Juno News - The closing of the Canadian mind

00:00:00.000 I want to chat for a moment about what I would describe as the closing of the Canadian mind

00:00:10.800 when it comes to coronavirus statistics, contextual information, nuance, and what is

00:00:16.180 happening all around the globe. You know, Canadians are usually encouraged to think of

00:00:20.660 themselves as very cosmopolitan, oh so worldly, and they're encouraged to think of themselves as

00:00:25.520 very intelligent in many respects, more so than those Americans. You know, the cliches over the

00:00:30.220 years, oh Americans are so dumb, this, that, and that, they can't find this or that on the map and

00:00:34.240 so forth, but we Canadians, we're far superior to them. Well how's that holding up right now during

00:00:39.820 the coronavirus conversation? One of the things that I have found so frustrating is how the general

00:00:45.600 conversation about the pandemic, the restrictions, COVID-19, various different statistics about it,

00:00:51.520 is we are encouraged to have as narrow of a perspective as possible. We bring out daily

00:00:57.860 reports on the case counts, and nothing more than that, even though if you open up the epidemiological

00:01:03.020 summaries that the various provinces release and their stuff up at the federal level, you can see

00:01:07.400 there's a whole bunch of contextual information that's really interesting, that the public has a

00:01:12.140 right to know, and that I think everybody should be discussing to help really inform their perspective

00:01:17.320 of the virus, and also to help them cobble together their own personal risk assessment, so they

00:01:21.760 understand how they should be going out and about in society, what sort of precautions they should be

00:01:25.520 taking. You know, those phrases, knowledge is power, and so forth, does it not apply right now? And yet,

00:01:30.680 for whatever reason, one is discouraged from having that big picture perspective. For one example, as I

00:01:36.540 said, the actual facts and statistics about what's going on actually in Canada with the numbers, what the

00:01:42.160 reports show us, and also that more global perspective. I actually saw one journalist

00:01:46.520 arguing on social media the other day saying, well, you know, you don't want to really look around at

00:01:50.820 other jurisdictions, because, you know, it's not perfectly apples to apples and so forth, what's going

00:01:55.000 on? Yeah, I know, nothing is really perfectly apples to apples. You can't compare any two economies or any

00:02:00.640 two, you know, tax policies in two different countries perfectly, because things are just going to be

00:02:06.000 slightly different in every country, but shouldn't we actually look around the world and what's going on

00:02:11.240 with coronavirus cases? But you're not supposed to talk about these different jurisdictions that,

00:02:15.660 say, have managed to see a drastic decrease in their coronavirus cases, even though they have not

00:02:20.900 had lockdowns in place. I'm thinking of these U.S. states that you're not supposed to mention, places

00:02:25.700 like Florida, some other U.S. states, other places around the world. It's kind of taboos to bring that up.

00:02:31.320 I mean, you just can't have that worldly big picture. And it's been interesting to watch the media

00:02:37.080 kind of encourage that rather blunt level of conversation, where you go for a year talking

00:02:43.260 about an issue where you would think, I mean, sometimes this is the only thing people talk

00:02:47.540 about for days on end, and yet there's so much contextual info that should be out there in the

00:02:53.300 conversation. But boy, people put a lot of effort into avoiding it, ignoring it, downplaying all of

00:02:59.240 that information. Very troubling. And why I feel we are in this position right now, where we are

00:03:03.380 really witnessing the closing of the Canadian mind.

Juno News - March 08, 2021