Juno News - March 30, 2021


The media has failed to report the facts about COVID-19


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

206.92085

Word Count

881

Sentence Count

4


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 one of the things that has become so frustrating so exhausting really when it comes to the
00:00:10.660 coronavirus conversation in canada and the debates around whether or not there should be
00:00:14.900 more lockdowns or fewer restrictions should we lock things down open them up and so forth is
00:00:20.180 is the level of information that that some people are working with and how i would posit that the
00:00:25.980 the lockdown advocates that that i have heard from the people who who correspond with me uh write
00:00:31.460 things at me in twitter and so forth i've really got to say i'm not trying to insult people here but
00:00:36.060 we're dealing with a lot of low information voters it is surprising to me how there are basic facts
00:00:42.020 that have not been accurately communicated uh to the public and and i guess one can blame people for
00:00:47.660 not doing their own research and so forth but look folks are busy living their lives working their
00:00:52.000 jobs taking care of their families and so forth i mean a lot of the blame i gotta lay squarely at
00:00:57.020 my colleagues in the broader media sector in the way that they have been not properly communicating
00:01:02.300 a lot of these rudimentary facts that it's so important for people to know one big example i
00:01:07.940 write a lot about the schools issue and coronavirus and kids what pediatricians are saying and oh by the
00:01:13.200 way pediatricians are pretty much all saying schools need to remain open and i get a lot of tweets sent my
00:01:17.900 way or emails sent my way from a lot of folks saying well maybe the school should close down
00:01:21.920 because you know even if one child dies it's too many or you know we don't have the children dying
00:01:25.920 and so forth and i go well i got good news for you one child has not died of coronavirus in
00:01:32.360 ontario there's not a single case of a school-aged child in ontario ever dying of coronavirus the
00:01:38.320 statistics show that there is one girl who died of it toronto public health was explicit that
00:01:42.580 coronavirus was not the cause of death in her that she just had coronavirus but it was not
00:01:48.000 the cause of death i think a lot of parents would also breathe a sigh of relief to hear all of that
00:01:53.140 they need to be told that information more i think a lot of people would be confused by it there's been
00:01:57.620 public opinion polls in the uk and in the u.s uh trying to gauge what people actually think is going
00:02:03.460 on and those polls find that most people have a far more alarmist view of what's happening when you ask
00:02:08.340 them about uh risks of hospitalization death rates and so forth they they they overestimate all of it
00:02:14.060 and by a great degree of magnitude here's another statistic that a lot of people uh probably aren't
00:02:20.340 particularly aware of in terms of the number of coronavirus cases that have been attributed to
00:02:24.820 retail spread the number when i last wrote about it was 0.1 that's in ontario so that's the number
00:02:31.120 of coronavirus cases directly attributed to all retail all across the province so whether you're
00:02:37.720 talking about loblaws or lcbo outlets liquor stores that kind of thing 0.1 of cases and that is not
00:02:46.140 just uh that the shoppers going about that includes people back in the stock room the employees having
00:02:51.460 prolonged close contact in the back room uh having their lunch or what have you that includes those
00:02:57.160 numbers as well i think a lot of people would be surprised to know that public health officials when
00:03:02.040 when you listen in great detail to their press conferences and i know they can be boring but you sit
00:03:05.860 down and you listen to the whole hour-long thing or what have you uh they talk about things like
00:03:10.160 mobility data so when they like to close things down they're not even closing them down because
00:03:15.300 they believe that they are causing coronavirus spread but just by closing those things down uh you
00:03:20.800 are limiting uh the number of places that people the number of excuses and reasons people have to
00:03:25.640 leave the house so you shut that thing down just as another way to keep people home to sort of
00:03:30.200 a drop mobility in that city or province or what have you and again i think people believe
00:03:35.460 that when places are being closed down it's because they're attributing very dangerous spread to those
00:03:40.520 specific locations so therefore you need to be afraid of your gym or you need to be afraid you know
00:03:44.620 of the boutique bookstore or what have you even though that isn't even the reason why public health
00:03:49.080 officials are really actually closing them down in the first place a lot of rudimentary
00:03:54.220 kind of 101 information about what's happening that i just think my colleagues in the media have
00:03:59.600 done a really poor job of highlighting i think because of that because of that sort of failure
00:04:04.880 to communicate i think that's one of the reasons why we have people who who are advocating and really
00:04:10.800 pushing for some wild policies that maybe are not actually the most productive path forward