Juno News - The harms of being ＂cautiously pessimistic＂ during COVID

00:00:00.000 So a lot of health officials in Canada and around the world have been reluctant to say that Omicron

00:00:10.220 is a much milder variant because they don't want to be premature, they don't want to call things

00:00:14.660 too early, they want to wait for more data. And one can appreciate why someone might want to

00:00:19.940 approach things that way, but I had a recent conversation with Dr. Neil Rau, who's an

00:00:23.920 infectious diseases physician based out of Ontario, and he was talking about the difference between

00:00:28.340 being cautiously optimistic, which is an appropriate thing, and cautiously pessimistic, which can come

00:00:34.500 with a lot of harms itself. And Dr. Rau was talking about how if there are restrictions on our lives

00:00:40.500 that are in place longer than they need to be, needlessly, ones that, well, we don't really

00:00:45.960 particularly need them, but we've got them in place out of an abundance of caution, well, we have to

00:00:51.380 start talking about the harms of those restrictions as well. And I think this speaks to, yes, the current

00:00:56.840 moment where they are looking at Omicron data, but also our approach to COVID restrictions more

00:01:01.780 broadly. We get that during the first wave, we thought, well, what is this thing? We're not even

00:01:06.360 sure what we're dealing with here. Okay, go into lockdowns. That was basically the original rationale.

00:01:11.320 But later on, we heard more and more restrictions being brought in just, well, just because we could,

00:01:16.460 just because, well, why not? Just because out of an abundance of caution. Yes, we know COVID-19 doesn't

00:01:21.980 particularly spread in the gyms, for instance, but, you know, there might be a little bit of negligible

00:01:26.500 spread, and we want to flatten the curve. So let's shut those things down without really weighing

00:01:30.800 the pros and cons of, well, negative health effects of shutting down fitness centers. Obviously,

00:01:36.740 something people need to keep their metabolic health in good shape, which is one of the leading

00:01:40.640 indicators, having poor metabolic health, of whether or not you will or will not end up in hospital

00:01:46.000 after you contract COVID-19. It's nice to see more people talking about this. Dr. Rao has long been

00:01:52.040 an advocate of striking that balance in terms of, let's talk about weighing the negative consequences

00:01:57.640 of keeping these restrictions in for too long, because more and more the data is coming forward

00:02:03.580 talking about the negative costs, the harms that have come from so many of these restrictions on our

00:02:08.580 lives. And as we're getting increasingly two years into it, I think more people are talking about all

00:02:14.260 of this. More folks are saying, come on, we need a more balanced approach. So one gets being cautiously

00:02:20.080 optimistic. Okay, things are looking good. Okay, hopefully, fingers crossed, this is going to continue

00:02:24.840 this way. Let's proceed productively forward. But the cautiously pessimistic, the, okay, I can look around

00:02:31.820 and I can try and find that doom and gloom data. And I can say, well, hold on, two weeks from now, things

00:02:38.200 might be absolutely chaotic. I mean, currently things are looking good, but they might be chaotic.

00:02:42.980 All right, one appreciates why some people might come to that perspective, but there are consequences

00:02:48.380 to pushing those perspectives. There are harms that come from that as well.

Juno News - December 27, 2021