other's areas of expertise.
00:03:37.480 It is a policy lead.
00:03:38.900 First of all, that's one of the major shifts of this national committee to exit.
00:03:43.480 It is a policy lead, not a science lead.
00:03:45.700 The science supports it.
00:03:47.060 It is one of many inputs, but it is not a science project.
00:03:50.400 It is not a research project.
00:03:51.700 We are not following the science.
00:03:54.040 The science informs the policy.
00:03:56.240 We are not, as one Ontario official said, looking at the virus as in charge.
00:04:00.520 We can't do anything.
00:04:01.240 The virus is in charge.
00:04:02.280 Nay, this is a policy lead.
00:04:04.460 It is to exit.
00:04:05.540 It is to choreograph an exit that has been already choreographed in many other advanced and less
00:04:10.080 advanced countries, no less.
00:04:12.160 The other shift is that we are doing real systems thinking across the systems.
00:04:16.500 Andrew, you'll appreciate that in our country today, we don't have one single crisis.
00:04:21.920 We actually have six or seven crises of system nationally.
00:04:25.880 We have the pandemic.
00:04:27.160 We have public health writ large.
00:04:29.620 The pandemic becomes the minor crisis before long.
00:04:32.120 We have a massive education crisis.
00:04:33.980 We have an economic crisis of historical proportions.
00:04:36.700 We have a national unity crisis.
00:04:38.200 We have an international crisis.
00:04:39.520 We have an institutional crisis and we have a growing social crisis, one of broken norms.
00:04:44.720 We need to work across all these systems and exit in the coming months.
00:04:48.940 Many countries in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East, and Latin America are already
00:04:54.020 exiting.
00:04:55.000 This is a unique committee in that it's practical.
00:04:57.920 We bring together really properly national experts across all the disciplines representing
00:05:03.620 all parts of the country.
00:05:04.640 That's the other unique thing.
00:05:05.560 It is really national and we plan to exit because the country needs it desperately and we will
00:05:11.140 provide both the advice and the courage and the vocabulary and the frameworks to do so.
00:05:16.840 Is this plan one that only governments are in a position to accept or reject or is there
00:05:22.080 something here that businesses and individuals can take from as well as they move forward?
00:05:28.200 In the end, of course, it's a government exit because government is choreographing a lot of
00:05:33.460 the move.
00:05:34.020 So it's a policy exit informed by science, but all these other areas, economics, social
00:05:39.840 policy, psychology, education, of course.
00:05:45.040 I should say the media plays a major role and individual leaders in communities, civil society
00:05:50.860 and institutions play a major role in changing the psychology.
00:05:53.860 We must not over sentimentalize the last two years and lick our wounds about where we are
00:06:02.240 today.
00:06:02.680 That's one of the big weaknesses in our national response.
00:06:05.840 We must be purposeful and bold and we must exit as a mature country.
00:06:11.560 In fact, if you look back at some of the diagnoses, and I think this will be the case when we look
00:06:15.440 back a number of years, hence on where we've been weakest, we say that we not only overreacted,
00:06:21.980 but we didn't properly gauge the nature and the measure of the crisis.
00:06:27.440 And in world historical terms, this was not a major crisis.
00:06:30.660 God forbid there should be one.
00:06:32.460 And countries that have endured far larger crises acted with much more maturity because
00:06:37.540 they said, you know what?
00:06:38.820 This is a crisis.
00:06:39.960 It's a pandemic.
00:06:40.560 Here's the measure of the pandemic.
00:06:42.720 And here's how we respond, given all our other tragedies in the past.
00:06:46.980 Fortunately for Canada, we haven't had major public catastrophes at this scale over the
00:06:52.200 last hundred years, even almost since Confederation, if I may be so bold.
00:06:57.420 So our reaction has been non-systematic, immature, overly sentimental.
00:07:03.080 And we're here to be strictly practical, to exit.
00:07:06.980 And we mean to exit because as proud Canadians, we realize that if we continue the forward scenario
00:07:15.420 is not status quo, it is continued disintegration, including the possible collapse of the country.
00:07:20.700 So we need to reverse that energy and we mean to do it in the coming few months.
00:07:25.820 So let's talk about a parallel universe here in which your committee is the one driving public
00:07:32.220 policy in Canada or in one or all of the provinces here.
00:07:36.320 What's the day one action that you'd take to implement this plan?
00:07:40.220 What do you put in place right now?
00:07:42.240 And what does the next few months look like?
00:07:45.260 Well, first of all, let's talk about when the exit actually happens, when we declare
00:07:50.880 that this is over for all practical intents and purposes for Canada.
00:07:55.380 I believe it has three parts.
00:07:58.440 One is that COVID becomes largely endemic and seen thus.
00:08:01.240 And I believe the chief medical officer of health of Canada, Teresa Tam, declared that
00:08:07.100 we're trending towards that even yesterday.
00:08:09.320 A number of countries are already there.
00:08:10.980 A number of countries are extrapolating that.
00:08:12.940 So the pandemic becomes endemic.
00:08:14.720 It has seasonal intensity.
00:08:17.080 But you don't think Canada is there just yet, you're saying, correct?
00:08:20.280 We're very close.
00:08:21.160 Second point is that the pandemic, even in the endemic form, becomes properly gauged.
00:08:28.740 That is, we deal with people with comorbidities, aged people, the vulnerable in a specific class
00:08:35.300 of treatment and intervention of various intelligent forms like we would have in 2019.
00:08:40.300 We would treat them as vulnerable and we intervene maturely.
00:08:43.620 But for the rest of the society, starting with the young and the able and everyone else,
00:08:49.780 we work, work, work, build, build, build, and learn, learn, learn, and play, play, play
00:08:55.160 for the young people.
00:08:56.040 That's fundamental.
00:08:56.860 And the final point on the exit is that on a proper systems view, we begin to understand
00:09:01.900 the pandemic.
00:09:02.740 If we imagine we have six or seven or eight balls in the air in a society as massive and
00:09:07.800 complex as Canada, the pandemic is just a part of one ball.
00:09:11.720 It is not the totality of our crisis, not the totality of our imagination, and we don't
00:09:16.380 imagine that there's just one exit for all these crises, including that one little ball.
00:09:21.820 So it's a systems apprehension that we will impose on both decision makers and the societal
00:09:27.920 understanding of the crisis.
00:09:29.400 And that's a threefold exit, and we'll get there soon.
00:09:31.920 In terms of the general choreography of the short term, we must restore the rhythm of our
00:09:37.420 society.
00:09:38.000 All those things that we knew in Canada to be part of the daily bread must be restored
00:09:43.140 with great deliberation, consideration, choreography, starting with the children in school, without
00:09:50.640 restriction, without inhibition.
00:09:53.540 Play, play, play, learn, learn, learn.
00:09:55.040 It's one of the fundamental rhythms of the society.
00:09:58.760 The rhythm of sport, of culture, of restaurant.
00:10:02.120 All of that needs to be restored with, in my, in my preliminary assessment, with great
00:10:07.460 energy, not zombying out of the condition as if we've been struck about the head five
00:10:13.320 times.
00:10:13.780 It's actually counterintuitive, but we need to punch back with high energy, not low
00:10:18.160 energy.
00:10:18.620 We need to come out with a statement, very much like at the end of a war, there would
00:10:22.600 be a parade here.
00:10:23.520 We're not talking about a parade.
00:10:24.420 We're talking about restoring the rhythm of society, which is deeply ingrained in us.
00:10:28.340 We've forgotten how to live elegantly in Canada, and the committee, I hope, will give both
00:10:33.400 the choreography and the courage to say, back we go.
00:10:37.280 You know, we're a sophisticated, advanced, old society in political terms.
00:10:42.040 We've been living inelegantly over the last two years.
00:10:46.200 The inelegant living is not our, our default equilibrium.
00:10:50.860 We're coming out, but we need a higher energy level to get out of there.
00:10:54.080 We've stuck here, and we've created a storyline that is overly sentimental and self-congratulatory.
00:11:00.520 This is our lifestyle.
00:11:01.680 Aren't we, aren't we suffering?
00:11:04.880 No, we need to go higher, but that requires work.
00:11:07.700 That requires more thinking, and that really requires energy push to get us to that higher,
00:11:12.360 higher equilibrium that we enjoyed so much over the last hundred years.
00:11:16.960 Now, when you talk about restoring that rhythm of society, are you talking about lifting things
00:11:22.280 like mask mandates and vaccine passports and basically returning to life, you know, March
00:11:27.360 1st, 2020, or even November 1st, 2020, or 2019, I guess?
00:11:32.620 I think my own preliminary thinking and early thinking of the committee is, of course, there
00:11:36.900 will be deliberate actions that say, we're back.
00:11:41.180 Life is back to normal.
00:11:42.160 We're not zombying, again, out of this where we say all of these legacy things that were
00:11:47.660 there purposefully, sometimes competently, sometimes less competently, sometimes accidentally
00:11:53.860 to manage the pandemic, that these are legacy items with which we'll need to learn to live.
00:11:58.120 No, no, no.
00:11:58.600 This is a deliberate statement that we're exiting and exiting in the full sense.
00:12:04.380 And might I add, Andrew, that because we've had so many crises, we're not exiting back to
00:12:09.400 2019 living.
00:12:10.300 That rhythm of 2019 should be there, but it will require that much more work to get out
00:12:14.700 of the multiple crises.
00:12:16.280 So the pandemic, in my assessment, will be the minor crises of our six or seven crises.
00:12:22.080 And therefore, we require work across education.
00:12:24.820 We have 200,000 children out of school permanently in Canada.
00:12:29.000 We need to get them back to school.
00:12:30.660 We have huge tens of thousands of businesses that have disintegrated.
00:12:34.440 We have a social crisis whereby you have to negotiate the norms, restaurant to restaurant,
00:12:39.840 community to community, household to household, complete breakdown, and province to province,
00:12:45.080 no less.
00:12:45.580 We have a national unity crisis.
00:12:47.600 The civil services and political class of the country have not seen the country in two years.
00:12:52.560 They don't know what's happening, except for on their Twitter feed or on Facebook or what they
00:12:56.160 might get on a text message or phone.
00:12:58.720 All of that rhythm needs to be restored by statement, deliberately, not accidentally.
00:13:05.440 And the political class right now is slightly in the realm of deer in the headlight, a little
00:13:12.640 bit traumatized, confused.
00:13:14.100 And we will give them that direction and courage to effectuate that choreography that we're
00:13:18.360 seeing already in other countries.
00:13:20.980 I know it's early.
00:13:21.900 You just launched this committee this week formally.
00:13:24.740 But has there been any political leaders?
00:13:27.380 Have there been any political leaders provincially or federally that seem to be approaching this
00:13:31.300 with an open mind?
00:13:33.340 We're in touch with a lot of them, if not all of them, on both the political and scientific
00:13:39.940 sides.
00:13:40.340 And of course, on the policy side, and we're strictly non-ideological, non-partisan, always
00:13:46.160 practical.
00:13:46.840 Very much in the tradition of the Institute for 21st Century Questions, the mandate of
00:13:51.080 the committee is strictly practical.
00:13:52.740 We will give advice.
00:13:53.900 We will speak to everyone.
00:13:55.840 And we will, I expect, give courage to the country to declare an exit in the coming months.
00:14:03.420 That is the plan.
00:14:04.920 That is my expectation.
00:14:07.840 Well, that is my hope as well.
00:14:09.760 Joining me is, of course, the chair of the Worldwide Commission to Educate All Kids, the
00:14:14.060 president of the Institute for 21st Century Questions, and the co-chair of the Canada Science
00:14:19.120 and Policy Committee to Exit the Pandemic.
00:14:21.300 And I didn't mention him earlier, but the other co-chair is Dr. Quadmo Kiramatang, who's
00:14:25.920 been phenomenal on this as well.
00:14:27.420 So glad to see he's involved.
00:14:29.200 Thank you very much, Irvin, for your time today.
00:14:31.100 Really appreciate it.
00:14:32.360 Thank you, Andrew.
00:14:33.540 Irvin Student, thanks again for your time.
00:14:36.080 Listen, he's got some great names on there.
00:14:38.620 Dr. Martha Fulford, who's been a solid advocate, especially on the school reopening aspect,
00:14:44.760 does has Dr. Quadmo Kiramatang, who has the Quadcast, which is something you should definitely
00:14:49.700 listen to.
00:14:50.220 Again, he's been a doctor that's pushed back against a lot of those who just want lockdowns
00:14:54.600 indefinitely.
00:14:55.520 So I was very glad to see his name there.
00:14:57.480 And also public policy people, former politicians, current politicians, people that have an eye
00:15:03.720 for public policy, where a lot of the medical advisors and science advisors have not.
00:15:09.560 One of the biggest problems I talked about earlier on in the pandemic was that people
00:15:13.560 with a one-track focus on one particular outcome, who are unconcerned with economic outcome,
00:15:19.440 unconcerned with child development and child welfare, and all of these other things, were
00:15:24.240 directing policy based on one particular metric, which was an important one, but not something
00:15:30.360 that you can take at the expense of all of these other things.
00:15:33.440 So I would say we could probably expedite that exit from the pandemic sooner.
00:15:37.480 Like I said a couple of weeks ago, the pandemic is over when people say it is.
00:15:41.940 But I'm glad to see some intellectual and academic gravitas coming towards that perspective
00:15:46.600 that politicians have to just put their line in the sand and say, you know what, we're
00:15:50.640 leaving this thing.
00:15:51.400 We've got to end things there.
00:15:52.700 My thanks to all of you for tuning in to The Andrew Lawton Show today.
00:15:55.840 We'll talk to you soon.
00:15:56.840 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.
00:15:59.400 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.