The Candice Malcolm Show - January 20, 2022


The UK has dropped all COVID-19 restrictions – will Canada ever follow suit？


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

188.40427

Word count

1,784

Sentence count

148

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The United Kingdom has announced an end to COVID-19 protective measures. No more masks, no more vaccine mandates, the pandemic is basically over. I m Candice Malan and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
00:00:00.000 The United Kingdom has announced an end to COVID-19 protective measures.
00:00:05.040 No more masks, no more vaccine mandates, the pandemic is basically over.
00:00:09.740 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:16.180 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into this show.
00:00:18.940 Now first off, I need to apologize because I am recording this show right now from a hotel room.
00:00:24.540 I am on the road right now.
00:00:25.800 I thought I was going to be home in time to record today's show so I didn't bring any of my normal equipment that I would bring when I'm traveling.
00:00:32.220 I don't have a camera, I don't have a microphone, I don't have proper lighting.
00:00:35.720 And so my apologies for the way that this looks and sounds but let me assure you we will be back in studio and things will go back to normal tomorrow.
00:00:44.400 Again, I wasn't anticipating having to record the show.
00:00:47.180 I thought I'd be back but alas, travel is not as easy as it used to be and so here I am stuck doing this video from my hotel room.
00:00:54.320 So now that I've got that out of the way, I want to talk to you today about this extraordinary news out of the United Kingdom.
00:01:00.520 And now, of course, you can be cynical and you can say, look, Boris Johnson is in the fight for his political life.
00:01:06.260 He's in huge trouble from all sides in the UK.
00:01:10.480 He was caught, you know, breaking his own COVID rules and having these sort of so-called illicit parties at Downing Street.
00:01:16.780 The Conservatives were not happy when the government introduced more COVID measures.
00:01:22.300 Us Conservatives should be unhappy about this.
00:01:24.780 The idea of continuing to lock down society, given everything we know, given the fact that we know that staying at home creates more harm and good for most people.
00:01:35.380 It creates more diseases of despair.
00:01:37.200 We've seen huge growth in isolation, in suicides, in drug overdoses, all kinds of things.
00:01:43.780 People missing early diagnosis of other diseases.
00:01:47.280 We've seen huge explosions of other health issues because of COVID.
00:01:52.000 And instead, we have this sort of singular focus on COVID, even in the midst of a wave that just let me tell you, it's completely mild.
00:01:58.800 My entire household has now had COVID.
00:02:01.140 We had it sort of various stages over Christmas.
00:02:03.800 The latest person to get it is my mom, my kid's grandma.
00:02:07.860 And let me tell you, you know, she is in an age group that you would be concerned about.
00:02:13.080 You know, her age, her past health conditions, she's at risk.
00:02:17.000 And yet the COVID that's hit her right now is very mild.
00:02:20.140 It's basically like the flu.
00:02:21.500 She's got a sore throat, a bit of a runny nose. 0.78
00:02:24.420 You know, she's been down for a couple of days and she's already feeling better.
00:02:27.400 My son had COVID over Christmas.
00:02:30.020 We barely even noticed it.
00:02:31.180 If it wasn't for the fact that his swim teacher had COVID, told us that she had COVID, so we tested him.
00:02:36.900 We tested him three times.
00:02:38.020 The first two times, he was negative.
00:02:39.860 The third time, he was positive.
00:02:41.440 But if it wasn't for that test, we wouldn't have even known that he had COVID because he barely had any symptoms whatsoever and he's better.
00:02:48.080 So this wave of COVID is different and it doesn't have the negative impact that previous waves have.
00:02:54.380 I'm not saying that it's completely safe.
00:02:57.160 Obviously, people are still getting sick.
00:02:58.760 People are still going in the hospital and you can still have negative impact of COVID.
00:03:03.180 But for all of society to lock down over it just makes no sense at this point.
00:03:08.020 It's completely illogical given what we know about this strain.
00:03:12.480 If anything, you know, healthy people should want to go out and get this strain of COVID so that they get the antibodies,
00:03:17.800 they get the natural immunities and they can better fight future waves.
00:03:21.040 All that's just to say, conservatives in the UK were not happy with Boris Johnson.
00:03:25.160 Perhaps that is why he gave this triumphant speech in the House of Commons over in the UK where he announced basically an end to everything.
00:03:33.700 It's over.
00:03:34.620 No more restrictions.
00:03:36.060 No more vaccine mandates.
00:03:37.220 No more masks.
00:03:38.100 No more masks for children in school.
00:03:39.840 Thank goodness.
00:03:40.480 One of the worst, absolutely most jacronian, cruel policies that's imaginable.
00:03:46.320 Making little kids, we're just learning how to speak, learning how to communicate, learning how to be social, forcing them to wear masks.
00:03:53.100 I can't imagine a worse policy than that.
00:03:55.640 So that's all over in the UK.
00:03:57.540 I want to show you a clip of Boris Johnson in the House of Commons in the UK delivering this wonderful speech.
00:04:03.760 We can return to Plan A in England and allow Plan B regulations to expire.
00:04:12.160 As a result, from the start of Thursday next week, mandatory certification will end.
00:04:18.740 Organisations can, of course, choose to use the NHS COVID pass voluntarily, but we will end the compulsory use of COVID status certification in England.
00:04:27.000 From now on, the Government is no longer asking people to work from home.
00:04:32.920 And people should now speak to their employers about arrangements for returning to the office.
00:04:37.620 And having looked at the data carefully, the Cabinet concluded that once regulations lapse,
00:04:45.700 the Government will no longer mandate the wearing of face masks anyway.
00:04:53.400 Mr Speaker.
00:04:57.000 Mr Speaker, from tomorrow, from tomorrow, we will no longer require face masks in classrooms.
00:05:10.700 And the Department for Education will shortly remove national guidance on their use in communal areas.
00:05:19.060 In the country at large, we will continue to suggest the use of face coverings in enclosed or crowded spaces,
00:05:25.280 particularly when you come into contact with people you don't normally meet.
00:05:28.480 But we will trust the judgment of the British people.
00:05:32.920 And no longer criminalise anyone who chooses not to wear one.
00:05:37.620 The Government will also ease restrictions further on visits to care homes.
00:05:42.320 And my right honourable friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, will set out plans in the coming days.
00:05:49.540 Mr Speaker, as we return to Plan A, the Huttons will know that some measures still remain, including those on self-isolation.
00:05:57.200 No more vaccine mandates, no more vaccine passports.
00:06:00.700 It's all going to be voluntary now in the UK.
00:06:03.100 No more working from home, no more masks, no more masks for children in the classroom.
00:06:07.340 So key.
00:06:08.240 And I love that the last line that you delivered there.
00:06:10.620 We are going to trust the judgment of the British people.
00:06:14.120 Can you imagine?
00:06:14.900 Can you imagine a leader in Canada saying that they're going to trust the judgment of the people?
00:06:20.040 It was music to my ears.
00:06:21.480 So refreshing to hear.
00:06:22.940 And I'll tell you why this gives me hope.
00:06:25.020 Okay.
00:06:25.560 So over the last two years, we've sort of been living through multiple experiments.
00:06:29.920 Lots of different governments in different jurisdictions have taken totally different approaches to COVID.
00:06:34.400 Look at how Sweden approached it.
00:06:36.480 You know, very little lockdowns.
00:06:37.820 They focus very much on the people who were most at risk, who had underlying conditions.
00:06:43.920 You know, people scolded them.
00:06:45.100 People emphasized, the news media emphasized any negative thing that happened over there.
00:06:48.680 But things are looking pretty good in Sweden.
00:06:50.740 You can look down at the United States and see the exact same kinds of examples where you had states like Florida and states like Texas,
00:06:57.540 who basically just said, we're going to live and let live.
00:07:00.120 We're going to get back to normal.
00:07:01.820 And so they did.
00:07:03.020 They opened up their societies.
00:07:04.980 They didn't have the same kinds of restrictions.
00:07:06.680 You can compare that to other states that had the sort of more Canadian mindset, like California or New York, that stayed locked down.
00:07:12.600 You can compare the data, look at the hospitalizations and death rates, and you can have some interesting discussions.
00:07:17.960 The only thing is, in Canada, we didn't really have experiments like that.
00:07:22.440 There were some mild disagreements.
00:07:24.580 But overall, the premiers in this country were sort of in lockstep.
00:07:27.760 It didn't matter if you were an NDP, a liberal or a conservative.
00:07:30.480 They were pro-lockdown.
00:07:31.420 They wanted to lock you down.
00:07:32.800 We were stuck inside.
00:07:34.100 We had to work from home.
00:07:35.360 We had restrictions.
00:07:36.820 We had vaccine mandates.
00:07:38.500 They sort of scrummed it up.
00:07:39.960 And instead of looking to the U.S. for some of these examples of saying, okay, look, there are other approaches.
00:07:45.640 There are other ways to go.
00:07:46.880 That didn't happen in Canada.
00:07:48.180 And I don't expect it to.
00:07:49.420 I know that Canadians, this sort of anti-American sentiment runs deep within Canada, especially our political culture, especially when there are liberals in charge like we have federally with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
00:08:01.760 So I don't expect Trudeau to say, oh, hey, look, Rhonda Santos is doing some pretty cool stuff in Florida. 0.98
00:08:07.400 I think we're going to try that.
00:08:08.900 Or, hey, let's look at Texas and see how they did.
00:08:12.400 I don't expect that to happen in a million years.
00:08:14.960 However, the U.K. is different.
00:08:16.900 I think that perhaps Canada could look to the U.K.
00:08:19.640 They could see the U.K. as a pure country and say, okay, let's wait and see.
00:08:24.340 Let's watch what happens over there.
00:08:25.720 If things go according to plan and the Omicron variant is mild and it's already peaked and we're already getting past that and now so many more people have natural immunity and we can just kind of go on with our lives.
00:08:37.060 And, you know, if you're in that risk group, you can protect yourself.
00:08:40.640 If you're elderly, if you have underlying conditions, you can protect yourself.
00:08:43.620 But for everyone else, it's like, let's just get on with our lives.
00:08:46.880 Let's get back to normal.
00:08:47.840 Let's put a new emphasis on health.
00:08:50.060 Make sure that people are taking care of themselves.
00:08:51.940 Make sure that people are getting the vitamins that they need, getting the exercise that they need, getting the nutritious foods that they need.
00:08:58.540 Let's put an emphasis in our society back towards health, back towards crusting the judgment of the people, individual responsibility.
00:09:06.580 Let's move on with our lives.
00:09:07.740 So I'm really hopeful today.
00:09:09.240 I hope that the Canadian government, the Canadian Prime Minister will look to the U.K., notice what's going on over there.
00:09:15.560 And hopefully this will be a step towards the end of this awful, awful pandemic.
00:09:21.880 Thank you so much for watching.
00:09:22.940 We'll be back in studio with our normal setup next week.
00:09:26.000 I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.