Juno News - January 05, 2021


Three facts you need to know about COVID-19


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

200.03368

Word Count

792

Sentence Count

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 one of the interesting paradoxes about this current moment we're in right now and it's
00:00:09.560 actually quite a troubling one is that while COVID-19 is pretty much the only thing anyone's
00:00:14.120 talking about right now there's actually a huge swath of low information voters out there people
00:00:20.020 who have not been exposed to all of the contextual and nuanced information out there that should give
00:00:25.240 us a fuller picture of what's actually going on and I'm not talking about some niche fringe thing
00:00:30.300 that only a few people are talking about I'm talking about statements statistics facts from
00:00:34.560 the federal government things that Dr. Theresa Tam is saying or your own provincial or municipal public
00:00:39.520 health officials let me give you just three examples and these are things that when I've
00:00:43.660 written about them or tweeted them said them on a radio program people will write to me and say wow
00:00:47.860 I've never heard that before that's interesting or they say you must be lying no one else is saying
00:00:52.320 that and their minds are kind of blown by these things you may have heard of these but these
00:00:56.960 things I'm about to say a lot of people out there millions of Canadians I think don't actually know
00:01:01.800 this so here's one example that the federal app that Justin Trudeau has been urging a lot of people
00:01:06.880 to download that only registers a contact between two people if you have been within six feet of a
00:01:13.520 person for 15 minutes or longer so the federal government Dr. Theresa Tam and many other experts
00:01:20.200 they don't actually believe that you can catch it from just passing by someone in a grocery store
00:01:25.740 it's true look it up for yourself here's fact number two that children are just not being hard
00:01:31.680 hit by COVID-19 so every year the federal government produces a report that tells you how many kids have
00:01:37.480 been hospitalized by the flu how many got in the ICU how many have died from it and the last flu season
00:01:43.480 has about 1500 people under 19 who have been hospitalized and about 10 kids a year die from the flu
00:01:49.900 I didn't really know that and it's rather tragic well guess what so far throughout all of coronavirus
00:01:55.440 from March until now we've only got 450 people under the age of 19 who have been hospitalized with
00:02:01.300 COVID-19 and only three have tragically died and at least one of those in fact died of cancer but
00:02:07.220 unfortunately had COVID-19 at the same time now I think a lot of parents who have kept their children
00:02:12.700 home from school for fear that well they could tragically die of this if they get it they are not aware
00:02:17.900 of this contextual information now the third one that I want to discuss kind of an interesting one
00:02:23.680 that's starting to bubble to the surface just a bit more which is that more and more officials are
00:02:28.780 discussing how COVID-19 is going to become or may become an endemic illness what does that mean
00:02:35.280 well it means that even if you have a vaccine and you have a lot of people take it like you know say
00:02:40.480 the flu it's still going to be around for many years to come people are still going to get it
00:02:46.700 hopefully fewer of them will and rather tragically some people will still die of it hopefully just
00:02:52.040 not as many that are dying of it right now why does that matter well when we hear these schemes that
00:02:57.380 some doctors are advocating COVID zero get Canada to zero cases got to do what Australia does force
00:03:03.200 people into their homes until you get to zero cases you start to look at the science and where
00:03:07.680 infectious diseases experts believe this is going and you go well that's just not at all feasible
00:03:13.220 Quebec premier Francois Legault I heard him say a quote where he said zero deaths zero not a single
00:03:18.600 death is acceptable and I agree with the kind of sentiment about that that obviously it would be
00:03:23.460 ideal if nobody died of all of this but it looks like all the science says that even after the vaccine
00:03:30.020 there's going to be a few people I don't know how many hopefully as few as possible but some people
00:03:34.960 still dying of this so to say there needs to be restrictions until we get to zero deaths or cases
00:03:40.900 100% vaccination rate it's actually not consistent with the facts it's not consistent with the
00:03:47.800 science just three examples of things that I really think need to get out there more for the public to
00:03:53.180 have a much more informed perspective of what's actually going on out there