Juno News - Why are some people ignoring the facts about COVID-19？

In this episode, I discuss the good news and bad news about the coronavirus, and why we need to do more to spread the word about it to the public. I also discuss the problem of not getting enough information out there about it, and how we can do better.

00:00:00.000 It's become very concerning to see that there are two things out there when it comes to coronavirus

00:00:11.000 information that aren't really getting out there and that people don't want to hear and in fact

00:00:17.460 many of them get angry if that information is communicated to them even though it's entirely

00:00:23.320 factually based. I've witnessed this experience. I felt it personally. Those two pieces of information,

00:00:28.820 very broad pieces of information but I'll put them out there. One is the good news about how we're

00:00:34.760 progressing with the coronavirus. What is the good news? What do I mean by that? Well largely the fact

00:00:39.760 that a number of doctors treating coronavirus patients say hey good news. We have learned so

00:00:45.080 much more about this virus since the first wave. We have learned how to improve our treatments. We

00:00:50.980 have learned which drugs to give people, how much of them, when to give it to them so that they get

00:00:55.440 better sooner so that their hospital stays are not as prolonged as they could be. The other is that

00:01:00.720 those doctors also say we have actually learned who is most hit by all of this. Therefore presumably

00:01:06.900 telling us who we need to work to protect more, who we need to back up and support, the vulnerable that

00:01:13.400 we need to have their backs on all of this and that also means those low-risk populations. Well 1.00

00:01:18.360 maybe we can tell them you don't actually need to fear for your lives anymore like you were. I mean

00:01:23.100 at the first wave a lot of people were concerned not just that their elderly loved ones and people

00:01:28.040 who are immunocompromised would get this but that they were concerned for themselves. That they may

00:01:32.140 die. That their kids would die. We are learning that that is just not the case anymore and that is good

00:01:37.160 news and I think a lot of people know that but many many people out there have not actually been

00:01:42.300 exposed to that information. That's kind of troubling and the second part of this and it's related to the

00:01:47.380 good news is the statistics, the facts. You know we live in an era of open data, big data, analytics.

00:01:54.220 These are multi-billion dollar industries where we we get info about absolutely everything, people's

00:01:59.100 consumer habits and their browsing habits to sell ads to them and so forth. You would think that

00:02:03.500 coronavirus data, particularly because this is about saving lives and whether or not society is

00:02:08.420 completely shut down or not, would be equally as nuanced as those other sectors I mentioned, advertising

00:02:13.600 and so forth. But it's kind of not. I mean there is granular data out there that we are getting more

00:02:19.680 of and learning more about but there's a resistance for being out there. I've been talking about the

00:02:24.340 comorbidity data and we've learned that for instance in Alberta 75% of the people who've died of coronavirus

00:02:29.920 have died with three or more other underlying medical conditions. Wow! That's quite something that

00:02:36.820 tells us a number of things that tells us well there are people who are exceptionally vulnerable to this

00:02:41.480 so maybe we can do more to protect them, to help them out and so forth. It also tells us that people

00:02:46.680 who are not in that situation are that much less likely to have a serious outcome from it and well

00:02:53.400 maybe we can find ways to cobble the rules such that we're able to liberate those people from the severe

00:02:58.120 restrictions that they and their businesses are operating under. But I learned that there's a big

00:03:02.440 resistance to just getting that information out there more and having that discussion more. Do we still

00:03:09.160 have a number of people in our communities dying of coronavirus? Yes we absolutely do but we we know

00:03:13.560 more about who they are, we are learning more about why it is that they are susceptible to the virus,

00:03:19.400 and we are learning more about how to treat things. That is all good news. It is stuff that should be

00:03:25.480 discussed more, disseminated more, and here's the key thing used in both public discussion and public

00:03:31.720 health and political discussions about how to create all these restrictions and measures that

00:03:36.840 we're currently living under. But there's a resistance to all of that. And I find that very alarming,

00:03:43.320 very puzzling, very troubling.

Juno News - November 26, 2020

Why are some people ignoring the facts about COVID-19？

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