HANNAFORD： ＂Masks are not the answer...＂
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
150.26218
Summary
Health Canada says the number of Canadians dying from the flu is actually down, and it s actually been dropping off since the middle of October. So why are we still seeing so many deaths from this flu season? And why is it happening?
Transcript
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It's funny how kids who play in the dirt end up healthier than the ones who don't.
00:00:06.160
Something about developing immunity would that be?
00:00:09.760
So when you close the schools during a pandemic and send home the kids,
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don't be surprised that with no chance to develop immunities,
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when they do come back to school they get everything that's going around,
00:00:22.480
and they bring it home to you. The difference is, if we're talking about COVID-19,
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but kids are low risk for COVID, but moms and dads can end up feeling like they've been hit by a truck.
00:00:34.960
People tell me it's like a once-in-a-decade dose of the flu.
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Unsurprisingly then, the hospital waiting rooms fill up,
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and right on cue with the arrival of the fall flu season,
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come the impassioned pleas for a return to universal, point-of-a-gun,
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full weight-of-the-law, mandatory masking. And if you don't, you're a social path.
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Seriously, if you don't care to cover your face, you're a sociopath.
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That's what they think, at the Globe and Mail anyway,
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where columnist Marsha Lederman was emoting this week.
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Waits at emergency rooms, especially at children's hospitals, not just in Ontario,
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are unsustainably lengthy, at times forcing people to wait in the parking lot.
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Hearing those on the front lines, healthcare workers, parents tell it,
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the system feels like it is teetering, close to collapse.
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Ms. Lederman also complains that anti-maskers can be belligerent.
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If they are, they need to lighten up. It's a free world.
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If somebody wants to mask up, let them, and then leave them alone.
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However, as far as all the emotional gut-helper stuff goes,
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According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, who are the number keepers for all things COVID in Canada,
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hospital bed use by COVID-19 patients was actually down the week Lederman wrote her Pearl Clutcher.
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Between November the 9th, 2022, and November the 16th, 2022,
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the total number of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients decreased from 6100 to 5700.
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The number of non-ICU beds occupied by COVID-19 patients decreased from 5800 to 5400.
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The number of ICU beds occupied by COVID-19 patients decreased from 268 to 252.
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The number of COVID-19 patients who are mechanically vented decreased from 116 to 105.
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It's actually been dropping off since the middle of October.
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Now, here's one more thing from the very same Public Health Agency of Canada's site.
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More Canadians have died from COVID this year than either 2020 or 2021.
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At the end of both 2020 and 2021, Canada's chief medical officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, issued statements on how COVID had gone that year.
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In round numbers, she said 50,500 people died of COVID in 2020, and at the end of 2021, nearly 15,000 more.
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Sure, the larger part was at the turn of the year, to be sure.
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But if you're under 70, let me just give you some reassurance.
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82% of the 47,000 Canadians who have died since March 2020 were people over 70.
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But unlike me, having something else wrong with them.
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Bottom line, for all the masks and the vaccines, the social distancing, the lockdowns, and in Quebec,
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months of overnight curfews, none of it seems to have made much difference.
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This damn COVID virus seems to do what it wants, which, by the way, is also pretty much the way
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By the way, in 2018, flu did to the hospital system what Marsha Letterman says COVID is doing to it now.
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It said the 2017-18 influenza epidemic is sending people to hospitals and urgent care
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centres in every state, and medical centres are responding with extraordinary measures,
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asking staff to work overtime, setting up triage tents, restricting friends and family visits,
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Ask anybody who you know who works in a hospital, they'll tell you.
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But masking, you'll notice, was not among the extraordinary measures recommended
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to deal with the flu five years ago, nor was sending children home from schools.
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Funny they didn't think of that five years ago.
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So why is it that the first thing that the Globe and Mail thinks of now,
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the Globe and Mail and, frankly, so many other people who are joining the mask-up bandwagon,
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It sounds community-minded, and calling people you actually look down on a little,
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We wouldn't expect you to say anything different.
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As for us, we'll go with Health Canada's numbers.
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These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms,
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regulations and legislation in Canada, and more importantly, educating the public
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about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.
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