Juno News - What is the government's plan to get us back to normal？

00:00:00.000 Every day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a press conference where he updates Canadians

00:00:10.760 on what the government has been doing in response to the coronavirus crisis.

00:00:14.520 But one of the things that seems to be missing from these press conferences is Justin Trudeau's

00:00:18.320 plan for getting Canada back on its feet.

00:00:21.040 What is his and his cabinet's plan to get us back to normal, or whatever that new normal

00:00:25.240 is going to be, and how are they going to tackle the challenges that we currently face?

00:00:29.320 Now I wanted to make this video because it's a really important point we have to ponder

00:00:32.960 as a country.

00:00:33.960 However, a lot of this discussion seems to revolve strictly around economic factors and

00:00:38.480 really placing economic factors versus mortality.

00:00:41.460 It's a little bit more complicated than that, and I hope we can flesh out some of these issues

00:00:45.100 to make that conversation a bit more fruitful and a bit more useful.

00:00:48.560 So the first place I want to look is here.

00:00:50.860 This is a story out of BC that on the face of it seems very positive.

00:00:54.080 BC restaurants begin planning for dine-in instead of take-out.

00:00:57.140 And you think, okay great, now we're going to get to some semblance of normalcy or whatever

00:01:01.980 new normal that's going to be, we're going to slowly start getting there.

00:01:05.600 But if you scroll down just a bit in the story, it says that about 180 to 190,000 people are

00:01:11.060 presently out of work who work in this industry.

00:01:13.660 That is a huge number of people.

00:01:15.840 Just below, 15 to 25% of restaurants may close permanently as a result of the coronavirus

00:01:22.060 crisis because they simply do not have the money to stay open and a lot of the businesses

00:01:27.100 simply are just going to go bankrupt as a result.

00:01:29.780 Now this is an economic factor and economic factors are definitely important to consider.

00:01:35.460 We're spending a lot of money and it's something that we're going to have to do.

00:01:38.420 We're going to have to spend money to get the economy and get the country back on its feet.

00:01:41.900 But money is not the entire story.

00:01:44.280 I want to talk to you about something called the social determinants of health.

00:01:48.060 Now these are the things that we don't normally calculate because they're very difficult to

00:01:52.220 quantify.

00:01:53.220 You cannot often put a cost and the cost or dollar value you'd like to put is very different

00:01:58.380 from person to person.

00:02:00.060 These are the things we need to keep in mind and the type of plan that I would like to

00:02:03.400 see the government coming up with on how we're going to get Canadians back to, again, some 0.97

00:02:07.920 sort of normal life or back to something different because we cannot simply sustain the current

00:02:12.940 regime that we're doing.

00:02:14.280 We cannot isolate or stay home for the next 18 months until we get a vaccine for this

00:02:18.760 virus.

00:02:19.760 So I want to go through a couple of these obvious ones with you and then talk about something

00:02:23.400 else.

00:02:24.400 So now one of the things that most Canadians are obviously facing as a social determinant

00:02:28.580 of health is isolation.

00:02:30.200 So right here, social isolation is a very big one.

00:02:33.180 People are social animals.

00:02:34.100 We need to have conversations.

00:02:35.580 We need to see other people.

00:02:36.980 A number of reports coming out of China, France, Italy show that domestic violence is up,

00:02:42.200 divorces are up, and isolation, forced isolation in a small confined space is not healthy and

00:02:48.260 is not something we can sustain in the long term.

00:02:50.560 It's going to have health consequences that are maybe not readily apparent, but that are

00:02:54.700 nonetheless very important and something we need to consider.

00:02:57.920 There's also hunger and in that nutrition and malnutrition, people may not be eating or

00:03:03.140 taking care of themselves in such a way that they normally do or normally should be.

00:03:07.940 And that's obviously because we're all stuck at home, we can't really go anywhere.

00:03:11.520 And even if you want to go for a jog or something like that, oftentimes you're discouraged.

00:03:15.720 And especially by the social media mob that really is desperate to call these snitch lines

00:03:21.160 as I call them to really just snitch on their neighbors who want to get some exercise or want

00:03:26.560 to leave their house.

00:03:27.940 There's also housing in general, access to care.

00:03:30.940 I mean, right now, most of the medical services, the non-critical medical services are suspended.

00:03:37.580 Many people cannot see the doctor or if they can, then it's by conference call.

00:03:40.940 Again, this is going to have health outcomes for people down the road.

00:03:45.000 It's not maybe going to be apparent what exactly caused these health conditions, but it's obviously

00:03:49.920 clear that if you're sitting at home, you're not taking care of yourself, you're not able

00:03:52.640 to do the things that you normally do.

00:03:54.640 Your mood is affected that you're going to have a health outcome.

00:03:57.840 And that brings me to the overall point that almost no one is discussing.

00:04:01.580 And that's why here at True North, we're all about discussing a number of things, a

00:04:04.920 number of issues that are just not being discussed, especially in the mainstream media.

00:04:08.760 And that is the difference in morbidity to mortality.

00:04:12.800 Whenever we have the discussion on a plan going forward, it always revolves around the

00:04:17.460 economic factors and the mortality.

00:04:19.960 So we're going to open up the economy.

00:04:21.600 How many people are going to get killed?

00:04:23.460 That's really the basis for discussion.

00:04:25.280 But no one is talking about the morbidity.

00:04:28.440 Now for reference, morbidity is the, right here, morbidity is the physical or psychological

00:04:32.920 state that's anything out of the norm.

00:04:34.660 It's something that's going to cause a health effect or health outcome for Canadians.

00:04:38.960 It's really in line and similar to the social determinants of health, but morbidity is something

00:04:43.820 that is often tracked or at least discussed in a bit of a more detailed fashion than just

00:04:48.660 the social determinants of health because those are very, very broad.

00:04:52.320 So one of the things again, that's important is that people's health outcome is going to

00:04:56.860 be affected by how they're forced to react or how they are behaving right now during the,

00:05:03.240 during the quarantine, during the stay home orders.

00:05:05.540 Now how does this connect to the economic factors?

00:05:08.940 It's not really about money.

00:05:10.360 It's not about large corporations or billionaires.

00:05:12.900 It's about the restaurateur who is now going to lose his business and possibly his home

00:05:17.740 because of the coronavirus where he simply can't get any customers and he's not able

00:05:22.440 to stay afloat.

00:05:24.140 It's about the single mother who owns a salon who may be forced to shut down for a year,

00:05:29.300 especially if we keep social distancing rules and prevent certain businesses, certain occupations

00:05:34.180 from getting close to one another.

00:05:35.720 I mean, you can't really get a haircut if you have to stay six feet away from another

00:05:39.500 person.

00:05:40.500 And so again, the economic factors are important to look at, but more so we have to see what

00:05:45.840 economic factors are going to affect social determinants of health and how is that going

00:05:50.500 to affect the morbidity?

00:05:52.140 The entire discussion has to revolve not just around how many people are going to die right

00:05:56.480 now from the coronavirus, but how many people will have negative health incomes and how many

00:06:00.640 people may actually die or God forbid, kill themselves.

00:06:04.300 There was a report out of LA, I believe, where a suicide hotline received 8,000% increase

00:06:10.420 and 8,000% increase in calls.

00:06:13.160 So it's really something we need to balance.

00:06:15.320 And this is something that we're not seeing from the government.

00:06:17.720 There's a lot of economic plans.

00:06:19.700 They're often short term.

00:06:21.200 They're often discussing a number of the financial issues.

00:06:23.520 So there's the CERB that's giving Canadians to about $2,000 up to $2,000 every four weeks,

00:06:28.460 but there's almost nothing on morbidity.

00:06:30.520 And this is something that we'd like to see from the government, something that is imperative

00:06:34.100 that we have a discussion on and something that we plan for when we eventually move to

00:06:37.800 reopen.

00:06:38.800 So for True North, I'm Sam Ashkenazi.

00:06:41.280 Please stay safe, wash your hands, and we'll see you again next time.

00:06:43.760 Take care.

Juno News - April 25, 2020

What is the government's plan to get us back to normal？

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