The troubling ideology of ＂COVID-zero＂ activists
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183.3581
Summary
The coronavirus epidemic in Canada continues to be one of the worst epidemics in the history of epidemiology, and it's only getting worse. In this episode, we talk about a group of folks out there called "Covid Zero" and their advocacy campaign called the Campaign for Zero Coronavirus in Canada.
Transcript
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wouldn't it be great if there was no coronavirus in canada either because it never materialized
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in the first place or because we eliminated it we got rid of all the cases zero coronavirus
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yeah of course that would be fantastic i'm sure pretty much everybody agrees but it's not
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pragmatic right there's nobody out there actually saying our main goal should be
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zero coronavirus cases no more do strategies to just completely destroy the thing right
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yeah wrong there's this group of folks out there you may have heard of called
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covid zero the covid zero advocacy campaign what is this all about well these are folks who pretty
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much say we should have measures in place restrictions in place until we get to almost
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zero coronavirus cases really how is that even possible well some of the folks associated with
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covid zero they did put out a document a number of months ago where they actually said
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40 cases per day that's the number you need to get to all across canada 40 cases per day and they
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support some form of restrictions until you get to that 40 cases per day one per million for people
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in canada give or take wow that's quite something seeing as most medical experts also agree that this
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is becoming an endemic illness meaning it'll be seasonal it'll be around for well quite a long time
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many years many decades to come well hold on a second then they can't really honestly mean
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covid zero they must mean it in an aspirational goal like how people say okay we're doing a campaign
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to end homelessness in five years from now or ten years from now and obviously we we all agree that
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that's a great aspirational goal to end homelessness but we kind of know yeah homelessness it's not going to
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go away in five years but let's still just say that to you know have a good goal to aspire to no i i think the
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covid zero people actually do mean that you have to bring in policies to aggressively get to zero
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cases what sort of harms would have to happen to society to the economy to to civil society to social
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life to our children and so forth to get to these zero cases which we would probably never even get to
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in the first place it's very bizarre to see this covid zero that it's been around for a number of months
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now and here in april 2021 still people are adherents of it and they're they're always trying
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to gain new steam behind this very bizarre ideology and i think ideology is the right word for it i mean
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covid zero it has a logo it has branding it's got this mission statement uh some of those previous
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releases i mentioned associated with covid zero people it's got funding attached to it and so forth
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they're sort of actively seeking out new recruits i mean this is a an ideological movement it is not a
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earnestly and organically held professional medical opinion yet we got a lot of people espousing it
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very odd go out there and read the documentation behind covid zero and and realize just how troubling
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advocacy of this idea is if you want to just say hey it would be great if there's no coronavirus you
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know let's work towards eliminate okay so be it fair enough reasonable approach but for a lot of them
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that's not actually what they're saying they actually mean perpetual measures for perpetual
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suppression of the virus wow really quite something and kind of unbelievable that serious people