Juno News - September 18, 2020What is the government trying to accomplish？
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Summary
In this episode of the podcast, I sit down with Dr. Kelly to discuss the rising cases of coronavirus in Canada and how to manage public opinion in the midst of a growing pandemic. We talk about how to deal with the growing number of cases, what to do about it, and where it's going to take us.
Transcript
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We're at an interesting place right now in Canada when it comes to managing the pandemic.
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A situation that I feel like is a rather risky, dangerous one in terms of public opinion,
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how divergent we're getting and where that's going to take us, where it's going to lead.
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Ontario reporting over 400 new cases in one day, which has caused alarm for a lot of people
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and folks all across Canada seeing similar things happening in their respective provinces.
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They are concerned and, well, I guess they should be because
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having more cases of coronavirus is of course not ideal, so nobody wants that to happen.
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At the same time, we've been talking about this idea of a second wave,
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well, ever since the very beginning of this, back in March and April and May and so forth.
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So psychologically, I mean, we should have all been prepared for some version of this happening
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And the silver lining good news is that, well, the death rates, the hospitalizations,
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And the people who are getting infected or testing positive, they skew to the younger demographics.
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Plus the medical system is doing a much better job managing this and dealing with the therapeutics
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of assisting people of coronavirus than they were six months ago.
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So hats off to them. And those should all be calming elements, I think, that help sort of
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moderate opinion broadly. But, well, it's not. Opinion is really divergent. We have one extreme end
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where we have a lot of people who are seeing these numbers and they are saying,
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uh-oh, September, what do we do? Shut it all down again. It's not safe to have the schools open,
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the gyms. We've got to close all of this down. Go back to the way things were in April.
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I mean, people are really calling out for that. It's something.
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And then on the other side, we've got people who are calling this a scamdemic and so forth,
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and they think the entire thing is a total hoax. So those two sides are really kind of
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battling it out in terms of severity. I think, I hope, that most people are in a bit of a moderate
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middle, but more and more people are beginning to splinter, beginning to fray. And if not holding
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those more opposing views there on the extreme ends, still, some people feeling like, oh, I'm
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really getting alarmed by this. And more people feeling like, yeah, I'm not so sure. I think this
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is all overblown. Government response isn't really helping either. There's a lot of following going
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along as opposed to leading. And I think we need the government to step forward and really say,
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what is it you're trying to accomplish? Because are we trying to get to zero cases? I mean,
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I don't think that's going to happen. Some doctors I've spoken to, top-notch medical experts have said,
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yeah, about the vaccine, when it comes, it may even just be a seasonal one, like a flu shot.
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And we're just going to be dealing with COVID-19 for, you know, many years to come,
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the rest of our lives. Well, if that's the case, then we can't just do this thing where we have
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shutdowns and lockdowns and reopen and so forth. We're going to have to learn to live with coronavirus,
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which is the headline of a feature I tweeted out from the New York Times where they're talking
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about how European countries are talking about doing that as well, learning to live
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with coronavirus. Whatever it is, the governments here in Canada, they've got to kind of get their
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act together to decide what is their objectives? What is it that they want to accomplish? Because
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right now it seems like they're kind of just flailing and it doesn't send a good signal to the public
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out there who are just going off in their own directions. So very curious times. What do you
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think about this second wave and what's going to unfold? Let me know.