Juno News - April 21, 2021


The Perils of ＂COVID Zero＂ Policies


Episode Stats

Length

9 minutes

Words per Minute

196.60452

Word Count

1,849

Sentence Count

107

Misogynist Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Anthony Fury is a True North contributor and also the columnist and op-ed editor at the Toronto Sun.
00:00:15.920 Anthony, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on today.
00:00:18.220 Great to be here, Andrew.
00:00:18.900 Now, you made an observation that I thought was a very unique one.
00:00:22.880 We're not hearing it from a lot of people in the media,
00:00:24.820 which was that Ontarians didn't just rebuke this expanded law enforcement power,
00:00:30.800 but more broadly, they pushed back against this COVID-0 narrative.
00:00:34.840 Explain what you mean by that.
00:00:36.700 Yeah, I don't think they actively did that.
00:00:38.760 They didn't know they were doing that, but kind of implicitly through them rejecting all of these outdoor restrictions,
00:00:45.920 playground closures, and this basic idea that you have to stay at home regardless of the activity you're doing,
00:00:53.000 regardless of what you're getting up to.
00:00:54.600 They said, no, we don't care for that.
00:00:56.480 We're reasonable people.
00:00:57.660 We want to flatten the curve or, you know, all those buzzwords we've been hearing.
00:01:01.540 Okay, we're up for that.
00:01:03.020 But hold on a second.
00:01:03.920 These activities that we know have nothing to do with spread, why exactly are you forcing that upon us?
00:01:10.080 This is ridiculous.
00:01:11.220 And there's an important distinction, clarification to be made here, Andrew,
00:01:14.560 in that a lot of people think that what the Ford government is trying to do now is combat locations and activities that cause spread.
00:01:20.560 That is not what they are doing.
00:01:22.380 If you look at the latest Ontario Science Table PDF that was at the last presentation,
00:01:26.760 there are multiple pages on that slide deck that talk about bringing down mobility data.
00:01:31.480 So they are just obsessed with the idea, Andrew, that how we deal with coronavirus isn't micro-targeting the locations causing spread,
00:01:39.380 but just to force everyone to stay at home, to give fewer reasons for the Google Analytics chart,
00:01:45.900 which tells you how much people are driving around because they have anonymized cell phone data,
00:01:50.920 and bringing that down.
00:01:52.420 And there's even a table for recreation, meaning how much people are sort of going out and about in the parks
00:01:57.840 and hanging out there and they want to bring it all down.
00:01:59.880 And that is consistent with this COVID zero ideology.
00:02:03.460 We got to get to zero cases by any means possible.
00:02:06.680 Places like New Zealand, Andrew, which have actually closed the parks multiple times as recently as just last month.
00:02:12.800 They thought coronavirus was gone in New Zealand.
00:02:15.360 No, they still closed the parks, the playgrounds, last month.
00:02:18.040 That's an important point because I've had even from people that I would say are ostensibly on the right pushback when I criticize lockdowns
00:02:25.600 because they say, you know, if we just did an Australia or New Zealand style lockdown, a short but harsh one, we would beat it.
00:02:33.480 But you're right to point out that those jurisdictions haven't beaten it.
00:02:38.200 Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I always say is I find it really, really bizarre.
00:02:43.400 I mean, it flabbergasts me that we're in the 21st century.
00:02:45.560 There's so many really credentialed, bright minds in Ontario that we're privileged to have here.
00:02:50.100 We're told we live in the age of analytics, of big data.
00:02:52.820 It's a multi-billion dollar industry.
00:02:54.980 And you're telling me big data can't be used to actually deal with these problems here.
00:02:59.580 We can micro-target, you know, ad buys for particular products, but we can't micro-target the data coming out of public health.
00:03:07.040 Instead, we have this, quite frankly, really, really, the basic approach to coronavirus right now from COVID zero is,
00:03:13.440 well, this virus spreads from person to person, so let's make it illegal for people to be near people.
00:03:19.960 Look, if someone had put that on their public health final exam, the very people, the professors advocating for this right now,
00:03:27.480 they would have failed those students two years ago.
00:03:30.160 But it's no joke.
00:03:31.200 This has never been a part of public health literature.
00:03:33.720 Infectious diseases physicians who don't support lockdowns have made this very clear to me.
00:03:37.660 It's not in any of the plans that Dr. Teresa Tam signed off on as late as 2018 about how to deal with this.
00:03:43.780 I mean, lockdowns are actually not a traditional public health protocol.
00:03:48.440 Yeah, you're right about that.
00:03:49.620 And it's interesting how of the many shifts, even this is one that we've seen from the World Health Organization,
00:03:55.480 which has said, no, no, no, lockdowns are not something that we like.
00:03:58.940 And that's the one area where the governments have decided they're not going to defer to this.
00:04:03.180 But this COVID zero idea is also a complete inversion of that stated goal of just make it so that we,
00:04:11.720 if we do have harsh cases, we have hospital capacity, we can get our ducks in a row,
00:04:16.220 the flatten the curve line from, what, 13 months ago.
00:04:19.320 And now it's, you're right, moving more and more towards this idea that we need to do everything
00:04:24.180 and anything we can until there are zero cases.
00:04:27.060 And what is so bizarre is at the same time, if you ask those very COVID zero advocates,
00:04:32.360 hey, is coronavirus becoming an endemic illness, meaning it's just kind of here to stay for the rest of our natural lives,
00:04:39.200 hopefully at a much sort of lower level and hopefully much fewer deaths every year,
00:04:42.900 they will all agree yes, except one of the latest COVID zero documents that a lot of these people were co-signatories on,
00:04:49.500 the very doctors who were on television saying shut her down, but oh, no, we didn't mean the playgrounds,
00:04:53.640 we didn't mean the outdoor sports, those very documents, not only do they call for the New Zealand model,
00:04:58.040 which does involve playground shutdowns, they also call for continual suppression of the virus,
00:05:03.520 meaning various restrictions and lockdown measures, until Canada gets to 40 cases per day.
00:05:09.620 That's actually in this Canadian Shield document that COVID zero advocates, they liked,
00:05:14.300 and they co-signed it 40 cases per day.
00:05:16.440 They came up with that because it's one case per million,
00:05:19.240 40 cases per day with a country with a border as long as ours, not an island nation like Taiwan
00:05:26.060 and New Zealand, when it's an endemic illness that we're also admitting we will never get rid of
00:05:30.800 in our natural lives. I mean, it's crazy talk is really what we can call COVID zero. It is total junk science.
00:05:38.200 Explain to me what's happening with Doug Ford's legitimacy as a leader right now,
00:05:43.880 because one thing I saw on Friday was that a lot of the criticism that he was getting was from the
00:05:50.880 right and the left. I was not seeing any real defense of the Ontario police measures. Now,
00:05:56.440 the province has since backtracked a little bit on that, but as you know, they've not admitted
00:06:01.040 wrongdoing, and even the language they used was not, you know, we got it wrong. They said,
00:06:05.760 no, no, no, they were going to, quote, refocus, unquote, the powers. Paul Calandra yesterday
00:06:11.120 gave a little bit more. But even then he said, no, no, no, it was just a communications problem.
00:06:15.540 What's happening here?
00:06:17.360 Well, when you ask what's going on with Doug Ford's legitimacy, I mean, nothing's going on
00:06:21.060 with it. There is no legitimacy right now. They announced these measures on Friday. A lot of
00:06:25.320 people were immediately outraged, closed down the playgrounds, randomly stopped me. And then by the
00:06:30.180 weekend, you had most police forces in Ontario saying, we ain't doing those random stops. I was
00:06:35.720 bicycling around downtown and I saw all the new rules that are enacted. And there's a lot. Yes,
00:06:40.440 the playgrounds were shut down, but picnic tables are still banned. You can't sit on those. You can't
00:06:45.400 play catch with a friend in a park. That is illegal. All you can do is walk through parks and so forth.
00:06:49.940 I can tell you, traveling through the streets of Toronto, nobody was following those rules. Some
00:06:55.000 of them, because they probably said, I'm going to do civil disobedience. Others, because they don't
00:06:59.000 listen to this stuff anymore. They don't care. They've tuned it out. And then you've had mayors like
00:07:03.080 Patrick Brown and Brampton, the mayor of Aurora and others who have openly said these need to be
00:07:07.600 repealed. So there's a major legitimacy problem. They've got to get these laws off the books because
00:07:12.680 you can't have a society in which these laws are just everybody's kind of mocking them. Nobody's
00:07:19.080 following them because if they think they have a problem on their hands now, well, if we're asking
00:07:23.500 what's the point of these laws, why should we follow them? There's going to be a cascading effect.
00:07:27.780 I guarantee you more and more rule breaking is going to happen because of that. And the government's
00:07:32.560 put themselves in a very dangerous situation where their legitimacy is collapsing right now.
00:07:37.400 Yeah. And you're right that that then makes it very difficult for people to go along with advice
00:07:42.260 or guidance that may actually be rooted in science if they're so used to stuff that is not. And the
00:07:47.600 playground ban, I think, is a very real thing. I don't want to make it just about the symbolism,
00:07:52.440 but symbolically, it also, I think, does reveal the government has just completely abandoned that idea
00:07:58.900 of linking science with the guidance. And when you mentioned it at the beginning of our discussion
00:08:03.900 that it's not about targeting where transmission is occurring, parks, I'm not aware of any outbreaks
00:08:09.640 there. And then for Minister Christine Elliott, Deputy Premier Christine Elliott, to say that people
00:08:14.400 not wearing masks at parks is part of the reason for spread is, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, where's the
00:08:20.860 evidence? Yeah, it's absolutely shocking that they would go out and say numerous factually incorrect
00:08:26.700 things during that press conference, which I think really frustrated people. I mean, are there
00:08:30.900 anomalous examples of outdoor spread in the literature? Sure. One of my favourite lines in one of those
00:08:35.400 studies is that most examples of outdoor spread have an indoor component to them. And you're like,
00:08:40.160 what? What does that mean? So there's an outdoor barbecue. And then, well, people decide to take it
00:08:44.160 indoors to get some beer from the beer fridge, hang in inside and in a close, you know, space for 20
00:08:49.120 minutes. Oh, OK. So outdoor spread just wasn't outdoor spread. It was actually indoor spread. It's
00:08:54.320 basically not really a thing that's happening. And yet here we have all these restrictions
00:08:58.880 on outdoor activities. It's if the people of Ontario want to say that's unacceptable,
00:09:03.560 we got to get this rolled back. Well, they're already hearing from other mayors who are saying
00:09:07.160 just that. Anthony Fury is an op ed editor and columnist at the Toronto Sun and my colleague
00:09:12.480 here at True North. Anthony, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on. Likewise. Thanks. Thanks for
00:09:17.320 listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.