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The Current Transcript for April 30, 2020

Host: Matt Gallaway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Everyone is worried about getting sick. I've had one negative test already. Every odd sniffle you have worries you and you worry with your family.

MATT GALLOWAY: It is a stressful time on the frontlines of this pandemic, after the death, by suicide of an emergency room physician from New York. We'll look this morning at the strain doctors are under and the help coming their way. All of us are feeling something heavy in this moment. In Toronto, Blue Jays broadcaster Jamie Campbell thought he could help by picking up the phone.

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I've talked to Vietnam draught dodgers. I've talked to a woman who made it through the Great Depression. I have spoken with kids who are hospitalized.

MG: Coming up, a sportscaster explains why he's calling baseball fans who are missing the sport and each other. Also this morning, in any other moment, the fact that the Pentagon released videos of UFOs buzzing the earth, kind of big news. What was it that those pilots saw flying above the sky? We'll try to get some answers. And if those aliens landed, now, they would find a world with culture on hold. A look at an existential moment for theatre. We start, though, with a look at where we are now in this pandemic and how quickly everything we thought we knew has changed. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is an extended edition of The Current.

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Evolving picture of COVID-19 doesn't mean virus itself is changing, says doctor

Guests: Dr. Sumon Chakrabarty, Dr. Matthew Oughten, Dr. Jennifer McCombe

MG: Cast your mind back. Just three months ago, a mysterious new disease that was starting to spread around the world didn't even have an official name.

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First of all, we now have a name for the disease and it is COVID-19. And I will spell it. C O V I D hyphen 1 9.

MG: Well, no one needs the spelling anymore. That was director general of the W.H.O. Tedros Ghebreyesus speaking on the 11th of February. Since then, what we know about COVID-19 has changed dramatically. At first, the focus was on how this virus was attacking the lungs, but it soon became evident that the disease strikes every major organ. And we've come to learn that not everyone experiences the same kinds of symptoms or shows any symptoms at all. Kym Murphy recovered from COVID-19 earlier this month. She is in St. John, New Brunswick.

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My symptoms began with plugged ears, strangely enough, progressed to a headache and then a lot of body aches and fatigue, a little bit of the chills and the sweats. And within about three or four days, I lost my sense of smell and taste, which struck me as very odd since I had no nasal congestion at all, but really a bad headache all the time.

MG: Donna Gillis is from Pictou County in Nova Scotia.

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I actually didn't have a fever at all and my symptoms were a dry cough, a headache, eye pain. And these came and went. I didn't have them the entire time. I lost my sense of taste and smell, which I have not recovered yet, and I have been considered recovered now for over a week.

MG: We have discovered a lot of it COVID-19 in the past few months, but doctors and scientists still know there is much more to learn. Sumon Chakrabarty and Matthew Oughten are both infectious disease specialist Dr. Chakrabarty with Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga. Dr. Oughten is with the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. Good morning to you both.

DR. SUMON CHAKRABARTY: Good morning.

DR. MATTHEW OUGHTEN: Good morning.

MG: I think for all of us, it feels as though the world is changing really quickly. And what we knew three months ago is something completely different than what we know now. Dr. Chakrabarty, does your head spin with how quickly things have changed?

DR. SUMON CHAKRABARTY: Absolutely. This is unprecedented for any of us. And we think that we barely knew the name of this thing or it existed in December. And all of a sudden it's now the centre of our attention. It's been like that for the past several weeks. And, you know, I've never seen anything like this in my life and either have really my parents. So it's a big thing that we're all looking at and it's still going to be with us for some time to come.

MATT GALLOWAY: Same for you, Dr. Oughten?

DR. MATTHEW OUGHTEN: Yes. I would say that to go even a little further, that at least in Canadian memory, the last time that our population has gone through anything like this was 102 years ago in 1918 with the pandemic influenza. And as a as a result, we don't have sort of a cultural familiarity with a lot of these concepts, things like physical distancing. I think a lot of the public didn't really understand the idea of epidemic spread and how you could go so quickly from very few cases to a very large number of cases. So this is something that we are to a large extent learning as we go.

MG: Let's talk about these symptoms, Sumon Chakrabarty. How often are you noticing these unusual symptoms in your patients?

DR. SUMON CHAKRABARTY: Well, we see this all the time. This is actually not specific to coronavirus. We see this with many other illnesses where the majority of people will have certain symptoms. For example, this is a respiratory virus. So mainly shortness of breath, cough and fever. But yes, what you do see some unusual symptoms as well. This whole idea of losing your sense of taste and smell. I've seen many times, you know, you can see people with headaches, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, headaches. So we do see all this stuff. But it's important to note that the most common things that the majority of people experience are still respiratory.

MG: What about, Matthew Oughten, liver and kidneys? What's going on there in symptoms with with those organs?

DR. MATTHEW OUGHTEN: So there's as we're seeing more and more cases, we're definitely recognising just how systemic this disease can be. So I guess two simple examples. One is that it is exceedingly common, especially early in the disease, to find some evidence of liver inflammation through commonly ordered blood tests. The other another factor that we're noticing is in a small proportion of patients presenting with acute kidney injury. And in fact, for patients who have pre-existing serious kidney disease and particularly patients who are kidney transplant patients, this disease can be quite dangerous.

MG: Is this, just briefly, is this just us learning more about this disease or is it changing?

DR. MATTHEW OUGHTEN: I don't believe that it's changing. I think that what's happening is that generally speaking, for any one infectious disease, we don't see usually a huge number of cases. All of. It's really a few cases here, a few cases they're spread out over time. This is a massive surge of cases. So as a result, we're certainly going to be seeing, you know, statistically the common presentations. But we're also seeing so many cases that it's not uncommon that we're coming across the less common manifestations as well.

MG: In the last couple of days, Sumon Chakrabarty, we've been hearing about something called COVID Toes, particularly among young people. What is that?

DR. SUMON CHAKRABARTY: Yes, we're seeing children especially showing up with weird pigmentary changes and these packie blotchy almost purple type lesions on their toes and their feet. I have actually seen this occasionally in adults as well. And based on what we know about COVID-19, it likely has some effect on the micro vasculature. So you're microscopic blood vessels - and that's my guess of what we're seeing here - It's not something that's very common, but once you start to see lots of cases, you'll see showing up, I've see it in the hands as well. So it's an interesting finding. And certainly I have seen that in other infections as well, that in fact , affect the vasculature.

MG: Interesting is an unusual word, because I think for a lot of people it's concerning. We were hearing before and again, it speaks to how quickly things are changing. Young people aren't affected by this. This is really something that older members of the population need to be concerned about. Obviously, that was debunked, but we still. And you see this meaning came back where they're looking at sending kids back to school in a couple of weeks time. People are still saying that young people aren't particularly affected by this. And then this appears. What does that say.

DR. SUMON CHAKRABARTY: Well, I mean, the one thing that's important is that while whereas young people are the majority of the people who get the infection in terms of absolute numbers, it is true that they are in terms of severe consequences.,We don't see that as much in that population. But yes, it is a concern to me. I'm a little concerned about what's going to happen in Quebec with going back to schools early, because children, though they don't get affected severely, can pass on the infection. But that said, listen, I'm very, very happy if I'm wrong. I would like to see we have to start schools at some time. And it's important to keep track of what happens over the next several weeks and then learn from it in any way we can.

MG: There are all of these different symptoms and then, Dr. Oughten, there are a number of people who are asymptomatic as well. How common is it for people to have no symptoms whatsoever?

DR. MATTHEW OUGHTEN: So this has been a real changing story, but we're a victim of our case definitions. So in the early stages of this disease, we had to develop a case definition based on what we were seeing. Of course, what we were seeing relied on patients presenting to medical attention. And of course, you're not going to be necessarily presenting medical attention if you're feeling fine. So what we were basing the case definitions on were the most common symptoms, particularly the symptoms that would be most likely to be severe. So not surprising, that was things like fever, shortness of breath, cough. But early on, there is a very- it was felt that there was a very, very low number of cases that were asymptomatic. But as time has gone on, as there's been various forms of screening of people, especially in the community, we're appreciating that this disease can be either asymptomatic or [unintelligible] symptomatic, which is presenting with relatively few symptoms. And of course, just to make matters even more confusing is that this disease presented or I guess spread rapidly during, in the northern hemisphere, what we call cough and cold season. So as a result, if you developed a slight runny nose and perhaps a bit of a cough in January, that's not at all unusual for most people. This wouldn't stand there as much as if the same symptoms had been spreading in North America in June or July, for example.

MG: Well, and that's a question that we often hear. And I mean, anecdotally, you hear it as well, Sumon, is that people wonder, did they maybe have got knocked out by a flu or a very, very bad cold in November, December, early January. Didn't take any notice of it then. Now they're wondering maybe whether they actually had Covid. What do you say to those people?

DR. SUMON CHAKRABARTY: I think that's a very big possibility. I have many friends, for example, in California who are saying that they had some type of, you know, cold or flu in in late December. And they're wondering the same thing. I think that is certainly a possibility by the time that we detected it in many parts of the world had already been there circulating, especially in places like China and Italy. So certainly a possibility. And once we have a good serologic test, we'll be able to shed some light on this area.

MG: And this will tell us who has antibodies and perhaps who has been affected but have been asymptomatic or subclinical.

DR. SUMON CHAKRABARTY: That's right. It is going give us an idea of the prevalence of who is actually been exposed over a large population.

MG: Just the last point on this, I want to bring in another voice in a moment. But what is it like, the two of you to be learning about this as you are treating people?

DR. MATTHEW OUGHTEN: I would say this is just another day that ends in Y. I mean, yes, obviously, this is a bigger, more globally spread disease. But, you know, I think if you're doing this job correctly and doing this job well, you're always learning as you go refining your sort of your personal data set, using that to become a better clinician, a better diagnostician. So this is just that, but accelerated by a factor of 100.

DR. SUMON CHAKRABARTY: I completely agree with Matthew that looking at this is that we've all been learning there's certain situations that we have to prepare to be wrong. And, you know, I think it's important to listen to all the different viewpoints and then go forward at the very bottom line based on evidence. It's important.

MG: Preparing to be wrong is interesting, though, because again, there are a lot of people who say, well, how come you didn't know this then and now we're being told something different. So whether it's about masks, whether it's about the very symptoms, now we're hearing there, you know, if you have a sore throat or you have chills that you might have this. You say that being able to be proven wrong is a good thing.

DR. SUMON CHAKRABARTY: Yes, exactly. Because the thing is, we're working with the best evidence that we have at the time. Think about this. We've learned so much about this infection in just the last four months. And it's important to always be ready to kind of learn more. Look at the evidence and let it guide you rather than emotion.

DR. MATTHEW OUGHTEN: That's the strength of the scientific method.

MG: Well, in it being willing to be proven wrong, but also just learning more constantly. Yes. Dr. Jennifer McCombe has been listening and she's a neurologist at the University of Alberta. Doctor, good morning to you.

DR. JENNIFER MCCOMBE: Good morning.

MG: What do you make of this, this idea of constantly being proven wrong, but constantly being challenged? But what you know and how that shapes how we treat people who have this disease?

DR. JENNIFER MCCOMBE: Well, yes. No, I completely agree with what the others said. I mean, it's about just learning every day about how this is changing and the new symptoms that potentially you might expect. And and when you learn those things, trying to figure out why they happen. And once you've done that, hopefully directing a treatment a little bit better.

MG: We're now hearing about COVID patients who have neurological conditions, especially strokes, but also loss of smell, taste balance. What's going on there?

DR. JENNIFER MCCOMBE: Well, yeah. Again, we're not entirely sure what's going on. There's a few different possibilities that people are wondering about whether or not the virus affects those parts of the brain and in other nerves themselves or whether or not this is due to inflammation, healthy happening elsewhere in the body that's been affecting that organ or even something else. Like with the strokes, whether or not clots are forming more easily in these patients and then causing stroke. So, again, something we're still learning.

MG: The number of severe neurological conditions in this country isn't particularly well known when you attach it to coronavirus. But this is being documented and recorded in other countries. What are you learning about those cases and the research that's being done elsewhere?

DR. JENNIFER MCCOMBE: What we're learning is that these things can happen. And I mean, this was mentioned before. We're seeing this come very quickly and it's spreading across the world in large numbers. And so because of that, we get the sense that this is happening very frequently, but it is happening in a small percentage of people. We are learning about it from our colleagues. And then eventually, if the numbers come here, potentially we will see more of those things here and we'll be better armed to Bill to recognise those things earlier.

MG: Dr. Chakrabarty, are you seeing those neurological conditions with your colvard patients?

DR. SUMON CHAKRABARTY: Absolutely. And again, this is something that we've all been learning, that we've been seeing people that have unexplained strokes. We've seen people that have unexplained, you know, they're not waking up after the sedation is stopped. Unusual radiologic manifestations when we do MRI. So very, very important to document this. And certainly there's much more to the virus, what you can do rather than just the lungs.

MG: What do we think is happening to the brain? Dr. McCombe, when it comes to the effects of COVID-19.

DR. JENNIFER MCCOMBE: Well, so I mean, one of the possibilities is that the virus is entering the brain itself and causing these troubles. Potentially, if people have troubles of smell, it's entering through those nerves and and you're developing headache and things as a result. The other possibility, as I mentioned, is because of inflammation happening in the body, that potentially that inflammation is leading to some of those symptoms or else could it just be a clot that there's clots forming everywhere in the body in that clot goes to the brain and causes a stroke in the brain, which results in those symptoms.

MG: So this is something that you've seen before.

DR. JENNIFER MCCOMBE: Absolutely. I mean, again, because of the volume of patients that we're seeing at this time, it seems no more obvious in this population, but definitely other coronaviruses have been documented to have neurologic complications. We've seen it with other types of viruses like influenza. So absolutely, these things have been seen before.

MG: I think to the average person and I could ask all three of you this, but I'll start with you, Jennifer. The average person hears about this and it's unnerving because they think maybe we had a bead on what this thing was and that keeps changing and then it becomes something more complicated. How should people who are listening to this, who are in the midst of this pandemic, how should they be processing what you're talking about?

DR. JENNIFER MCCOMBE: I get it. It is unnerving. I mean, we're learning about this whole even idea of pandemic, because as mentioned before, I think the things that make me feel better is that everybody is working hard to figure out why this is happening. We've done great measures to flatten the curve here in our country and we're seeing less numbers of it. And we have the benefit to learning from other places and learning how to stop the spread and essentially try to mitigate all of the problems that could be happening.

MG: Matthew, out and how far along are we in actually understanding this virus?

DR. MATTHEW OUGHTEN: I mean, it's a constant process of refinement. And there's many things that we suspected about this infection early on that have been largely borne out. I'm thinking, for example, of the initial use of 14 days as a quarantine period, and subsequent research has borne out that that was probably a very well-chosen duration of time. There's other things that we believed early on that some secret research has shown us were we were completely off and. But this is, as I was saying before, the scientific method. We're learning more about this. We're constantly refining. And I have to say, I don't think I've ever seen such a rapid, collaborative effort between groups literally all over the world. And I think that is really encouraging, not only for helping us as a as a as a planet come to grips with this infection, understand this infection better and deal with this infection. But I'm also hopeful that this is setting the stage for such collaborative efforts to continue even when SARS COVID-2 is a distant memory.

MG: Sumon Chakrabarty, what do you see as the promise there just in terms of, to Matthew's point, beyond this, people working together, getting out of, as they say, those silos and actually collaborating for the greater good.

DR. JENNIFER MCCOMBE: I think is very important, Doctor Oughten said an amazing point here about the collaboration now in collaboration in the future. And if we look, this is not just in the scientific world either. The whole idea of social and physical distancing has been something that we've all done as a team effort to make it happen. And I do think that, obviously, I don't want to be in in isolation anymore. I want this to go back to normal life. It's going to be a while. But I think if there's one thing that we learn from this is that we have to do things together. And hopefully this is something that continues long after the pandemic is done.

MG: In the last couple of minutes, I want to ask you each the same question, which is I'll start with you. Suman, what's one thing you still want to know about this virus?

MATT GALLOWAY: You know, I think at this point is that the one thing I want to know the best is what we can do in the future, in the upcoming months to make it so that we can decrease the amount of transmission, start moving back to a more normal life and do it with minimum disruption to society. I think that's the biggest thing that I want to know. And we're going to start to figure this out in the next several weeks.

MG: Matthew Oughten, for you. In the midst of everything changing, what's the one question you still really- the burning question you have?

DR. MATTHEW OUGHTEN: I would like us to know who is immune and for how long. Of course, as was pointed out earlier, this is an infection that most people didn't even know of until about four months ago. And as a result, it's very hard to know about immunity that lasts any substantial duration. But that question, knowing who is immune and how long and how robust that immunity is, is going to be the question that is going to determine in large part how easily and how quickly we can reduce some of our restrictive measures and to get back to something more approaching a normal life.

MG: Jennifer McCombe, to you last. What's the big question you have still?

DR. JENNIFER MCCOMBE: Yeah. What I'd like to know is what is the ultimate causes of why certain people develop certain types of channels with the virus now that people are still in some asymptomatic. So is that that the virus is just acting differently in them? Is there more inflammation? And I think that'll help us sort out why certain people get sick and when we know that, will build to figure out how to make those people better, to target more directed therapies that might be causing all of these symptoms.

MG: It's reassuring that you share the questions that so many of us share around this and you have some answers as well. But we're still trying to figure out where we are and where we're going to go. Thank you all for the work that you're doing and for joining us this morning.

GUESTS: Thank you. Here's our pleasure.

MG: Jennifer McCombe is a neurologist at the University of Alberta. Sumon Chakrabarty, an infectious disease physician with the Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga. And Matthew Oughten is an infectious disease physician at Jewish General Hospital and a professor at McGill University in Montreal. The CBC News is next. And then overlapping anxiety's of health care workers, how to support the mental health of those on the frontlines. They're learning about this disease, as you heard, as the disease is unfolding. But they are also trying to figure out how to treat patients and protect themselves. That's coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Mental health of front-line workers

Guests: Dr. Samir Sinha, Christine Purdon, Sanjeev Sockalingam

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, the sportscaster Jamie Campbell, he can't call any Toronto Blue Jays games right now, so instead he's phoning lonely fans.

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JAMIE CAMPBELL: Oh, hey, Anne, this is Jamie Campbell from SportsNet.

VOICE: Hi.

MG: You'll hear that story in about 45 minutes. But first, staying mentally fit on the frontlines.

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MG: So daily banging of pots and pans, one of the ways Canadians are showing support for doctors, nurses and other frontline health care workers. Many of those workers are under tremendous pressure right now, working long hours, worried about loved ones, struggling for protective gear and trying not to get sick themselves. Recent reports describe an E.R. doctor in New York City who recovered from COVID-19. She continued to treat patients. She was treated for exhaustion. And last weekend she died by suicide. Dr. Samir Sinha is director of geriatrics at the Sinai Health System and the University Health Network in Toronto. Doctor, good morning.

DR. SAMIR SINHA: Good morning, Matt.

MG: The story of the doctor in New York is heartbreaking. She was on the frontlines of this work in an area that was the epicentre, still is the epicentre in many ways, of this outbreak in the United States. When you heard of what she was going through, what went through your mind?

DR. SAMIR SINHA: It was sad. I mean, it was you feel a mix of guilt and sadness and and sadness for the fact that, you know, I have colleagues, for example, in New York, in New York City, like her, who are working in the E.D. who, she got infected. She then brought herself back to work so she could actually work just as hard. Even though she was still trying to recover, if you will. And then her her colleagues, she said, you need to take a break. And I don't know, just it's so sad to see that that happened to a colleague of mine. And why say a bit of guilt is because, you know, we're lucky. You know, as frontline workers, we're all going through a lot of stress that some of us are, especially my colleagues who are working in nursing homes in Canada. You're just seeing that some of our colleagues are getting it worse than others. And it just we all want to just get through this together.

MG: One of the last six weeks or so been like for you.

DR. SAMIR SINHA: It's been completely different. I mean, you like to think that you're trained for every eventuality, but I don't think any of us is trained for a pandemic. And I know that as a trainee and studying medical history, actually at one point, you know, I read about pandemics and how, you know, there's all these stages that we go through as clinicians, as a society. And I always thought about, well, what would it be like when we've hit this point and we have. And it's tough because you're scared. You're scared of getting sick. You're scared of getting your loved one sick. You're scared of letting your patients down. You're scared of letting your colleagues down. You don't want to make a wrong decision. Yet, a day and a pandemic is like a week. I don't even remember what life was like on both, you know, six weeks ago. And I feel as a leader of a program, one of the biggest in Canada, I've got to be the strongest for all of my colleagues. So you're wearing a lot on your shoulders these days.

MG: You are one of the most respected voices in your field in this country, if not the most. And one of the things that happens is people will turn to you in the midst of a crisis for information. Early on in this pandemic, you said publicly that if your mother was in a care home, given what was going on in those long term care homes, you would try to pull her out. How did the response to that comment affect what you're going through right now?

DR. SAMIR SINHA: You know, it's tough because, again, you know, what you want to do as a physician is you always want to be able to do no harm. I mean, that's the Hippocratic Oath that we all take when we start. And my patients regularly, my health patients always say like, well, Dr. Sinha, what would you do if this is your mother? What would you do if it's your father? And my patients are my colleagues. And so I will always speak the truth. And this was an uncomfortable truth that I spoke, you know, early on. And initially people thought, well, he's just being reckless, like, how dare. My own professional society actually sent him an email to all members deriding my comments and saying that it was irresponsible, if you will. That was horrible because, you know, for a person who's just been trying to help and trying to lead, it's sad now that people look back from three weeks ago or four weeks ago when I comment and seen that 90 percent of our deaths had been in these nursing homes in Ontario, 30 percent of the cases have been in these [unintelliglbe]. And this is only one percent of the population. And we're still seeing outbreaks every day. So with over 1000 dead in these homes, people realise that the frontline was there. So, you know, I'm not commenting on this. So people say, oh, I told you so? No, that's not the point. The point is that our focus needs to be on saving as many lives as possible. And sometimes that means saying unpopular things. But I'm glad it was the right thing to say, because it got movement and it and and I hope that we're starting to turn the tide.

MG: Do you ever wonder or maybe how do you prevent wondering whether - part of this is about advising government on policy and the other work that you're doing - whether you look back and you wonder whether you could have done more or more, whether more could have been done on a policy level so that we aren't in the place that we are now.

DR. SAMIR SINHA: I wrote my first report for the Ontario government as a sexpert lead back in 2012, and I don't want to look back at it right now because a lot of the answers that I had at that time, a lot of the answers that colleagues had before and even what the wet law for inquiry last year talked about in the SA's inquiry. It actually said it had recommendations there, that if those things had been done by previous governments even. We would have actually perhaps avoided the level of death and catastrophe we have now. So, of course I feel enormous guilt that as soon as I find information, I'm emailing our ministers of long term care and seniors, their deputies, everybody, anybody who will listen. And I'm glad I've been doing that, because a day is a lifetime in a pandemic, and at least we've been able to move quickly, quicklierr than some other provinces, at least in terms of, you know, changing things because it's been deadly in these environments.

MG: What is it that wakes you up in the middle of the night? I mean, we all have these moments. It's 3:00 o'clock and then we're in the middle of a pandemic. Those 3:00 o'clock wakeup moments. What is it that wakes you?

DR. SAMIR SINHA: It's it's those things about could I have done more? Should I have been more forceful in a conversation? You know, should I have sounded even more alarm bells? I think the challenge is that when I see the stats, you know, the ghoulish maths every day and seeing more people dying, I really go back. I treat every single step through this pandemic and say, is there more I could have done? And so it is it's stressful and [unintelligible] knows? You know, dinnertime conversations that sometimes, you know, there are tears or I sometimes arrive on the doorstep and I'm in tears because I hear news dispatches. And I just feel like as a leader, as someone who people look to, you know, should I have done more back, you know, five years ago, two years ago, six weeks ago? And I think that's one of those things, as long as you know that you are genuinely trying to do everything you can, you can at least look in the mirror yourself at the end of the day, and that kind of gets you through.

MG: So how do you cope with that?

DR. SAMIR SINHA: You know what? What's been amazing, my patients, they seem to be comforting me more these days than I'm comforting that I call few every day just to check in on them, see how they're going. They're surprised I even have time and all this to check in on them. And they say, well, we're watching you on the news and we hear you on the radio and we're glad you're doing okay. But thanks for looking out for us. And and I have incredible colleagues and, you know, my colleagues at Sinai and UHN and my colleagues across the country, literally every day they're sending me emails of encouragement saying, yes, you know, you said something that some people didn't like. But you know what? It had to be said and good for you. And I think having colleagues like that who can keep you grounded, having parents who closely tell me what I'm doing, right or wrong. I'm just glad that through this pandemic, they've just kept cheering the on and saying you're doing the right thing and keep doing it.

MG: Thanks for the work that you're doing. And stay well. And it's great to talk to you, as always.

DR. SAMIR SINHA: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Dr. Samir Sinha is director of geriatrics at the Sinai Health System and the University Health Network in Toronto. The Canadian Medical Association recently conducted a survey of its members and the overwhelming majority of the 2500 doctors who responded report being stressed out by this pandemic, by how it's affecting them and how it's affecting their patients. Dr. Sandy Buchmann is the president of the CMA.

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They tend to compartmentalize their mental health problems, put it to the side and continue to serve, continue to work. And so we are concerned that for sure, that there may be a delay over time, perhaps as the pandemic crisis eases, that these mental health problems will surface later on, further anxiety, perhaps more depression, substance use, that kind of thing that might happen in the future.

MG: Christine Purdon is a registered clinical psychologist and a professor at the University of Waterloo. Christine, good morning to you.

CHRISTINE PURDON: Good morning.

MG: You heard the results of that survey. You also heard Samir talking about the pressure and the stress that he feels. How concerned are you that those on the frontlines in this pandemic, the health care workers who are there protecting us, that they are facing their own looming mental health crisis?

CHRISTINE PURDON: I am absolutely. These people are working so hard in circumstances that most of us just don't really understand. And I do think for sure there are going to be people when all this is over who are going to have some struggles with depression, anxiety, possibly post-traumatic stress disorder. And I think that the good news is that for that we tend to manage these kinds of this kind of stress and trauma in ways that can sometimes lead to actual growth. For example, so, for example, some people who come through trauma come through the other side with stronger relationships and struggle less with their priorities. So whereas before they may have had trouble prioritising family and work or family over overwork, they may now find themselves less conflicted about doing that and being able to prioritise their family. So some people can come through the other side of things in a way that leads to growth. There there are always people who are going to come through with with difficulties. And that doesn't mean that anybody's weaker or at fault in any way. It's just that when you've been exposed to these kinds of impossible situations, it is going to affect a small part of the population.

MG: What happens when, I'll use your phrase, you talk about coming through these things when we have no idea how we're going to come through them. We don't know where the end of the tunnel is.

CHRISTINE PURDON: Yes, exactly. So it's sort of this marathon for sure, not a sprint. And I think this is where people I'm hoping that they're getting the leadership and guidance to be able to be told land one plane at a time. So, you know, focus on what needs to be done right now and try not to focus on the rest of the mountain that needs to be climbed. And I also think people need to be able to take breaks and get refreshed and return. I think that I'm hoping that the org different organizations for frontline workers are able to make sure that they're the people who work for them are able to do that.

MG: Samir talked about coming home and either being in tears at the doorstep or at the dinner table. We're all living this stress, but they are living it in a different way, in part because we might be able to turn the news off. You might be able to distract yourself with some sort of mindless television. It's harder if you're coming home based on what you've seen at your work, that's going to follow you there. How do they go about separating selves and the fact that they're living through this? They're not working in a vacuum.

CHRISTINE PURDON: I think that, yes, and I think that there can be a tendency to want to protect one's family from the experiences that you've had. And I think that people need to talk about. They need to debrief about what's happened to them in the day and maybe not necessarily at the dinner table. But I do think being able to talk to close family and friends and colleagues as as we just heard, like the support of colleagues meant everything. So I do think it's extremely important that people be able to talk about their feelings. And again, maybe not at the dinner table, but maybe at another point. And just to have a chance to debrief, to cry, to be angry, to release the emotions from the day, because not being able to talk about it is very, very difficult. It's like denying this incredibly profound experience you've been through. And I think it is very important we know this about development of trauma, not being able to express one's feelings. It's actually really important in my neighbourhood.

MG: Every night at 7:30 p.m., you hear the clangs, pots and pans and people blowing on a recorder and whatever else they can get to make noise to celebrate people who were working on the frontlines. What's the effect of something like that?

CHRISTINE PURDON: Well, I think it's going to vary. I think we need to ask the health worker called workers about that. I think there could be quite varied responses. So I think it's really wonderful to acknowledge and validate and support are our front line workers in every way that we can. I think that we also need to think reflect on potentially unintended consequences. So when our narrative is that these people are heroes, for some people, they may think, well, superheroes don't get sick. Superheroes don't turn down an extra shift. Superheroes don't fail. And so it could be that some health care workers are walking past the clanging thinking, I don't deserve this, or now I can't, you know, turn down an extra shift. I have to be a superhero. So I think we we just need to be careful about recognising the challenges that that health care workers have, not adding to the pressure.

MG: We're speaking with a friend of mine who's a doctor, and she talked about how she comes home. And she's essentially been on high alert all day. And it's really hard just to flip that switch back to living a normal life. If you take a look at the long tail of that, psychologically, what what is the the effect of this when this is over, at some point time it will be done. What's the effect of that of that heightened stress that you're constantly under?

CHRISTINE PURDON: Yes. So it's I mean, it's in a way it's a bit like the soldiers going into battle that when they come back from the front, they're, you know, on high alert and they're in their homes and they're, you know, establishing their perimeter of their of their house in suburbia at midnight. And so I do think that this is part of our the threat system that's getting triggered. And the sense that we don't know that threat has passed. And I think we need to really help ourselves or help people be mindful of what's actually not happening. So when you come home, there aren't alarms that are saying a patient needs critical attention. Instead, you know, there are children who want to play with you and thus you want to be able to mindfully switch gears and be able to say, OK, right. I'm not in that circumstance and try to down regulate that anxious response, recognise that it's normal to feel very keyed up. And adrenaline has a very long Half-Life in the body. So once you've been very pumped up, it can take a while and you're still edgy and antsy. But recognising that startle response and that hyper alert is normal, but also recognising that you're allowed to switch gears and say, OK, I'm home now, I can relax now.

MG: We're going to speak next about supports that are there. But from your perspective, just briefly, what should be in place to help those front line workerss?

CHRISTINE PURDON: I mean, right now, I think what health care workers need the most is protective gear, hot meals, clean sheets, family time and work environment that supports them by normalising stress, normalising, starting to feel burnt out, helping people accept that when they're burning out that they can take a break. And so I think those are the most important things that can contribute to mental health right now of workers. I think for workers who are really struggling with this, like finding themselves losing empathy, finding themselves really burnt out. There are lots of resources. The Canadian government, if you if you go on their Web site, there are links to different types of tele-psychology or Internet assisted therapy, supports that people can use. I think afterwards, I think that we need to be ready to validate and support. I think that it'll be helpful for people to have the opportunity to debrief, to have an opportunity like when this is over that it's not just simply over and everybody goes back to normal, but rather there's an opportunity to kind of process that experience with other people who have been through it. And so I do think we want to be sure that we have mental health support in place for everybody in Canada, including our health care workers, that with particular attention to making sure there's an opportunity for people to debrief.

MG: Christine, thank you.

CHRISTINE PURDON: You're welcome.

MG: Christine Purdon is a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo. Sanjeev Sockalingam is the vice president of education, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health CANH. Also a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He's been listening in. Sanjeev, good morning to you.

SANJEEV SOCKALINGAM: Good morning.

MG: Tell me about some of the resources that are available for those frontline health care workers right now.

SANJEEV SOCKALINGAM: Well, I think picking up on some of the earlier comments that I do think that across Canada there's been an increased effort to make resources available from a range of materials and organizations. So one for sure, we know there is an increase in information on mental health and some of the ways to cope. Even my organisation has put out apps and online resources available for health care providers for coping strategies. And I know many provinces have moved to the centralised information databases, which are helpful for education and awareness. But also more importantly, I think there are opportunities for people to start to act for support. Whether it's through hospitals or health care organizations where they have their peers to debrief, provide support, those kind of moments or safe spaces to talk about mental health or some of the distress that people might be experiencing. Coaches and buddy systems that have been set up in those organizations as well. And then I would say emerging direct access to distress centres as well as opportunities for getting direct mental health care as well.

MG: We'll often talk about the things that we've learned from experiences past. And initially we were talking about the lessons that we learned from SARS when it came to ensuring that these systems were in place to protect the public, but also protect those health care workers. When you take a look at the work that you're doing, what did SARS show you about what's necessary in a moment like this?

SANJEEV SOCKALINGAM: Well, I think there is definitely different phases, as we know, through pandemics that we need to plan for and provide support. So, first of all, with the anxiety and worries about working in these spaces, you know, personal protective equipment being key in addressing fears about the spread of infection to families and loved ones, and then really providing those supports and ensuring information and equipment is available is critical. I think as we get into the current phases, you start to see things like exhaustion, fatigue, burnout. As you know, hours continue to accumulate as well as can imagine distress of seeing individuals and patients that in our nature are wanting to help and save but are unable to. And so really providing support during that time and manage those distresses. And so we have seen these support networks in groups where having mobile teams providing mental health support in distress, whether it be phone lines, whether it be kind of huddles on those units and supports or groups, virtual groups, especially given our physical distancing, are some strategies of emergent based on some of our SARS experience.

Experience is years long. Well, there continue go on to long term. I was just going to look at that. Long term. I do think that we know that many of these things can persist for [unintelligible], although many people can grow and learn and continue to manage a situation. I think we do have to be cognizant of the kind of post pandemic mental health burden is there and that we need to think about how do we address those and again, continue to provide support. Long term is going to be critical in the form of all these interventions that I've talked about in terms of awareness, access to supports from peers, you know, online counselling, but also. More direct care is needed.

MG: We just have a minute or so left. Is your sense that attention is being paid now you think of the work that those frontline workers are doing and they want to help. They want to be there on the frontlines. And as we were hearing, if you think of yourself as a hero, sometimes you don't want to step aside because you think you're needed there. So is that support present now?

SANJEEV SOCKALINGAM: I think there are some support that have emerged over time and over the last few weeks. I do think the goal here is to continue to offer this for the long haul. And I think the major focus for us now is to again, not to think about this as short sprints, but more about a marathon. And how do we think about building that sustainable mental health support system for health care providers who are probably at highest risk during this pandemic of some of the distress and mental health concerns?

MG: I appreciate your perspective on this and the work that you're doing, Doctor. Thank you.

SANJEEV SOCKALINGAM: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Sanjeev Sockalingam is a vice president of education at cam- H. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. It's also professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. A reminder for anyone who might be struggling right now. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline phone number is 1 800 273 8255. That's 800 273 8255. In Canada, suicide prevention and support is available from Crisis Services Canada at 1 8 3 3 4 5 6 4 5 6 6. 8 3 3 4 5 6 4, 5, 6, 6. There are so many doctors, nurses, frontline health care workers who are listening, I'm sure. And in the midst of this. Who are you relying on to help you through this? Samir was talking about the support not just only of friends and family, but also of colleagues. What are you turning to and who are you turning to in a difficult moment? We'd love to hear from you, particularly those right on the frontlines in the midst of this. You can reach us through the Web site at cbc.ca/thecCurrent. Click on the contact link. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or send us an email thecurrent@cbc.ca. Coming up in 90 seconds. Entire towns and businesses depend on their success. Canada's theatres are struggling through this pandemic and if they want to survive, they need to get creative. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current and that story is on its way in a minute and a half. Stay with us.

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How can Canadian theatre survive lockdown?; Toronto Blue Jays broadcaster Jamie Campbell calls up fans

Guests: Ashlie Cocoran, R.H. Thomson, Antoni Cimolino, Jamie Campbell

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Rain. Wind. Thunder. Fire are my daughters. I tax, not you, you element's with unkindness. I never gave your kingdom, called you children. You owe me no subscription. Why then, let fall your horrible pleasure. Here I stand. Your slave. The poor infirm weak and despised old man.

MG: It's one of this country's greatest actors in the role of King Lear. Colm Feore performing at the Stratford Festival in 2014. Those were simpler times in many ways, especially in the world of theatre. This week, the Stratford Festival suspended its entire 2020 season, and because of COVID-19 theatres across this country are empty right now. With no end in sight, many are pivoting to the Internet. Edmonton's Citadel Theatre has a series called Stuck in the House, features videos from performers whose shows were cancelled. Here's the playwright and actress Belinda Cornish and her husband, the actor Mark Meer, with a bit of her play The Garneau Block.

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VOICE 1: Hello, darling. I haven't seen you since the Mayor's evening. How did it go? That's right. You hosted. Did you meet them there?

VOICE 2: We'd met before. We did a radio thing. He is tall.

VOICE 1: And handsome.

MG: Actors may still be creating content, but they have taken a serious financial hit, not to mention the Canadians who work behind the scenes and in businesses that rely on the success of theatres. R.H. Thomson is an award winning Canadian film TV and stage actor. Antoni Cimolino is artistic director of the Stratford Festival of Canada and Ashlie Corcoran is artistic director of the Arts Club Theatre Company of Vancouver. Good morning to you all.

GUEST: Good morning.

MG: Antoni Cimolino, let's start with you and the decision to suspend the Stratford Festival's season. Take me through the moment when you finally had to make that decision.

ANTONI CIMOLINO: Well, it was that week in the middle of March where every day we seem to get more and more information, we were imploring our staff to make sure that, you know, they were safely apart from each other, washing their hands, doing everything they could. But, you know, the very purpose of theatre's connection. So it's very hard to rehearse in social distancing situation. As time went on, we realised that things, the skies were darkening and we just couldn't. We had to keep our people safe. We have to keep our audience with say. And so we made the decision the 16th of March to stop rehearsal. And you know, Matt, it was a really tough decision to eventually cancel performances because while we need to you know, first of all, safety has to be first. But for the 1000 people who work at the festival, for the 3500 people beyond the community of Stratford who, you know, businesses and are working at restaurants, B&Bs, this was really devastating. And ultimately, you know, it's devastating to the arts across the country because the art gives us a reason to live. It gives us joy. And so to have all of that taken away is really devastating.

MG: R.H., for you, what was the immediate impact on you and on the work that you're doing in the situation that we're in?

R.H. THOMSON: Well, being a performer, we're in the performing arts. But I've always called the performing arts the precarious arts. Our lives are precarious from day one. And as you go through a career, you're always just trying to start stay on your feet, no matter what's thrown at you. And employment is so, unless you're at a wonderful festival like [unintelliglbe], where you actually have long term employment performance, your lives are on and off your entire life. So this is just another a bigger set of variations of the vicarious being thrown at you. But we're also resourceful. So it's trying to find creative. We're in the creative world here. And the creativity, the urge to say, to speak, to make, to construct and to communicate is is always kind of feeling its way forward in some way. And so now you're seeing all the bits and pieces that are starting appearence say, well, we could do this or we could do that. So in a way, everything's changed, but in a way, nothing's changed.

GUEST: Ashlie Corcoran Tell me about shutting down your productions. How how did you make that decision? Given everything we do as we've heard, everything that is factored into a decision like that.

ASHLIE COCORAN: Yes. So something that makes our club unique is that we're a year round organisation. So our season starts in September and they go through to August. So just like Anthony, very bad March, when we realised that there was a global pandemic, we started to make decisions. And for us, it's been about making decisions about in particular, specific productions. So up to this point, seven of our productions from this current season have either been postponed or cancelled. And our season runs until the end of August. And then a brand new season with 18 other productions will start in September. At this point, out of those seven productions, based on the possibility that by the end of this summer and there may be seven performances on our stage, and there's also, of course, the hope, that optimistic hope that we'll be starting our next season in September. But for us, just like Anthony, we're saying that number one consideration that people safety and patient safety, our staff safety and of course, our artists safety. And so we're every day listening to what Dr. Bonnie Henry has to say. Here in B.C., listening to Dr. Theresa Tam and we're using the guidance of our public health officials to make these very difficult decisions that affect a lot of people's livelihoods. We've had to lay off 125 [unintelliglbe] staff almost immediately in March and 200 artists contracts have been affected. And, of course, you know, affects our audiences, all who and love coming to the club and love participating in the art and entertainment that they receive when they come to see shows on our stages.

MG: Antoni, you said that this will be a devastating blow. How much money will Stratford lose as a result of this?

ANTONI CIMOLINO: Well, in the tens of millions of dollars we were building this season that now we can't continue. And so while we're trying to pick up whatever pieces we can, we've got to get through to a time when we can, you know, put on plays again and give you a sense of perspective. We had 750 performances plus another another 300 form events or four theatres that are closed. And it was a big year we had been fundraising and we were opening up a new theatre named in the name of our founder, Tom Patterson. And so the impact is enormous. You know, each year the festival generates about $56 million dollars worth of taxes and a quarter of our audience comes from outside Canada. So that's a lot of newfound money for the Canadian government. And here's 135 million dollars worth of economic impact for the area. A lot of our local businesses that really invest this year because they were thinking, wow, this new theatre, a great opportunity to, you know, take a step up. And so for the thousands upon thousands of people, artists, staff members, people in the community, this will be you know, we don't know how long it's going to last. And the impact for all of us is enormous.

MG: That's a lot to wear. I mean, in terms of the decision that you're making, because it's not just the company. It's not just the people that are immediately employed by Strafford. It's it's all of those. The. The ripple effect goes on and on and on.

ANTONI CIMOLINO: Yes. I want to just take a step back and say it's a dangerous time and governments are doing what they need to do right now to make sure that we're all safe and they're frontline workers. So we have to put this in perspective. On the other hand, for people who are trying to, you know, who are living sometimes paycheque to paycheque, this also impacts life. And yes, it was tough. It's tough because you you these are neighbours. These are friends. These are colleagues. And while the outrage is absolutely right. You know, artists are used to this. This is how we live our life. And on the other hand, for a lot of people, this will provoke real hardship.

MG: R.H. if you were, not to age you, but an actor at the beginning of your career, what would this mean to you that precarity is something perhaps, to your point, used to it, but you understand how the game works if you're just starting out. What does something like this mean?

R.H. THOMSON: Well, it's about survival. And if you will, having so many decades under my belt here, part of actually having a career is surviving a career. Part of actually making it through from one decade to another to another to, you know, to suddenly you have a film and suddenly you have a television series and suddenly you have a wonderful play as a tarragon. And then suddenly the six months of nothing, partly of getting through that is to develop a series of survival mechanisms. And the old guys like me who've been around, we're around because we've developed all these bits of pieces that we can survive, you know, emotionally, psychically, psychologically, artistically, financially. But when you're starting out, you're just starting to put together that tool kit of what do I do when I'm not employed? What do I do if I'm not in a play? What do I do if I have no creative outlet? Do I just leave the profession or do I find other ways to survive? Because we're all- the creators always trying to maintain that ember inside, which is the creative spark. And that's what helps to speak and be fed and glow every day. And if you don't have a venue to appear [unintelliglbe] stages or appear in Stratford or if you don't have that. Where is that ember going to go out or do you keep that alive in some way? And that is part of the survival structure.

MG: Actually, the venue that people are now turning to, we see this in music, but also in theatre and other disciplines as well as is online. How does is that working for you?

ASHLIE COCORAN: Absolutely. We have, like many other institutions, pivoted a lot of our activities online. We have a new digital content platform, which is really just a digital space where we can hold some of that content. And we're providing online workshops and every Wednesday workshops and design technical theatre drama in play and every week they sell out. People are definitely looking for a way to engage with theatre and engage with the club. We also have a program called Live at Home where twice a week, I guess his contracts have had to be cancelled or postponed. Performative, a bit is whatever it is for them, whatever their inspiration, theatre pieces, music, piece of new text, a monologue from their living room. Then we put that on a lot of our social media. We're also existing activities that we are had like an emerging playright unit or a program. We're very proud of [unintelliglbe] whick is learning early about playwriting for youth to learn about playrighting that is now online. So yes, we're always looking for ways to engage with our audience during this time, either through new avenues or taking existing programming and [unintelligible].

MG: It does not, not to be crass, but can you make any money through that?

ASHLIE COCORAN: I would say that this is more about engaging with our audience than quote unquote monetizing. And there's always make money. But when, The Arts Club is the largest theatre in western Canada, I don't think that those workshops are going to be what sustains us through this, but they will be a way to sustain that connection to our audience.

MG: Do you worry about that? I mean, I asked Antoni this as well, but do you worry about sustainability, how long this can go on for?

ASHLIE COCORAN: We definitely worry about own ability.

ANTONI CIMOLINO: I mean, you know, maybe the antivirals and the vaccines come tomorrow. I mean, we this this is definitely a challenge. And the longer it goes on, the more devastating it's going to be. And none of us know the answer to that question.

MG: How do you think how do you think, Antoni, you get people back into a theatre. I mean, there's been reports from Seoul where people show up to the theatre and they everyone's wearing masks. You get your temperature taken as you come in and then they trace people when they go out to make sure that this doesn't spread, if somebody were to be sick. Are you starting to think about that, how you could possibly convince people to get back into the theatre?

ANTONI CIMOLINO: Well, I think that over time, as we know more about this virus and and things evolve and change when the time comes that the government says we can get together and whatever sites, groups. I think there's going to be different protocols for a period of time until we feel comfortable together again, as we were six months ago. Until then, space thing masks. I do think we're going to have to either think about all that and that's true across the board. That's going to be the new reality until we all get resistant to this virus.

MG: Ashlie, are you thinking about that as well. In terms of how you would convince theatre goers who for the last several weeks have been staying apart from each other to come and sit side by side and share a space and share an experience together.

ASHLIE COCORAN: Yes. Similarly, Antoni, our Health and Safety Committee at the Arts Club and our leadership, we're talking about those things right now. I'm gathering the information that we have. Looking at what's happening in places like Seoul or I just read about a theatre company in Massachusetts that's having programming this summer. What are other people doing? Gathering information, putting together plans and really listening to what our public health guidelines are here so that when we learn more, we're ready to take action. We want people to feel safe and comfortable, and that's the most important thing. So we're waiting for that time.

ANTONI CIMOLINO: Or maybe we resurrect an old 19th century theatrical form called the Box. The theatres in the 19th and 18th century used to have private boxes that you could sit in. So you didn't have to be in public while you were in the theatre. So maybe we'll bring back the private box.

MG: People get creative.

ANTONI CIMOLINO: You know, the festival theatre has 1830 seats. One of the great innovations of it was that we went back to the Greeks and we came together as a community. We could watch each other, watch the play. And the power of coming together as a community it's why theatre was invented in democracy. It's about coming together and determining our values together. And so coming back to that one day will be glorious. And I think when we feel that's right, it's going to be like a rock.

MG: I just wonder whether we took that for granted. Do you know what I mean? That we go and we would be in that space with everybody else and you'd share something and you think, well, I'll just do this again next week or I'll do it again next summer. Now, you can't.

ASHLIE COCORAN: You know, I think there are lots of things that we've taken for granted in this period as physical distancing thing has probably put a lot of that entirely, you know, but you read about those surveys where the number one thing people are excited about doing is hugging their friends and family members. But I was going to say the same as Antoni, like when I get downtrodden and when they get a little overwhelmed or sad thinking about all of this, and what are those protocols and when is the science going to come? I do think that when it is safe to gather together, that's all we're going to want to do. That's all people are going to want to do.

MG: R.H. Do you think the audiences will come back?

R.H. THOMSON: I think the sports stadiums will be packed. I think the theatres will be packed. We're performing arts and we're a blood sport. And people would get addicted to a blood sport. I mean, essentially says and so people when you go in, when you watch a story or when you want to watch a game being played and the goal being scored as a community, that's one thing. When you watch a story being told as a community, that's another thing. And we've been trying- we have been told that, yes, life can happen on the Internet, on screens. We've been told that for probably a good decade now, but we know the blood is using in our lives. And so that's why these bases will fill up. There are opportunities that appear, though. I mean, David Young wrote a play called Inexpressible Island, about six men who were trapped in 1913 in an ice cave in Antarctic for an entire winter. And they survived and they came out. And he wrote this incredible play based on what did these people do in this cave, knowing that people had forgotten them and they were totally isolated. What did they do? And what stories could they tell to keep themselves going? Well, we did it about a number of years ago. We did that play a number times in Toronto and Ottawa and other places. And so we're gonna do a version, an online version, it with the NAC program. And we're going to do it in early May, in which we will all be in isolation on a Zoom performance, telling a story about surviving in isolation. And so in a way the plays return that are that speak perfectly to the time that we're in.

MG: It feels like we're in a bit of an ice cave these days. I wish you all the best of luck. It's great to speak with you all. Thank you.

GUESTS: Thank you very much.

MG: R.H.Thomson film, TV and stage actor. He was with Antoni Cimolino, artistic director of the Stratford Festival, and Ashlie Corcoran, artistic director of the Arts Club Theatre Company of Vancouver. I Matt Galloway, you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

MG: From theatre to sports, baseball fans may recognise that music.

SOUNDCLIP

And well documented and from the time he signed in July of 2015, Vladimir Guerrero Junior was expected to be in the major leagues. That day arrived a year ago.

MG: You might recognise that voice as well. It's Jamie Campbell, host of the show Bluejay Central on SportsNet. Major League Baseball, like theatre, is postponed due to this pandemic. And so Jamie Campbell has found himself with some time on his hands. Among many other things, he's been picking up the phone and making personal phone calls to Jays fans across this country, people who are missing the game and who might need to be in a little bit of company or comfort. Calls like this one.

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JAMIE CAMPBELL: Oh, hey. And this is Jamie Campbell from SportsNet.

VOICE: Hi.

JAMIE CAMPBELL: How are you?

VOICE: Oh, not too bad.

JAMIE CAMPBELL: Good. How are you doing otherwise? Are you getting enough supplies and food?

VOICE: I was just putting some groceries away now that my son got for me.

JAMIE CAMPBELL: That's great.

MG: Jamie Campbell. Good morning.

JAMIE CAMPBELL: Good morning, Matt.

MG: I love this idea. Why are you calling people?

JAMIE CAMPBELL: I needed something to do. Now it's more than that. I learned long ago that as much as we like to say we're in the broadcast industry, we're actually in the customer service industry. And I have great respect for everybody that tunes in to watch Blue Jays baseball on SportsNet. And I felt that the best way that I could contribute to any loneliness or sadness or fear that they might be feeling when we learned that we were all going to be in lockdown was to simply pick up a phone and an offer to talk to as many people as I possibly could.

MG: How many people have you called?

JAMIE CAMPBELL: I think I should probably sit down with my son's near empty school book I when I stole it from him and start charting exactly how many. But I think I'm sure I'm over 800 and I'm probably nearing a 1000 at this point.

MG: I've heard some of these calls. Tell me about some of them that stand out to you.

JAMIE CAMPBELL: Boy, there's one that really stands out. I spoke to a gentleman in Mississauga, Ontario, named Mike Farrell, and he is 75 years old. And this is how I love how baseball can connect all our lives. Back in 1966, a year before I was born. He was playing baseball in Montreal. He was a second baseman and he went to turn a double play and was hurt quite badly in the collision with the runner. So off he goes to hospital, the tending physiotherapists that day was a beautiful young lady who I guess he took a shine to. And not long after that, they were married, had children, and she just passed away this January. So after a life filled with joy with the woman he met because of a baseball incident, I couldn't have been happier. And in a way, completely emotional, too, to hear his story, it was quite a conversation.

MG: And so people send you a note and they'll say, you know what, this person could do with a call. And can you give them a ring and you'll call them. Why do you think there is that connection? You talked about being in the customer service business? And there's something about sports. There's something about baseball in particular, it seems, like that creates that kind of relationship.

JAMIE CAMPBELL: Yes, I think it's because, Matt, I'm the family member. They didn't know they had, but they recognised the voice or the face because they've been tuning in to the Blue Jays for so long. And it seems that, you know, most days during their summer I'm on television with Buck Martinez or Pat Tabla or Joe Siddall, and we become so familiar, we've become a part of their daily routine that once I pick up the phone and call them as much as they might be surprised, initially, I believe that they fully welcome me into their lives simply because they're accustomed to having me there anyway.

MG: And they've had those conversations with you through the television.

JAMIE CAMPBELL: I'm sure in a weird kind of way, it's it's strange how often people say, well, you wave to me when you're on TV. And I think, oh, yes, I guess there is that kind of a connection in some way.

MG: You were calling some folks in Nova Scotia as well in the last week or so.

JAMIE CAMPBELL: I was yeah. I specifically I sent out a tweet last week after we heard this awful news that emanated from Nova Scotia. And I spent all of last Wednesday, I think I started phoning around 9:30 in the morning and I finished up around 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time, calling just people in Nova Scotia or people who were tied to the province in some way, because I felt like everybody else in this country, that folks there could use a big hug. And I'm still making a number of calls to Nova Scotia as follow ups.

MG: You don't need to do this. You could be doing other things or nothing at all in the time that you have. What are you getting into this?

JAMIE CAMPBELL: I am completely enriched by being able to connect with people who I didn't know previously. They're sharing intimate stories about their lives that I would not have learned of otherwise. In a weird kind of way, I'm developing some friendships. There is one lady in particular whose number is on my fridge and I'm going to be calling her once a week just because I believe that she could use a pick me up a little more than just once. I've told people that if I'm in their town, I will call them again and maybe come by and wave at their window. So there's great benefit to this for me.

MG: I think of growing up and watching baseball with my aunt, my uncle. And they would we'd sit in the stands or we'd sit in the living room with the TV on and the radio on at the same time watching this. And there's a shared experience. And we're just talking about theatre and what it's like to be in a theatre with 1800 people. When you're with, you know, 30,000, 40,000 people in a stadium watching a game, there's something that happens. What do you miss most about something that perhaps you took for granted and going to see a baseball game?

JAMIE CAMPBELL: I will tell you this, honestly, Matt, I never took for granted a single thing going to any baseball game, because when my dad first took me to a ball game in 1977 and it became an ingrained passion, I figured if I ever get a chance to do this as a professional, I will never, ever regret a single day. That said, there is something great about the sunshine and the green grass or artificial turf, if you're at the Rogers Centre. And just the ability over nine innings to not have to pay rapt attention to what's happening, it's the best conversational sport. You can sit there and have a hotdog and a beer and have a wonderful conversation or a visit with somebody that means something to you and then check in and out of the game as it's being played. Whereas with other sports, there is an intensity that you have to pay attention to almost entirely. Baseball offers that, too, but you don't have to. And I think that's what I miss about it.

MG: Can you imagine it coming back in some form this summer?

JAMIE CAMPBELL: I do. I do. I hope it does, in part for all these people I've been talking to who have in some cases reached a point where they just don't know what further to do to keep themselves occupied and a live baseball game and a hope for a season and even if it's just 60 or 70 games and there's a race to the postseason, even if there are no spectators in the stands cheering on the Blue Jays, I think there are so many people that would just love to see a season in some form.

MG: Especially for the Jays who have and we heard the start of the beginning a couple of great young players who we want to see them play.

JAMIE CAMPBELL: Yes. Who I believe over, say, 70 games versus the normal 162 might be so intrigued and spirited in terms of being able to play a really quick season. Might be a contender, a World Series game like this. I know that there's not a long enough summer for them to slump as young kids.

MG: Find the find the silver lining in this situation that we're in. You're doing great stuff and it's a real pleasure to hear your voice. I'm the guy who is talking back to you on the television as well. Jamie, thanks for making those calls and for taking ours.

JAMIE CAMPBELL: Thanks for having me, Matt.

MG: Jamie Campbell, host of Bluejays Central on SportsNet. CBC News is next. And then vindication for those who want to believe why the Pentagon released a series of UFO videos and what it means for enthusiasts. What would aliens make of this world that we're in right now? We'll try and find out in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is an extended edition of The Current on CBC Radio.

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Believers say Pentagon’s UFO video shows proof of spacecraft

Guests: Nick Pope, Mick West

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to an extended edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, lessons from 1918, what we can learn from the fiction and poetry that was written about the Spanish flu. That's coming up in about half an hour. But first, why things are looking up for ufologists.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Aliens Exist by Blink 182]

MG: You know, that might be the first time we've played Blink 182 on the current. If that sounds a little out of place right now, bear with me.

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[Song: Aliens Exist by Blink182]

MG: That song is called Aliens Exist and we're playing it because this is a big week for people who believe the Pentagon has officially released a series of videos captured by Navy pilots in 2004. They didn't provide any comment on the content of the clips, but UFO believers claim the videos are evidence of alien spacecraft. One of those believers is the guy who wrote the song you just heard. Tom Delonge was a lead singer and guitarist for Blink 182. Also an outspoken believer in alien life.

SOUNDCLIP

So what they did was as the government slipped operatives, you know, over decades into these UFO UFO groups and into the news and just made everyone think it was dumb, but it was for good reason because they don't want people to understand it was real. They didn't want people freaking out. They didn't want Congress freaking out. And eventually what that would have done is exposed what they were trying to do, you know. So just keep everyone thinking it's stupid that way it doesn't boil up.

MG: Mm hmm. In fact, Tom Delonge helped make those videos public in 2017. So for believers like him, the Pentagon's acknowledgement is vindication, a small step towards an open conversation about UFOs. Nick Pope investigated UFOs for the U.K. Ministry of Defence. He is in Tucson, Arizona. Nick, good morning.

NICK POPE: Good morning.

MG: For people who have never seen these videos, what can you tell us about them?

NICK POPE: Well, they were taken from U.S. Navy jets and they show, essentially, that these jets were chasing or tracking these small, fast-moving objects, one of which is rotating. And of course, we've known for several years that pilots see UFOs all the time. But to actually have it on the official forward looking infra-red camera footage that was released by the Pentagon is great. As you say, this this footage had been in the public domain for some years in an unauthorised fashion. This week, the Pentagon made it official, and of course, that's big news when they put it on their own Web site and said it's real, whatever it shows, we don't know. But these are real films.

MG: Describe what are the things you haven't seen it? What are what are the things that the pilots see?

NICK POPE: Well, we can't really make out much from the films. And that's I mean, people can can look at them and they're widely available on YouTube. And of course, now on the Pentagon's own Web site. But essentially, they show small targets. Actually, I say small. We don't really know the size. And that's one of the point that's there's still a lot we don't know about this. But almost as important as what you see, these unidentified objects, is the sound track of the pilots themselves saying, hey, look at those things. There's a whole fleet of them. Wow. And the point is, of course, the U.S. Navy top guns are not easily impressed in terms of things like speed and manoeuvrability. So when they get excited, it tells you there's something a little bit unusual about this, to say the least.

MG: All right. Let's have a listen. This is one of the pilots in the videos.

[sc].

VOICE 1: My Gosh! They're going against the winds, the winds are 120 miles to the west. Look at that thing, dude.That's not one of us, though. Is it? It's not.

VOICE 2: [crosstalk] one of us, dude.

[/sc].

MG: Can we say, Nick, that these are definitively some sort of spacecraft?

NICK POPE: No, we can't. I in fact, I issued a list the other day of about seven different possibilities. All we can really say is that the official position of the United States government is that these objects, or the phenomenon shown, remain unidentified. That's the official line. I don't know any better than that. There are a whole bunch of theories, obviously, and we can get into them. Is it our own technology? Is it Russia or is it China? Is it some sort of misidentification and forward looking infra-red camera anomaly or as the believers think, is it something else — something possibly even extraterrestrial?

MG: Tell me more about what the believers think, what is in the UFO community. And there is a sizable one. What is it believe?

NICK POPE: Oh, they they a lot of them believe this. This is extraterrestrial. And after years of what they see as government denial, they think that this is a prelude to disclosure. The moment when the government formally acknowledges an extraterrestrial presence. So, of course, the UFO community are hugely excited about this. And I get that. Absolutely. I mean, for years, this subject was regarded as fringe. These people were often derided because of their their views and whatever we think these objects are, whatever these videos show, doesn't matter in a sense. The important point is this subject has now come out of the fringe and into the mainstream. And when the Pentagon start putting this sort of thing on their their own website, it does give the UFO community, I think, a sort of validation that they haven't had before. And good luck to them.

MG: Do you believe, as somebody who has investigated this for the Ministry of Defence in the U.K., do you believe this is a significant moment?

NICK POPE: It is a significant moment. I certainly don't, though, claim that these things show alien spaceship. I like the U.S. government. Take the position, I dont know. There may well be people in the system who know more, of course. Whatever the public line, the US government has a whole range of intelligence specialists with huge resources and capabilities to analyse pictures like that. It's likely they know rather more in the bowels of the Pentagon than perhaps we're being told. But that's another story.

MG: What did what did you uncover for the UK government who you're investigating UFOs?

NICK POPE: When I was at the ministry defence during this sort of job, we got two or three hundred cases each year. Most of them turned out to be misidentifications. But we always said, you know, the sceptics had to be right every day. The believers only needed to be right once. So only one of these cases needed to turn out to be something different. And we were in game changing territory. And yes, we had plenty of sightings from military pilots, commercial airline pilots. We had incidents where radar operators track things, performing extraordinary speeds and manoeuvres. So a small proportion of our sightings were unexplained and were very interesting. We didn't say it was extraterrestrial, but neither did we rule out that possibility. Unknown means unknown.

MG: Did you ever think that what you were seeing on that footage, and not the footage were talking about, but in the work that you were doing, did you ever think that what you were looking at was some sort of extraterrestrial vehicle?

NICK POPE: Well, I didn't ever find some sort of definitive you can take it to the bank smoking gun. But certainly I think a lot of us that we occasionally thought the unthinkable and my goodness, life would be more interesting and exciting if it were visiting extraterrestrials than not.

MG: Have you chosen the camp of the believers?

NICK POPE: Sort of on on the fence, to be honest. But over the years, the ministry defence there, there were both sceptics and believers and a whole bunch of agnostics on this issue. I'm still undecided. But this new revelation, I think, takes us to some very interesting territory and at least lays the groundwork for serious adult conversation about this that goes beyond Sci-Fi memes.

MG: Mick West is the author of Escaping the Rabbit Hole How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic and Respect. He's been listening and he's in Sacramento, California. Mick, good morning to you.

MICK WEST: Good morning.

MG: How significant is the Pentagon acknowledging these videos and putting them up on their official website?

MICK WEST: I dont think that today's not a few days ago is very significant because they essentially acknowledged them back in September last year. These videos have been out for two years and the Navy has never really said that these are not real videos from Navy planes. And I think these are three videos that all actually have accessible explanation. So if you analyse them carefully.

MG: So is there anything in the videos that would suggest alien spacecraft to you?

MICK WEST: Well, it certainly looks like an alien spacecraft. One of them, for example, is the Gimbel video, which looks like a rotating flying saucer. But if you analyse what's going on there, it actually seems like it's more likely that it is the heat signature of the jet engine. It kind of flares up in the infra-red. And when a plane is very far away, the signature of the heat of the engines actually kind of overwhelms the image of the plane itself. It's like if you shone a flashlight into a camera, you dont see the flashlight itself, you just see a bright glare around it. And if you scrub back and forward through that video, you will see this kind of a light field in the background. And when the object rotates, this light bill rotates, which kind of shows you that it's not actually an object rotating, it's just something in the camera rotating.

MG: What about the next point, though, that these are in a Top Gun pilots and they aren't easily impressed by things that they see in the sky? If you listen again to that video, they seem quite taken by what they're looking at.

MG: Well, you got to realise that what they are looking at is really the same thing that we're looking at. They're just looking at a small screen in their cockpit and they're seeing these things on the screen. So they're seeing things that look quite impressive, like the one that's labelled go fast. It looks like something that's moving really, really fast over the ocean when you just look at it on the video. But if you actually do the maths and all the numbers are available on the screen, you can work out that it's not actually moving very fast and it's not actually a low down thing. So they are having the same initial misidentification that we do. And remember, these these clips are only 35 seconds long. So we're only seeing what their initial impression of these things was.

MG: You're a pilot yourself.

MICK WEST: Yes. Done private pilot training up to like sello certification. So, yes, I'm very familiar with looking at things in the sky.

MG: Why do you think so many military pilots - because it's not just this incident. You'll hear those stories. And Nick was talking about that as well. Commercial pilots as well will report UFO sightings. Why is that the case?

MICK WEST: Well, you know, if you ever fly in a cockpit, you've got a huge field division. You can see for miles in many directions. And there's lots of other planes and things up there. And when things are far enough away, they just look like white dots. They just look like things in the distance. And, you can't tell what they are because they're so far away, and this is kind of what you're seeing in these videos. You're seeing things that are too far away to make out any details. So pilots will naturally see things in the sky that they can't identify. And sometimes pilots get kind of a a loss of situational awareness. They can't tell exactly where something is or how far away something is or how big is it. So they can be confused by something that's small and near. And they think it's large and far away. And this is the actual motion, the relative motion that looks like it's moving when it's not actually moving.

MG: You have written about this online. What sort of reactions are you getting when you pick apart the videos and offer a sceptical view?

MICK WEST: Well, I get very mixed reactions. I think a lot of people are kind of upset. I kind of spoil the fun in a way. But, you know, I'm not I'm not here to spoil anybody's fun. I'm here to try to figure out what these things are. And there's some very simple things in it, like one of the videos has a glow around the object, which people say is some kind of anti-gravity drive or something like that. But when you look into that, the actual real explanation is a pretty boring one. It's just the sharpening artefacts that they use in infra-red video is very, very common. But, you know, it spoils the fun for people. So they tend, some of them, to not look into these explanations because they prefer another explanation. It's kind of unfortunate.

MG: Why do you think in the face - and I'll ask Nick this as well. But Mick West, first for you - why in the face of evidence, do people still want to believe?

MICK WEST: Well, UFOs are a lot of fun, is a very entertaining subject. But a lot of people. And, you know, Nick was the one actually told me this. A lot of people in the community have had personal experiences with UFO, that they think prove to them that UFOs are real. And because of this, they are believers already and that you can't really tell them anything that will disprove that personal experience. So it's very hard to convince someone that what they saw themselves personally like ten years ago or whatever is not real.

MG: Nick Pope, for you, why do you think people want to believe in this stuff?

NICK POPE: Well, I think the more we look out with the astronomy stories into the universe, the less special earth looks. So the more likely it is that we're not alone. But I think more than that, it's deeper. I mean, the question, are we alone or not in the universe? The related question, are we being visited? Those are some of the biggest and most profound questions we can ask. And I think if we can get answers, let's get them. And people are absolutely fascinated by this. And my goodness, at the moment, it would be a refreshing change from all the other news.

MG: You said that this could lead to a serious adult conversation. What would that conversation look like?

NICK POPE: Well, I think firstly, we get into the technical details and of course, with the videos themselves, the US, there's a whole branch of intelligence called MASINT, measurement and signature intelligence, where whatever the pilots say at the time, the intelligence specialists in the U.S. government and military have access to looking at these pictures, these videos across a range of radio frequencies, the electromagnetic spectrum. So the first part of the conversation is a technical one and makes theory and all the other theories go into the port and the U.S. government has access to all that data to find out all the things we don't currently, no signs of the object, speed, etc. But then we have a wider conversation, I think a more philosophical one. You know what if it is not just us in the universe? What if there are other civilizations out there that will have profound implications for almost every aspect of human society, politics, religion, science, economics, philosophy? Let's have that conversation. It would be interesting and it would be fun.

MG: Mick West, the former Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, tweeted this out after the Pentagon released these videos. This is a quotation: "I'm glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of the research and materials available. The US needs to take a serious scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed". Is this some sort of moment where the lid is is taken off? And we actually have a real conversation about whether aliens are circling our planet?

MICK WEST: Well, I think Harry Reid would like that. But I think, you know, Harry Reid is really just another UFO fan when it comes down to it. He was high up in government. He didn't really have any information about aliens. And he would like to know what's going on. But there is actually a national security implication here, because if you've got an identified object, you want to know what they are. And that's going to part of the issue here is that the Navy recognizes that there's major security implications of an identified objects coming onto airspace where they shouldn't be. And because it's a national security issue is all classified. It's all secret. So they're not going to tell you what their analysis is. The Navy probably has a very good idea of what types of things these are, that they're drones or balloons or aircraft or whatever they are. But they're not going to tell you about it because that's part of a classified investigation.

MG: What do you make of Tom Delonge suggestion that there's been this systematic suppression of information about UFOs by the U.S. and other government? People talk about Area 51 out in the desert and that there's alien corpses that are there in some sort of shed or something, that people are hiding away in all sorts of secretive technology that will never know about. Do you but any of that, Mick?

MICK WEST: Not really. But I think it's arisen because of this the default level of secrecy that we have in the United States. Everything is secret until is deemed otherwise. So it's very natural for the military to cover things up, even if they're really banal stuff like the radar not working. You don't want the Chinese to know that your radar isn't working. So anything to do with radar is covered up.

MG: Nick Pope, is the U.S. government sitting on something even bigger than these videos?

NICK POPE: I don't really buy in to cover ups and conspiracies. However, we do know from the US Navy itself that these three videos are just the tip of the iceberg. They changed guidance last year to their own pilots on what to do if they encounter these things, whatever they are. And they said this was in response to a series of ongoing series of incursions into restricted military airspace where President Trump has confirmed that he had a short briefing on this. Various senators on the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee have said that they've received classified briefings, too. So there is a lot going on behind the scenes, and that's makes sense. Yes, it's highly classified. Even if the U.S. Navy and the government position is officially we don't know. I know from my own direct personal experience, there will be in government what we call the sort of best current assessment of that. The Department of Defence. When I asked them about that, they dodged the question. And when I pressed them, they said they wouldn't be commenting on it. But yes, absolutely, somewhere in government, somebody will have a best current assessment of what these three videos show and that they're not telling.

MG: Dodging the question and then not answering it leads again to greater conspiracy theories, doesn't it?

NICK POPE: It does, yes. And it comes from what Mick correctly called this or default position of security in the United States and in the United Kingdom, too, I should say. I don't think there's this big, nebulous, sinister cover up. I don't think people have got a spaceship hidden away in a hangar somewhere. Sometimes saying nothing is because we're talking about blank project secret next generation aircraft, missiles and drones. Other times it is simply because we don't know. But Mick was right on this. Anything identified in our air space is in and of itself a defence and national security issue.

MG: Mick West, is there any harm in beleiving in these sorts of things, I mean, part of it is we're in a time we're in a pandemic where there are all sorts of conspiracy theories and hoaxes and snake oil being sold as sort of a solution to COVID-19, that can be really dangerous. Is there any harm in believing that these things might be UFOs?

MICK WEST: I've always said that the UFO conspiracies are kind of a mostly harmless conspiracy because they're just kind of like a hobby that people do and they look up in the sky. There is a little bit of harm in that if people are distrusting everything the government says and they will distrust it on things like health advice or other things that actually affect their lives. But with UFOs, you know, it's kind of a fun topic to get into. It's not really that harmful of a topic.

MG: Don't you want to believe in this?

MICK WEST: Sure. I'd love for it to be real. I've a big science fiction fan. I used to read like Arthur C. Clarke and the Aliens Visiting the Planet. So it would be wonderful to discover aliens here or somewhere else in the universe.

MG: One wonders what they would make of us, particularly in this time. Good to speak with you both.

NICK POPE: Thank you.

MICK WEST: Thank you.

MG: Mick West is a writer and professional debunker. Nick Pope investigated UFOs for the U.K. Ministry of Defence. You know, there are so many great songs that have been inspired by the idea of extra terrestrial encounters. The Birds, Jimi Hendrix, Modest Mouse, David Bowie have all looked to the skies for alien inspiration. Jim Sullivan disappeared under very mysterious circumstances in 1975. He was headed for Nashville from Los Angeles when his abandoned car was found in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, just north of Roswell. In 1969, he recorded this lost gem. This is Jim Sullivan in UFO.

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[Song: UFO by Jim Sullivan]

MG: What a tune, Jim Sullivan UFO. Disappeared mysteriously. His car and his guitar were found in the desert just north of Roswell, New Mexico. Coming up on The Current, T.S. Eliot wrote about it. So did Yeates and Lovecraft, what fiction about the Spanish flu can teach us about this pandemic that we are in right now. That's on its way in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Learning from the 1918 pandemic

Guests: Laura Spinney, Elizabeth Outka

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. It's hard enough living through one pandemic. Imagine some people, though, are doing this for a second time. George Allen was just a boy when his small community in Nova Scotia was shattered by the 1918 Spanish flu. He is 107 years old now, but he has no trouble remembering how tough that was.

SOUNDCLIP

Houses after houses were quarantined. You have to take food. Just leave it on their doorstep and go away. It was very, very, very, very hard year, when your neighbours died and other people died. But it was an awful lot of deaths.

MG: At least 50 million lives worldwide. George's family tried to help their neighbours in North Sydney, and he remembers how his mother would always have soup on the stove.

SOUNDCLIP

She had a based taurine and we got a stove and my father and I take it all around to save people. We had food. We shared what we had with other people who hadn't had anything and we helped ourselves by [unintelligible]

MG: Today, George Allen is feeling the effects of this pandemic. He recently turned 107. Plans for a celebration were scuttled.

SOUNDCLIP

Yeah, we cancel the birthday party. My son came up to see me [unintelligible]. He bought me a piece of cake of his home. The other didn't come. This is very lonesome this time, really. We can't get together with anybody at all.

MG: Incredible life. There are many people who are looking at the parallels between now and that 1918 pandemic. Laura Spinney is one of them. She's the author of Pale Rider The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World. She's in Paris. Laura, good morning.

LAURA SPINNEY: Good morning. Good afternoon.

MG: Good afternoon to you. What do we know about the origins of the Spanish flu?

LAURA SPINNEY: Not very much. We know that it wasn't Spanish. That was a misnomer. There are three leading theories of where it starts today. One of which corresponds to an origin in China. Another to an origin in the US in Kansas. And the third to an origin in a British army camp in northern France at a place called [unintelligible].

MG: How prepared was North America for this virus?

LAURA SPINNEY: Nobody was prepared for it because we didn't really have any system of the disease surveillance at that time. And also flu was not in most places a reportable disease at the beginning of the pandemic, meaning that a doctor who saw a case was not obliged to pass it up the chain, if you like, to the state or national authorities. So there's no kind of overview of what was happening. And of course, from then on, it just in a way got worse. There was no diagnostic test and very little that doctors could do in the way of treatment.

MG: What were they trying to do? I mean, what was working and what was a failure when it came to trying to control the virus back then?

LAURA SPINNEY: So in terms of treatments, really almost nothing at all. They had no vaccine. Virus, viruses, flus obviously caused by a virus. But viruses are relatively new concept then. They had no vaccine that could have stopped it. They did have vaccines, but they were against bacteria. They had no antiviral drugs because those weren't invented into the 1960s. They had no antibiotics, which might have helped with the bacterial complications that cause pneumonia, in many of the lethal cases. And so they really had to fall back on. They had one thing, aspirin. The so-called wonder drug, which can reduce inflammation as long as you use it in the right doses. But they very often gave doses that were far too high and so aggravated the problem. And so they were you know, there were of folk remedies were tried. Of course, they put in place that social distancing measures like we are using today, because these are very ancient, these things like isolation and quarantine. But and in that sense, to me, this current pandemic feels quite ancient itself. But apart from that, they were pretty much helpless.

MG: So cities went into lockdown back then?

LAURA SPINNEY: Not so much lock down. I wouldn't call it a lockdown. What we're doing now is kind of very severe response that we've had is pretty much unprecedented in the history of humanity. And interesting that they did put in place measures, but it very, very greatly to what extent how aggressively they enforce them. You know, people weren't really closeted inside their homes in the way we are [unintelligible]. There were, you know, mass gatherings were banned. Rush hour was staggered. The closing times of shuttered shops and factories targeted. People didn't kind of mill together in the streets too much. There were all kinds of restrictions. But I would say it very, very much- schools were closed. Yes, it was very variable.

MG: It's interesting because we're in a time now where people are saying, well, what happened in 1918 and what is it that we could learn from that, whereas maybe six months ago, no disrespect to the work that you're doing, but people perhaps didn't pay attention at all to what happened in 1918 and the pandemic. If you take a look at pandemics through history, are there threads that would connect them or at least commonalities in the circumstances that would proceed them?

LAURA SPINNEY: Yes, I mean, you know, if you've worked on this problem, you know, all the historians who've written, the un-scientists and the writers like me. Then one of the extraordinary things is that you become aware of how common a problem has been in the history of humanity. I mean, if you take flu, which is considered the disease that, you know, is most prone to cause a pandemic. We've had 15 flu pandemics in the last 500 years, more or less. That's a lot really, if you think about it. We had three in the 20th century alone. And we'll probably have one in this century again in front of us, [unintelligible] to me. So, you know, it's not something that's unpredictable. Of course, the data's unpredictable and the nature of the disease to some extent is unpredictable and the severity is unpredictable. But we could prepare a great deal more than we do. You could learn from those past events to a greater extent than we do, I think.

MG: You have written about the social inequality that is around often and at times a. Tell me a bit more about.

LAURA SPINNEY: So it's really interesting, the flu used to be called democratic disease. And in one sense it is. I mean, it doesn't really mind who it attacks and it's pretty much the same for the coronavirus. But the point is societies, the human society, is not democratic. And so just to give you an example from the city, I live in Paris, one in four women who died in 1918 was a maid. So what we know now about this sort of socio economic dimension of pandemics is that poor people, who are barely accommodated, [unintelligible] you work long hours and you have poor access to health care, are very much more vulnerable than people who do not fit those criteria. And so in almost in every pandemic, the people who suffer are the poor, the working classes and the people who live in developing countries and those are the countries that are the brunt of death. And if you think that's a thing of the past, think again. I mean, there was a study that was published in 2012 on the impact of the 2009 pandemic in England. The death rate in the poorest cities of the population was three times that in the richest cities of a population, so it continues to be true today and it will definitely be true in this pandemic.

MG: And we talk and you write about this as well when it comes to the lockdowns, again, that lockdowns or social isolation. People will say it's a privilege that often the people who need to be on the front lines, whether they're cleaners, whether they are stocking grocery store shelves, are on the lower socio economic scale. And that the lockdown can exacerbate some of the inequalities that are already in place.

LAURA SPINNEY: Yes. And it's really interesting, because if you think about it, the main group in our society now, populations who are most vulnerable are the elderly in this pandemic. That wasn't true in 1918. So they tend to be people who are already out of the labour market. So confinement in an economic sense has less of an impact on them than on younger, generally poor again, people and particularly women. That's what the data seems to be suggesting. So the impact of the confinement measures is hitting a very different sector of population from the people. Those measures were designed to protect the people who have most to lose from catching the disease, let's put it that way. So these two things which are obviously operating at the same time: punishing, if you like, different parts of the population. And that you haven't really seen before. In 1918, not that there was a lockdown to speak of in the sense that we see it today, but the people who were most vulnerable were those aged 20 to 40. So they were the most productive people in the population. They were the workers, parents, the pillars of community.

MG: How did the Spanish flu change society do you think?

LAURA SPINNEY: Well, I think it's a great question, but a difficult question because it's so broad, of course. I think you can't lose 50 million people and not have an impact on pretty much every domain of human activity. Just to give you some examples, I think it changed, you know, I think historical evidence demonstrates that it changed the end of the war. Certainly accelerated it. Some people, though they're a minority, argue it changed who won. It definitely had an impact on the peace process. It definitely had an impact, as I show in my book on the independence movement in India, less certainly had an impact on the beginnings of apartheid in South Africa. I think it gave a huge stimulus to the concept that had already been discussed, but nothing had been done of socialized medicine, which starts to come in Europe and Russia from the 1920s. And I think it gave birth to the kind of very first global health agencies, the forerunners of the W.H.O., because there was a very clear perceived need to have a global body that was coordinated response to a global health threat.

MG: Are you starting to think about how what we're in now will change us?

LAURA SPINNEY: I mean, I'm really fascinated by the debates that are going on. I see, you know, with the context having changed them. You see many of the same things. We must address inequality in our societies. We must address the, you know, the chronic underfunding of our health services, see this in lots of different countries, many of the same debate with modifications that went on in 1980. But what we don't know is whether that will actually carry fruit through and will anything actually change. And that remains to be seen. You know, I think and hope we're looking at a pandemic on a completely different scale from 1918. 1918 was a vast and terrible. I don't think was it going to be looking at anywhere near the numbers. Of course, we're still in it. I can't say that for sure. We need to wait and see. But if I'm right and the impact is very much smaller, given the global population is also four times bigger, you know, intuitively you might think that we will be less inclined to make changes. So, you know, maybe nothing will happen.

MG: The perspective of history is fascinating. Laura, it's great to talk to you. Thank you.

LAURA SPINNEY: You, too. Thank you.

MG: Laura Spinney is a science writer and the author of Pale Rider The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World. The Great Influenza of 1918 also inspired some great literature. Elizabeth Outka is a professor of literature at the University of Richmond in Virginia and the author of a new book called Viral Modernism: The Influenza Pandemic and Inter-War Literature. Elizabeth, good morning to you.

ELIZABETH OUTKA: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What role has literature played in recording this part of history and reflecting it back to not just the generation that was experiencing it, but generations following?

ELIZABETH OUTKA: Well, literature speaks usually to a different kind of history, a history of emotions, of senses, of how bodies feel internally, how they carry memories. In short, our realities. And literature is also particularly good at evoking bodily sensations associated with illness to the way those sensations mixed with emotions, the fragmented realities that that disease can bring. So I think that literature has a key sort of voice in both the 1918 pandemic and eventually in our experience of COVID.

MG: We're just talking to Laura Spinney and her book Pill Writer. The title of it is taken from one of the books that you looked at. Tell us about Katherine Anne Porter.

ELIZABETH OUTKA: Katherine Anne Porter got what they thought was going to be a deadly case of of influenza in the 1918 outbreak. And many years later, in 1939, she publishes Pale Horse Spell Rider, which is one of the best pieces that we have on the impact of influenza. And it's about a couple of men and a woman who they feel like they know what story they're in. There in a story about the war. And the man is a soldier and he's going to die, they think, in the war and she will stay home. And that's the story that they're in. And so Porter really shows us how they then miss the story when the story changes. Right. When they actually are in a story about the pandemic. And so that's what they think is going to be the danger turns out to be and turned out not to be the danger. It's actually an invisible virus that ends up killing the soldier.

MG: There are examples of literature reflecting that time, reflecting what was going on in that moment. People will often turn to the work of Elliot’s. Tell us a little bit about T.S. Eliot and how the pandemic was reflected in something like The Wasteland would seem to be the key example.

ELIZABETH OUTKA: That's right. So often read, and it certainly is a great work is about many things and a novel or a poem like The Wasteland isn't a puzzle with one key. So it's certainly about the war. It was about his own personal crises at the time. And so when you read it through a war lens, you can see it is sort of there's so many bodies, there's a sense of these rats that dead men's alley evoking all of the sort of trenches. But when you read it through a flu lens, you can see that it's set in London and bodies are everywhere. And there is a sort of sense of burning and a sense of thirst, which Eliot specifically links to influenza in his other writings. We get a sense of broken language. And these rats, you know, which were a sign of World War One, but also, you know, rather unfairly, but still linked to plague. So it's when you're looking through the flu lens lines like 'I had not thought death had undone so many' start to read differently. We have a- it was a moment of a death haunted landscape. And Eliot really brilliantly captures that.

MG: Can you apply that lens to The Second Coming as well?

ELIZABETH OUTKA: It's The Second Coming. Another poem that that is very much about war, about revolution, about the political violence of his time. But at the time that he wrote it, just a few weeks after he wrote it, well, a few weeks before he wrote it, his wife, who was pregnant with their first child, nearly dies of her case of the flu. And he watched this. And again, sort of if you read The Second Coming through the lens of the pandemic, you start to see how it's in some ways a fever dream. And this sort of sense of chaos both internally in the body, kind of mere anarchy that a virus can produce and also in his larger society. Dublin was full of funerals and corpses and coffins and pregnant women were the most vulnerable and the flu. They died in the highest numbers. And so lines like 'the ceremony of innocence is drowned'. Start to read like a reflection of that and a reflection of the way most people died in that pandemic, which was drowning in their beds from the fluid that had filled their lungs. So it becomes a very sort of powerful expression of what it might have been like to live through that moment.

MG: It sounds as though it was, I mean, from the experience of history, looking back on it could be the inspiration for what we now look at is as horror literature or horror writing. And I never connected this, but I was reading about this, the inspiration in some ways for the work of H.P. Lovecraft.

ELIZABETH OUTKA: Yes. He has many inspirations and certainly horror literature has been around for a long time, but I think it's Lovecraft at his home in Providence, Rhode Island, was watching Providence fill the graveyards, sort of fill and mass graves being prepared and all of these coffins and in the aftermath of war as well. But you have this problem with bodies. Right. You have between 60 and 110 million corpses. And what do you do with them? And they haunt people. And he imagines them rising up and angry, revengeful, seeking to infect and attack. And we have these sort of Proto zombie figures and a way in some ways of materializing an invisible enemy, sort of making it something you can see. Like, right, yes, this is a terrible thing. And we can and we need to eradicate it. But in Lovecraft's case, sometimes it also shows how images of contagion and infection and disease can really easily morph into discrimination and prejudice and racism, as it does in some of his story that the cause is not a virus, but a certain person or a group of people, that this is the thing that's causing it. We're seeing that now. And it's extraordinarily cruel and extraordinarily dangerous.

MG: In terms of what people will often refer to as a yellow fever, for example.

ELIZABETH OUTKA: Correct.

MG: And the panic and the peril that when people start pointing fingers at China and calling it a war hand flu or something like that.

ELIZABETH OUTKA: That's right. Yes.

MG: You also in your research, you came across some non-fiction writing, including some letters from Canada. Tell me about just briefly, but these letters from Canada.

ELIZABETH OUTKA: Yes. Well, they are from a remarkable collection of letters that are held at the Imperial War Museum in London. And in the 1970s, the historian Richard Collier realised that a lot of people who would remember the flu pandemic were starting to starting to die. And so he took out advertisements in all the major newspapers in Canada, in the United States and in Europe. And he received hundreds of replies. And I've spent a lot of time reading these letters. And so the quotations you have are from the letters in the Canadian collection that I read and pulled out.

MG: We're going to hear a few of these excerpts. These are the words of survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic as recalled in 1972. Have a listen.

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VOICE 1: During my convalescence, I learned of the great kindness of people, always someone at the door with soup and often special treats. I still remember preserved wild strawberries and cream. I doubt if any calamity in Manitoba united the people of this province in a bond of friendship and kindness could compare.

VOICE 2: When the first course of the flu eased up, I remember hearing the peace bells ringing on my way home from a house where 12 people were in bed. I don't cry easily, but that time I stopped in the street and cried for the misery and the sorrow that the war and the flu and the aftermath of the war had caused.

VOICE 1: In my village, the doctor spent about 20 hours a day visiting rural patients, at times a whole family would be ill at once and several times farmers were laid him on country roads, offering the deed to the farm if he would just come in to prescribe for the patients.

MG: Elizabeth Outka, do you think that the literature of the time reflects the horror that those survivors describe?

ELIZABETH OUTKA: Very much. And both those letters in the literature reflect how we remember through our senses what we hear and smell and taste. They send us back in time and it is what remains. And literature is great at capturing that, at representing our world, reflecting back to us what we've experienced and allowing us to reimagine it sometimes and to see, as those letters do, the things that were terrible and the things that offer compensation.

MG: We have just a few seconds left. I speak with authors and they talk about how they don't want to write about what they're in right now. But do you expect that there will be a body of literature that comes out of this experience that we're all sharing right now?

ELIZABETH OUTKA: I do. There's always a lag time with art as we process it, but I think art will do what it's always done from a world of chaos and uncertainty and injustice, it shows us how to make meaning.

MG: Thanks for your time this morning. It's a real pleasure to talk to you.

ELIZABETH OUTKA: It was a pleasure, Matt. Thank you.

MG: Elizabeth Outka is a professor of literature at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Her book is called Viral Modernism The Influenza Pandemic and Inter-War Literature. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Earlier this month, we played a few episodes of the Vinyl Cafe and it turns out, yes, indeed, not that we needed to be reminded that a whole lot of you, Miss Dave and Morley and the comforting voice of the great Stuart McLean on your radio. We got a lot of mail asking us to play more and so ask and you shall receive as a reward for getting through yet another pandemic week. Tomorrow, more of the Vinyl Cafe on your CBC Radio One. Here's a taste of the episode. Fish Head.

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Dave the Son Sam. We're having lunch at the Maple Leaf Cafe in Big Narrows, Dave's hometown. It was a Saturday early May. Dave and Sam were in town for the weekend to help Margaret with things. Their spring ritual, take down the windows, turn the garden. Saturday lunch at the Maple Leaf was part of a club, sandwiches and fries, vanilla milkshakes. Last time, said Sam, we had grilled cheese. We did, said Dave, I don't remember that. Barbara brought them their shakes, two tall glasses, an aluminium container with the overflow, she set the overflow down in front of Sam. A real shake, said Dave to Sam, made with real ice cream. Sam rolled his eyes and bent his straw down. It's good, he said. And then he said, tell me another story about him. Dave said, I don't know. He was a good guy. It's a hard question. You live your life in minutes and hours, you move along beside the people you love. And in the midst of all of the moments in the middle of all the movement, you don't often stop to commit things to memory. You never imagined there is anything about anything that's going to be of any historical importance that someone's going to come along one day and quiz you about things. But he was my grandfather's, said Sam, and I don't know anything about him. I know, said Dave, I know. He put his sandwich down, he he liked to play the bass, he said. His friends would come over to the house on Sunday nights and they'd play music. I know that stuff, said Sam, it was slow. It wasn't slow, said David, it fall behind the beat. Dave was twisting around in the booth, a lady behind the counter, Barbara, held up a bottle of ketchup. Dave nodded. Thanks, he said. And then he turned back to Sam. Did I ever tell you the one where we jumped off the bridge into the river on our way home from church? I was afraid to jump at all, the other kids jumped all the time and my dad wanted to show me I shouldn't be afraid, so he jumped with me. In your clothes, said Sam. Holding hands, said Dave, in our Sunday best, he got in trouble for that.

MG: Miss him terribly and it's a great pleasure to hear him back on the radio. The late Stewart McLean, the Vinyl Cafe and an excerpt of the story, Fish Head. We will play the whole thing tomorrow on The Current. You deserve that. Tomorrow is Friday. It's been a long week. A little bit of relief after all of the things we've gone through. Coming up on the program, have you checked your mailbox lately? Canadians say a free newspaper is spreading a COVID-19 conspiracy theory. We'll find out where that paper came from in about six minutes. We'll also check our own mailbox and your stories on things that are bringing you comfort through these anxious times. That's on its way as well. I'm Matt Galloway. This is an extended edition of The Current on CBC Radio One. Stick around.

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Misleading stories about COVID-19 origins

Guests: Andrea Bellemare, Karin Marley, Rupi Kaur

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, the Canadian poet Rubi Kaur, how she broke through pandemic grief by writing with other people die.

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I was lonely and I was desperate to add I was scared and lost.

MG: Her conversation with Tom Power coming up. But first, we hand the show over to you.

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MG: We have a bit of time to go through some of your mail. We've been asking you to tell us what brings you joy or comfort in the middle of these anxious times and The Current's senior producer Karin Marley is here to sift through the mailbag. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. Yes, a lot of people talking about finding or at least trying to find the bright spots in all of this, Virginia Vandall-Walker wrote from her home near Breton, Alberta: On our acreage, we have a guest cabin. My daughter and three year old grandson come out from the city on Saturday to Sunday. They stay in the cabin. We connect by Zoom and watch them at the yard playing from our kitchen table window. Heartwarming.

MG: People have also had to get creative when it comes to celebrations during this lockdown. Greg Marshon wrote us from Victoria: My father, Lucien Marshon, turned 90 on the twenty seventh of April - Happy birthday, Lucien - His four children, seven grandchildren and one great grandchild connected via Zoom from Halifax, Toronto, Calgary, Victoria and San Francisco. We had arbitrarily divided each of the nine decades of his life between us and the isolated groups of children and grandchildren had put together presentations about each decade. So my father was treated to a folk song about collecting gopher tales from the 1930s and 1940s trivia game Pictures of our parents 1950s wedding presented by one granddaughter in Victoria and accompanied by the singing of another in Toronto, a psychedelic 1960s slide show, a game show from the 1970s, two granddaughters dancing together, albeit in Calgary and Halifax, to music from the 1980s, and his year and a half old great granddaughter portraying each of his grandchildren born in the 1990s. That's really ambitious. Despite a couple of technical glitches, the four time zones separating us and the fact that many of the family members are still working remotely at home and even on the frontlines of the health care system. We met for almost three hours to laugh and marvel at the variety and creativity of the presentations and listened to the decades shaped stories of my father's life.

KARIN MARLEY: That sounds like a heck of a party.

MG: That is quite some.

KARIN MARLEY: Melanie wrote to us from Vancouver about being a new Canadian at this time. My family moved to Vancouver from the U.S. in August, she wrote. We'd been able to connect with our friends back home somewhat regularly, but with everyone's busy lives it was usually less than once a week. Having made a big move in our middle aged years has definitely brought some challenges in having our base of friends far away and only just recently making new ones, all of which is complicated by COVID-19. The positive in this for us has been with people maintaining social distancing and being at home most of the time. We've been able to make wonderful connections with our friends back home that have definitely taken the loneliness out of our social isolation, especially since we can't connect with our local friends in our usual ways. We would not have had this time with our treasured friends if it wasn't for COVID-19.

MG: Are there ways that you are connecting with people that fit with the unusual times that we're in? I've seen a lot of birthday parties happening from the sidewalk. I have heard of people, myself included, getting in touch with friends that you haven't spoken to in months, maybe years. Let us know. You can reach us through the web site at cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. You can email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. And if there's music that you're listening to, in addition to connecting with people. Music that's kind of easing some of the anxiety. We'd love to hear your song choices as well. So go to the web site atcbc.ca/thecurrent. Karin, thank you.

KARIN MARLEY: Thank you, Matt.

MG: From our mailbox to yours. A free newspaper has shown up in mailboxes across this country this month. Maybe you got one, too. It's called the Epoch Times. And inside the paper there are some strange and misleading bits of information about COVID-19. Andrea Bellemare is a reporter with the CBC Fact Checking Unit. She's been looking into how this newspaper ended up in mailboxes from Whitehorse to Montreal. Andrea, good morning.

ANDREA BELLEMARE: Good morning.

MG: How did this newspaper end up on your radar?

ANDREA BELLEMARE: So I've been on the show before and I've often asked people to e-mail covid@cbc.ca And we started getting e-mails, to that e-mail about it. People are saying, what is this? Why did I get it? And so we decide to look into it.

MG: And so what were some of the concerns that you heard from those people who got a copy of this thing in the mail?

ANDREA BELLEMARE: So the paper on the front cover, just to describe for your listeners, it says why the coronavirus should be called the CCP virus, which is Chinese Communist Party virus. And so people saw this headline and they said, we don't know what it is or we don't know why we're getting it. One man told me he thought it was really alarming. And another man said he thought that maybe it would be considered hate literature. And we heard from a woman named Lisa Armstrong who got a copy in her mailbox in Colonia B.C. And here's what she said.

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It really feels racist and inflammatory. And right now, we're all scared. We're all vulnerable. We don't know what's going to happen next. There's somebody that starts playing on those fears is a very dangerous thing to do at this time. We need to be clear headed and keep ourselves together.

ANDREA BELLEMARE: And you know, since we published our story, we've actually heard from other people in further studies in Canada who also had concerns and they had concerns with the content as well, because they thought that it could lead people to discriminate against Asian Canadians.

MG: Where did this thing come from? Who's publishing the Epoch Times?

ANDREA BELLEMARE: So The Epoch Times was founded in 2000. It's based in New York. And it's a non-profit media organisation under the umbrella of the Epoch Media Group. They also have a TV channel, New Tang Dynasty, and it's associated with the Falun Gong Movement, which is a religious group that began in China and it was declared illegal and a cult by the Chinese government in 1999. And so now there's evidence that the Chinese government persecute these members and oppresses their religious rights. So the the Falun Gong movement opposes the Chinese government. And if you look at even in the about section of the Epoch Times, they have stated very clearly that they are critical and against communism.

MG: Have you spoken to the people who are behind the paper?

ANDREA BELLEMARE: Yes. So we reached out to the Canadian publisher, Cindy Gou, and she very firmly rejected concerns over the reporting. And she told us she even less the statement. And part of what she said is that some people may have erroneously conflated criticism of the Chinese Communist Party with criticism of the Chinese people understanding the difference is vital and will eliminate racial tension. As people come to understand that the criticism of the handling of the virus is that the CCP, not the Chinese people. And we actually have her whole statement linked in our article online.

MG: What is the goal of a publication like this and making these claims about the Chinese government? I mean, Falun Gong have a long history in terms of, to your point, a dispute with the Chinese government and claims of oppression. What's the point in publishing stuff like this?

ANDREA BELLEMARE: So one thing that we know as as we've said, is they've been very openly critical of the Chinese government. And one university professor that we spoke to describe that relationship between the two groups as antagonistic. And again, you know, they're very open about their criticisms of communism. And there's also something interesting in the presentation. So one of the pieces in this paper, an article, it's a commentary piece raises questions about a possible bioweapons link, or that could be the origin of the coronavirus. This is something you and I've talked before. It's written in such a way as to raise questions. And so this is really interesting because it's sort of raising questions. I reached out to Claire Wardle and she is with a non-profit that studies disinformation. And here's what she told me.

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That is a technique of disinformation activists, who want people to question as much as possible authoritative sources. So ultimately, you'll no longer going to your trusted news site or the W.H.O. or your government or even for information you're left thinking, I can't trust anybody.

MG: So it's not just people who are getting the Epoch Times in their mailboxes. You're also hearing from concerned postal workers, the people who are delivering this thing.

ANDREA BELLEMARE: Yes, that's right. And I actually got an e-mail from a concerned postal worker in Toronto about this, and he felt that the headlines were over the line. And he said, to be honest, it makes me feel like humanity is facing an existential crisis. And I'm being forced to hand out weapons in a cage fight. And so after we published our story yesterday, we actually heard from a union representative in Scarborough named Derek Richman's. And he let us know that other carriers in his local were concerned. And he actually also wrote a letter to Public Services Minister Anita Anand. She's the minister responsible for Canada Post, and he asked for a temporary halt to delivery.

MG: What is Canada posting? Do the postal workers have to deliver this?

ANDREA BELLEMARE: Yes, they do. We reached out to them and they said, you know, we understand the reaction to this publication, but we're Canada's postal system. We are legally required to deliver it. They say the content is the sole responsibility of the publisher. And then they said anyone concerned with the contents to contact the publisher, they can file a complaint against the publication through the appropriate institutions, or they can place the item in the recycling box.

MG: What about the federal government? Does the government have anything to say on this, given, you know, obviously its role with Canada Post?

ANDREA BELLEMARE: Yes. So we reached out to the minister's office as well, to Anita Anand's office. And she told us that after an initial assessment of the material, it doesn't appear to meet the criteria for promoting hatred under the criminal code. And so they re-establish that, you know, decisions made by Canada Post to deliver or refuse delivery of neighbour hood mail are subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And then they said that further assessment is ongoing. And so we heard from them just last night about this.

MG: All right, Andrea. Thank you.

ANDREA BELLEMARE: Thanks.

MG: Andrea Bellemare is a reporter on CBC Coronavirus Disinformation Unit. Disinformation can be online and perhaps in printed form as well. If you have a story that you think that unit should look into. You can e-mail them as somebody did, giving Andrea the heads up on that newspaper. The e-mail address is covid@cbc.ca.

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MG: It's The Current on CBC Radio One, my name's Matt Galloway. Tom Power, host of Q is back with us. Tom, good morning.

TOM POWER: Matt, what's the best thing about living in Switzerland?

MG: Good question. The mountains, the chocolate, the people? I've no idea, I've never been to Switzerland.

TP: I don't know, but the flags are big plus.

MG: Well.

TP: Come on, Matt, that's pretty good.

MG: Hey, you're not, you're not even a dad, and you're throwing around dad jokes. Not bad. You've been working on that for how long?

TP: About three weeks. That's been my challenge to myself during the pandemic.

MG: Area man is in quarantine and comes up with a series of bad jokes. Film at eleven.

TP: I like it. I like that. I'm sort of obsessed. I heard that joke over the weekend on the television show. And one of the kids who have this like this, you know, joke hotline told it to me. I'm dying about it. I think it's fantastic.

MG: Yes, it's it's so bad, it's good or it's so good, it's bad.

TP: Kind of like my broadcasting. Matt, it's nice to talk to you. I'm here to talk about Rupi Kaur. Are you familiar with Rupi Kaur?

MG: Wildly, wildly popular poet.

TP: From Brampton, Ontario, rose to fame on Instagram, distinctive brand of very visual poetry, best selling author around the world. Last year, The New Republic named her writer of the Decade. Isn't that amazing?

MG: It's a good thing. I mean, in part because she's using social media, new forms of communication to connect people and connect to people in ways that perhaps you wouldn't have been able to otherwise. And presumably still doing that, even though she's in isolation, perhaps being more productive than coming up with bad jokes.

TP: Exactly. I mean, she probably has a couple of those, too. But I tell you, what I love about her is, one, she definitely annoys a lot of the old poetry guard with her, you know, Instagram poetry.

MG: Good for her.

TP: I think so, too. I love anyone getting annoyed. But I like you said, I'm really interested in the fact that she's using new media to reach people during this time, especially. Here's my conversation with her because.

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TP: Hi, Rupi.

RUPI KAUR: Hi, Tom. How are you?

TP: Not bad. I want to read a quote you put online of my favourite writer, Flannery O'Connor. You wrote, "I write, because I don't know what I think until I read what I say". Why is that quote so significant to you?

RUPI KAUR: I think that quote is the reason that I wrote Milk and Honey. I was 18, 19, 20 at the time when I was writing that book and processing so many emotions and so many experiences. And one thing that I struggled with growing up was I didn't have the words to describe the things that I was feeling. And it wasn't until years later that I wrote them down that I was able to look back and say, that is exactly what that was. And so that quote has just been a sort of mantra that I use when I write every single book, because I think especially sometimes I don't know what to write about. Sometimes I let the outer world dictate what I should write about. That could always brings me back. And it's been an anchor in my life to always write what is here and what's honest.

TP: It's funny. You know, I've started writing a little bit just because, you know, I would go for these long walks and I'll come home and I'll feel something that I'll feel very emotional or I'll feel very scared or I'll feel very peaceful. And I don't really know what I'm feeling. And as a as I write things down, it starts to become clear to me. And I've never really experienced that before, where because I was under the impression that writing would be something that I knew I was feeling that I was trying to figure out the words to say. But it's the opposite. It's that I don't actually know what I'm feeling until I write it. It's kind of spooky.

RUPI KAUR: It's spooky for sure. And for me writing and poetry is such a form of catharsis. And I always say that in my writing, in writing poetry, I'm actually figuring out the answers to questions. I didn't know that I had until I wrote them down.

TP: Are you able to write while you're home?

RUPI KAUR: Yes. I mean, I think like for everybody, the first couple of weeks, I wasn't able to do anything, which was really hard because I was beating myself up for it. I mean, there was so much uncertainty. I didn't know where I was going to be. I was in the middle of trips and coming back home. And there was a collective grief that I think we were all feeling. And our year was suddenly up in the air. And so for the first like three weeks, I wasn't able to write a single word. And it was devastating because I have a manuscript due very soon. And that's why I started doing the workshops, because I was lonely and I was desperate. And I was scared and lost. And I don't know, the idea came to me. And I think I always go back to connection and sharing. That's why I started to publish. That's why I shared my work is I'm desperate to connect with other people because I think that's what keeps us alive and keeps us going. And so now I think for a lot of us who have been directly affected by like losing a loved one, this routine, this thing indoors has become normal. So now I am getting writing them. Thank God.

TP: It's interesting to me that that you've been doing these workshops where, you know, people can tune in and they can ideally write two to three poems a session, it's interesting to me that that would help you write.

RUPI KAUR: Yes. I think what it is, is it helps me write because it helps me feel like I'm a part of a larger community, which I know I am intellectually. But sometimes when you're sitting at home as a writer alone for hours, day in and day out, it just feels like you're by yourself and you're the only one dealing with the things that you're dealing with. And I feel like that is such a dangerous place to be because it's becomes so much of the self, the I I I. But when I do the workshops, I realise this whole thing, this whole journey, this whole thing called life is so much bigger than me and I'm not at the centre of it. And when I feel that pressure and that burden sort of like release, then it's easier for me to do the work. And it also when I see people join my lives and read their work and they're so talented and they just have so much amazing things to share, it reminds me why I do this and why I need to keep doing it.

TP: So on these Instagram live poetry workshops. What do you do? What kind of activities do you do to get people writing?

RUPI KAUR: So in my own writing, I every morning I wake up and my poetry writing starts off with just free writing because what I'm trying to do is just excavate what's happening in my subconscious and my inner world. And so all of the activities and all the exercises are designed to let readers just free. I'm not really interested right now in teaching people technique and skill right now. The ones the sessions I've been doing have just been here. Let your subconscious do the work for you. Our thoughts are already processing. And so don't worry about editing. Don't worry about revising. Just let it come out of you. And so all the exercises have been designed to freewrite and they're about sometimes or eight minutes long sometimes or 50 minutes long and we tackled different subjects. Sometimes it's fear. Sometimes it's love. Sometimes I leave it up to the writers were involved to pick their themes and their subjects. But all of them are sort of designed to just do exactly what you said. Like when you go on those long walks and you come back and you start writing and you're like, oh, my goodness, where did all this come from? That's what the exercises are designed to do. I'm interested in pulling out of people what's happening on the inside that they might not be aware of?

TP: What can people get from that? What can people get from writing poetry right now at a time when they're scared or they're spooked out or they've been with their families too long? What is the release of writing poetry?

RUPI KAUR: I think writing poetry or just any form of writing at all, because a lot of the people who do my workshops aren't poets. And, you know, some of them are writing for the first time. And so. I think it's a form of therapy. I think it's a form of meditation and it's a form of just sitting with yourself and. That is that process is like nurturing and it's such a nutritious process. And so you always come out of it feeling better and feeling more connected to yourself, which I think is really important at this time when there is so much uncertainty clouding our days.

TP: Is writing something that happens to you or is it more like you? Sit down. Okay. Okay. I gotta get some poems down. Let me just do this. Or are you just sitting around your house waiting for something to hite you?

RUPI KAUR: For a long time, writing- So writing was initially something that was, like I said, a form of catharsis. It was such a inner meditative spiritual experience. And then when Milk and Honey took off and it became so much bigger than me. It felt like writing became work and then it turned into, oh, I gotta get up and I got to write these poems because I got to get a book out because people are waiting. And that was not a good place to be because then I'm not enjoying the thing anymore. And then the poems weren't coming because I'm not enjoying them. So now in this period of stillness, I've been taking a step back, learning how to take the pressure off and writing to enjoy and writing to just be where I am. And so every day I wake up in the morning, I meditate and I'm like, okay, what is it? What do I need today? And that is what I'm going to write. And it's a journey every single day I have to wake up and make the decision to write what I need today. And so it's been it's a process. And I mean, yesterday was a great day and then Sunday wasn't. And today, who knows how it's going to go. And it's just, I guess, learning how to be okay with that.

TP: You're gonna do a reading right now. Can you tell me what it is and tell me what you needed? Like tell me where you were when you wrote it.

RUPI KAUR: So this poem I'm going to read is from the Sun and her Flowers. And it's called Community. I think during the process of writing this book, it was very difficult for me to reach out to people that I loved and tell them that I was hurting. And after Milk and Honey, I sort of closed myself off and I was feeling very isolated and very feeling very lonely. So writing this poem was a way to teach myself to reach out again and realise that it's actually okay to reach out, because if people are present in my life to take care of me when everything is great, they will be more than happy to take care of me when things aren't going so well. And I wanted to read it because there are so many communities around the world, different countries, different groups of people who are being affected by this in different ways. And so I want to send this out to everybody who has lost a loved one or is on the frontlines working: Community. When the world comes crashing at your feet. It's okay to let others help you pick up the pieces. If we're present to take part in your happiness when your circumstances are great, we are more than capable of sharing your pain.

TP: Beautiful Rupi Kaur thank you so much for doing this today and talking to me, and I think the good thing I took away from the most of this and I hope you take us in the right way, is that it's hard for you, too. That's very gratifying.

RUPI KAUR: It's hard for all of us. But it makes me feel better to know that we're not suffering it alone. We're all together and we're gonna get through it together.

TP: Ruby, thank you so much. Take care.

RUPI KAUR: Thanks. Bye.

MG: Tom Powers conversation with the poet Ruby Corps, you can find more of Rupi cause poetry on the Q Web site. cbc.ca/q. It's time to say goodbye to our friends in Newfoundland and Labrador. Cross-talk is up next for you, for everyone else. Stay with us. We're back in 90 seconds. And we're going to talk about how quickly things change when it comes to what we know and what we don't know about COVID-19. And there is some power in that in terms of not actually knowing everything. We'll hear from some doctors about what they've learned, how they're learning together, but also, as I say, the strength and understanding that you don't need to know everything in the midst of this pandemic that's on its way. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stick around.

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Filmmaker Jeff Baranby with Tom Power

Guest: Jeff Barnaby

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One extended edition of the program. I'm Matt Galloway Tom Power, host of Q is back. Hello, Tom.

TP: Matt, I know my joke didn't go over as well last time. I got another one. Want to try it out.

MG: Yes, please.

TP: Okay. I went to buy some camouflage pants, but I couldn't find any.

MG: Show yourself out, son. How do you follow that? You know, you follow that with zombie's.

TP: I tell you what I don't understand, Matt. Do you understand people who during this time want to watch movies about other pandemics?

MG: Not as such, no. I'm like escapism.

TP: Me too, man. I like I like movies about, you know, unicorns and, you know, Michael Jordan. I don't like movies about pandemics. But, you know, life for some people is their thing. And if that is your thing, I got just the film for you, Matt. It's by a great filmmaker named Jeff Bernaby, it's called Blood Quantum. And he sees parallels in his film through what we're living in right now. His imagined world is one plagued by zombies were an isolated Miqmaq community discovers they're the only ones with immunity. Here's our conversation.

SOUNDCLIP

TP: Hi, Jeff. How are you?

JEFF BARNABY: Hanging in there. It's kind of strange that the lifestyle of a writer and quality of life isn't that much different. You know, this is pretty much how I spent my summer last year and that just kind of watching the sun go by my window as editor waits.

MG: By the way, Jeff, I'm so sorry to hear that. The theatrical release has been put on hold for a while. How are you doing with that?

JEFF BARNABY: I think anything in the vein of trying to limit the spread of the virus is fine by me. I think the film is still going to be the film, you know, six months from now, a year from now, two years from now. And I think it's pretty surreal that it's correlating with this virus. You're starting to see all the schemes, where social connotation that I put it in the film play out on in real life on the news. It's all you can do to keep your brain from just seeping all your years from total disbelief. And I'm there with everybody else where I wake up and kind of feel like waking up from a dream. But you're waking up into this just surreal reality. Just going to the grocery store or walking the dog is wrought with anxiety. It's bizarre.

TP: Jeff, you mentioned connotations between the film and what's going on right now. Just for people who haven't seen the film, like give us a little give us a little elevator pitch and tell us about some of the connotations that you're seeing.

JEFF BARNABY: Well, this was even playing up before the virus started because of the pipeline protest. And the film is just covered with comments on things that I already seen play out. And I kind of made this comparison earlier. You know, it seems like human learning curve as a circle where you're in this cycle of, you know, doing the same thing over and over again, watching it play out in different scenarios. So for me to talk about the film, it's hard to take it seriously, but it's hard to take it seriously in light of what's going on.

TP: But what I find interesting about what about art is how it can reflect it can reflect what's going on our society without the filmmaker even maybe knowing it yet or without it even happening yet. And you look at your film, you know, about the small, isolated, you know, indigenous community finds that they're the only ones immune to a plague taking over the world. They have to figure out whether to save the world, whether to just, you know, save themselves. I have to admit that when I knew I was talking to all those kind of connection started ringing in my head as I was watching the news.

JEFF BARNABY: Yes. And it's kind of like- you ever see Alanis Obomsawin's film 270 Years of Resistance. And there's a section in the film that goes through the history of colonization and how it's kind of played out over and over again the same way and how her film reflected that pattern. And I was kind of trying to do the same thing, not realising how close everything was and having no idea whatsoever that there was going to be a pandemic on the horizon. And you watched people mobilize for something like a pandemic and you stop and wonder why can't they do the same thing for climate change or missing and murdered indigenous women or, you know, whatever, quote unquote, plague is, is hitting our culture as we speak rather than wait for it to get to a critical point. It's hard to put all that stuff in a film and you're commenting on it, but you were doing it in a way, you were kind of hopefully doing it in a way that was going to make it accessible and not horrify people even more. Because now, like, how does that even compare to what's going on?

TP: I know. It's always, you know, when when real life starts to outshadow the horror films that we watch as it can be even it can be even more terrifying. Just on another topic here, Jeff. Like I've been talking to people so much about how we can help Canadian musicians at a time when they're off the road right now. And it makes me think about Canadian film makers. I mean, the film industry worldwide is pretty much shut down. What are some ways we can support Canadian film right now?

JEFF BARNABY: I think people are doing it because what else are you gonna do? I mean, you could spend time with your family and at some point, I think everybody needs a break and they're gonna be watching their streaming services. And I think that's the best way you can support any artists and that's give their work space and time. And now everybody has the time to do that. And as much as quarantine, it's not some trite, but it's a time for spiritual reflection on everything that's going on right at a nexus point in our culture and our and our humanity. And it's just what are we gonna do next? Because this is as blatant and brutal a warning sign as we're ever going to get. And we need to change. So I think if you support the material and you're starting to see messages of this sort all over the screen, all over the page, I think it's time to start taking it seriously and not just look at it as a form of entertainment. I think people have been playing themselves. You see the issues with capitalism and parasite and the metaphors can't keep up with the reality anymore.

TP: Jeff, give me one, before we go, give me one recommendation for people to watch while they're stuck at home.

JEFF BARNABY: I just watched the platform last night, and that's the one that's fresh in my head. You know what? The weird thing about this whole thing is I'm having a hard time writing because we finally have the time. And it's because, like I said before, you're having a hard time finding ideas to keep pace with the reality. Like, I can't wait to see the 20, 22, 23 films about what we're going through now. I can't wait to see what those films are going to be.

TP: Nominee there. Jeff Barnaby, thanks so much for your time.

JEFF BARNABY: Thank you.

MG: Tom Power in conversation with the filmmaker Jeff Barnaby. And that will do it for this extended edition of the program for today. Tomorrow's Friday. We're back. You'll hear a little bit of Stuart McLean and the Vinyl Cafe tomorrow to wrap up our week. In the meantime, that's it for us. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Take good care. We'll talk tomorrow.

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Thursday April 30, 2020 Full Transcript

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