The media pushes fake news left, right and centre
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Summary
Trudeau bungles the border closure, the science is not yet settled on coronavirus, and at a time where we really need the truth, the media pushes fake news left, right, and center. Candice Malcolm explains.
Transcript
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Trudeau bungles the border closure, the science is not yet settled on coronavirus,
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and at a time where we really need the truth, the media pushes fake news left, right, and center.
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I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.
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Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into The Candace Malcolm Show. We are back in our
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studios, sort of running at half capacity. I finished my two-week self-quarantine after
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returning from California. And as I mentioned on the show before, I went and got tested for
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coronavirus, and I tested negative. So it's safe to have my producer here in the room,
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but he is keeping his distance. He's six feet away, or as some Canadians like to say,
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two meters away, but he's further away. So we are keeping safe at True North, and we hope that you
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are as well. So Justin Trudeau finally announced that they were closing the border after months
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and months of saying that this thing was like no big deal, saying that, you know, having flights
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from China wasn't going to make us any more a threat during this sort of Wuhan outbreak.
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The Trudeau government finally did an about-face. True North commended them for not only closing the
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border, but closing the illegal crossing at Roxham Road. That was a huge about-face, sort of
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ideologically, not only, you know, the right thing to do, but it goes against the ideology that they
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possess. So that was the right thing to do. The problem is that this measure was absolutely
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bungled. So just on Wednesday, Justin Trudeau finally announced that the government was making it
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mandatory that people returning to Canada self-quarantine for 14 days. Up until then,
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it had just been a recommendation. It was just recommended that people come back. In other words,
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you didn't really have to do it, and no one was monitoring, and there was no enforcement
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measures. So we had one million Canadians and permanent residents return to Canada last week.
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So just to paint the timeline, you know, at first we had the Trudeau government saying border
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closures don't work. Then they announced the border closure and said, look, all Canadians,
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you have to come home right now. We're in the middle of spring break in a lot of the countries,
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so families are, you know, in hot spots getting some sun and on vacation. A lot of people in Europe,
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a lot of people in Asia. Trudeau made the call saying, hey, everyone get back to Canada ASAP.
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So a million Canadians follow that advice. They get on a plane, you know, by any means possible,
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they get back to Canada. It's a huge effort to get a million Canadians abroad back into the country
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at once. And at that point, we learned that the Trudeau government wasn't even making it mandatory
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that people self-isolate and self-quarantine. So if you just think about it, a million people coming
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from all over the world, you could only imagine how many of those people could have been sick. I mean,
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it only takes a small number. It only really takes one person who's very sick. This disease is very
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contagious, as we know, and it can easily spread. So Trudeau said, come back. And there were no
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measures. We've reported this as well at True North that people arriving at the airport,
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supposedly there were enhanced measures to be tracking people who are ill. That wasn't the case.
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There was a CBC report about how sick travelers were masking their coronavirus symptoms to get through
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airport screening. You read the article and you hear about one woman who's coming back from Spain
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and she was actually tested positive for coronavirus when she got back. But she just was so desperate to
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get out of Spain. And as we know, there's a huge outbreak there right now. The hospitals are
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completely overburdened. The death toll there has now actually surpassed China. So things are really
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bad in countries like Italy, Spain and France. And so Canadians were, you know, hustling to get out of
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there. I mean, you kind of understand and are sympathetic to this woman because if I was abroad,
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I would want to come home to Canada where it's sort of safe and comfortable. But at the same time,
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of course, she puts so many people at risk. And because Trudeau hadn't issued the mandate to
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say it is absolutely necessary, it's not just advised, but it's legally necessary for you to
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stay at home. A lot of the people that came back last week, the millions of Canadians, million Canadians
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are potentially out and about, out, you know, doing grocery shopping, going for a walk, doing the
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things that we are permitted to do under this self-isolation ruling. And yet, you know, the law
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is only going into effect as of today, as of Thursday. So anyone who came last week is just
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sort of a free for all. This is just the government completely bungling this thing. Like, you know, a lot
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of people are giving Trudeau credit for his daily press briefings, for the sort of transparency they're
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operating, kind of giving assurances to Canadians. That's all well and good. But every major decision
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the Trudeau government has made has been like two weeks late or three weeks late. And at a time like
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this, where time is of the essence and it's so vital to stop the spread before it happens and
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really contain the virus to the individuals that have it, Trudeau is really, really just letting us
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down. So now, finally, it is legally mandated. But, and I went into this in detail yesterday in the
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True North update with my co-host, Andrew Lawton, the details are really in the exemptions, not the
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rule itself. So the rule is all Canadians have to self-isolate. But then there's like all these
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exemptions, including flight attendants. So, you know, the people who are on the front lines that are
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interacting with all these passengers, all these people interacting one-on-one with every single
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passenger on a plane, they're not required to self-isolate. They should be the, in my opinion, they should be
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the ones that are most required to self-isolate. They're the people that are most at risk because they're
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interacting so closely with other people. Then there's other exemptions, including
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frontline workers. So if you're a frontline worker, an essential worker, sorry, someone who's
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working in an essential service, which could potentially even be at a hospital. If you're
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working at a hospital, you're exempt from the quarantine. But come on, give me a break. Those
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were the people who could also potentially interact with other people, interact with sick people.
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If someone is a nurse at a hospital, they just returned from a vacation in Spain and they're exempt
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from the 14-day quarantine so they can go to work. But what if they're, what if they have symptoms?
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What if they're sick and they just haven't started showing symptoms? It's bizarre. We're either going
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to take this health crisis seriously and have the rules being followed to a tee, or we're just kind
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of going to go willy-nilly, which is what the Trudeau government has been doing. And again, I think these
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exemptions really do make it problematic. Now, all this said, I think that it is very important.
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Like I said, I personally self-isolated at a time where it wasn't even required, partially because I was
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feeling some symptoms of the flu. But I also just thought, you know, not only for my own health and
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safety, but for my community as well, I'm going to self-isolate. I think it's important to follow
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these measures and to be overly cautious. I'd rather be overly cautious than utterly cautious.
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I personally had a whole bunch of speaking opportunities and gigs this spring. I was supposed
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to speak at the Manning Conference this weekend. I had a whole bunch of other speeches lined up across
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Canada and they've basically all been cancelled. Not basically, every single one of them
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has been cancelled. And I think that's for the better. I think at a time like this where there's
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so much uncertainty, it's better to be cautious. But I want to make this point very clearly. The
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science is not yet settled on coronavirus. It isn't something that we just all have a complete
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agreement with. You know, the way that the Trudeau government looks, sort of almost absolves
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themselves of responsibility for decision-making by saying, we rely on experts. We rely on the science.
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The science is what's guiding us. The experts are what's guiding us. That's all well and
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good. But there is no agreement within the scientific community on this issue, as is the
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case in most issues. But as we're seeing more and more, there are so many dissenting voices
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that it's really hard to just say, you know, there's one specific train of thought and we're
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following that. And so, you know, when you look through the science, when you look through
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what the quote-unquote experts are saying, they're not all in agreement. And so I'm going
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to go through some of the different, some of the scientific voices that are not really
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being amplified. That, you know, there's a specific train of thought, which is this is
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really, really bad. The entire country, the entire society, every single person in the
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world needs to just stay at home for an indefinite amount of time. And that's sort of the prevailing
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wisdom at this point. But like I said, there is a lot, quite a bit of dissent within the
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community. So I'm going to start by talking about an individual called Michael Levitt.
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He is a Nobel laureate in chemistry, won that in 2013. And he is a Stanford biophysicist.
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So Mr. Levitt, Professor Levitt, correctly calculated that China would get through the
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worst of its coronavirus outbreaks long before many health experts had predicted. He actually
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created a model and predicted the number of cases and the number of deaths, like within
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a few dozen. It was really, really impressive what he did. So he basically says, look, we don't
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have all the information. We don't have perfect information right now. Everything is kind of
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messy. And we're just basing it on what we know, which really isn't a lot. And so what he's saying
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is that just as he predicted that the number in China sort of exponentially grew, but then it kind of
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teetered off. And it didn't continue to exponentially grow until it hit the whole population.
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It teetered off and stopped. And so he's saying that, you know, that's going to happen in North
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America. In North America, we're still kind of on the upward trajectory, especially in the United
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States, places like New York City, where it's very, very dense. That's a problem area because
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this thing does spread very quickly. But he's saying, you know, we're close to the end. This
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is not the apocalyptic scenario that people are suggesting. He says, what we need to control
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is the panic. In the grand scheme, we're going to be fine. This is Professor Michael Levitt from
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Stanford University. He's not the only one from Stanford University saying that we're really,
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really overreacting here. So there was an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. And I want to
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read through this op-ed because it's really interesting. And again, it shows the opposite
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opinion and the opposite perspective of what the sort of prevailing wisdom on coronaviruses.
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The op-ed says, is the coronavirus as deadly as they say? Current estimates about the COVID-19
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fatality rate may be too high by orders of magnitude. Okay. So this is also written by
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two professors at the University of, sorry, at Stanford University. They say, if it's true
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that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter in place orders and quarantines,
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then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are
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surely justified. But there's little evidence to confirm that premise. And projections of the
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death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high. So what these two professors do is they
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say, look, we don't really have a correct control group. It's really hard to estimate how many people
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die from this disease because we don't know all the people who actually have it. Like potentially
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there could be tens of thousands or millions of people out there who have coronavirus, but because
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their symptoms are so mild, they're not showing any symptoms and they kind of just get better on their
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own. So they never get tested and they're not part of that number. So if we say like, for instance,
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you know, there's a hundred people that test positive for coronavirus and 10 of them die,
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it's really easy to say that the death rate would be 10%. But what the professors are really trying to
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say is that it's not really a hundred people that have coronavirus. It's more like 10,000. And then the
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10 people die. And you look at it that way and the percentage becomes much, much lower, a fraction of
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a percent. And this thing is only really as deadly as the common flu. And so they're saying,
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because there's not testing, because we don't really know how many people have it and aren't
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really affected by it, it's hard to say what the death rate is. So they look at a couple
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of population samples. They look at China, Italy, Iceland, and then they also look at the Diamond
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Princess cruise. And they basically come to the conclusion that the death rate, oh, sorry. And they
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also look at the NBA players. And they basically come to the conclusion that based on those different
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sample groups, the death rate is much, much, much lower. So yes, coronavirus does massively increase
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your risk at death if you get it. But so few people have that sort of very, very deadly stream
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that it means that the mortality rate is much, much lower, essentially. So that's this point.
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Again, you know, these are scientists, these are experts as well, but they're not being included
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in the sort of mainstream idea of how we should react to this. There's so many more examples. So
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the University of Toronto in Canada, one doctor predicted in early March that exaggerated reactions
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by the public about coronavirus will end up being worse than the disease itself. He says,
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I'm scared that our hospitals will be overwhelmed with anyone who thinks they probably have it,
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but then so they might as well go get checked out no matter what, because you never know.
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A McGill researcher also says that the public should not mistake coronavirus spread for being
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particularly deadly. So his point is that like, you know, the spread is very contagious and it does
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spread very rapidly, but that's not the same thing as it being very deadly. We still don't know,
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like I talked about earlier, we don't know the exact mortality rate because we don't know who has it.
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And so he's saying, you know, people conflate the two just because it spreads really quickly
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does not, is not necessarily an indication of how dangerous it is. I could go on and on and on.
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So again, I think we should be very cautious of just saying simply, you know, we're going to rely
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on scientists and experts to guide our public policy here because of course there's, you know,
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so many different opinions and voices in the scientific community. And so for Trudeau to sort
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of rest on that just shows his lack of leadership and his inability to be a leader. Another problem I
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have is that, again, you're so overemphasizing the worst case scenario. So an official at the Trudeau,
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every day that Justin Trudeau gives a briefing and then the sort of ministers are in charge of the
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coronavirus response team also give a briefing on sort of all the different things that they're
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working on. And one of the officials yesterday said, look, when we're talking about the self-isolation,
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the self-quarantine and dealing with coronavirus, we're not talking about days. We're not talking
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about weeks. We're talking about months. So months of this sort of shelter in place orders,
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quarantine, self-isolation. You just can't even imagine. I went into this in some detail,
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my show on Tuesday. The economic outcome of that kind of decision-making is just catastrophic.
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And I think, again, it has to be weighed with the public health concerns. I'm not saying that
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the public health concerns should be ignored, no, but we should also consider that massive,
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massive economic collapse and burden that will happen if we really have to follow these orders
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for months. I also just don't think that Canadians will abide by that. I think that that's the point
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where you're going to get a lot of people just saying, you know, forget it. I don't care what
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the government says. I live in a free society. I'm going to go out for a walk. I'm going to go to the
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park. You can't force me to stay in my house in a free society. And that's when you're going to get
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the sort of civil unrest. And just by contrast, Donald Trump, who's getting lots and lots of
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criticism for optimistically saying, look, I hope this is over by Easter so people can go about their
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lives this spring. You know, he's getting condemned by that. But he literally said the opposite. He
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said, look, we're talking about weeks here and not months, trying to give assurances to the economy
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and to the people that, you know, things are going to get better. Don't, let's not take the worst case
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scenario here. So unfortunately, I think the Canadian government is taking the wrong approach
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being overly draconian now when they were overly lax for the last three months, in my opinion.
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And so in the midst of all of this, yesterday, the liberal government sort of quietly announced
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another media bailout. It was really kind of jaw dropping. Justin Trudeau in the middle of his
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briefing just sort of said, you know, and because it's a hard time for media, we're going to announce
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new measures to support the media. Well, in a free society, we rely on a free press, a free and
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independent press, not one that is bought and paid for by the federal government and by a political
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party running the federal government, the liberal party. And yet liberals pat themselves on the back
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and celebrate the fact that they're giving money out to journalists. So we later heard the details
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about that. Liberal government announced it will be giving media companies $30 million in taxpayer
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dollars as part of its national coronavirus awareness campaign. The federal government will
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be purchasing advertisements on traditional and digital media platforms to inform the public about
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the pandemic. It's crucial that Canadians can obtain authoritative, well-sourced and factual
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information related to COVID-19. This is why the government of Canada is taking immediate action
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so Canadians can continue to access diverse and reliable news sources, said the Heritage Minister.
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So, hmm, interesting. So I guess at a time when advertisers aren't advertising in the media,
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the government sees it as a priority to sort of shovel them a bunch of cash. Of course, it will only go
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to the media outlets that they approve of, that they like, which, as we know, does not include media
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outlets like True North. The government still refuses to recognize us as a media organization. And we
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actually took them to court. We took them to court during the last federal election for a right to
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report, to stand up for press freedom in Canada. We won. We got an emergency injunction. A judge ordered that
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the Trudeau government had to let us go and report and be allowed to be reporters at the election debate.
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The Trudeau government is still wanting to pick winners and losers. And this is just the latest example.
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You know that it's going to go to the CBC. You know that the CBC is sort of the golden child and the chosen one
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for the Trudeau Liberals. How could you not? They're always running interference for the Trudeau Liberals.
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They're always kind of distracting from the real issue at a time where, again, Trudeau has bungled the response
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of keeping Canadians safe and acting quickly and swiftly to ensure that the coronavirus doesn't
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spread throughout Canada. Trudeau has been weeks and weeks late and slow and messing things up
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left, right and center. So rely on the CBC to come in and change the entire narrative to bash Trump
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instead. CBC will always rather bash Trump and talk about Trump, even though they're the Canadian
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broadcaster they're supposed to be reporting on the Canadian news. If Canadians want to watch the media
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bash Trump, all they have to do is turn on any number of news channels in the United States.
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CNN runs, you know, 24-7 Trump bashing. So why do we have to have a Canadian voice doing that same
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thing instead of looking at the Canadian stories? Well, here's a fake news of the week. We have the
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CBC runs a story blaming Donald Trump for the death of a man who literally ingested fish tank cleaner.
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This is a wild story. This is a wild story. So on Monday, a man from Arizona sadly died
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after he and his wife consumed aquarium cleaner that contained chloroquine. Basically, Donald Trump
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has been doing these briefings as well. He's, again, trying to paint a rosy picture, trying to be as
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optimistic as he can in this sort of time of basically, I mean, he's been calling himself a
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wartime president. This is basically, you know, the world at war against this virus and it's having a
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similar kind of economic impact as a war would have, devastating the economy. So Trump's trying
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to be optimistic. He went out and he sort of touted a couple of treatments that are being tried. And
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he's, you know, he said there's a couple of treatments that have been out there that have
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had some success. One of the examples that he gave was hydrochloroquine, which is a malaria drug or
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an anti-malaria medication. And so Trump touted this as well as two other drugs as being potential
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game changers in the fight against coronavirus. So this couple in Arizona, I guess they heard Trump
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saying chloroquine is something that is helping people who have coronavirus. This couple didn't
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have any symptoms. They don't have coronavirus. They didn't have coronavirus, but they were paranoid.
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They were scared, which you could blame just as much as the media sort of fear-mongering and
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hypering this up as you could on the president. But regardless, they were looking, the woman was
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looking through her cupboard and she found some fish tank cleaner, aquarium cleaner. She read on
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the label, it said chloroquine. She decided, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to consume this.
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I'm going to drink this because Donald Trump told me to. She mixed it with some water. Her and her
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husband ingested it. So this is like a homemade cocktail of cleaning solution that she found. I mean,
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you'd have to be so insane and I'm sorry, so stupid to drink something like that. This couple did.
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Sadly, the man passed away. The woman vomited it up. And so she was in critical condition,
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but she didn't. Of course, NBC ran there and put a microphone in her face. And so she said,
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you know, don't listen to Trump. Trump told me to do this and don't listen to Trump. Trump kept
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saying it was basically pretty much a cure. Don't take anything. Don't believe anything. Don't believe
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anything that the president says. Call your doctor. Well, that would be good advice to everyone. You know,
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don't just start taking homemade cocktails of, of random stuff in your, um, cleaning cupboard,
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thinking that that will prevent you from getting coronavirus. No, um, chloroquine needs to be
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prescribed by a doctor. And it's not just something that you can create a homemade version of in your,
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in your laundry room. And so again, this is just a story of basically people acting very recklessly
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in a chaotic situation. The media, of course, run and decide to blame this all, of course,
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on Donald Trump. This is just such a dishonest take by the media. We saw it in the U.S. and then
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they sort of backed off of it because it was just so brazen. But you trust the CBC to repeat every
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single type of Trump derangement. So they had this headline from CBC News Alerts, Arizona man dead,
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woman in critical condition after ingesting, after ingesting chemical touted by U.S. President Donald
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Trump as potential COVID-19 treatment. Don't believe anything the president says, woman tells NBC,
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call your doctor. The only problem is Trump didn't tout this particular drug as a cure for COVID-19 or
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treatment. He said that the doctors are having some luck with using this in combination with
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antibiotics and that it made him feel optimistic. He by no means told people to go and ingest a
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homemade cocktail of random stuff. So this is pretty dishonest even for the CBC. So that gets this week
00:21:54.780
in fake news. So once again, instead of informing Canadians with the truth and in keeping us well
00:22:00.980
informed, the CBC instead goes and runs towards Trump derangement syndrome and pushing fake news.
00:22:08.120
They would rather tell a story about how Trump is wrong and how Trump potentially killed someone
00:22:13.860
than report the truth, which is that chloroquine is actually is having positive effects. There's
00:22:18.740
been plenty of doctors and plenty of experts, again, out there saying this is potentially something that
00:22:23.720
will help people with coronavirus. But the media is so deranged that they can't even see that.
00:22:28.360
Okay, I am going to leave it at that. Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to check out
00:22:32.400
True North Update, which is a daily show I've been doing with Andrew Lawton, where we go through all the
00:22:36.540
latest with the coronavirus here in Canada and around the world. And we sort of pick apart what
00:22:41.900
Trudeau and his ministers say after their daily briefing every day. So check that out. Thank
00:22:46.500
you so much for tuning in. And we will be back again next week. I'm Candace Malcolm. And this is