Juno News - February 09, 2023


The media got it wrong on Covid ｜ Dr. Matt Strauss ｜ Part 2.


Episode Stats

Length

22 minutes

Words per Minute

171.97565

Word Count

3,898

Sentence Count

42

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I think that you are wise to say that you don't know what's going on. The wisest man in, let's say, Western philosophy, Socrates says, I only know that I don't know. And on both sides of this issue, so the first thing I'll say is I didn't watch that movie. Some people who I think are very thoughtful and reflective did watch it, gave a description to me and I was like, yeah, that doesn't sound credible.
00:00:26.960 And it's not how I'm going to spend two hours on a Friday night.
00:00:33.100 What I have seen happening, so like one thing you could take from that German pathology study with the autopsies is only four out of the 35 people who dropped dead unexpectedly at home died because of vaccine-induced myocarditis.
00:00:47.960 And that's not completely confirmed, but it seems like the most likely explanation.
00:00:51.320 So I think it's deeply irresponsible if you're on Twitter and somebody faints somewhere or has a heart attack somewhere to say, this is the vaccine.
00:01:00.320 They might not even have been vaccinated. So there's just a lot of deeply irresponsible claims coming out from the old traditional anti-vaccine movement.
00:01:12.320 And then I think they're in the medical establishment is a reflexive like they're conspiracy theorists, they're misinformation mongers.
00:01:19.320 They're very bad people. We need to censor them and know the vaccine doesn't kill anybody. It's perfectly safe. And it's like, well, no, hang on absolutism on both sides.
00:01:27.320 I understand why they're falling into a reflexive absolutism because the claims made on the anti-vaccine side are irresponsible and often false.
00:01:37.320 But four out of 35 out of a population of 11 million is still not zero.
00:01:43.320 So we have to be really careful to be nuanced at all times.
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00:02:06.320 Well, yeah, no, of course, and you are extremely nuanced.
00:02:08.320 And I'm just, I feel like we're in the twilight zone, really, that someone as nuanced as you
00:02:15.320 are has been attacked as viciously you know as you've been for the last year and a half or more
00:02:23.480 and so that's going to be my next question this recent Toronto Star story that if you can talk
00:02:29.880 about it by Bruce Arthur who is a sports writer but anointed as a public health expert and
00:02:38.840 ironically he seems critical of the fact that you hadn't received specialist training
00:02:43.960 for your position as acting health officer at this health unit without having the self-realization
00:02:53.240 to realize he has zero training in public health and and that was one of the reasons why I wanted
00:02:59.480 you to tell me what you do as a critical care physician because you know do I believe a critical
00:03:05.720 care physician or do I go with what a sports writer is saying in the Toronto Star for me
00:03:10.360 the choice is very clear um so you you know you point to distortions and misrepresentations in his
00:03:16.840 uh you know in this interview that you did with him could you could you set the record
00:03:21.880 record straight for us you know and why do you think your views were were misrepresented what is going on
00:03:27.480 here um why my views were misrepresented um I can't speak for Bruce in fact I would invite Bruce to
00:03:38.920 explain why he did that because my views were misrepresented I explained it very carefully to
00:03:45.320 him um his editors must have explained it to him because they printed corrections he went on twitter the
00:03:50.760 day after and kind of explained how he was right all along and made more factual errors um amazing so I
00:04:00.200 can't which I called out in his replies um I I can't speak for his headspace um but I I think you should
00:04:08.680 invite him uh to be on the podcast I I would love to hear um more globally socially I think people were
00:04:15.320 terrified of COVID um and I think there's a um I think there was a whole swath of people who hadn't
00:04:23.720 really spent a lot of time reflecting on their mortality who suddenly all had to all at once I
00:04:28.920 think that this is the first pandemic we've gone through with social media with your phone buzzing
00:04:32.840 in your pocket telling you constantly how many cases how many deaths is the ICU full you have enough
00:04:36.600 ventilators um so I was a medical resident during h1n1 working in ICU and I um I'm pretty sure I got I
00:04:43.880 was working with h1n1 patients and I had the worst flu of my life I nobody was interested in testing me
00:04:49.240 public health didn't call me the hospital called me every day to ask if I could come back to work
00:04:53.560 yet like the idea and um h1n1 was particularly dangerous to people in their 20s um so I was more
00:05:01.480 at risk of death back then in 2008 but hardly anyone even remembers the h1n1 pandemic so that's very
00:05:08.520 interesting so h1n1 was actually more deadly uh as far as young people were concerned um is that
00:05:15.160 is that yeah I um I and I wouldn't be able to remember the age cutoffs I remember I did the
00:05:20.200 own calculation for me as a yeah as a I think I was 25 at that time and yeah sorry go ahead in both
00:05:29.400 cases like you can neither number is certain for the mortality risk because there's more cases than
00:05:34.600 tests that are performed um but yeah something really changed in terms of how we as a society
00:05:40.760 deal with this sort of thing and I hope it killed far more people no question but I am saying the
00:05:46.920 the alacrity of our response was terribly different and I think social media is part of that so
00:05:51.560 I think people another issue is that China has been ascendant since h1n1 and this um virus happened to
00:06:00.120 start in China well possibly not a coincidence um and so the first worldwide response to this
00:06:08.920 pandemic was a communist authoritarian authoritarian dictatorship response um and throughout my initial
00:06:16.600 commentaries I was like hey everyone like look at South Korea and Japan and Taiwan they're all having
00:06:21.560 really successful pandemic responses that are not playing by the Chinese Communist Party playbook and
00:06:28.360 Taiwan for for most of the pandemic was doing better than than mainland China um but but yet the
00:06:36.280 World Health Organization made some statements um explicitly promoting the the authoritarian lockdown
00:06:43.480 response so all that taken together I think people were just terrified they thought um this this new
00:06:49.880 uh superpower is going to teach us the proper response and like get on the team you're not on our team
00:06:56.200 you're on the team with the anti-science anti-vaxxers and I was like no I have more vaccines than most
00:06:59.960 people because I've done work overseas yeah um uh and I think it was just frank tribalism um yeah if
00:07:08.920 you're not saying the words on our team then you must be on their team yeah absolutely like I I interviewed um
00:07:15.880 recently I interviewed Thomas Fatsy I don't know if you uh know of uh Thomas Fatsy he and his co-author
00:07:22.200 have a great new book out called the covid consensus and he was on my podcast recently and uh he made he
00:07:28.920 made a very interesting point to me uh which you know which I picked up from his book and we were
00:07:34.040 talking about it on the show uh that the western world really had not um experienced death in this
00:07:41.240 manner uh you know there was a bureaucratization of death in our society you know uh sick people um dying
00:07:49.320 people are sent to hospices hospitals long-term care homes retirement homes whatever and there's
00:07:55.160 a whole bureau bureaucracy of death involved and you're kind of just kind of um uh you know hermetically
00:08:01.560 sealed from all of that stuff and so this was the first time where we were as you say um every day
00:08:07.960 getting updates minute by minute updates about how many people died in Italy for example um and uh whereas
00:08:15.400 in the rest of the world say in Asia for example or in India in particular death is like an everyday
00:08:21.160 part of life you see it all the time around you yeah and and frankly as an ICU doctor as any hospital
00:08:27.800 doctor you see uh every day all the time and I think I think another sort of confluence and events for why
00:08:33.880 did Ontario and Canada have such draconian responses I think our healthcare system was on its last legs
00:08:41.880 free pandemic I think the um the folks who are responsible for the catastrophe of our healthcare
00:08:48.200 system in Ontario were kind of granted a three-year excuse um to use at all times but in some ways I've
00:08:56.280 been in positions like me have been the frog boiling in water where things were getting worse and worse
00:09:01.640 every year I started med school 20 years ago and people would be lying in stretchers in the hall back
00:09:07.000 then and every year it's been a little bit more and I I do remember in the winter of 2019 thinking
00:09:13.080 I don't even know that I want to be associated with this anymore I had a um 92 year old woman
00:09:20.360 who was in the hall like um it just no no darkness no privacy uh no place to use the washroom on a very
00:09:29.160 uncomfortable stretcher and her seven-year-old daughter came in and said like should I just take her home
00:09:33.800 and I said frankly you probably should like she needs to be in the hospital but
00:09:37.560 this is inhumane and she's not going to get better here yeah um and but that 92 year old woman
00:09:44.680 does not have a podcast um is not uh is not invited to conferences uh isn't about to write a book about
00:09:52.440 what happened to her but it's awful so by the time that you get to feel the inhumanity
00:09:57.800 of our healthcare system collapsing you're you're usually not in a position to make a lot of noise
00:10:03.240 about it yeah another thing that you mentioned and it just occurred to me uh is that uh um that
00:10:11.240 you know I expected authoritarian uh governments around the world to really take advantage of the
00:10:16.120 pandemic and really push hard on authoritarian uh measures of you know and just use the pandemic as an
00:10:23.160 excuse I've actually seen the opposite like you mentioned Bolsonaro I I'll give you India as an
00:10:29.560 example yes the Indian government I was actually there during the first lockdown and they um did
00:10:36.040 think one of the the world's most draconian lockdown it lasted for like two months locking down 1.1 billion
00:10:43.000 people and it it truly was like a lot a real lockdown you couldn't even the hospitals were locked
00:10:49.720 down if you could believe that uh for the first few days um so you know I just it's perplexing you
00:10:56.520 know why is it that liberal democracies like Canada uh New Zealand uh Australia I mean these are the last
00:11:03.720 places on the planet that I would have thought would have gone you know would have would have
00:11:07.880 implemented these extreme measures I mean there are these um interviews of Jacinda Ardern uh that are
00:11:13.000 making the rounds now where you know she's like saying in this you know it almost sounds evil you know if
00:11:18.920 you don't get tested we're gonna put you in a quarantine and uh you're gonna be there in in
00:11:23.960 that quarantine facility indefinitely basically if you refuse to get tested for COVID how did this
00:11:29.400 how did this happen like I it's it's a puzzle for me I don't know if you have any thoughts about it
00:11:36.280 I don't um I do not have a complete political theory on what happened um I think part of it was the
00:11:45.320 uh extremely divisive global figure of Donald Trump and uh as soon as Donald Trump wanted to open up
00:11:55.240 um because like you know hydroxychloroquine I don't I never thought it worked but I never thought it was
00:12:01.480 a a public threat that we all need to censor anyone who mentions it on on social media I think the fact
00:12:08.520 that Donald Trump had mentioned it at a press conference really motivated a lot of animosity towards
00:12:13.800 it people forget that um Trump uh did operation warp speed to get the vaccine to market faster than
00:12:20.840 usual and a number of prominent uh left-wing figures including Kamala Harris said I'm never
00:12:25.960 taking this Trump vaccine that was back in like November of 2020. So I I I I kind of think he
00:12:32.920 recalibrated and by the way I've never been a supporter and at times I've been staunchly critical of
00:12:39.400 Trump um I think he recalibrated the left-right divide in a totally nonsensical way a lot of the
00:12:44.600 time because of course no I would not have predicted that um more liberal progressive places would be
00:12:50.120 locking elderly people in their nursing home room uh without being allowed to go outside and see the
00:12:55.160 sun for weeks slash months at a time that yeah that is a deep surprise to me yeah um yeah I mean uh you
00:13:02.360 know the one of the things that I wanted to ask you about is you know right now where we are in the
00:13:08.040 pandemic now um I've I my senses and I've said this many times in several of my columns recently that
00:13:14.680 much of the advanced world western world um you know essentially seems to have moved on from the
00:13:21.240 pandemic and removed all pandemic measures Japan of all places last week said that COVID-19 should
00:13:28.280 be treated like the flu uh yet here in Canada we seem to be stuck in some kind of a time warp where
00:13:35.000 you know we're constantly being told to get vaccinated uh perhaps we should bring mass mandates
00:13:40.680 uh in um what do you make of this disconnect uh Canada versus the rest of the world I mean
00:13:47.640 let's take Japan for example of of highly max mass compliant society highly vaccinated
00:13:54.040 but yet uh the Japanese government said that we're just going to treat it like the flu now
00:13:57.960 um I I think so the first part of my answer might be a a second part to the last question um yeah I
00:14:05.800 there's this important book by uh a political theorist named James Burnham uh called the managerial
00:14:11.560 revolution where he he was explaining like the the the 20th the the the big conflict in the 20th
00:14:21.400 century between the far right fascism and the far left i.e communism is going to be one and he he was
00:14:27.960 not happy about this by managerialism by the the um uh ascendance of this many um professional
00:14:35.400 managerial class the laptop class the Davos set the people who um claim to be much smarter than
00:14:40.840 everyone else and and they'll just run things in this sort of technocratic fashion and you'll be
00:14:44.680 happy with whatever they come up with because obviously they know better than you whether you
00:14:48.120 whether you should have your palm or your wedding or your dad's funeral um and I think Canada
00:14:52.920 very very heavily subscribed at least the government and the bureaucracy of Canada of course the
00:14:57.560 bureaucracy does it is a bureau it is a bureaucratic philosophy and it and it's very centered in Ottawa
00:15:03.080 which I think is why the trucks went there so I think um that's part of why we're seeing it so
00:15:09.960 heavily in Canada the other issue in Canada is actually two more issues one for some reason we have
00:15:16.120 very strongly tied our national identity to a healthcare system that isn't good um in all the
00:15:21.800 rankings of OECD countries and their healthcare systems we're always second last um but at least
00:15:27.560 we're beating the uh United States which is the elephant in the room and that's all we really care
00:15:32.760 about so we we've come to see take great pride in our ability to do healthcare here um even though it's
00:15:38.680 not that good and it's it's an unfortunate myth that we can't let go of um and oh I had one other oh
00:15:47.480 and we don't have a functioning media which I know you're able to talk about um with more depth than I
00:15:52.920 am but if um often uh political figures then you know I'll name the prime minister Trudeau would say
00:16:01.400 we're we're doing this trucker mandate um because that's what the science shows and I was
00:16:07.640 I was just flabbergasted going like will one of these journalists in the scrum say which scientific
00:16:12.840 paper are you quoting prime minister you don't just get to say the science supports my policy
00:16:18.600 right um somebody say which science please yeah well that has never happened and I I've you know as
00:16:29.080 really an outsider in journalism um I've um commented on this many many times like I'm not at these press
00:16:35.720 conferences um but uh maybe I should start going to them uh uh you know if I get the time but the
00:16:43.480 the point is I would have asked that question like what is this based on you know why where you how are
00:16:49.800 you implementing this policy you know what's the science here yet we were told follow the science
00:16:54.760 follow the science and you know but the end result really is that you know we've created a great uh
00:17:01.640 distrust in public health wouldn't you say um I I think that's true I don't I I don't know of a
00:17:11.000 scientific a scientific way to answer that question I do maybe know one I know that um a lot of figures in
00:17:18.360 public health have said you need to get your toddlers vaccinated against covid and at ontario
00:17:22.760 currently um four percent of toddlers have received two doses of vaccine against covid so that it stands
00:17:33.640 to reason that 96 of parents of toddlers aren't buying these recommendations currently um and two years
00:17:42.600 ago I think that they would have been lining up in droves um to follow that advice so yes I think
00:17:49.800 there quite obviously has been an erosion of public trust um it and some of that's going to be terribly
00:17:56.520 detrimental like if you're not careful if you're not nuanced if you've said things that turned out
00:18:01.640 to be ridiculous or untrue which certain public health figures in Canada have at certain times I
00:18:06.680 don't want to call out names um that's going to diminish public trust um and it it should um but
00:18:14.440 there are terrible drastic downsides to that currently we don't know in Ontario uh what percentage of the
00:18:20.520 population and the the young population is vaccinated against polio that's a really really bad problem
00:18:26.440 because polio can be absolutely devastating for children and the vaccine is 99 effective for life at
00:18:33.000 preventing you from getting it and I I know kind of anecdotally that there are a lot of folks who
00:18:39.240 in addition to not believing public health about the COVID vaccines are not believing public health
00:18:42.520 about the traditional vaccines that we have 70 years of safety data on and we know how good they are
00:18:47.800 and that's a big problem yeah well uh Matt I know um you're very busy and uh but I one final question
00:18:55.400 for you on a personal note uh you know you've uh uh very courageously taken on these positions right
00:19:02.200 from the beginning of the pandemic um and of course you've taken a lot of heat uh I'm sure uh you know
00:19:08.600 it hasn't been easy for you and your family um and but you know when you look back on all of this now
00:19:14.360 you've basically been proved proved right um and and what's more you have um you know the health district
00:19:22.280 that you um that you uh were in charge of seeing a 30 percent um um you know um um uh lower mortality
00:19:33.160 from COVID than the provincial average um do you feel a sense of vindication that it was all worth it
00:19:39.640 and if in hindsight uh if you knew in hindsight you know how much heat you were gonna uh take for
00:19:47.080 challenging the establishment and you know and this group think out there would you would you
00:19:53.160 would you have still done the same things would you or would you have approached things differently
00:19:57.640 yes absolutely and I I've just been continually surprised by the blowback um I in some ways
00:20:06.040 this is not the I'm not living in the society that I thought I was living in I I I thought we
00:20:13.800 cherished evidence cost benefit analysis freedom of speech hashing it out uh having a friendly
00:20:21.320 argument like we can agreeing to disagree these like very basic civil society um ethos or or this very
00:20:31.240 basic ethos um I I'm I'm so perplexed that it's not the case um but at no point could I have done any
00:20:39.160 other like um there's the Elon Musk uh quote if nobody makes the stuff there won't be any stuff
00:20:45.560 if nobody criticizes bad policy there will not be any good policy so yeah um it's been this weird um
00:20:54.440 tightrope to walk between saying the most true thing and saying the most effective thing and I
00:21:00.680 frankly have a lot of sympathy for public figures who maybe I was critical of three years ago where I
00:21:06.040 I I now understand that you can't say everything that you have to say in public life on day one
00:21:12.360 because then there will be no day two you have to kind of meet the public where they are at what
00:21:18.520 they're ready to hear but you you always have to be pushing towards truth and reason or else we're
00:21:23.720 we're not going to have truth or reason like my um family are refugees from former Yugoslavia and uh
00:21:30.200 they they fled because they were starving um and being politically persecuted uh and that that can
00:21:37.720 happen here it won't happen here because we're going to speak out and we're we're winning but it's
00:21:43.800 not speaking out is not an option well yeah it's definitely not an option for me um uh even if I tried
00:21:50.840 I mean I I just can't find uh it in me to not uh speak up and um it's it's a good thing and a bad thing
00:21:57.800 I think both at the same time but I'm so glad that you're speaking up Matt and that you have
00:22:02.440 been speaking up for all of us during the pandemic and uh it's been such a great uh privilege and honor
00:22:08.520 to have you on the show and um you know and also you know that uh that you'll join us again sometime
00:22:15.880 soon and uh and hopefully we'll have other things to talk about other than COVID-19 I hope that so much
00:22:22.680 and uh I just want to say you're you're a hero of mine and uh I will always come when you call
00:22:26.920 oh thank you Matt real pleasure thanks take care