Juno News - September 28, 2020


What is the government's goal when managing the coronavirus？


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

199.85173

Word Count

629

Sentence Count

29


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 One of the things we need to talk about a whole lot more in Canada right now is
00:00:08.980 what is our goal with dealing with the coronavirus? What is our objective in
00:00:14.840 managing the pandemic? And at first blush upon hearing this you might go, well,
00:00:19.320 Fury, I mean, what a bizarre question. We know what we're all doing. We're trying to,
00:00:22.680 to, and then we go, wait, we can't actually really fill in the blank here on
00:00:28.040 something we've mutually all agreed upon. Is it to flatten the curve? Is it to not
00:00:32.720 overwhelm the healthcare system? Is it to go about our lives in a way where we can
00:00:37.400 still live with coronavirus to protect the most vulnerable? Is it, is it to
00:00:41.840 completely eradicate all cases, to suppress them to zero or only a few a day? What is
00:00:47.660 it? Is it to wait things out until there's a vaccine? What is our objective? Now you
00:00:53.180 may certainly have your opinions, but we have not been given any guidance, any real
00:00:57.560 sort of leadership from anyone on high, not from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or
00:01:01.880 Dr. Theresa Tam, not from any premier, not from any mayor, not from any public health
00:01:06.600 official. It's all kind of conflicting rudderless stuff. And I don't think that's
00:01:11.800 good because every public policy decision you make, every public health decision you
00:01:16.880 make, should it not be geared towards some sort of objective, some sort of goal. But we
00:01:22.920 don't know what that goal is. Now, there are many options out there on the table,
00:01:27.240 of course, and they have different merits to them. I have my preferred one, which is
00:01:31.980 right now, based on where we're at, I think the goal should be learning to live
00:01:35.560 with the coronavirus. Yes, so we can go out and about in our daily lives in a way
00:01:39.580 where we follow public health protocols such that we're not spreading this in an
00:01:43.880 uncontrollable manner and we protect the most vulnerable at the same time. But, you know,
00:01:47.580 we get out and about. We're going to have to do that, particularly since we may see
00:01:51.900 two or three or four or five waves. I mean, heavens, to talk about the second wave,
00:01:56.920 will there be another wave? How long do you go until there's a vaccine? And also,
00:02:01.460 what sort of vaccine are we going to end up getting that is most effective? Some
00:02:05.760 doctors have been telling me, well, it could be something like the flu shot
00:02:08.380 eventually. It could just be an annual thing. In some years, it's more effective than
00:02:11.920 others. Wow, that's quite something. Then we have to adjust our thinking caps. And I
00:02:16.700 think to get not all on the same page because, you know, this is a democracy,
00:02:20.820 there's free speech and people are going to be disagreeing, but at least to get
00:02:23.980 some broader sense of where we're all headed together, we got to have that
00:02:28.860 conversation. We got to get on some degree of the same page here. And the
00:02:33.520 officials don't seem to be wanting to do that. They're just flailing right now at
00:02:38.020 the idea, oh, there's a second wave in Canada, even though, yeah, yeah, we know. Back in
00:02:41.800 like March and April, we were saying, well, just wait, September, October, there'll be a
00:02:45.140 second wave. So we should have seen this coming. We did see this coming.
00:02:49.140 Now they're just flailing, playing whack-a-mole with all these different
00:02:52.820 targeted lockdowns. Some of them are necessary. I'm not particularly criticizing
00:02:56.520 those actual actions, but what I am criticizing is the lack of a plan, a lack
00:03:01.560 of a much broader long-term plan. And that, that is the conversation, Canada, we
00:03:06.840 now need to have.