Juno News - The media pushes fake news left, right and centre

00:00:00.160 Trudeau bungles the border closure, the science is not yet settled on coronavirus,

00:00:05.280 and at a time where we really need the truth, the media pushes fake news left,

00:00:09.440 right and center. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:17.520 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into The Candace Malcolm Show. We are back in our

00:00:21.920 studios sort of running at half capacity. I finished my two-week self-quarantine after

00:00:26.320 returning from California. And as I mentioned on the show before, I went and got tested for

00:00:30.400 coronavirus and I tested negative, so it's safe to have my producer here in the room,

00:00:35.840 but he is keeping his distance. He's six feet away, or as some Canadians like to say,

00:00:40.560 two meters away, but he's further away. So we are keeping safe at True North and we hope that you are

00:00:46.080 as well. So Justin Trudeau finally announced that they were closing the border after months and months

00:00:52.240 of saying that this thing was like no big deal, saying that, you know, having flights from China

00:00:56.480 wasn't going to make us any more a threat during this sort of Wuhan outbreak. The Trudeau government

00:01:02.160 finally did an about-face. True North commended them for not only closing the border, but closing

00:01:06.160 the illegal crossing at Roxham Road. That was a huge about-face sort of ideologically, not only,

00:01:12.640 you know, the right thing to do, but it goes against the ideology that they possess. So that was the

00:01:17.440 right thing to do. The problem is that this measure was absolutely bungled. So just on Wednesday,

00:01:22.720 Justin Trudeau finally announced that the government was making it mandatory that people returning to

00:01:27.760 Canada self-quarantine for 14 days. Up until then, it had just been a recommendation. It was just

00:01:33.120 recommended that people come back. In other words, you didn't really have to do it and no one was

00:01:37.680 monitoring and there was no enforcement measures. So we had one million Canadians and permanent residents

00:01:43.040 returned to Canada last week. So just to paint the timeline, you know, at first we had the Trudeau

00:01:48.720 government saying border closures don't work. Then they announced the border closure and said,

00:01:52.560 look, all Canadians, you have to come home right now. We're in the middle of spring break in a lot 1.00

00:01:57.200 of the countries, so families are, you know, in hot spots getting some sun and on vacation. A lot of

00:02:02.240 people in Europe, a lot of people in Asia. Trudeau made the call saying, hey, everyone get back to Canada

00:02:07.280 ASAP. So a million Canadians follow that advice. They get on a plane, you know, by any means

00:02:12.800 possible. They get back to Canada. It's a huge effort to get a million Canadians abroad back

00:02:17.920 into the country at once. And at that point, we learned that the Trudeau government wasn't even

00:02:23.280 making it mandatory that people self-isolate and self-quarantine. So if you just think about it,

00:02:28.960 a million people coming from all over the world, you could only imagine how many of those people

00:02:34.480 could have been sick. I mean, it only takes a small number. It only really takes one person

00:02:38.640 who's very sick. This disease is very contagious, as we know, and it can easily spread. So Trudeau

00:02:45.760 said, come back. And there were no measures. We've reported this as well at True North that people

00:02:50.160 arriving at the airport, supposedly there were enhanced measures to be tracking people who are

00:02:54.560 ill. That wasn't the case. There was a CBC report about how sick travelers were masking their

00:03:00.320 coronavirus symptoms to get through airport screening. You read the article and you hear about

00:03:05.280 one woman who's coming back from Spain and she was actually tested positive for coronavirus when she

00:03:11.600 got back. But she just was so desperate to get out of Spain. And as we know, there's a huge outbreak

00:03:15.680 there right now. The hospitals are completely overburdened. The death toll there has now actually

00:03:20.400 surpassed China. So things are really bad in countries like Italy, Spain, and France. And so Canadians were,

00:03:27.280 you know, hustling to get out of there. I mean, you kind of understand and are sympathetic to this

00:03:31.520 woman because if I was abroad, I would want to come home to Canada where it's sort of safe and

00:03:35.120 comfortable. But at the same time, of course, she puts so many people at risk. And because Trudeau

00:03:40.000 hadn't issued the mandate to say it is absolutely necessary, it's not just advised, but it's legally

00:03:47.120 necessary for you to stay at home, a lot of the people that came back last week, the millions of

00:03:52.000 Canadians, million Canadians are potentially out and about, out, you know, doing grocery shopping,

00:03:59.120 going for a walk, doing the things that we are permitted to do under this self-isolation

00:04:04.880 ruling. And yet, you know, the law is only going into effect as of today, as of Thursday. So anyone

00:04:11.120 who came last week is just sort of a free for all. This is just, the government completely bungling

00:04:16.080 this thing. Like, you know, a lot of people are giving Trudeau credit for his daily press briefings,

00:04:20.720 for the sort of transparency they're operating, kind of giving assurances to Canadians. That's all well and

00:04:25.200 good. But every major decision the Trudeau government has made has been like two weeks

00:04:29.920 late or three weeks late. And at a time like this where time is of the essence and it's so vital

00:04:34.160 to stop the spread before it happens and really contain the virus to the individuals that have it,

00:04:39.840 Trudeau is really, really just letting us down. So now, finally, it is legally mandated. But, and I

00:04:46.320 went into this in detail yesterday in the True North update with my co-host, Andrew Lawton, the details

00:04:52.880 are really in the exemptions, not the rule itself. So the rule is all Canadians have to self-isolate. 0.76

00:04:58.240 But then there's like all these exemptions, including flight attendants. So, you know, the

00:05:02.000 people who are on the front lines that are interacting with all these passengers, all these people

00:05:05.760 interacting one on one with every single passenger on a plane, they're not required to

00:05:10.000 self-isolate. They should be the, in my opinion, they should be the ones that are most required to

00:05:13.680 self-isolate. They're the people that are most at risk because they're interacting so closely with

00:05:18.640 other people. Then there's other exemptions, including frontline workers. So if you're a

00:05:22.800 frontline worker, an essential worker, sorry, someone who's working in essential service,

00:05:28.000 which could potentially even be at a hospital. If you're working at a hospital, you're exempt from

00:05:32.720 the quarantine. But come on, give me a break. Those are the people who could also potentially

00:05:37.120 interact with other people, interact with sick people. If someone is a nurse at a hospital,

00:05:40.960 they just returned from a vacation in Spain and they're exempt from the 14-day quarantine so they can

00:05:45.040 go to work. But what if they're, what if they have symptoms? What if they're sick and they just haven't

00:05:48.480 started showing symptoms? It's, it's bizarre. We're either going to take this health crisis seriously

00:05:53.520 and have the rules being followed to a tee, or we're just kind of going to go willy-nilly,

00:05:57.760 which is what the Trudeau government has been doing. And again, I think these exemptions really

00:06:02.400 do make it problematic. Now, all this said, I think that it is very important. Like I said,

00:06:07.680 I personally self-isolated at a time where it wasn't even required,

00:06:10.560 partially because I was feeling some symptoms of the flu. But I also just thought, you know,

00:06:16.160 not only for my own health and safety, but for my community as well, I'm going to self-isolate.

00:06:20.320 I think it's important to follow these measures and to be overly cautious. I'd rather be overly

00:06:25.600 cautious than utterly cautious. I personally had a whole bunch of speaking opportunities and gigs

00:06:30.960 this spring. I was supposed to speak at the Manning Conference this weekend. I had a whole bunch of

00:06:35.040 other speeches lined up across Canada and they've basically all been cancelled. Not basically,

00:06:39.600 every single one of them has been cancelled. And I think that's for the better. I think at a time

00:06:43.600 like this where there's so much uncertainty, it's better to be cautious. But I want to make this

00:06:48.880 point very clearly. The science is not yet settled on coronavirus. It isn't something that we just all

00:06:55.280 have a complete agreement with. You know, the way that the Trudeau government looks sort of almost

00:07:00.960 absolves themselves of responsibility for decision making by saying, we rely on experts. We rely on the

00:07:07.200 science. The science is what's guiding us. The experts are what's guiding us. That's all well and good.

00:07:11.920 But there is no agreement within the scientific community on this issue, as is the case in most

00:07:17.360 issues. But as we're seeing more and more, there are so many dissenting voices that it's really hard

00:07:24.320 to just say, you know, there's one specific train of thought and we're following that. And so,

00:07:31.200 you know, when you look through the science, when you look through what the quote unquote experts are

00:07:36.160 saying, they're not all in agreement. And so I'm going to go through some of the different, some of

00:07:42.160 the scientific voices that are not really being amplified. That, you know, that there's a specific

00:07:46.880 train of thought, which is, this is really, really bad. The entire country, the entire society, every

00:07:51.280 single person in the world needs to just stay at home for an indefinite amount of time. And that's sort of

00:07:56.800 the prevailing wisdom at this point. But like I said, there is a lot, quite a bit of dissent within

00:08:02.800 the community. So I'm going to start by talking about an individual called Michael Levitt. He is a

00:08:07.840 Nobel laureate in chemistry, won that in 2013, and he is a Stanford biophysicist. So Mr. Levitt,

00:08:14.080 Professor Levitt correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus 1.00

00:08:18.720 outbreaks long before many health experts had predicted. He actually created a model and predicted

00:08:23.920 the number of cases and the number of deaths like within a few dozen. It was really, really impressive

00:08:28.880 what he did. So he basically says, look, we don't have all the information. We don't have perfect

00:08:33.120 information right now. Everything is kind of messy and we're just basing it on what we know, which

00:08:38.160 really isn't a lot. And so what he's saying is that just as he predicted that the number in China

00:08:44.960 sort of exponentially grew, but then it kind of teetered off and it didn't continue to exponentially

00:08:50.080 grow until it hit the whole population, it teetered off and stopped. And so he's saying that, you know,

00:08:56.160 that's going to happen in North America. North America, we're still kind of on the upward trajectory,

00:09:00.560 especially in the United States, places like New York City, where it's very, very dense.

00:09:05.920 That's a problem area because this thing does spread very quickly. But he's saying, you know,

00:09:10.720 we're close to the end. This is not the apocalyptic scenario that people are suggesting. He says,

00:09:15.680 what we need to control is the panic. In the grand scheme, we're going to be fine.

00:09:22.480 This is Professor Michael Levitt from Stanford University. He's not the only one from Stanford

00:09:27.920 University saying that we're really, really overreacting here. So there was an op-ed

00:09:32.000 in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. And I want to read through this op-ed because it's really

00:09:37.440 interesting. And again, it shows the opposite opinion and the opposite perspective of what the

00:09:42.160 sort of prevailing wisdom on coronaviruses. The op-ed says, is the coronavirus as deadly as they

00:09:47.440 say? Current estimates about the COVID-19 fatality rate may be too high by orders of magnitude.

00:09:54.800 Okay. So this is also written by two professors at Stanford University. They say,

00:10:01.120 if it's true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter in place orders and

00:10:05.440 quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country

00:10:10.240 are surely justified. But there's little evidence to confirm that premise. And projections of the

00:10:15.920 death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high. So what these two professors do is they

00:10:22.560 say, look, we don't really have a correct control group. It's really hard to estimate how many people

00:10:27.360 die from this disease because we don't know all the people who actually have it. Like potentially,

00:10:32.160 there could be tens of thousands or millions of people out there who have coronavirus, but because

00:10:36.880 their symptoms are so mild, they're not showing any symptoms and they kind of just get better on

00:10:41.760 their own. So they never get tested and they're not part of that number. So if we say like, for

00:10:46.640 instance, you know, there's a hundred people that test positive for coronavirus and 10 of them die,

00:10:52.000 it's really easy to say that the death rate would be 10%. But what the professors are really trying to

00:10:56.720 say is that it's not really a hundred people that have coronavirus, it's more like 10,000. And then the 10

00:11:02.160 people die and you look at it that way and the percentage becomes much, much lower, a fraction of a percent.

00:11:06.880 And this thing is only really as deadly as the common flu. And so they're saying, because there's

00:11:11.760 not testing, because we don't really know how many people have it and aren't really affected by it,

00:11:15.920 it's hard to say what the death rate is. So they look at a couple of population samples,

00:11:20.320 they look at China, Italy, Iceland, and then they also look at the Diamond Princess Cruise. And they

00:11:27.120 basically come to the conclusion that the death rate, oh, sorry. And they also look at the NBA players.

00:11:31.600 And they basically come to the conclusion that based on those different sample groups, the death

00:11:36.640 rate is much, much, much lower. So yes, coronavirus does massively increase your risk at death if you

00:11:41.920 get it. But so few people have that sort of very, very deadly stream that it means that the mortality

00:11:50.720 rate is much, much lower essentially. So that's this point. Again, you know, these are scientists,

00:11:55.520 these are experts as well, but they're not being included in the sort of mainstream idea of how we

00:12:02.320 should react to this. There's so many more examples. So the University of Toronto in Canada,

00:12:08.800 one doctor predicted in early March that exaggerated reactions by the public about coronavirus will end up

00:12:15.200 being worse than the disease itself. He says, I'm scared that our hospitals will be overwhelmed with

00:12:20.640 anyone who thinks they probably have it, but then so they might as well go get checked out no matter

00:12:26.000 what, because you never know. A McGill researcher also says the public should not mistake coronavirus

00:12:32.000 spread for being particularly deadly. So his point is that like, you know, the spread is very contagious

00:12:37.680 and it does spread very rapidly, but that's not the same thing as it being very deadly. We still don't

00:12:42.080 know, like I talked about earlier, we don't know the exact mortality rate because we don't know who

00:12:45.680 has it. And so he's saying, you know, people conflate the two just because it spreads really quickly

00:12:51.600 does not, is not necessarily an indication of how dangerous it is. I could go on and on and on. So

00:12:58.320 again, I think we should be very cautious of just saying simply, you know, we're going to rely on

00:13:02.800 scientists and experts to guide our public policy here, because of course there's, you know, so many

00:13:08.080 different opinions and voices in the scientific community. And so for Trudeau to sort of rest on

00:13:15.760 that just shows his lack of leadership and his inability to be a leader. Another problem I have

00:13:20.960 is that, again, you're so overemphasizing the worst case scenario. So an official at the Trudeau,

00:13:27.120 every day that Justin Trudeau gives a briefing, and then the sort of ministers are in charge of the

00:13:31.120 coronavirus response team also give a briefing on sort of all the different things that they're working on.

00:13:36.960 And one of the officials yesterday said, look, when we're talking about the self-isolation,

00:13:41.360 the self-quarantine, and dealing with coronavirus, we're not talking about days,

00:13:45.440 we're not talking about weeks, we're talking about months. So months of this sort of shelter

00:13:50.480 in place orders, quarantine, self-isolation. You just can't even imagine. I went into this in some

00:13:56.400 detail in my show on Tuesday. The economic outcome of that kind of decision making is just catastrophic.

00:14:03.760 And I think, again, it has to be weighed with the public health concerns. I'm not saying

00:14:08.720 that the public health concerns should be ignored. No. But we should also consider that massive,

00:14:13.840 massive economic collapse and burden that will happen if we really have to follow these orders

00:14:18.800 for months. I also just don't think that Canadians will abide by that. I think that that's the point

00:14:23.040 where you're going to get a lot of people just saying, you know, forget it. I don't care what the

00:14:27.440 government says. I live in a free society. I'm going to go out for a walk. I'm going to go to the park.

00:14:31.360 You can't force me to stay in my house in a free society. And that's when you're going to get the

00:14:36.240 sort of civil unrest. And just by contrast, Donald Trump, who's getting lots and lots of criticism

00:14:41.360 for optimistically saying, look, I hope this is over by Easter so people can go about their lives

00:14:46.720 this spring. You know, he's getting condemned by that. But he literally said the opposite. He said,

00:14:50.720 look, we're talking about weeks here and not months, trying to give assurances to the economy

00:14:56.400 and to the people that, you know, things are going to get better. Don't let's not take the worst case

00:15:00.560 scenario here. So unfortunately, I think the Canadian government is taking the wrong approach

00:15:06.000 being overly draconian now when they were overly lax for the last three months, in my opinion.

00:15:13.040 And so in the midst of all of this yesterday, the Liberal government sort of quietly announced

00:15:19.680 another media bailout. It was really kind of jaw dropping. Justin Trudeau in the middle of his

00:15:24.640 briefing just sort of said, you know, and because it's a hard time for media, we're going to announce

00:15:29.280 new measures to support the media. Well, in a free society, we rely on a free press, a free and

00:15:34.800 independent press, not one that is bought and paid for by the federal government and by a political party

00:15:40.320 running the federal government, the Liberal Party. And yet liberals pat themselves on the back and

00:15:44.960 celebrate the fact that they're giving money out to journalists. So we later heard the details about

00:15:50.800 that. Liberal government announced it would be giving media companies $30 million in taxpayer dollars

00:15:56.320 as part of its national coronavirus awareness campaign. The federal government will be purchasing

00:16:02.000 advertisements on traditional and digital media platforms to inform the public about the pandemic.

00:16:07.840 It's crucial that Canadians can obtain authoritative, well-sourced and factual information related to COVID-19.

00:16:14.720 This is why the government of Canada is taking immediate action so Canadians can continue to 1.00

00:16:19.760 access diverse and reliable news sources, said the Heritage Minister. So, hmm, interesting. So I guess at a

00:16:27.280 time when advertisers aren't advertising in the media, the government sees it as a priority to sort of

00:16:32.720 shovel them a bunch of cash. Of course, it will only go to the media outlets that they approve of,

00:16:38.160 that they like, which, as we know, does not include media outlets like True North. The government still

00:16:42.560 refuses to recognize us as a media organization. And we actually took them to court. We took them to

00:16:47.840 court during the last federal election for a right to report, to stand up for press freedom in Canada.

00:16:52.720 We won. We got an emergency injunction. A judge ordered that the Trudeau government had to let us

00:16:57.120 go and report and be allowed to be reporters at the election debate. The Trudeau government is still

00:17:03.920 wanting to pick winners and losers. And this is just the latest example. You know that it's going to go to

00:17:09.120 the CBC. You know that the CBC is sort of the golden child and the chosen one for the Trudeau

00:17:14.240 liberals. How could you not? They're always running interference for the Trudeau liberals.

00:17:18.080 They're always kind of distracting from the real issue at a time where, again, Trudeau has bungled

00:17:23.600 the response of keeping Canadians safe and acting quickly and swiftly to ensure that the coronavirus

00:17:29.760 doesn't spread throughout Canada. Trudeau has been weeks and weeks late and slow and messing

00:17:34.800 things up left, right and center. So rely on the CBC to come in and change the entire narrative to

00:17:40.000 bash Trump instead. CBC will always rather bash Trump and talk about Trump, even though they're

00:17:44.800 the Canadian broadcaster. They're supposed to be reporting on the Canadian news. If Canadians want

00:17:48.960 to watch the media bash Trump, all they have to do is turn on any number of news channels in the United

00:17:54.560 States. CNN runs, you know, 24-7 Trump bashing. So why do we have to have a Canadian voice doing that same

00:18:01.200 thing instead of looking at the Canadian stories? Well, here's a fake news of the week. We have the

00:18:07.440 CBC runs a story blaming Donald Trump for the death of a man who literally ingested fish tank cleaner.

00:18:16.000 This is a wild story. This is a wild story. So on Monday, a man from Arizona sadly died

00:18:22.320 after he and his wife consumed aquarium cleaner that contained chloroquine. Basically, Donald Trump has

00:18:28.720 been doing these briefings as well. He's, again, trying to paint a rosy picture, trying to be as

00:18:33.120 optimistic as he can in this sort of time of basically, I mean, he's been calling himself a

00:18:37.440 wartime president. This is basically, you know, the world at war against this virus and it's having a

00:18:42.880 similar kind of economic impact as war would have, devastating the economy. So Trump's trying to be

00:18:49.440 optimistic. He went out and he sort of touted a couple of treatments that are being tried. And he,

00:18:54.720 you know, he said there's a couple treatments that have been out there that have had some success.

00:18:58.240 One of the examples that he gave was hydrochloroquine, which is a malaria drug or an anti-malaria

00:19:03.760 medication. And so Trump touted this as well as two other drugs as being potential game changers in

00:19:09.600 the fight against coronavirus. So this couple in Arizona, I guess they heard Trump saying

00:19:15.920 chloroquine is something that is helping people who have coronavirus. This couple didn't have any

00:19:20.720 symptoms. They don't have coronavirus. They didn't have coronavirus, but they were paranoid. They were

00:19:24.560 scared, which you could blame just as much as the media sort of fear mongering and hypering this up

00:19:29.760 as you could on the president. But regardless, they were looking, the woman was looking through her

00:19:34.400 cupboard and she found some fish tank cleaner, aquarium cleaner. She read on the label, it said

00:19:41.600 chloroquine. She decided, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to consume this. I'm going to drink this

00:19:45.760 because Donald Trump told me to. She mixed it with some water. Her and her husband ingested it. So this is

00:19:50.480 like a homemade cocktail of cleaning solution that she found. I mean, you'd have to be so insane and

00:19:57.360 I'm sorry, so stupid to drink something like that. This couple did. Sadly, the man passed away. The 1.00

00:20:02.720 woman vomited it up. And so she was in critical condition, but she didn't. Of course, NBC ran there 0.60

00:20:08.880 and put a microphone in her face. And so she said, you know, don't listen to Trump. Trump told me to do

00:20:14.480 this and don't listen to Trump. Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure. Don't take

00:20:19.680 anything. Don't believe anything. Don't believe anything that the president says, call your doctor.

00:20:23.600 Well, that would be good advice to everyone. You know, don't just start taking homemade cocktails of

00:20:29.680 random stuff in your cleaning cupboard, thinking that that will prevent you from getting coronavirus. No,

00:20:36.160 chloroquine needs to be prescribed by a doctor. And it's not just something that you can create a

00:20:40.960 homemade version of in your laundry room. And so, again, this is just a story of basically people

00:20:50.640 acting very recklessly in a chaotic situation. The media, of course, run and decide to blame this all,

00:20:57.840 of course, on Donald Trump. This is just such a dishonest take by the media. We saw it in the U.S.

00:21:02.960 And then they sort of backed off of it because it was just so brazen. But you trust the CBC to repeat

00:21:09.360 every single type of Trump derangement. So they had this headline from CBC News Alerts,

00:21:15.040 Arizona man dead, woman in critical condition after ingesting chemical touted by U.S. President Donald Trump

00:21:22.880 as potential COVID-19 treatment. Don't believe anything the president says, woman tells NBC,

00:21:28.240 call your doctor. The only problem is Trump didn't tout this particular drug as a cure for COVID-19

00:21:35.360 or treatment. He said that the doctors are having some luck with using this in combination with

00:21:41.040 antibiotics and that it made him feel optimistic. He by no means told people to go and ingest a homemade

00:21:47.520 cocktail of random stuff. So this is pretty dishonest even for the CBC. So that gets this week in

00:21:55.120 fake news. So once again, instead of informing Canadians with the truth and keeping us well

00:22:00.960 informed, the CBC instead goes and runs towards Trump derangement syndrome and pushing fake news.

00:22:08.080 They would rather tell a story about how Trump is wrong and how Trump potentially killed someone

00:22:14.000 than report the truth, which is that chloroquine is actually is having positive effects. There's been

00:22:18.800 plenty of doctors and plenty of experts, again, out there saying this is potentially something that will

00:22:23.760 help people with coronavirus, but the media is so deranged that they can't even see that.

00:22:28.240 Okay, I am going to leave it at that. Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to check out

00:22:32.400 True North Update, which is a daily show I've been doing with Andrew Lawton, where we go through all

00:22:36.320 the latest with the coronavirus here in Canada and around the world, and we sort of pick apart what

00:22:41.840 Trudeau and his ministers say after their daily briefing every day. So check that out. Thank you so

00:22:46.960 much for tuning in and we will be back again next week. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

Juno News - March 27, 2020

The media pushes fake news left, right and centre

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