Juno News - April 27, 2020


Skeptical of the lockdowns？ Prepare to be mocked


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

163.05965

Word count

987

Sentence count

47

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Pro and anti-lockdown protesters are calling for the government to reopen the economy, but the voices that are expressing that or calling for reopening the economy are often mocked and derided by the mainstream media. Why should the government re-open the economy?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I don't know about you, but it seems to me that the feelings of restlessness,
00:00:07.900 annoyance, and even doubt are starting to kick in as we enter the sixth or seventh week of the
00:00:13.780 pandemic. I can't even keep track at this point. In my private conversations, I am hearing that
00:00:19.380 more people are ready to reopen the economy, but they may not express that publicly because
00:00:24.880 the public voices that are expressing that or are calling for reopening of the economy
00:00:29.680 are often getting mocked. This sentiment that I'm detecting and that other people are detecting
00:00:35.300 as well coincides with an Angus Reid survey published on April 20th that found concern
00:00:41.340 about personally contracting the virus has fallen for the first time since early March, dropping
00:00:47.040 from 73% two weeks ago to 61%. So fear of the coronavirus itself is on the decline. As for
00:00:56.640 reopening the economy, on one side we have the pro-lockdown stay-home crowd. I've seen
00:01:03.080 some refer to these people as social distance warriors, which I think is a hilarious term. 0.86
00:01:08.640 The social distance warriors often make fun of or criticize the anti-lockdown crowd, so
00:01:15.620 the people who want to open up, for just being all about GDP and money and they just want the
00:01:20.680 cash to start flowing again. But I think we should be a little more charitable of their
00:01:25.060 position in that the anti-lockdown crowd, they're concerned about jobs and family finances and
00:01:31.980 paying rent and in some cases government overreach as demonstrated by the nonsensical fines that
00:01:38.840 have been given out by bylaw officers and the nonsensical closure of parks. We've now got
00:01:45.300 a $180 billion deficit to deal with, and that was the figure from a couple weeks ago, so it's
00:01:51.020 surely more now. So how is this deficit going to affect the quality of life for the next generations
00:01:57.560 of citizens who will be the ones responsible for paying that off? And at least when I talk about
00:02:03.920 reopening the economy, I'm not talking about only businesses and jobs and restaurants and retail.
00:02:08.900 I'm talking about the restoration of quality of life, so the reopening of our lives, which includes
00:02:15.440 the reopening of parks, playgrounds, beaches, recreational facilities, basketball courts,
00:02:22.120 everything like that. Now on Saturday, there was a relatively large anti-lockdown protest in Ontario
00:02:28.020 in front of Queen's Park. It attracted between 100 and 200 people. And as my True North colleague
00:02:34.440 Anthony Fury wrote on Twitter in reference to these protests, he said,
00:02:38.820 a word of caution. The fact that anti-lockdown protests happening later today may include some
00:02:44.480 fringe voices with ridiculous signs saying silly things doesn't somehow negate the need for us to
00:02:49.920 prioritize a smart, targeted reopening of the economy as soon as is possible. And if I can add to this
00:02:56.620 point, I think a lot of people agree with some of the points that the protesters are making. Not all of
00:03:03.880 it, but you know, about how the economic effects of the shutdowns are going to wreak havoc on people's
00:03:09.740 lives, about how small businesses are closing down, about how our civil liberties are being encroached
00:03:16.440 upon. All of these things are valid concerns. But then you see how these protesters are being mocked on
00:03:23.140 social media, or you see that some of the protesters who are being highlighted in the media might be
00:03:29.040 individuals who are, who have particularly fringe ideas, or they might be behaving in an aggressive
00:03:34.960 manner, which is all a turnoff. And then someone who's at home, kind of thinking to themselves,
00:03:41.000 well, yeah, I would like to go back to work. I would like my kids to go back to school. I think
00:03:45.460 it's silly that they've closed the parks and playgrounds. Those people will now suppress those
00:03:50.460 thoughts because they don't want to be associated with, you know, the fringe, the people who are being
00:03:55.080 mocked. So they learn to just stay quiet. You know, they don't want to be made fun of. And Premier Ford
00:04:02.400 also spoke out against the protesters. Here's a clip from Saturday.
00:04:06.860 These people that are absolutely irresponsible, it's reckless to do what they're doing. And personally,
00:04:14.840 I think it's selfish. We have healthcare workers down the street at these hospitals working around the
00:04:22.360 3 o'clock to protect the community. 99.9% of the people in this province are working together, side by side. That's the reason we were able to see a flattening of the curve.
00:04:34.460 But then we have, you know, a bunch of yahoos out in the front of Queen's Park sitting there protesting that the place isn't open. As they're breaking the law and putting everyone in jeopardy, putting themselves in jeopardy, putting the workers in jeopardy. 1.00
00:04:52.120 And God forbid one of them end up in the hospital down the street.
00:04:56.080 Vancouver has been host to a few smaller protests as well with a couple dozen people.
00:05:02.180 And Dan Dix, who runs a YouTube channel, he posted a small clip of himself at the protest on Twitter.
00:05:10.240 And it blew up because some blue checks had some choice words for him.
00:05:15.820 Notably, the actor Seth Rogen called him an idiot, but with some expletives thrown in there.
00:05:23.200 And some other minor Canadian figures were just piling on, calling him an idiot and a moron.
00:05:29.480 And so if you yourself are skeptical of some aspects of the lockdowns, but you're following the reaction to the protesters here,
00:05:38.500 well, you're going to learn pretty fast that you're going to want to stay quiet unless you want to be mocked.
00:05:43.680 And so it's very likely that we will see these protests continue to be written off as fringe and ridiculous for the next little while.
00:05:52.720 But, or it could, they could get bigger, they could gain momentum.
00:05:57.040 So we will have to wait and see on that end.
00:05:59.660 I'm Lindsay Shepard, investigative journalism fellow with True North.