Juno News - September 18, 2020


What is the government trying to accomplish？


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

187.63402

Word Count

700

Sentence Count

36


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 We're at an interesting place right now in Canada when it comes to managing the pandemic.
00:00:10.000 A situation that I feel like is a rather risky, dangerous one in terms of public opinion,
00:00:17.600 how divergent we're getting and where that's going to take us, where it's going to lead.
00:00:22.960 So right now we've got rising cases in Canada.
00:00:26.320 Ontario reporting over 400 new cases in one day, which has caused alarm for a lot of people
00:00:32.160 and folks all across Canada seeing similar things happening in their respective provinces.
00:00:37.120 They are concerned and, well, I guess they should be because
00:00:40.080 having more cases of coronavirus is of course not ideal, so nobody wants that to happen.
00:00:44.640 At the same time, we've been talking about this idea of a second wave,
00:00:48.640 well, ever since the very beginning of this, back in March and April and May and so forth.
00:00:53.200 So psychologically, I mean, we should have all been prepared for some version of this happening
00:00:58.880 around about this time.
00:01:00.400 And the silver lining good news is that, well, the death rates, the hospitalizations,
00:01:04.960 the ICUs, they are stable or going down.
00:01:07.920 And the people who are getting infected or testing positive, they skew to the younger demographics.
00:01:13.120 Plus the medical system is doing a much better job managing this and dealing with the therapeutics
00:01:18.160 of assisting people of coronavirus than they were six months ago.
00:01:21.440 So hats off to them. And those should all be calming elements, I think, that help sort of
00:01:26.400 moderate opinion broadly. But, well, it's not. Opinion is really divergent. We have one extreme end
00:01:33.040 where we have a lot of people who are seeing these numbers and they are saying,
00:01:36.240 uh-oh, September, what do we do? Shut it all down again. It's not safe to have the schools open,
00:01:41.680 the gyms. We've got to close all of this down. Go back to the way things were in April.
00:01:46.480 I mean, people are really calling out for that. It's something.
00:01:49.280 And then on the other side, we've got people who are calling this a scamdemic and so forth,
00:01:53.680 and they think the entire thing is a total hoax. So those two sides are really kind of
00:01:59.280 battling it out in terms of severity. I think, I hope, that most people are in a bit of a moderate
00:02:04.960 middle, but more and more people are beginning to splinter, beginning to fray. And if not holding
00:02:10.480 those more opposing views there on the extreme ends, still, some people feeling like, oh, I'm
00:02:16.640 really getting alarmed by this. And more people feeling like, yeah, I'm not so sure. I think this
00:02:21.360 is all overblown. Government response isn't really helping either. There's a lot of following going
00:02:26.560 along as opposed to leading. And I think we need the government to step forward and really say,
00:02:31.680 what is it you're trying to accomplish? Because are we trying to get to zero cases? I mean,
00:02:36.560 I don't think that's going to happen. Some doctors I've spoken to, top-notch medical experts have said,
00:02:42.160 yeah, about the vaccine, when it comes, it may even just be a seasonal one, like a flu shot.
00:02:46.800 And we're just going to be dealing with COVID-19 for, you know, many years to come,
00:02:50.480 the rest of our lives. Well, if that's the case, then we can't just do this thing where we have
00:02:55.280 shutdowns and lockdowns and reopen and so forth. We're going to have to learn to live with coronavirus,
00:03:00.480 which is the headline of a feature I tweeted out from the New York Times where they're talking
00:03:04.960 about how European countries are talking about doing that as well, learning to live
00:03:09.360 with coronavirus. Whatever it is, the governments here in Canada, they've got to kind of get their
00:03:14.640 act together to decide what is their objectives? What is it that they want to accomplish? Because
00:03:19.520 right now it seems like they're kind of just flailing and it doesn't send a good signal to the public
00:03:24.640 out there who are just going off in their own directions. So very curious times. What do you
00:03:29.840 think about this second wave and what's going to unfold? Let me know.