Juno News - October 10, 2021Why does Canada view COVID-19 differently than other countries？
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Kelly discusses a recent article in the New York Times that offered a nuanced, nuanced and nuanced approach to the issue of whether or not to vaccinate teenagers. This is something that we rarely see in mainstream media in Canada.
Transcript
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I read a really interesting article in the New York Times the other day with a headline that said
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for kids and COVID vaccines just one dose for now. I thought wow it was really interesting as
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I read this article because it was much more I would say nuanced and a much more complex approach
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to the issue than we have seen here in Canada and with Canadian media. Yes the headline item was
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about vaccine doses and saying okay maybe we're now going to move towards just one dose for
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teenagers 12 year olds 13 year olds and so forth and also a bit bit of talking about the 5 to 11
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year olds as opposed to doing the two doses that we're doing now and it was looking at the different
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jurisdictions considering that exploring it what some different experts are saying and I feel like
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here in Canada if someone were to step forward and say why are we giving two doses to teenagers we
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should only give one maybe that person would be called an anti-vaxxer or something like that that
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level of nuance is just not really in our discourse right now even if there are pediatricians or
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epidemiologists and so forth vaccine experts who are actually thinking these very issues it's not
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kind of getting out there and I found it kind of funny that things that are in the New York Times
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you know the the U.S.'s I guess paper of record are things that you would not see really in Canadian
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media because oh no we we can't really talk about that here we don't cover it here. I mean the article
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was very interesting for offering varying perspectives of individuals there was someone
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quoted who was on the Britain the British vaccine advisory panel saying look this whole idea of
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vaccinating a teenager to protect the elderly I mean that's that's immoral that's unethical that was a
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quote from this gentleman there again something that I feel like wouldn't make its way into the
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Canadian discussion and the Canadian media coverage and it was kind of refreshing and one thing I saw later
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I noticed there was a correction at the bottom of this article that they had initially in a first
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draft vastly overstated by tenfold the number of kids that had been hospitalized in the U.S.
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with COVID and they issued a correction saying we got it wrong here's what the number actually is
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and I saw on social media people were making fun of this and saying oh look you know this this
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article is fear-mongering and so forth I thought well that's funny that it's considered fear-mongering
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in that regard because my original impression as someone who's just you know mostly used to reading
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Canadian media is well it was actually the opposite I mean they were saying things that would have been
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considered risque and it's quite curious to see this phenomenon unfold I've seen it repeatedly where
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I would say American media that is liberal or centrist or even the left wing is is unpacking things in a
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very complex way a much more complex way than you're finding here in Canada than even say right-wing
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politicians are willing themselves to say there was a lot of criticism of various lockdown measures
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and major prominent American publications all throughout this year really moving towards a
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much more evolved and balanced and I think mature approach and conversation for everything for
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lockdowns for what the vaccine rollout strategy really is and well it's really refreshing to see that
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it's happening there and well I guess it's the opposite it's disheartening to see that it's still