Domestic violence is a shadow pandemic, says advocate

Guests: Wanda McGinnis, Amanda Dale, Maryam Monsef

MG: A new ad begins with a close up of a young woman chatting on the phone with her friend.

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[Commercial from Ireland about domestic violence]

MG: On a black screen the words appear: if your home isn't safe, support is still here. This is a campaign by the government of Ireland addressing a chilling fact. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, domestic violence has been on the rise. In parts of China's Hubei province, reports of domestic violence tripled after their lockdown was put in place. France and Brazil have seen more than a 40 percent rise. And it is a disturbing fact that the perpetrator in Nova Scotia's mass shooting began with a violent attack on his girlfriend. The question for many women is what happens when you're told to stay at home, but home is not safe? Wanda McGinnis is executive director of the Wheatland Crisis Society in Strathmore, Alberta. Wanda, good morning.

WANDA MCGINNIS: Good morning.

MG: Tell me about the shelter that you run. What is it at in terms of occupancy right now?

WANDA MCGINNIS: We've reduced our occupancy to be able to accommodate some of the social distancing and self-isolation practices. So we're sitting about half full at this point.

MG: Half full? What are you hearing from clients about how this pandemic has affected the situations that they're in?

WANDA MCGINNIS: Well, isolation, of course, is a very dangerous situation for them to be in. While it's necessary to protect themselves from COVID-19, it is very dangerous when their partners are using it to further alienate them, isolate them from family and friends and perpetrate violence against them and their children.

MG: Tell me more about that, because as you say, the message from health officials is stay at home to stay healthy. In what ways would a forced lockdown allow for abusers to take advantage of the victim even more because they're forced to be at home?

WANDA MCGINNIS: We know one of the things I think they would worry about most is. When we aren't enforced, isolation, isolation is actually kind of abnormal. People expect you to be places, they expect you, they expect to be able to reach out and contact you, then spend time with you. And when we're enforced isolation, all of those things are not the norm anymore. And so your partner has his complete control. And so those are very dangerous situations if you're being mistreated.

MG: One of the things we've also heard from police services across the country is that calls around domestic abuse, domestic violence are down. Tell me what you understand about what it's like to try to make a call for help under the circumstances that we're all in right now.

WANDA MCGINNIS: Well, I think if you have only a few minutes where your partner is not around you. Those are really critical moments. And so having numbers front of mind is really important. So I think anything that all levels of government can do to ensure that there are great public campaigns around, who do you call, how do you make those calls? What are the best numbers to call in an emergency? Those are really critical pieces of information to get out to all families.

MG: And so people shouldn't be reassured by the fact that calls to police services are down?

WANDA MCGINNIS: Absolutely not. I think really we're in the middle of a pandemic showdown, right? We have violence against women and girls and we've called it 19. And, you know, both can kill you. So I think it comes down to making sure that people have all of the tools they need to keep themselves safe. Self-isolation is one when you're facing Kobe 19. But, you know, numbers to be able to reach out and get help are or what you need when you're living with domestic violence.

MG: What about finding somewhere to go? You're a rural shelter. And so how does that exacerbate the situation that your clients might find themselves in?

WANDA MCGINNIS: Well, you know, I think accessing shelters always a challenge. And I think what we're working really hard right now is try and remove as many barriers as possible. So when we're talking about rural Alberta, it's making sure that, you know, there really are very few things that can prevent you from coming. So we're going to try and facilitate transportation. We're going to make sure that we can get as many people to you as quickly as we can. If if the police are appropriate, then we're going to support those additional calls that need to be made.

MG: We're also hearing because kids are out of school, that in some ways there's, you know, a separate set of eyes that teachers might have on what might be unfolding at home that aren't on those kids right now. How concerned are you about that?

WANDA MCGINNIS: So I think teachers always play a really critical point in our domestic violence response. They see families in a different way than many of us have an opportunity to. One of the things that I am a little worried about is what the virtual classroom might mean in the face of domestic violence, particularly, as you know, families continue to be under pressure and tensions continue to build. I think there's the potential as this isolation period continues, that at some point an entire classroom of children could be exposed to a horrific domestic violence incident that's happening in the background.

MG: We started our conversation with that ad from Ireland. What would you like to see the federal government do? Do you want something similar on a national scale?

WANDA MCGINNIS: You know, I think the federal government has been very, very responsive. But I think that we can never give too much. So I trust that they're going to be consulting all of their experts in the area. But I think that we need to be talking about this. And I think we need to be talking about all of the time, not just during a pandemic, but certainly I think that there's always more work to be done.

MG: Just finally, what do you expect to see once the lockdowns begin to lift in terms of the work that you're doing?

WANDA MCGINNIS: I am terrified of what that's going to look like because I do not believe that for a second. Domestic violence rates have increased and that people have found a way to live peacefully with each other. I think once the isolation periods are over and our communities start to open up again, I think we're going to have an absolute surge of domestic violence. And I think we're going to hear stories that we haven't heard before. I think we've just had the tip of the iceberg in our local community. You know, women are indicating very dangerous situations where they're reporting multiple strangling and assaults with weapons and this is absolutly a terrifying situation that we're facing.

MG: Wanda, thank you for telling us about the work that you're doing.

WANDA MCGINNIS: Thank you for having me.

MG: Wanda McGinnis executive director of the Wheatland Crisis Society in Stratmore, Alberta. Amanda Dale is an advisory member with the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. She's in Chelsea, Quebec. Amanda, good morning to you.

AMANDA DALE: Good morning Matt.

MG: What do you make of what you've heard just now from from Wanda? She's terrified not only but what's happening now. But about what she and we are likely to see once these lockdowns begin to lift.

AMANDA DALE: I feel her. I couldn't agree more. And it took me up a bit to hear someone, a veteran like Wanda, who knows her stuff, saying the word terrified.

MG: What sort of data do we have on what's going on in Canada? I mentioned what we're hearing anecdotally from police services yesterday. The Quebec City Police Service said that they've seen something like a 33 percent rise in the number of calls concerning domestic violence.

AMANDA DALE: Well, that it is anecdotal at this point. And that's part of the problem is we don't have excellent data gathering in Canada disaggregated by sex, gender, race. And we are often relying on the frontline to provide this anecdotal sort of piece together a picture of what we're facing. And what I'm hearing from my contacts in the front lines and across Canada is this kind of range that that mirrors the global range, everything from 30 percent to 300 percent increases. And what Wanda mentioned about the difficulty of creating social distancing in Congo, that living means that we've lost that we've lost state and there's just a chaotic range. I would say of responses that seems to be up to each individual shelter to to create in its own context. And while having a nuanced response is important. It speaks to the lack of a coordinated effort across the country. And Wanda did mention that there are two warring pandemic. And we've known since 2013 that the W.H.O. announced violence against women as a global epidemic and then shortly thereafter started referring to it as a pandemic. And we've known this in Canada has international treaty bodies and reports from the special rapporteur on violence against women, all of which have outlined what we should have had in place when this hit. And so this crisis reveals the other crisis in an absolutely predictable and horrifying way in my view.

MG: What should have been in place in this country?

AMANDA DALE: We don't have a national action plan on violence against women. We keep hearing that it's coming for many years. We've heard it can't be done because provinces and territories can't work together. And it's a federal system and the government can't make the problem to do anything. But the fact is we saw a viable pandemic of COVID-19 bring everyone together. And I believe if the political will is there, we could have done the same with the violence against women epidemic.

MG: Why isn't that political will there? I mean, if we know that this is a crisis and to your point that this has been named as an epidemic or a pandemic around the world, why isn't that political will here?

AMANDA DALE: Matt, the the question of my entire 40 year career. It is ian ugly truth for us to confront and it requires people with power over other people to relinquish their power. That's what violence against women is. It requires. It's so it's so part of the fabric of our society. And it doesn't leave aside the halls of the halls of power. We've seen the stories of sexual harassment on Parliament Hill. We know that this is something that requires all of us to examine our relationships or close personal relationships in a way that is not the comfortable distance of public policy normally.

MG: Are you confident? We keep talking about what will be and who will be when we come out of this pandemic. Are you confident that this, I don't want to say that it's going to present an opportunity because there's nothing positive that can come out of violence against women, but that there will be the opportunity to to rethink how we approach this issue.

AMANDA DALE: I do. I absolutely do. I feel that if we can mobilize during this this horrifying glimpse into what we neglected. I think we do have a moment for everyone to examine this in a different and more serious way and a more sustained way and to take seriously the kind of investment that it requires, no longer requiring shelters to hold bake sales to deal with this issue, but to actually have public investment that will take us to a new plateau where we can confidently say that we've thrown everything we have at it and we're shifting the ground.

MG: Just very briefly, I'm about to speak with Maryam Monsef, the Minister for Women and Gender Equality. What would you ask her?

AMANDA DALE: Invest in it. Commensurate with its impact and use the tools that are already at hand. We have gun control laws that were passed by parliament last fall that haven't been placed on the order table. We have a national action plan on violence gets women that's waiting. All of this is that we're integrated into the mainstream responses to COVID-19 would prevent these kinds of catch up games that we're playing after women's lives have already been at stake.

MG: Amanda, good to speak with you as ever. Thank you.

AMANDA DALE: Always. Thank you, Matt.

MG: Amanda Dale, advisory member with the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability. Maryam Monsef is the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Rural Economic Development. Minister, good morning to you.

MARYAM MONSEF: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Do you believe, as Amanda Dale believes, that there is a shadow pandemic underway in this country right now, a pandemic that is rooted in gender based violence?

MARYAM MONSEF: I do women and advocates like Amanda has been telling us that that's been the case for decades.

MG: And so when you hear from people on the frontlines that there is a crisis, that when it comes to space, something is practical in space, that because of social distancing and physical distancing guidelines, we've lost space and there isn't the room for women to go. What's your response to that?

MARYAM MONSEF: Well, there are three ways that the pandemic has hit women hardest. 62 percent of the jobs lost in March because of the pandemic were women's jobs, whether women are working or not, they take on care responsibilities. Now that kids are out of school at a day-care, now that they need to care for in-laws and parents. And many of those who are still employed are women on the frontlines. They're earning low wages in precarious situations, putting themselves at risk often because they've either chosen this path or because they have no other choice. Nurses to subbies, childcare workers. They're mostly women. And you know on the issue of gender-based violence, we've seen in other countries, rates of gender-based violence, which were already high pre-pandemic, have only increased and so has the severity of that violence. Our government is aware of this issue. We are working on it and we know that there is much more to be done.

MG: I was just I apologize for interrupting, but in understanding that and knowing that you hear Amanda Dale say that shelters shouldn't have to have bake sales to be able to to fund themselves. Why is that acceptable if there is this shadow pandemic underway?

MARYAM MONSEF: As a government, we've been supporting organizations advocating for and and for the eradication and preventing gender based violence. We've been supporting them like the essential workers. They are on top of 50 million dollars that's been going to shelters and sexual assault centres and gender based violence organizations. We've been sending money to provinces to top up the pay for these essential workers. So when it comes to their wages and provincial governments have the ability to pay those on the frontlines of this work. And our government for the past five years has been working to do what these advocates have been saying for the past 50 years with, you know, the most significant investments in gender based violence sector in Canada's history. And we were just getting started on responding to the calls for justice, for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. We weren't getting started on introducing gun laws. We weren't getting started on putting forward a national action plan and then the pandemic and the pandemic, well, it's a situation that no one can really foresee. But as Amanda mentioned, one of the silver linings in the pandemic, if there is one, is that provinces and territories and the federal government are working together. We are mobilizing. We know there is more to be done when it comes to gender based violence. We get it and we're on it. And as long as our partners in provincial and territorial governments continue to address this issue with the same urgency we are, we will reduce the rates of gender based violence in this country and prevent a lot of suffering.

MG: Do you believe that there is a nationally and I'll use Amanda's phrase, the political will for a national action plan on violence against women?

MARYAM MONSEF: I do, and it's something that was in my mandate letter from the Prime Minister just after the federal election in October when we met with my provincial and territorial counterparts. In December, everybody was on the same page. And actually I'm meeting with them later this week to talk about the second phase of our response to gender based violence during COVID. That political will is there, Matt, and I have to say, it's not just governments that see this issue for what it really is. While it's not a new phenomena, your colleagues at CBC were running an investigative piece about the rates of domestic violence in Canada that were overwhelming shelters even before the pandemic. So there is a cultural shift happening that is most definitely shaping political will as well.

MG: We just have a few seconds left. In the midst of this pandemic, one of the things we're hearing is that's the guidance to stay home can complicate things if home is not a safe place. Ireland has the government of Ireland has these ads that are out letting women know the shelters are still open during COVID-19. Is that something that that your government would consider?

MARYAM MONSEF: Absolutely. Absolutely, and if you're out there and if your home isn't safe and your kids aren't safe, you are not alone. There are hundreds, if not thousands of organizations across the country who are there to support you. If you can check in on someone because you think that there may be a risk, whether it's online or on the phone, do that and if you're on the front lines of this work, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We are with you. We know there is more to be done and we're on it.

MG: Maryam Monsef, good to speak with you about this. Thank you.

MARYAM MONSEF: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Maryam Monsef is the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Rural Economic Development. She was in Peterborough, Ontario. If you or anyone you know is experiencing violence at home, please call the National Assaulted Women's Toll Free Help Line. It's 1-866-863-0511. You can also text. The hashtag is SAFE, 7233 on your Bell or Rogers, Fido or Telus mobile phone. And if you are in immediate danger, call 9-1-1. The CBC News is next and then we're going to be talking about staying safe at the grocery store. Remember when grocery shopping was fun? Not so much anymore. The basic chore of food shopping has turned into a mission that can be riddled with anxiety. We'll hear more about that coming up in six minutes. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio.

[Music]

From temperature checks to plexiglass and higher wages – how COVID-19 is changing the grocery shopping

Guests: Wayne Hanley, Sylvain Charlebois

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, health reporter Andre Picard will be here and we'll be talking about easing lockdown restrictions the right way. But first, putting food on the table, it's not as easy as it used to be.

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE: My name is Edith Sinnema and I'm 80 years old. I'm going to try to explain my shopping experience in this new day and age with the pandemic. So the first time I went, I was a bit afraid, a bit nervous, but when I got to the store at 7 o'clock in the morning and that was my first blip, I was thinking, what was the store thinking getting our seniors up so early. Until someone explained to me that it was the safest time for us to go because we are some of the most vulnerable people. And I got to the store and there was a friendly woman giving me a buggy, saying that it had been cleaned. There were directions of which way we should go. I was very careful not to touch anything that I was not intending to buy. And then as I was looking for an item, suddenly this gentleman comes zooming down the wrong side of the aisle and goes by me and I'm thinking, oh, I guess we're seniors, but we still haven't learned how to follow rules.

MG: No doubt that grocery shopping is not what it used to be. People like Edith Sinnema, who you just heard from, might be rolling with the changes. For others though, this routine chore has become fraught with anxiety. Here is Edmonton resident Jennifer Parker.

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VOICE: I would describe my trips to the grocery store as a bizarre and unsettling game of dodging humans. It's actually pretty surprising how the simple task of grocery shopping has become such a source of anxiety and frustration for me. I found the experience causes anxiety because of the people around me. They just don't seem to be following physical distancing measures or understand what the giant red areas on the floor of the store mean. The last time I was shopping, I saw couples out as if it was date night. They were chatting and slowly browsing and going the wrong way down the aisles. I reached my limit of so many people going the wrong way that I finally stopped dead in an aisle while a man approached from the wrong way. I told him he was going the wrong way and that I would back up until he got his item. And then he would have to leave. The way he came in, he definitely gave me a weird look. So basically grocery shopping these days makes me feel like an irrational person because it makes me so anxious.

MG: Does that sound familiar? It's not only visiting the grocery store that's unsettling right now. The employees who are stocking and wringing items are working through their own fears. Wayne Hanley is the president of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 10-6-A. It represents 25,000 grocery store employees in the province of Ontario. Wayne, good morning.

WAYNE HANLEY: Good morning.

MG: That scenario of people not following the arrows on the floor, respecting social distancing measures, is that ringing true with what you hear from your members?

WAYNE HANLEY: Absolutely. It's improving. When we first had shopping and trying to limit shoppers going into the stars, it was a little chaotic and quite, quite a number of cases chaotic, but now we're seeing better behaviour. It's not great, I think there's a number of ways it can be improved.

MG: Tell me a little bit about how you see it being improved because we're in this scenario now where you see things in the stores and you certainly don't remember seeing, you know, arrows on the floor or, you know, sheets of plexiglas separating the checkout person from the customer. How could you want that improved?

WAYNE HANLEY: Yeah, it's new not only to the public, it's new to our members that are working in the stores. We see it all coming down to the number of customers that are allowed in the store at one time. We've been hammering away hard on this and we have had employer loves company that has for the most part, been working well with it. We have had incidents where too many people are let in the store for a variety of reasons, whether that be a lack of security counting or just people wanting more in the stores or local management. But if we can control the number of customers that go into the store and the customer flow in the store is better, it minimizes those cases where, you know, we have had a couple of situations where we had a gun and gun incident in the store early on in the process and, you know, we had shoppers that have actually spit in there on our members and later carried out of the store in handcuffs by a local authorities.But we're seeing less and less of those types of incidents and I think it's becoming it's a largely result of the consumer becoming more aware, more sensitive. If we saw better enforcement inside the store, whther that be security people, we think that would add. We would like to see is the local management in the store on the floor and being proactive when they see people going down the wrong aisles. I've been in some of our units where the manager is constantly across the store managing the flow of the cash registers.

MG: You mentioned security people. I mean, if I think of my local grocery store, it's like going to a club now where there's a line-up outside, there's a velvet rope, there's a security guard who's there, who asks you questions. You want security guards in the store as well?

WAYNE HANLEY: I think that there has to be some level of security. If that can do be in the store or some form of talking with the customers who aren't in there just to do their shopping and get the heck out of the store fast. Those situations, I was in one of our units just on Friday and saw, you know, two people doing the grocery shopping. And there's no need for that. You know, those types of simple management decisions or actions by going up and asking one of those person to leave will increase the number of people in store and allow things to flow much better.

MG: We've seen chains like T&T and now Longo's in Ontario implementing temperature checks for shoppers and employees. If you wanna come into the store, somebody is there with a little temperature gun. They put it to your head or to your wrist and they see what your temperature is. If you're fine, you can go in, if not, then you will not be shopping today. This is a controversial measure. Have a listen to Dr. Bonnie Henry. She is the provincial health officer in British Columbia. She said last week these checks aren't necessarily effective.

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VOICE: Two thirds of people to three quarters have a fever at some point, but not having a fever doesn't mean that you're necessarily safe. You can have other symptoms that might be indicative of being sick.

MG: Wayne Hanley, do you want all grocery stores where your members are working to be checking people's temperatures before they come in to work or to shop?

WAYNE HANLEY: Absolutely. I think that any precautions that can be taken to eliminate the virus coming into the unit to expose our members to the virus should be undertaken. I can add to the controversy about whether we wear a mask or we don't wear masks. Initially, it was just, you know, the viruses, an airborne mask aren't necessary. It's at. We were advocating for masoli or from the onset. And I'm not saying that we got it right while we were trying to do is provide the best possible protection for our members. And now we're seeing that mask and becoming an acceptable norm.

MG: But I don't see everyone working in a grocery store wearing a mask. I certainly don't see everybody who is shopping, wearing a mask. Should that be uniform as well? And again, not just for shoppers, but for all of your members.

WAYNE HANLEY: I would love to see it mandatory. The employer hasn't gone, our employer, Loblaws here in Ontario has not gone that far. Masks are available to to the employee should they want to wear them. When I go into the stores I talk to our members and say, you know, do you know you can wear a mask? You just have to ask for it and the answer is, yeah, yeah, I know. You know, I just don't like talking through it, etc.. I try and explain to them, it is best to be proactive and, you know, it's a voluntary thing right now. I'd like to see it mandatory, yes.

MG: Your members are right there and they can't work from home because work is in the store and they need to be there. We're hearing that stores across the country are offering on average, kind of roughly a $2 per hour raise to workers during this pandemic. Is that enough? Are employees willing to continue on with this work if they're getting a little bit of a bump in their pay?

WAYNE HANLEY: I think it is certainly warranted. I would like to see it to be a higher amount. I think it is probably trying to find a balance of recognizing the risk payer, the amount of risk pay that you should be paid out against, you know, getting people to work. You know, I would like to think that the employers are doing this all out of the goodness of their heart, but the reality is they need people to work. And in order to do that right now, under these types of conditions, with the amount of risk is taken, there has to be incentives. Some are doing it by hourly incentives, increasing hourly pay. Others are doing it by monthly payments, weekly bonus payments, etc.. So I think it's twofold, but absolutely, they should be awarded premium pay and in recognition of the risk that's being taken.

MG: There's been some discussion as to whether a grocery store should stay open at all or whether they should be enclosed a handful of days a week so that people don't need to be there five, six, seven days a week. Whether you can do curbside pickup, whether there should be an enhanced method of home delivery rather than having not just customers, but employees also in the stores. Do you want the stores open at all?

WAYNE HANLEY: WelI think I have to recognize and would support the stores being open because we have to give food to consumers. And irrespective of getting a premium pay, I believe that many of our members are out there because they are providing and they feel a need to provide that service to the community. With respect to, you know, shopping, we've been proposing and purported to have a common pause day, right from the onset to give our our members a break. That's not going to happen unless it gets legislated out there just because of the competition between the different retailers out there. There's no doubt that the virus, the COVID-19 situation has brought online shopping into our stores much, much faster than what the industry was expecting. I think that's across all banners and various companies were going in various various directions to sort of do that last mile delivery from the store to the to the to the consumer's home. We've seen our our employer, Loblaws, step up selecting method methods inside their stores that will increase their efficiency. But it's just the number and the volume of online shopping. The Clicking Collector, the Pizza Express, I guess they call it now has increases, you know, tenfold and twenty fold in some locations. So they're reacting and kerbside pickup is is an option. But as you're holding all these orders in the stores, you have to have some place is creating problems with the distancing between employees trying to get it into the cars of the consumers that are there to pick it up. So the logistics in the store are become a little bit more difficult to point to and it's definitely something that has come on faster than the industry was expecting. And, you know, I don't know ultimately whether or not what's happening now will be the way that online shopping is being conducted a year from now when things are back to a new norm.

MG: It's important hear what your members are up against. Wayne, thank you.

WAYNE HANLEY: All right. Have a good day, Matt.

MG: And you. Wayne Hanley is president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 10-0-6A. They represent thousands of grocery store workers in Ontario. As you're hearing, business might be changing for the big grocery change. Smaller stores are also adapting to this pandemic. Ricardo Leal started something called the Bread Truck in Edmonton. He sells bread and pastries that people would normally pick up at the bakery owned by his business partners family. The customers call in their orders and then on weekends they drive the bread truck through neighbourhoods, honking to let people know that there's bread for sale.

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VOICE: I told my parents this idea that we were doing my part. My parents are both Portuguese and so is my partner's parents. And they had told us about when they were young in Portugal, they would put this cloth bag outside to hang it on their doorknob and the bread man or the bread truck would come along just like had not been used to and feel the bread bag with bread and people would just leave the money in the bread bag. And so we thought, wouldn't it be great if we if we just kind of drove the truck around? And we were even trying to get a special horn, but all we got was a megaphone. My wife operated through the window and we kind of just honked and passed around and people just really took to it and they'f come and stop us in the middle of the road. And there's something visceral about it, something that, first of all, a lot of people are isolating, they're not going out as much. So to have that kind of something local in that community feel, you know, makes people happy. And then they come out and a lot of people are buying, you know, buying pastries and leaving it on their neighbours doorsteps. So there's kind of like this community feel and and kinda togetherness. And maybe there's also a nostalgia to this whole back to basics where, you know, you're ordering from a local business and and it's bread. And, you know, bread has a history of being something really humbling. You break bread with family and friends. So it's I don't know, It's something really, really neat that's happened and I think people are really just loving it.

MG: I love the idea of the Bread Truck. Will the strategies survive the pandemic? What happens on the other side of things? Here to look into his crystal ball is Sylvain Charlebois. He teaches food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, is also senior director of their Agri-Food Analytics Lab. Sylvain, good morning to you.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Morning, Matt.

MG: I used to love grocery shopping. I would go, you know, daily, sometimes a couple of days would end up in the grocery store more than once. Now it's this anxiety filled experience for many of us. How is what we're in the midst of, from your perspective, changing the grocery shopping experience?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Well, I used to enjoy grocery shopping as well. It's just different. I mean, the grocers have tried to make us feel at home while visiting their facilities for many, many years. They've actually worked a lot on store design. They tried to inspire us. They tried to get us to impulse buy as much as possible. The experience is totally different. It went from a a pleasant hunt of different food products to a duty, essentially. And so we're asked to comply to certain rules. And I would say for the most part, talking to a lot of people across the country of the last six, seven years, most citizens are peacefully complying. I mean, there's been a few incidences here and there. But overall, people fully understand this is a this is this is a pandemic. And everyone has to really put in their their part and as much as possible. And yeah, there are new rules. And some people I'm not convinced people are ignoring rules much so than than than trying to understand or trying to send that. This is really a community issue. And you have to kind of follow the rules, new rules that may actually be confusing at times.

MG: Do you expect that other grocery store chains will follow what T&T and Longo's are doing, where you have to get your temperature checked before you go into the store?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Well, I'm not an expert in viruses or anything like that, but I've read some literature about these tests. And earlier, there are some some reservations in terms of how this technology works. I would say this about T&T and Longo's decision to to move forward on on testing consumers walking in. This is happening more and more across the supply chain. Companies are looking at managing risks outside their facilities more and more. We're seeing it right now in Cargill, in Alberta and also GVS Canada. At Brooks that both are facilities, meat processing plants, and they're trying to figure out how to mitigate risks outside. They've been very good at keeping food safe and making sure that the store is a safe place to go. But right now, because of this pandemic, the new reality for these businesses is to try to mitigate risk outside as much as possible.

MG: What about the idea, speaking about this with Wayne that stores could close entirely, that you could have just curbside pickup and not have, you know, hundreds of people or what have you in the grocery store all at the same time?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: I actually I know for a fact that some grocers were thinking about it. It hasn't happened. I actually did hear that some grocers were thinking of converting some stores into Pick stores to support their e-commerce strategy. That didn't happen either. So I do believe that grocers are very careful with their brands. They just don't want to make their stores look like some sort of forbidden place. Again, going against what they've done for many, many years. I mean, this is a most of these stores are a labyrinth of smells and taste. And and so it's really kind of kind of the cove. It is really something that is hitting grocers very hard right now. Their focus right now is just to deliver food as much as possible.

MG: If you take a look at delivery, it's interesting. You mentioned deliver food. Foodora, we learned yesterday, food delivery company is leaving Canada in May. And this comes just a couple of weeks after the ruling was put in place that people who work Foodora could form a union. Do you see a connection between the two?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Not really. I do think that Foodora's decision is all about its own business model. It just didn't see a fit between what employees wanted to do and the company and which is fine. Other apps will probably come up with a different conclusion. But I would say this about COVID, the one thing that is very interesting, what is going on right now, going back to your interview with with the bread delivery person in Alberta, COVID is democratizing the supply chain. Everyone will have access to the consumer eventually through e-commerce or by delivering bread on a truck in neighbourhoods, which is interesting. So it's going to give us all more choice. However, running a grocery store is costing more salaries are going up. There's security. There are rules. You need to clean the place more so that an operating room these days. So it's costing more. So I do expect if you're asking me to look into my crystal ball, I do expect some stores to close. Eventually you'll have fewer choices in a store, but as a consumer at home, you'll have more choice online and products will get to you instead of going to the store.

MG: And you can already see that. I mean, partially because restaurants have had to pivot and they're now selling things. Maybe, you know, unloading the wine cellar because they're not bringing money in and they're also selling pre-packaged food. You could buy things that you wouldn't get, whether it's, you know, a big company like Foodora or smaller individual couriers. It does feel as though if you have access and you are in a community where there is that critical mass of people, that you can get things that you wouldn't otherwise be able to get in in different ways.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Exactly. Cisco Canada sells exclusively to restaurants. As you know, Matt, the restaurant sector doesn't exist really right now. Cisco Canada last week decided to start selling to consumers online. If you would have asked me two months ago if Cisco Canada would have sold products to consumers, 20 ten ounce steaks for $250, I would have said, no way, but it's happening.

MG: Should we be concerned about, you talked about the supply chain, should we be concerned when the head of Tyson Foods, huge meat processing company in the United States puts full page ads in newspapers in the U.S. saying that the supply chain is about to break?

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: I'm concerned about that kind of messaging. To be honest, Matt, when you look at the entire supply chain, we should be okay. There should be some, there are disruptions here and there. It's not going to be perfect, but we're not going to run out of food. Tyson is in tough spots, Smithfield's as well. But meat packers are taking note. They're learning from this. And and frankly, before going into COVID, inventories were pretty high in wholesaling. And so I wouldn't be concerned about running out of of meat products. The only concern, of course, is price. Prices were actually going up before COVID. We are expecting prices to go up over the next few months, but it was happening whether there was COVID or not. But don't be scared, there'll be plenty of meat to make out or for you to buy.

MG: But it is going to cost more. We've heard that as well when it comes to fruits and vegetables, just because of temporary foreign workers and the difficulty in getting them back into the country.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: Yeah. If you remember in December, you and I spoke about food inflation in your studio in Toronto actually, 6 percent for meat. We're sticking to that forecast for 2020. We're expecting meat prices to go up by as much as 6 percent across the board.

MG: Sylvain, good to speak with you, as always. Thank you for bringing the crystal ball back to CBC Radio.

SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS: All right. Take care.

MG: Sylvain Charlebois, professor and food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University, senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab. Any thoughts on grocery shopping and how complicated it suddenly become? Used to be, as I said, a lot of joy for a lot of us and now an anxiety filled experience. You can let us know through the website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Coming up on this program, papers please. Imagine showing an immunity certificate everywhere you go. Yes, the grocery store, but beyond that as well. We'll speak about that idea and more with health reporter Andre Picard. He's here in 90 seconds time. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Return to school must happen carefully and thoughtfully

Guests: Andre Picard

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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VOICE: We have measures in place that people are following as we reopen gradually. I'm certain people will want to follow these measures because if we get this wrong, everything we have done, everything we have sacrificed over the past many weeks could have been in vain. We need to make sure we do this very carefully based on absolutely the best scientific advice.

MG: The Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday emphasizing that any plans to loosen restrictions around social distancing must be handled with care. In Quebec, the country's hardest hit province, those plans include sending kids back to school in as little as two weeks. And in New Brunswick, the roadmaps include something called social bubbles, bubbles of more than one household. There are many more questions than answers about what the next phase of Canada's COVID-19 response will look like. Andre Picard, health columnist with The Globe and Mail, he's joined us regularly over the past weeks. Andre, good morning.

ANDRE PICARD: Good morning.

MG: Let's start in Quebec, the premier Francois Legault said yesterday that elementary schools and day-care centres will begin reopening on the 11th of May. As you understand it, what are the risks and the benefits for families in that province?

ANDRE PICARD: I guess the benefits are parents are pretty overwrought by having kids around. They wanted to see the school year. You know, kids are some kids are suffering at home for a variety of reasons, not being underfed. There's the risk of violence just slowing down, develop mentally. So everybody wants to get kids back to school. But the question is, how do you do it safely? So that's the debate in Quebec. Are they doing this too soon. Are they doing it? They don't seem to be clear rules. They're saying, yeah, we're gonna be social distancing. We want to have classes of 15. But there's no real plan to do that. It's just kind of at one point the premier said, well, we hope those some kids don't show up so that it's not much of a plan. It seems a bit odd politically to do that.

MG: David Fissman, epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, says this is a calculated gamble.

ANDRE PICARD: It's a political decision. It's not a health decision. So they want to do something, but it just seems an odd place to start to open up congregate settings rather than more restrained settings like businesses.

MG: You've written that the belief is that it's okay for children to get infected because they don't get all that sick from the virus. That's the belief. We now are learning more about this. The U.K. and Italy are reporting that there are some children that have died from an inflammatory syndrome that may be linked to COVID-19. This is a rare thing, but how much do we not know yet about how this affects children?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, we know very little. What the biggest worry is not them getting sick, it's that they'll spread it to other people. So, you know, children can be carriers of this. So that's the danger with school. But we're also learning this is not not a benign illness. You know, we get obsessed with mortality statistics. All kids have no kid. Child has died in Canada, but kids are getting sick. There are children in the hospital now with with this illness. And when it goes bad, it goes very, very badly. So the the research you referred to is there's some evidence that children who have covered 19 are developing a syndrome called Kawasaki, which is like a toxic shock syndrome. It can damage the heart for life. You know, it is treatable, but it can do some really severe damage that we've seen this out of a few countries, very small reports, but this is a risk we can't ignore.

MG: There are a lot of parents and kids who are wondering about school. And you've written about something, not just the physical distancing, but temporal distancing. What is that?

ANDRE PICARD: Yeah so temporal distancing means spreading things out over time as opposed to distance. So we all know physical distancing now, keep your two meter distance. Temporal means maybe sending kids half the kids one day, the other half the next day, sending half in the morning, half in the afternoon to spreading out the number of people over time. And we're going to see this in workplaces. We're going to see it in stores. I know there are countries where you're only allowed to shop if your family name starts with a D on a certain day. That's kind of temporal distancing is to limit the number of people in any setting any given time.

MG: And that's what's coming our way?

ANDRE PICARD: I think so. I think that's going to be a practical way for some workplaces to get back. I think it's going to be you just had a long discussion about shopping being different. I think that's one way the shopping is going to be different. Some of us are only going to be able to shop on certain days.

MG: Ontario Premier Doug Ford yesterday released what a lot of people were looking forward to in terms of some sort of roadmap where we're going and ended up leaving the stage with, I think, probably more questions being directed his way than answers. He said that this was a roadmap, not a calendar. Do you think people have the patience for a roadmap or are they looking for dates? Tell us when things are going to start to resume.

ANDRE PICARD: I think that question is going to be answered by a natural experiment. Quebec's gone the calendar route, Ontario's gone the road map route. I think the problem in Ontario is not that I think a road map is a good way to go, but the problem with Ontario's road map is it doesn't have any markers on it. So it's so vague that we're gonna get somewhere, but we're not sure where. So, you know, if you set out on a trip and you don't know where you're going. It's not a very useful road map. So, I think there's a lot of caution there. Quebec a little less cautious. We'll see who's right in the end.

MG: What role should Ottawa have do you think in this wave of re-opening. As the prime ministers said yesterday, that each province has its right to make up its own individual plan.

ANDRE PICARD: Right. So it's true we have different outbreaks in different parts of the country, so it's appropriate to have different responses, but I think Ottawa has done what it's supposed to do is sort of set them standards to call people to order when they're they're out of bounds. So when Premier Legault and Quebecwas talking about this ridiculous idea of natural immunization. Dr. Theresa Tam, you know, was pretty clear. This is nonsense. We can't do this. So I think that's Ottawa's role a bit is to have some semblance of order and to to encourage those doing well and to discourage those who are are making a wrong decisions.

MG: In Quebec, the assumption is and maybe this is what's guiding the direction that the province is going in and that this is in some ways a tale of two epidemics. That you have what's happening in the general population where things largely are in control and then you have what's happening in hospitals and long term care. Is that a fair assessment of where we're at right now in this pandemic curve?

ANDRE PICARD: Yes, it is a fair assessment. There's these two worlds. There's this horror show going on still ongoing in long term care, and there's not that much community spread. But the big question and this is a question, every country, as it eases out of restrictions is how fast will communities spread happen again? You know, there's still sparks out there. And what we want to do is not have another fire. So we've had these fires. They've been contained. But the fire is not the sparks. The embers are still there and we don't want to reignite them.

MG: One of the ways to prevent the sparks from reigniting is the possible immunity passports that we've been talking about over the last couple of days on this program. If you're found to have antibodies to the virus, you're allowed to resume normal activities. If not, then you are still at home. How practical do you think is that idea in this country?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, they could be practical, it's a good idea. In theory, we're looking for a way to ensure you don't. People can go back to work, go back to school safely, have the fewest people out there who are potentially infectious. So in theory, it's great. In practise, there's all kinds of problems because we just don't know enough about COVID-19 yet. We don't know how long, if people have immunity, you know, it's sensible to think if it happens with most viruses, you have some immunity. But we don't know how strong that immunity is. We don't know how long it lasts. We don't know if it's different in different people. There's this whole question of asymptomatic transmission. Can you be reinfected? We don't know. There's some evidence that maybe or is it a virus, even a worst case scenario is that a virus that kind of you get sick, you get better, but then it hides and it springs up again, sort of like herpes virus. You're stressed and you're sick again and then infectious. There's all kinds, there's so many unanswered questions that we're a long way from the passport idea.

MG: What about the ethical concerns around it? People have gamed out these dystopian scenarios where you're stuck at home, I can go out and work and I go and I take your job because you can't have that job. How concerned should we be about that?

ANDRE PICARD: I think we have to consider that there is all kinds of implications of this deal. The worse one than you taking my job is I have immunity. Therefore, I'm going to be forced to go work in these long term care home. I'm a parking lot attendant, but I'm immune, so we're going to put you in with really high risk people. And yet we don't know if you're 100 percent protected. So there are all kinds of civil liberties issues, practical issues, legal issues that spring from this.

MG: Just the last point, we seem to always talk every week about testing. And in part that's because many people believe that's the gateway out of where we're at right now. How much closer are we to actually doing the number of tests we need to do to be able to inform the decisions we have to make?

ANDRE PICARD: I don't think there's an exact number, but we have to keep ramping up testing until the number of cases daily falls considerably. So I think we're pretty fair ways away from doing that. You know, we really have to get to the point where if we return to normal life and there are cases that we can contract, trace them really, really quickly and snuff out those, you know, that ember from becoming a fire, that's really the goal. And we're not there yet. Ontario, of the best things in Ontario is the roadmap, is they talked about we're not going to reopen until we can do all contract tracing within 24 hours. And I think that has to be the rule. If you can't do it quickly then there's the danger of spread. So that is a really important rule that I think every province has to adopt.

MG: But we're nowhere near that yet.

ANDRE PICARD: Certainly not near in Ontario. Ontario continues to be a laggard on testing. So they really have to pick it up. BC, Alberta have really increased their testing a lot. So has Quebec. But Quebec has a much bigger problem. So I think that we're getting there, but we're not quite there.

MG: Andre, great to talk to you as always and we will talk again. Thank you.

ANDRE PICARD: Thank you.

MG: Andre Picard, Global and Mail's health columnist. He is in Montreal.

Yes, the pandemic is making us anxious, but it’s also revealing how resilient we are

Guests: Theresa Vande Burgt, Hillary McBride

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway. There are many people who describe this pandemic as an emotional roller coaster. People are isolated. Your routine has been thrown off. You're facing all sorts of uncertainty. It's enough to make anyone feel a little wobbly.

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VOICE: It's been about 50/50. I've had some really good days where I feel angered and balance. I feel optimistic and hopeful. And I feel like, okay, a lot of people are counting on me. Family, friends, and even the opposite side of that eyesand days where it's just that I'm wobbly because you just don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow.

MG: That's the actor Dwayne Johnson, also known as The Rock. He has been outspoken about his experience with depression. Like many people right now, this pandemic is amplifying that problem. A new study by the Angus Reid Institute found that half of Canadians say their mental health has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Theresa Vande Burgt lives with anxiety and depression and joins us from Orillia, Ontario. Theresa, good morning to you.

THERESA VANDE BURGT: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Tell me a little bit about the anxiety and the mental health concerns that you have faced over the years.

THERESA VANDE BURGT: So I'm diagnosis with general anxiety disorder and depression as well. I was diagnosed as just social anxiety disorder when I was about 14 years old. So this is something that's not new to me. I've coped with this for most of my life. And it's in the last couple of weeks has kind of come back home full force.

MG: Tell me a little bit about the last couple of weeks and what life has been like for you.

THERESA VANDE BURGT: So actually, like right before this kind of all hit, I was already in a bit of a low place due to my anxiety and depression. And then so when I originally I was laid off from work, I kind of took it as a. Initial opportunity to like self care and take that time to work through this and work on myself, but as the time has gone on, I found it's created more problems than solutions. I believe this is my sixth or seventh week at home and I find it increasingly difficult to stay motivated and keep a healthy routine for myself.

MG: So what does that mean in terms of daily life for you?

THERESA VANDE BURGT: I, you know, the biggest thing I've struggled with is my sleep. My sleep has been thrown off. Insomnia is something that I've struggled with for a long time. And I find not having a healthy sleep routine, I'm not waking up and not doing the same thing throughout the day that I normally would. You know, working 8 or 9 hours a day. I'm finding it hard to keep myself busy and doing things that would normally keep me kind of distracted and on track from, you know, falling into those pits of depression and anxiety. So not having that regular routine has, you know, kind of fallen back a little bit into, you know. Not keeping up with.

MG: Just the routines of life?

THERESA VANDE BURGT: Yes.

MG: What do you use as a coping mechanism? I mean, in terms of whether it's therapy or whether and it's I really appreciate you speaking about this because it's a personal thing and it's really difficult. In talking to other people, what are some of the coping mechanisms that you might normally apply?

THERESA VANDE BURGT: Normally, I find it really helpful to be social, so that's something that has really impacted me, is not having that that same social interaction. You know, I'm finding other ways to get that through video chats and calls with family and friends. But it's it's different. It's a new. It's not having that same like physical contact and social interaction that I'm used to.

MG: What about more formalized forms of therapy?

THERESA VANDE BURGT: Right. So I have had, I am lucky to have access to therapy through the phone right now. Not everyone does have access to that. So that's been helpful. But it's also set me back a bit and I'm used to having again, that therapy in person and over the phone. It's a little easier for me to. You know, not reach out and utilise that as much as I should.

MG: What are you most concerned about in all of this?

THERESA VANDE BURGT: I'm most concerned about, this pressure of this feeling of guilt and this pressure to be productive right now. I feel like there's this, you see it all over social media, people utilizing this time to start new projects or finish old ones or learn new skills, which is a great thing. I'm not negating that at all, but I think that it's also creating this sense of pressure. And for someone who already struggles with their mental health, it can be extremely daunting and I think harmful to expect people to use this time because not everyone is able to do that.

MG: Thatt you see other people, you know, learning a language or they're going to paint the house or something like that. Learn how to bake bread or something like that and that's a dangerous form of aspiration in some ways?

THERESA VANDE BURGT: It can be/ I think it can be. I think that for people who, you know, might not have access to. Maybe they don't have the access to the materials they need to to bake bread or or they don't have the equipment to, you know, start their own podcast or on or paint something, you know. So people feel this kind of pressure from other people. Other people do that and they feel, you know, maybe they're not utilising their time as they should be. But I don't think everyone should be expected to be productive right now.

MG: Just before I let you go, how how important do you think it is for, not just the health care system, but for government more broadly to acknowledge the way that this is going to affect people mentally? That what we're in right now will have, yes, a financial effect on people, there's an educational impact, but there's also the real impact on people's mental health as this drags on.

THERESA VANDE BURGT: Yeah, I don't think it's being addressed enough. I don't think there's enough resources available, readily available right now because it's increasing to people who already have pre-existing mental health conditions, it's worsening for them. But then there's also people who maybe, you know, don't have those neurodiversity and they are not used to this. They maybe don't struggle as much with their mental health. It's now impacting them because it's impacting everyone. Everyone has mental health and everyone is struggling right now. And so I think it's really important to have readily available, accessible resources for people who have maybe had never had to access them before.

MG: Take care of yourself. And I really appreciate you talking to us. Theresa, thank you.

THERESA VANDE BURGT: Thank you for having me.

MG: Theresa Vande Burgt is an advocate for mental health. We reached her in Orillia, Ontario. For people with obsessive compulsive disorder, particularly those with a phobia of germs, this current crisis may be posing a real challenge. Mark Freeman is a mental health coach in Toronto, also has a history of OCD. Here is what he has seen as this pandemic has unfolded.

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VOICE: I've seeing that people who have been working on their mental health, like working on recovery already, they're doing really well because these uncertainties about, oh, no, what if I catch a disease? What if I spread the disease to somebody else? What if I die? What if my loved ones die? These are uncertainties they were already working on learning how to handle. They're actually kind of excelling right now. They knew how to handle this. But then I'm seeing a lot of forums online, people struggling with OCD who maybe haven't been working on recovery. And this is just fuelling compulsion, seeing a lot of people getting into unhealthy compulsions around cleaning, avoiding a lot of things that they don't need to be avoiding. And I kind of get that like when I struggled with OCD years ago, I used to wash my hands under scalding hot water until they would hurt, like until they were burned because I couldn't be certain that I had washed them. So I would use the pain I would feel later in my hands to reassure myself and that I needed to do it more and more and more and more.

MG: Hillary McBride is a clinical counsellor, host of the CBC podcast, Other People's Problems. She's in Vancouver. Hillary, good morning to you.

HILLARY MCBRIDE: Good morning.

MG: How do you notice how COVID-19, is affecting your patients and affecting in terms of your general practise, how what we're in right now is affecting their mental well-being?

HILLARY MCBRIDE: Yeah, well, I think Theresa and Mark identified a few of the factors, which is that some people are actually doing really well if they have internal resources that they can dip into to help them manage and get through that this might be a time where they actually feel like they're really well prepared for other people, perhaps who have been working on their mental health, as Mark has identified, or for people who have a history of trauma or feel like they've been overcome or overwhelmed by some of the symptoms of what is going, what's going on, or feeling like they're really struggling perhaps more than they have ever before. So I'm seeing a a spectrum of response. Mental health is so phenomenological, so individual that it would be hard to make a sweeping statement about all patients that I have seen. Some people feel like they're doing really well and some people feel like they're struggling more than they have in a long time.

MG: Let's talk just briefly about routines, because all of our routines have been upended. And you heard Theresa, who has anxiety and depression, speak of it, how important those routines are to her feeling well. How crucial are those kinds of daily routines?

HILLARY MCBRIDE: Yeah, I think routines are really important for some people more than others. I know that routines allow us to locate ourselves or feel like we have access to some consistency in a way that makes someone manageable and more predictable. Ultimately, we also want to have a little bit of flexibility. Flexibility is one of the markers of mental health, our ability to adapt and move through life, being able to kind of bounce back. That would be a mark of resilience. But routines allow us to to put some of the day to day things into the background so that we can focus on the other things that come up. Things like if there's a conflict at home or if we feel disconnected from something that we love or we're struggling in some other way. And when the routines get upended often our energy gets shifted towards prioritising the ability to navigate through the day to day and it leaves less energy, cognitive resources to be able to manage some of the other things that are coming up.

MG: How do you support people then? Because one of those routines could be more formalized elements of counselling if now you can only really connect with people online or through the telephone. What kind of support can you offer?

HILLARY MCBRIDE: Well, I think that one of the most important forms of support is the relational connection. The felt sense of not being alone in something that it would otherwise be unbearable helps us know that we can manage and get through. We're social creatures were designed to connect with each other. And so even though we can't offer connection in the same ways we were be able to before and all of the things that come with in-person connection, we can still be with each other in that way. And so what I found in doing my clinical work is having to be even more explicit about the felt sense of connection in therapy, even asking patients when I'm seeing them online. Can you feel me with you here? What is it like for us to be able to adapt and have a relationship and a relationship of trust that feel strong enough that we can we can move through all sorts of seasons of unpredictability and still be connected with each other. And then that way I'm emphasizing not necessarily routine, but the stability of the ongoing relationship, which really is where we've seen studies over and over again. The thing that is most transformative about therapy, it's the false sense of relational connection and the quality of attachment between you and the therapist.

MG: There are people who are predicting sort of a second pandemic as a result of this first one, that you could have a wave of mental illness that emerges because of everything that we're going through right now. Is that something that you're concerned about?

HILLARY MCBRIDE: I think it's something I'm aware of and I want to be prepared for. Concern, I feel like it changes day to day, but I am aware that the long term effect of being in a state of uncertainty and stress facing this threat that isn't visible, that isn't something we can respond to with a normal fear response has a profound impact on our nervous system and consequently our mental health. And so I do think it's something that we need to be thinking about now. I am aware that there are probably going to be really high rates of PTSD, acute stress disorder, not just for people who are working on the front lines, but also for people who have lived through the virus or are near in relationship to someone who has. And those things will persist in an ongoing fashion, especially if we're not giving people resources to mental health treatment.

MG: And this Angus Reed survey that came out yesterday says that 50 percent of us are saying that our mental health has suffered in the midst of this pandemic. And we're all feeling this, even if it's not clinical depression, it's something that we are in the midst of and that we're being affected by what would be in the last couple of minutes that we have one or two kind of coping mechanisms that people could employ.

HILLARY MCBRIDE: Well, I think even I was just naming that this is an issue normalizes it. When you said, you know, 50 percent of people are noting that this is impacting them, my first response was, of course it is. And instead of adding to the already existing distress that we're feeling a discourse of shame, I shouldn't be feeling this way. What's wrong with me? If we can normalise our responses by acknowledging that we are part of a socio cultural system and that shapes how we live and move and what happens in our bodies, normalising our response to to what's going on around us can help them finish the experience of, say, anxiety or shame or stress that we have on top of the existing stressors. But another thing that I think is really important also for preventing PTSD and possibly even depression are that the rates of anxiety is to note the stress response system in our body as being good as being helpful. So when we think of stress, this is called stress mindset theory that when we know stress in our body is good for us and actually with our bodies mobilizing us to protect us from the threats that are around us. It changes the dialogue that we have about that. And if we can be gentle and kind to ourselves, as Theresa mentioned, taking some of the pressure off to be productive, noticing how we're comparing ourselves to other people and thinking about how we can care for ourselves and do our best for us. Those are all ways that we can stop this from becoming even worse than it already is.

MG: You're doing that yourself?

HILLARY MCBRIDE: Absolutely yeah.

MG: Because like we all feel this, right? Yeah.

HILLARY MCBRIDE: Yeah.

MG: Hillary, it's good to talk to you about this. Thank you.

HILLARY MCBRIDE: You're welcome.

MG: Hilary McBride is a clinical counsellor in Vancouver. Also the host of the CBC podcast, Other People's Problems. Again, that research coming out from the Angus Reid Institute squared with what a lot of us are feeling right now, which is that we're in the midst of something and that this is affecting us. And to Hillary's point, you can acknowledge that, but what else are you doing to try to mitigate the effects of that? Are you taking specific steps? We were hearing it seems like months ago at the beginning of this from an emergency room physician around the importance of things like meditation, maybe there are other things that you're doing as well to mitigate some of the effects of this. If you have tips, you could share them with us. We'd love to hear from you. You can tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Email us thecurrent@cbc.ca or head to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. How are you handling and mitigating some of the effects of this pandemic on your mental well being? Get in touch. The CBC News is next. And then, cutting your own hair? You thought that was tough? Try grooming a dog at home. Our beloved pets can be slobbery, moving targets. You will hear from some brave Canadians who've tried to shear their own pets and we'll have some advice on that as well. I'm Matt Galloway. This is an extended edition of The Current on CBC Radio One. We're back in six minutes.

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Is isolation turning your pooch into one big furball? This vet has tips for home grooming

Guests: Cliff Redford

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

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MG: Coming up, she's the pride of Napanee, Ontario. Hear Tom Power's conversation with Avril Lavigne. But first, grooming your dog in isolation.

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MG: So is your dog looking a bit like a tumbleweed on a leash these days? Maybe more hair than hound? Perhaps more fur than Fido? In the grand scheme of things, this might seem trivial, but have a listen to this.

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ALLIE SHIER: Hi there, I'm Allie Shier.

SAM SHIER: I'm Sam Shier, sister of Allie Shier.

ALLIE SHIER: Our family, two years ago, got a beautiful golden doodle named Lou Levit. And she's perfect in every way. But a challenge we often find ourselves confronting is her combination of golden retriever hair and poodle fur, which just creates a lot of matts. Sam, you want to take it away?

SAM SHIER: SAM: Going to the groomer has always been a tough situation because she cries and takes a groomer like 12 hours because she is tough. It's not easy. Alice?

ALLIE SHIER: So Sam and I have been living at our mom's place during COVID for a full month as our mum recovers from surgery. So Sam and I have been tasked with Lou duty and about a month into COVID, Lou couldn't see and she was super matted. So every day my mum would call our groomer and say, you know, is there any you can do? And just basically begging her, even though our groomer said that she is not permitted to be seeing any dogs. We just felt very desperate. So our groomer suggested that we actually buy our own kind of professional grade grooming tools. So after some research, we spent over hundred dollars on a very fancy.

SAM SHIER: 300 and they were professional grooming sheers. Honestly, like this was something I was incredibly anxious about. The groomer was like, just watch a lot of YouTube tutorials. She's like, if you're shaving the neck, just hold the skin toch. And like, if you neck a certain part of her neck, she will bleed out and she could die. And we're like, what?

ALLIE SHIER: We were just like we're not equipped for this.

SAM SHIER: She's like oh, it's fine. Just like absolutely watch the trials. We're like we could kill our dog and we have to learn a new trade. Like, it just seemed insane and we didn't know what to do.

MG: Well, the Shier sisters eventually did track down a groomer who agreed to give Lou a haircut and they managed to get their money back on those shears. But in case you are thinking of attempting a corona cut for your dog or your own, Cliff Redford has some pointers. He's a veterinarian, owner of Wellington Vet Hospital in Markham, Ontario. Cliff, good morning.

CLIFF REDFORD: Good morning. How are you?

MG: Well, I'm OK. My dog, shorthair, so it's fine. Although there's hair everywhere, but that's another matter. You could imagine there are people who may be listening who are saying in the midst of a pandemic, you're going to talk about the issues of grooming your dog. This is a thing, though. I mean, this is something that people are concerned about.

CLIFF REDFORD: It's definitely important, but boy, oh, boy, that soundbytes scared the heck out of me. I'm glad I didn't listen to that before I groomed my own dog.

MG: Could you actually kill your own dog by giving it a haircut?

CLIFF REDFORD: I don't think you could. even if you tried, it would be really difficult. And I've seen a lot of dogs come into my clinic with mattes that were cut out with scissors or people trying to trim around the ears and whatnot, and they've definitely got cut and needed some lacerations. But they're not going to bleed out. You got to. You got to try really, really hard to get that to happen. So just stick with the clippers.

MG: It's a struggle in people's homes. Have a listen to Sydney Smith in Edmonton about her efforts in giving the dog a trim.

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VOICE: I have a six month old Australian labradoodle named Cooper We decided something needed to be done about his hair and thought we would try to do it ourselves. I took him to the bath. I think that went OK, but trying to blow dry him was definitely a bit of an adventure. I spent a bit of time, you know, trying to chase him around the house. And when we actually went to clip him, I think it went OK, but I definitely couldn't have done it alone. It was a two person job. You know, he constantly wanted to either lie down on the table or it was trying to eat the hair that we were cutting off of him. So it was sort of one person full time dog handling while the other person, as you know, and trying to rest to cut him. It took us close to four hours, which we're not going to start a grooming business any time soon, that's for sure. But, you know, overall, I think he looks okay. He'll survive the spring and hopefully won't feel too embarrassed when he goes out and about.

MG: Cliff, is it inevitable that the grooming is going to involve some sort of chase around the house?

CLIFF REDFORD: Yeah, I definitely recommend people stretch and maybe carbo load before they plan to grooming their dog. It is an exercise, that's for sure.

MG: How do you calm the skittish dog?

CLIFF REDFORD: Yeah and, you know, like hopefully your dogs whom we go into the groomer anyways, and so they're gonna be used to it. And I think with obviously a lot of rewards and taking your time, they they do quite well. If your dog is super anxious and we do see dogs with actual anxiety disorders and and severe OCD and whatnot, you can actually get some over-the-counter trick to fan or valerian root, any sort of like Dom calming agents on Amazon or PetSmart.ca can help. But really the trick is take your time. Go slow. It's okay to take a break. Halfway through, even if only half of their body shaved in the other half is super long. You don't really care. Just give him a break and they'll be fine.

MG: If this is the first time you've done something like this, what's the first thing you should do when you are about to groom your dog?

CLIFF REDFORD: You know, jokingly, I talk about stretching and getting ready for a workout, but have a couple of hours, get all your tools together, put the scissors away, stay away from the scissors. You can get a decent beard trimmer. Most of the guys out there are getting COVID quarantine beards growing. You can get a decent beard trimmer and clippers for 60 bucks online. So have your trimmers or your clippers ready, your brush, your shampoo, and you can use regular human shampoo once in a while. That's fine. You don't have to get dog shampoo.

MG: Okay. So that's important because there are people who maybe they don't want to go to the pet shop to buy shampoo or something and they ran out or they don't have any. You can use human shampoo?

CLIFF REDFORD: Absolutely. When I did my dog I used Head and Shoulders. You don't have to use Head and Shoulders. You don't even have to use a 2 in 1 like conditioner and shampoo. If you do it every single week and you use a human shampoo, you're gonna dry out their coat. Humans sweat, so our shampoo is designed to take the sweat out of our hair. But if you're gonna do it once a month, regular human shampoo is fine. It doesn't, just pick something that smells nice. It's fine.

MG: What about trimming the hair around your dog's eyes? That can be pretty stressful for the dog, let alone the dog trimmer.

CLIFF REDFORD: Yeah. And this is where, you know, I say, please put the scissors away and stay away from them. Have your clippers without a guard so that it's basically as short as possible. So you basically, after brushing out the fur and straightening it as much as possible, you kind of use your hand over the eyes like a guard. Much like your your barber would do when you're using scissors and you can then just run the clippers right over your fingers. It doesn't vibrate against the dog's face and they're not as scared. And it protects them and they get this nice little sort of scruffy eyebrow look.

MG: So the thing that gives me the fear is trimming my dog's nails.

CLIFF REDFORD: Yes.

MG: I will pay somebody happily to do that. I don't want to have anything to do with it, but that's not possible right now. How do you go about cutting the nails down?

CLIFF REDFORD: Yeah, you need to, it's definitely something Matt you're gonna have to learn how to do. You know, first of all, take a look. It sounds silly, but take a close look at your dogs nails, if your dog has even one toe that is white, then that nail is actually clear and you can see the quick, which is the tissue and the nerve and the blood vessel that's within the nail. So that kind of gives you an idea of how much you can remove on the other nails. But if you also take a close look, the nail is basically a tubular sort of silt cylinder structure and then it'll have this triangular hook and it's that triangular hook at the tip that you want to remove. And just take it easy. Just don't go as aggressively as you think. You can always come back a week later and take off a couple more millimetres. The last thing, though, is if you do hit that quick, which is bound to happen, it's going to hurt. It's going to bleed. Use a little cornstarch to kind of press it into the nail to stop the bleeding. And then, as ridiculous as it sounds, let him out in the backyard or take him for a walk. The bleeding will stop. You just want him bleeding all over your house. Just calm the dog. Do something that they enjoy and the bleeding will stop on its own.

MG: Did you see this video of the woman with the plastic wrap around her head and she puts peanut butter on the wrap so that the dog licks her forehead while she cuts the dog's nails, so the dog doesn't get squirmy.

CLIFF REDFORD: You know what? I should try that. That might be a good trick for my patience.

MG: Patience, is and a different take on this, patience, patience is really the key thing here, though, right? That you need to go slow.

CLIFF REDFORD: Yes. You need to go slow. Lots of rewards. Give your dog a treat. Have a sip of wine yourself. Everyone is going to have a great time. When I did it on my dog and it was the very first time I did it a couple of weeks ago ever, it was fine. It was a good time. And she was good. I'm going to tackle my labradoodle next. She's kind of walking around with a 1980s perm look going on even with the neon scrunchies. So that'll be a little bit more of a challenge. But it's a good time. It's fun.

MG: Maybe the glass of wine after, not before. Cliff, thank you.

CLIFF REDFORD: Definitely during.

MG: During.

CLIFF REDFORD: Excellent. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

MG: Good to have you on. Cliff Redford, a veterinarian, owner of Wellington Vet Hospital in Markham, Ontario. Do you have dog pictures, particularly pictures of your furry friend getting a shearing maybe before and after? You can tweet us. We are at @TheCurrentCBC. And remember, as Cliff says, no scissors, just use the Clippers. Last word on the plight of dogs in isolation goes to the proud owner of a shaggy but neat golden doodle named Jackson. Here's a poem by Mitchell Cait-Goldenthal, who is also the 13-year-old son of one of our producers.

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VOICE: The sun comes up. It goes down. I look outside my window. I see the wonders of the world outside my window. You went for a walk today. It's getting colder inside. I feel like if it wasn't for my coat, I'd be frozen icicle waiting to fall. I see less and less people outside. Where do they all go? It's like a bad dream of not being able to catch a squirrel or not being able to play in the cold white stuff that seems to melt by spring. When the beautiful plants spring up and I'm able to roll in green grass and the dandelions that whisk in the wind. I hope the humans come out soon. I like seeing children on the street, walking with popsicles melting, dripping onto the streets. I spring, silent as solemn slung plays outside my window. It seems to get louder with no response from the outside world. It seems I am stuck like a person who unfortunately walked into quicksand. The bees buzz by broken flowers that have not been watered because of the sudden strange, bizarre disappearance of the humans outside. But as for now, I sleep silently as the leaves return to their natural green beauty. For I am a dog, and I just want to play with leaves and the heat blowing against my face.

MG: A poem by 13 year old Mitchell Cait-Goldenthal. Life in Quarantine, from the perspective of his golden doodle Jackson.

Tom Power in conversation with Avril Lavigne

Guests: Tom Power, Avril Lavigne

MG: I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to an extended edition of The Current on CBC Radio One. Tom Power, cat owner is here. Hello, Tom.

TOM POWER: Matt, you know I hardly drink any wine when I'm looking after the cat, you know. You know, kind of before, during, after, you know, when I go to work, when I come home, kind of just generally all the time.

MG: The cat generally doesn't care what you're up to.

TOM POWER: No, the cat joins in.

MG: Oh, I see. How's everything?

TOM POWER: It's nice to have a partner in this stuff, you know?

MG: Do tell. Aside from life with your pets, are you going to tell us about today?

TOM POWER: Well, me and my cat, we're talking to Avril Lavigne the other day. You know, she turned me from a fan boy into a skater boy. We talked a little bit about her new single, which she had a song ready to come out and she was so inspired by the work of frontline workers in Canada and the United States that she changed the lyrics and rewrote one of her songs that was about to come out in order to be in tribute to them. So I got in touch with Avril Lavinge in Los Angeles and we chatted. Take a listen.

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[Tom Power's conversation with Avril Lavigne]

[Song: "We Are Warriors" by Avril Lavigne]

MG: Brand new music from Avril Lavigne. That's a song called "We Are Warriors." Well coming up on The Current, can a pandemic be funny? For comedians the answer is yes, but it's complicated. You'll hear how in about 90 seconds.

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VOICE: All right, folks, thanks for staying in tonight. This COVID-19, I tell you, I didn't see COVID 1 through 18, so I don't really know what this is all about.

MG: Hear how comedians, a little stir crazy these days are trying to figure out whether we can laugh and how we can laugh at the situation we all find ourselves in. That's on its way. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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Coping through laughter: Why comedy can help get us through the pandemic

Guests: Aurora Browne, Leonard Chan, Caleb Warren, Karen Marley

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. For all good comedians, it doesn't take much to inspire a joke. Neighbourly dispute. A pet peeve. A global pandemic. OK, that last one is novel and it is an international disaster, but strangely, it's also giving rise to a lot of humour. This is Canadian comedian Leonard Chan.

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[Clip of Leonard Chan's standup bit]

MG: In some cases, even comedy from the recent past is taking on a new dimension. Like this bit from Baroness von Sketch.

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[Clip of comedy bit from Baroness von Sketch]

MG: It can be, as you can imagine, dicey to go for laughs when the world is in such a dark place. What might be tasteless to some is a salve to others. To help us understand that fine line. I'm joined by two Canadian comics, Leonard Chan and Aurora Browne of the Baroness von Sketch Show. Good morning to you both.

AURORA BROWNE: Good morning, Matt.

LEONARD CHAN: Good morning.

MG: Aurora, that Baroness sketch that we heard feels a little on the nose right now. How does it feel for you hearing that in the time that we're in?

AURORA BROWNE: Oh, I still think that that's true. I think that that sentiment, it was written of course long before this, but I think we have some sorting out to do for sure. I think that that bit is probably still applicable.

MG: What is life like for you? You're at home with family?

AURORA BROWNE: I'm at home with family. I with my husband, Chris Siddiqui, and our son Sebastian. And in some ways, our life has not changed. I didn't go out that much to start with, so there's just more of the movies and things like that, but it's starting to wear on us for sure. For sure.

LEONARD CHAN: Are there things that are funny about the situation that you find yourself in?

AURORA BROWNE: Oh. Well, I don't think the pandemic itself is too hilarious, but the way people react to it always is. There's an endless array of of how people are strange or petty or shortsighted, and that's always kind of funny, except, of course, when those shortsighted decisions lead to lives being lost. You know, it's kind of a back and forth all the time.

MG: What about for you, Leonard? We heard a little bit of that virtual comedy show that you were part of. What is it like to be a stand up comedian in a time of quarantine?

LEONARD CHAN: Well, my career is in a shambles right now. It's hard, you know, standup does rely on people and audiences. Some of these shows, is mostly me just staring into a laptop. I don't see or hear the audience. So that's tough. You know, my ego does love the heavy lifting just filled in the silence with thunderous applause. Yeah. I mean, it's weird where there's a ton of uncertainty for everybody, but especially, you know, with stand ups, we're like, are people going to want to crowd into a basement and forcefully exhale at each other ever again? We don't know.

MG: In the meantime, you're trying to figure out, we heard it from that little clip there. You're trying to figure out what's what's funny and what isn't. And in many ways, if you're on a stage, presumably you'll know if that lands when the audience laughs or if they just sit in stony silence. How do you do that without an audience response?

LEONARD CHAN: Well, like I said, I just assume it's funny. Like I don't hear any laughter. You know and it may not be. I don't really know. Like I afterwards, you kind of see the comments in the chat. I don't look at him in real time because that would be disastrous. And yeah. And the kind of guy that was funny. Some people would say, oh, about funny. But like, it's hard. I'm not really testing new material at this point. Like, I'm like I'm not going to go really at the end of day. This stuff is working or not. But I guess it's more like TV now than standup. It's less intimate for sure.

MG: Aurora, you even just in the little bit at the beginning of the conversation, very cautious about drawing the line, saying you as you know, the pandemic isn't funny, but there are funny things that are happening within the pandemic. Why is it important to try to find something to laugh at in the middle of this nightmare that we're on.

AURORA BROWNE: Why is it important? Oh, well, I guess because otherwise life is an endless cycle of despair if we don't laugh, really. I mean, it's it's important any way, you know, to lift your spirits. And I think you just have to find it wherever you can take it. I'm lucky that I have a world class funny man in my house with me in our house. And our son was very hilarious, too. But there's also, you know, like there's people out there. If I really want to laugh, or get my mind off it, I will go on to like Reddit and Twitter and just find all the thousand little funny things that people are saying or doing. Unforutnatley, sometimes the news is mixed in there, so I have to kind of do that judiciously. But you just have to do it because we can't get into a room together and laugh. And I'm actually I can't wait to a day that goes for an all night. Ray, we're like a dance party or a really crowded patio. I'm I'm fantasizing about getting back together with my fellow humans. But until then, you just kind of have to get your your common sense of what might take your mind off things from anywhere you can, if that's the Internet or movies or whatever it is.

MG: Do you struggle with the too soon kind of issue? There are people who are in the midst of something really awful right now and it's a very personal thing. And there's loss and there's tragedy. People are losing their lives and and money and jobs. In the midst of that when is it appropriate to laugh?

AURORA BROWNE: Well, that's a really good question. And I think that I mean, for me and everybody else in this industry, everything is on a you know, it's a big pause button right now. And I think any large ideas I know I'm kind of wondering, like, what will the world be like when we come out of this?What page are we all going to be on? Because, you know, humour humour needs some kind of connection there. You know, everybody like recognising a common truth. So I am definitely not looking to write anything about the pandemic right now. I I make jokes about things to to, you know, the people and interacting with for sure if it's a funny little thing comes up, but mostly it's about getting away from the pandemic, I found. I rate things like, does it distract me? Does it make me smile? Does it full on make me laugh?

MG: Leonard, is there anything for you Leonard, that's off limits in terms of what you what you would use for material in this time?

LEONARD CHAN: No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't think there's ever too soon for jokes. I think. I mean, there's too soon for bad jokes. If it's but, you know, like the sooner it is to a tragedy, the better the joke has to be. And then sometime, you know, like you're a comedian. Skill level is just not at the point where you can make any jokes that are going to work if you're close to a tragedy. And like anytime you know, whether you're in a pandemic or not, when you write a joke, you have to be very cognizant of who the target is of that joke. Right. You don't want to. Obviously, you don't want to make fun of victims or anything like that. You know, you always want to punch up. But I think it's important to talk about this stuff, you know, because that's what everybody is thinking right now. Know, it's hard seeing that look. So, I mean, a rather that escapism. One thing that's certainly valid, but like any of these online shows I've been doing, well, you just have to talk about it because everybody's thinking about it, you know, and a lot of comedy is about relatability, you know. And finally, for me, like a comedian, like when I you know, what I see becomes a joke. Right? Like I just take in what I experienced, feed into the joke back bewteen my head, produce jokes,.

MG: Give me an example of that. Something that you've seen that you think you could use as material.

LEONARD CHAN: I mean, just look down south, I guess and what's happening in America, for example. I mean, it's a lot of cry laughing at the way they're dealing with the pandemic. You know, just the way other people like, you know, other people are dealing with a pandemic. The way I'm dealing with the pandemic. You know, just people are funny, especially in heightened situations. There's always going to be some strange reaction that you can look at it. It's just a billion things.

MG: You've talked about how you and your family, I mean, this doesn't seem like something that you'd be able to turn into a joke, but that you and your family experienced racism related to this pandemic. Where's the funny in that?

LEONARD CHAN: There's ways to find funny. I mean, like, for example, like look, I personally haven't experienced too much live because I've been quarantining a home with my wife and she clearly likes Asians. I've had friends who've gone out of experience, that's for sure. And, you know, I think there are ways to make it funny. You know, again, it's a matter of choosing your target. It's a matter of portraying the situation in a way where there's less humour. I know, for example, you know, like I have a joke I'm working on right now where I talk about how there's always been racism against Asians, but now there's an element of fear involved. Right. That's just on a completely different kind of more scary kind of racism. And the thing is like, I want people to be afraid of us, you know. But I want to be afraid of us for the right reasons, not because of the disease that anybody can get. Right? But I want them to be afraid of us because they're worried we might raise interest rates or something, you know?

MG: Aurora, you think of Baroness and I mean there's lots that's incredible about the show, but one of the great things is that it ends up commenting on the absurdity of daily life, the things that you see and we know we relate to it because we're all seeing those things are there. I mean, I don't know whether you're going out or just appearing, you know, rear view or rear window style at the window, kind of looking out onto the street. But are there things that you're seeing that could show up in a Baroness sketch down the road?

AURORA BROWNE: Well, first of all, you've got me Matt because I spent a lot of my time like your grandmother just kind of sitting looking out the window of my house, just kind of judging if people really need to be on the sidewalk or not. And so there's that. I have to say, if I could do something about anything, it's like all the crazy ways that people are entertaining themselves while they're stuck at home, because there's some amazing things that people can doing out there. Oh, you know what? You'll just have to wait and see. Because I have no idea what I'm going to be writing out of this at the moment. I'm just enjoying other people's silly videos. And when it when it all comes together, I mean, Bernice's is on a very long always going to be very long kind of turnaround. You know, we we don't do things on Baroness that are topical, that are weekly the way Saturday Night Live does or somebody who's doing Stand-Up does. We do tend to go for a longer range kind of stuff. So hopefully there will be some truth that we can, you know, latch on out of this. We'll have to see.

MG: You talk about the videos, I mean TikTok has been just this incredible source of comedy. People are posting up some of the funniest things you can imagine. Have a listen to this video posted by a school teacher in Texas. Her name is Lizzie Smith.

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[Clip from a video by Lizzie Smith]

MG: Aurora Browne has there been a democratization of comedy because amateurs can just post things up that then go viral like a virus?

AURORA BROWNE: Oh, full on and way before the pandemic for sure. People are really very funny and they've been putting funny stuff online for a very long time and I'm very glad that they do.

MG: Leonard, do you worry about amature stealing your thunder?

LEONARD CHAN: The other day, I was playing an online game where you have to write jokes and I lost to a nine year old. So that's pretty much I mean.

MG: As it should be.

LEONARD CHAN: Yeah. I mean, Aurora is right. Like, people have been doing this for a long time. People are very, very, very funny. And the only thing that's keeping them from doing this and taking my job is just the will.

AURORA BROWNE: I think it's smart. They actually have other skills, Leonard, that they're going and having regular. We're all just stuck here.

LEONARD CHAN: Exactly. Like I have no choice. I had to do this.

MG: These are serious times. It's important to find something in the midst of that that you can laugh at. It's good to speak with you both. Stay well, thank you.

AURORA BROWNE: You too Matt. Thanks so much.

LEONARD CHAN: You too. Thank you.

MG: Aurora Browne is a Canadian actor. She stars in and is one of the creators of the fantastic Baroness von Sketch show. Leonard Chan is a Canadian comedian and writer based in Toronto. Caleb Warren has a pretty interesting job. He studies what actually makes things funny and the impact that comedy and humour have on us, pandemic or no pandemic. He is an associate professor of marketing at the University of Arizona and a co-founder of the Humour Research Lab. Caleb, good morning to you.

CALEB WARREN: Good morning.

MG: You have a theory of humour. Can you explain how this works?

CALEB WARREN: Sure. So our idea is that people appreciate humour. They laugh. They feel amused, they think something's funny. When they see it as a violation, something that threatens their sense of how things should be — But at the same time, they see that violation is OK. It's not really a problem. It's benign. So we call it the benign violation theory and it can explain a wide range of comedy: jokes, puns. Tickling, for example, is an attack that someone levies, but, you know, they trust they're not going to hurt you. If you try to take care yourself. It's not funny. There's no threat of attack. There's no violation. If some creepy dude on the street tries to tickle you, that's not funny either. That's just a violation. That's not benign.

MG: And so if a pun. Explain that for a pun. We love puns. If somebody says a pun, how does that reinforce the benign theory?

CALEB WARREN: Most puns involve some language or communication or logic violation. So when is a door not a door? When it's ajar. So on the one hand, you know, that doesn't make any sense. It's a logic violation. On the other hand, there's this double meaning of a jar that would make it make sense of the violin. In that case, the logic violation. So it's both correct and it's wrong. Wrong being the violation, correct being benign. And a lot of puns work like this where they'll play with double meanings in the language to make something seem both wrong and correct according to an alternative norm.

MG: If yoy have a theory, you have to do experiments to figure out whether it works and how to reinforce it. What sort of experiments did you do?

CALEB WARREN: We run a lot of experiments. One of my favourite ones involved people throwing candy at each other. And in this study, we we wanted to test whether people laugh more when they experience a benign violation or when they see something that's incongruous or surprising. So in a study, we trained an actor and called them a Confederate and they looked like another participant in the study. So when the real participant showed up, this Confederate was already sitting at the table filling out a survey. And so the real participant starts working on the stuff and then the Confederate does something. And either this is surprising or not, or it's a violation or not. And we also try to make that violation more or less benign. Specifically, the Confederate. Has this bowl of candy in front of them. And in one condition, out of the blue he unexpectedly offers the candy to the participants. So that's a surprising but not a violation. In another condition, he just throws the candy on the participants. That's unexpected and a violation. And then we also have two conditions where we warn the participant what's coming. So the Confederate says, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but in a minute. I need to offer you this, Candy, or I'm sorry to interrupt you. But in a minute, I need to throw this candy at you. He then offers or throws the candy at the participant. And we observe when the participant laughs. Now, if humour comes from surprise and we'd see more laughter when the person was either surprisingly offered the candy or the candy was thrown at them, surprisingly. But what in fact, we saw was they were most likely to laugh when they were warned beforehand. I need to throw this candy at you. And then they threw the candy at the participant. And the reason is that when they see that, when they get the warning. This candy is going to be thrown at you. They they know that. OK. This is just part of the study. You know, this person isn't a total jerk. And so when the candidates turn at them, they're they're more likely to laugh. On the other hand, when the candy is thrown at them without any warning, they're shocked and they just think this person, they don't know what's going on. So that's more of a pure violation. It doesn't seem benign. And then when the candy is offered to them, there's no violation. There's no laughter there.

MG: That is so interesting. I mean, there's an actual theory and a way to explain what's happening in comedy. One of the things we heard from the comedian we were just speaking with Leonard Chan is how difficult it is to perform, particularly standup without an audience. How important is the audience to comedy?

CALEB WARREN: The audience is I think it's other people are important. It doesn't need to be a set audience vs. it can just be a friend who's joking with you. But people laugh way more in the presence of other people. And so that that is, I think, a key ingredient. And even TV shows often try to mimic that by having sort of laugh tracks. So the people watching at home, sir, hear the laughter of other people and try to make the situation at least seem more social. But other people have a huge effect on how much we laugh and also how much amusement we experience.

MG: Is that just giving people permission? I remember seeing a documentary about Johnny Carson and they talked about how Carson would laugh if a comedian told a joke because that would show the audience that he found it funny and then that they could laugh in a way. Is that what it's about, about giving people permission?

CALEB WARREN: I think that's part of it. Part of it is probably just social contagion or emotional contagion, rather, where we tend to experience the emotions of other people around us. And I think part of that comes from the why why we have humour and laughter in the first place. One one thing that our theory suggests is that a primary reason that humans and even apes and other mammals developed laughter was as a communication signal. And what we think it signals is that thing that looks threatening out there is actually not a problem. So people babies laugh and a lot of mammals laugh and laughter develops before talking. It's one of the few vocalizations that other animals have and babies have. And so it must signal something important. And what we think it is, it signals that there's nothing there's no problem here. So to bring it back to your point about Johnny Carson, you the laughter is a signal that, you know, no matter what this person just said, it's OK. Go with it.

MG: What do you think, just in the last minute or so that we have, what do you think laughing and humour can give us in this really difficult time that we're in right now. We're all dealing with a lot right now and we're looking for some sort of release. What is it that humour can do?

CALEB WARREN: I think it can help us with the coping process and with adjusting to this new unfortunate situation that many of us are in. Now there there is. You know, if you're if you've just been fired or a loved one has just died, it might be too soon. I know Leonard said that if the joke is good enough, then it might help. And that's true. But it's really hard to for people to experience humour if if they're just in terrible despair. But as people start to recover, and for those of us who are in I would say less unfortunate situations where we're just stuck at home for months at a time and we don't have a babysitter or day-care or anything and trying to work. Well, your kids are climbing over you like that. That sort of thing. Humour can help a lot. Coping with and and Ringarooma talked a little bit about this, but just the fact that you can laugh about something is that and helps you see it as benign. It helps you get over it and feel better, feel less anxious, feel less depressed. Get back to get back to living your life in these new circumstances. Humour can play a role in all that.

MG: Caleb, great to talk to you. Thank you.

CALEB WARREN: Thanks for having me.

MG: Caleb Warren is one of the founders of a humour research lab and an associate professor of marketing at the University of Arizona. Whether it's humour or other things, we have been hearing all sorts of stories about how you're coping and what's bringing you joy in these difficult times. Karen Marley, senior producer of The Current, is here now. Good morning.

KAREN MARLEY: Good morning.

MG: Cathy Murphy wrote Joy every evening at 7:30 p.m. on busy Pape Avenue in Toronto, my neighbours and I stand on our porches, bang our pots and pans for the frontline workers. We are a small group, including a family with an 18 month old and another with a shattered but dedicated undertaker coping with unprecedented numbers right now. It's very sweet to watch the wee one tapping her tiny pots, though she does not know the significance of her small gesture. The impact is big. The best part from Monday to Friday, the same TTC bus driver slows down as he passes, beeps his horn, gives us a big wave. We're banging the pots for him, too. And someday, when this is all over, I'm going to board his bus, introduce myself and shake his hand. This complete stranger with his big smile and wave brings me joy.

KAREN MARLEY: That is a lovely story. It might be a little while before we're shaking hands.

MG: I was going to say remember shaking hands?

KAREN MARLEY: Exactly. Roger Powley writes from Toronto We have a group of musical friends that get together every week to sing and play music. We call it a song circle. Before COVID we would go to a participants' home every week with like a party, and sometimes we would continue past midnight. When one person would do a song that other people who knew it would join in and play along and sing harmony. We now get together on Zoom. Only one person can play at a time. Last week there were 37 people that joined and we had folks from Florida and Nova Scotia. The song circle has been happening for more than 20 years and I have made many great friends. This is one of the joys of my life.

MG: Patricia Chatterton from Toronto wrote yesterday, as I was out on my daily walk, I saw these balloons billowing up in the wind and tried to read the two of them. 61? 91? No. As I got closer, there was a poster saying Happy 19th birthday and I had to smile. Then there was a young woman on the lawn in front of an empty table. I wished her happy birthday as another young man circled the area on his skateboard. It was a joyful scene, and I said to the celebrant, you will always remember this birthday on that cold, somewhat blustery day. Friends would drop by to wish her well. She planned to be there in front of her home all day she told me. How creative. COVID-19, brought out creativity in this 19 year old and sparked joy in someone 55 years older.

KAREN MARLEY: Happy birthday to that stranger there, Wendy Wright wrote from Kelowna, B.C.. During a walk that we take regularly with our dog, we discovered an owl is nest. Over the last weeks, we have watched those baby owlettes grow from fuzzy little balls to young owls. The joy I felt as they peered over the nest at me was hard to contain. All my maternal instincts came to the fore. Those little wise faces. Mum or pop, not really sure who was hidden above the nest, they sure know how to disguise themselves, kept watch over them, and it became a game each morning to try to get a good look at him or her. This wondrous glimpse of nature has rekindled my love of birds and nature, and I'm finding myself more aware of my surroundings and the wonder of our planet Earth. As all good things come to an end, they are owlettes, and I think of them as ours have seemingly flown the nest. It's empty now, but I still revisit that feeling of joy as I pass by and check out the nearby trees in case they're out there somewhere.

MG: One last note now. This from Nelly Cody, who writes, I reconnected with a long lost flame. That sounds exciting. When we first met several years ago, he was living in Montreal. I reached out a few weeks back to see if he and his family were all okay. And I happily discovered he now lives in Vancouver. I live on Vancouver Island, and we're now planning to meet again when the social distancing is finally lifted. Let us know how that goes.

KAREN MARLEY: I am curious to find out.

MG: Thank you for all of your letters. Lots of people getting in touch. What brings you joy? We did a whole show about that on Friday. We'd be happy to hear your thoughts on that as this situation continues to unfold. You can reach us through the website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on the contact link. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Karen, thank you.

KAREN MARLEY: Thank you.

MG: Karen Marley, senior producer of The Current. Coming up after the CBC News, our conversation with the author Lawrence Wright. He has a new novel out. I read it in one big gulp this weekend. It imagines a pandemic, somewhat like this one and now he's being called the reluctant prophet of COVID-19. A feature interview with this New Yorker staff writer. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stick around.

US government’s response to pandemic was worse than Lawrence Wright imagined in his new novel

Guests: Lawrence Wright

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Coming up, the comedian Amber Ruffin on the podcast Escape from Virtual Island. But we begin with an eerie example of life imitating art.

[Music: Theme]

MG: Lawrence Wright is an author best known for his non-fiction, he won the Pulitzer Prize for The Looming Tower, his book about 9/11. Then there was also Going Clear, his exposé on Scientology. Today, Lawrence Wright is back with a new book. It's called The End of October. And unlike the ones I just mentioned, it is not supposed to be true. This new novel is supposed to be fiction, a thriller about a pandemic. There's a virus that is spreading around the world. It's a deadly virus. There are quarantines. There are American hospitals on the verge of collapse. Sounds like fiction. Maybe not so much. Lawrence Wright is in Austin, Texas. Lawrence, good morning.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What is it like being the author of a novel about a universal pandemic that comes out in the midst of a universal pandemic?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: It's totally weird. It's just very, very strange experience. And, you know, pick up the newspaper and if it feels like I'm reading another chapter in my book. And honestly, man, I'm tyred of the coincidences. I'd like for this to come to an end.

MG: It makes for some anxious reading. I will say that I was I had read it in a big gulp on the weekend, but there were moments when I meant to be not paying attention to the news when it felt like I was paying attention to the news and I had to put the book down for a second just to take a deep breath. Why did you want to write this book?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well, you know, it's started out as a kind of warning cry, you know, when I started exploring the idea of writing about a pandemic. Talking to experts, it was quite clear how anxious they were. They all knew something like this was going to happen. They just didn't know when. And so a lot of the the anxiety in the book is reflecting what they felt at the time.

MG: Was there a conversation that you had with one of those experts that got you thinking this would make not a good non-fiction piece, a long piece for The New Yorker, but it would make a good novel?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well, I had years ago, Ridley Scott had approached me about writing a screenplay about the end of civilization. And so the question was, what would civilization to crack and crumble? And so I had that already in my mind, really never made that. At the time. But when I went out to think about it as a novel and I started asking experts what would happen if something like the 1918 flu came into our modern society, would we be better prepared than our ancestors were? And in this world where we're so densely connected and people live so close together and travel is so instant, you know, wouldn't it be worse? And so that was a question I put to them. And it turns out they had been thinking that very thing for their entire career.

MG: Tell us about the virus that is in the end of October.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: This virus is actually built on the 1918 Spanish flu. It's a haemorrhagic fever, very much like what was happening during the World War one period. And, you know, it's a much more fatal disease and covered 19, but not as contagious. It's you know, it spreads all over the world very quickly, but not as rapidly as this particular virus has.

MG: Without giving too much away, describe how this spreads. It starts, as these things often do in what seems like a very innocuous, innocent sort of way. And then things very quickly get out of control.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: And it starts in an Indonesian detention camp and then it spreads to Saudi Arabia during the Hajj. And this this idea came, I used to live in Saudi Arabia after 9/11 and I was working on my of my Looming Tower book. I was working for a newspaper in Jeddah. And one of my first task was to supervise the coverage of the Hajj. And you have two or three million people gathered in this place from all over the world. Every year there are epidemics of one sort of another and I thought, this is rather dangerous, isn't it? I, you know, people get on the aeroplanes and see an epidemic instantly all over the world. And that was in my mind when I started writing this novel.

MG: Tell me a bit more about the research that you do to make sure that the scenarios you're describing in the book, as terrifying as they are, are actually accurate. I mean, they're fiction, but but that that they stay true to what would unfold.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: I'm fascinated by the world of public health. And I was really very much welcomed into that world by people who were intrigued with this project. You know, I wanted to make sure that the science was correct. And honestly, this was a stretch for me, man. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor. But in talking to the public health officials, in the microbiologists and epidemiologists and virologists that I consulted, they led me through all of this. I went to Fort Dietrich, which is where we used to have our bio weapons laboratories. But now it's very much a part of our in our health establishment. I went to the National Institutes of Health. I talked to the chief science officer at Pfizer. Also, there is a lot of animal epidemiology in this novel. And so I spoke to several veterinary epidemiologist. I even have a dental operation in my novel and I consulted my dentist on how to do it. I always like to know what how would really happen. And that makes me feel more confident as a writer. And I think it engender is more trust with the readers.

MG: The dental operation is grim. That's all I'll say.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well, I wouldn't want to be a dentist after talking to him about it I have to say.

MG: Or a patient. We should just be clear. When did you finish writing this novel?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: I turned it in in July last year.

MG: OK. So the book is done. It's out of your hands. Somebody else has it. Editors and publishers and they're getting ready for it. What are you thinking when this is over and done with in terms of the writing, the book, as you see this crisis start to move from China and then be declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization and then spread from country to country to country?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well, they made their declaration on New Year's Eve, if you remember. And I immediately thought about SARS, which was in 2003, a very dangerous disease. And it was also a coronavirus far more fatal than the one that we're dealing with. Now, it killed about 10 percent of the people that it infected. And, you know, I was worried, especially because in 2003, the Chinese authorities hid the fact that they had this novel virus in their population until they got, you know, dangerously out of control. And I worried about that. I'd had no idea what stage it was in. It was a, you know, a triumph of public health that they were able to contain stars within 100 days. Unfortunately, this time around, we didn't act as quickly or as wisely as the world had done in 2003.

MG: What has surprised you as this real pandemic has played out knowing what you know?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: I guess the thing that has impressed me the most is the solidarity of people, just ordinary people to shelter in place at tremendous personal and financial cost. As you know, it's very inspiring. I underestimated the capacity of people to withstand this sort of assault on on their finances, in their personal lives. Governments, I think, behave pretty much as I expected them to continue. Well, you know, it is dismaying, Matt. I talk to all these people who many of whom work for our government, the American government, and, you know, in these institutes, the health institutes, they had spent years preparing pandemic models, doing tabletop exercises, you know, trying to prepare vaccines and so on. And so I knew what was going to happen. It is no coincidence, really. I mean, the publication date is a coincidence, but the the fact that things are unfolding as they are mirroring so much of what's in the novel, that's not article incidents, because it's exactly what people told me was going to happen to the experts that I consulted knew this would happen. It's very dismaying to think that their own government wasn't paying attention to them.

MG: Well the details of in the United States, the details of, you know, what could unfold and a plan to deal with a pandemic were actually written down in a book for the next president of the United States.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Yeah, well, a similar you know, it had passed originally from the Bush administration to the Obama administration and a Bama administration then did some work on that and passed it on and actually held a tabletop exercise for the incoming Trump administration. You know, on top of what happened immediately was that the budget for much of the public health were were cut like CDC. CDC had surveillance teams around the world, including in China. And, you know, because of the budget cuts, they had to eliminate them with all this talk disparaging the World Health organisation for its inactivity and China. We had cut off our own sources of information willy nilly. And then, you know, there was a pandemic response team inside the National Security Council, which was eliminated. It had been headed by Admiral Timothy Ziemer, who had overseen the efforts to fight malaria in Africa and is credited with saving six million lives. This that's an organisation that would have been leading the response to the pandemic now, but it doesn't exist any longer.

MG: There's a moment early on in the development of the pandemic in your book where health officials are talking, and one says that there is a need for truth and turns the communication over to a member from the country's Ministry of Health to be able to communicate that effectively. That's not what we see unfolding in the White House. And I think is it fair to say that the White House in your book, is based in somewhat on the Trump administration?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: I might have stance on this Matt is that everybody is a singular character in my book. And so except those who are actually named and, you know, yeah but it is set in current time.

MG: There are parallels then. We'll just say that there are, there might be some parallels. How important is it to to see that truth, the actual unvarnished truth based in science being presented and not being talked and twisted by politicians?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well, one of the first things is in one of the first casualties of something like a pandemic is trust. You know, if that if the government is seen as spinning or covering up or misrepresenting, then people don't trust their government. And after that, conspiracy theories arise in the vacuum left by the absence of truth. Conspiracy is rushing in to fill the void and the entity. That's exactly what happens. Along with that comes blame and stigma. And nations start blaming each other as they did in the novel and of course, as they're doing right now.

MG: How do you think your country will be changed by the experience that it's going through right now?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well, I think the whole world is at a fork. And, you know, we're all getting a look at the kind of society we actually live in. When you put a society under great stress, either a depression or a war or or in this case a pandemic, you get you get a close up look at the failings inside your society. I think we're well acquainted right now with the failings. And so we have an opportunity to address them. That doesn't mean that we will. We can. I mean, I look at 9/11, you know, after after that, I remember just feeling so strongly that, you know, we're gonna have to we're gonna have to stand for something now. We're going to have to be the country that we say we are, the country that our parents gave us. And what happened instead was we invaded Iraq and made a horrible mistake. Now, you know, look at our Arab Spring. There was another inflection point in that particular region and the world and so hopeful. And yet many of those countries are only more tyrannical now. So there are opportunities that arise when you see suddenly see the truth and what needs to be done. But it doesn't mean that will exercise it, but it does mean that the future is actually in our hands. We know what to do, but will we do it? That's yet to be seen.

MG: What do you see as one possibility for a brighter future? People are talking about, you know, in the United States, a Republican administration is essentially installed a guaranteed basic income for people. That that's something that seemed to a lot of people unimaginable six months ago, but here we are. That there are gaps in that and people are falling through those gaps, but that there are steps being taken in certain countries to address things that have been long, systematic failures. What do you see as one thing that could be brighter?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well, a social safety net, including, you know, universal health insurance would make the whole country stronger. I think that nothing has made a stronger case for that than this episode that we're involved in now. I think no more responsible and accountable government, one that trust the science and is more compassionate towards the people, you know, that would make a huge difference in making us a stronger society. How are things in Texas these days? Well, the governor just yesterday announced that we're opening up much of our society at the end of the week. And it's you know, it's a gamble. Texas is near the bottom in testing. So we're a little blind in this regard. You know, ifs, restaurants and theatres. And, you know, I I have a lot of mixed feelings about opening up theatres, especially. The governor has made a declaration that there were going to do a lot more testing without which, you know, we cannot possibly reopen. But he's also very aware, I think, of the consequences of having to go back into isolation, having a second wave that would be even more damaging than the first.

MG: We've seen these protests across parts of the United States with people demanding that the economy be reopened and going further than that, saying that the pandemic is fake news, that it's over blown, that it's exaggerated, it's just a mild flu or what have you. How's that playing out there?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Well, you know, in Austin, where I live, Alex Jones, led that campaign. He did not get very much of a response to be frank. It was, you know, even people who were at the event that he led said it was disappointing in terms of his attendance. I think most polls show most Texans want to, you know, stay home and be safe until, you know, the clouds clear and, you know, and that even the governor's declaration isn't going to make a lot of difference if people don't feel like it's safe to go outside.

MG: Are you concerned at all, this is a, people are looking for distraction and this is a great read, but are you concerned that the public might be pandemic fatigued and not want to think about it? Reading a novel about a pandemic in the middle of a pandemic?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Yes, I am concerned about it, Matt. And that's one of my concerns, the idea of publishing a book when all the bookstores are shuttered and the airports are empty is also a concern. You know, it's a very odd time. It's a weird coincidence. And, you know, my hope is that when people read this, they'll feel informed about, you know, what is happening. What is the science? I think they also will come to appreciate the ingenuity and the nobility of people who are involved in public health. And that might give them some confidence going down the road.

MG: I mean and I don't want to give too much away, but it's a grim book. And there's a note at the front of the regional edition of your book in which you write, I pray the events depicted in the end of October never come to pass. Do you think that they could come to pass again without any spoilers? Who would have you? But do you think what you're writing about and the degree to which things are taken in your book could be reflected in real life?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Oh, I certainly do. I mean, I think that there may come a time when we'll look back at Kogut, 19, as a blessing that, you know, it came it showed us how dangerous pandemics are and how ill prepared we were. And what we did in response was to stock up and and work on our vaccines and fortify our medical establishment so that when the big one comes, we'll be ready. Now, the hand we could just say, as we have done so often, well, we dodged a bullet every just look back since the last 20 years at the new diseases that have emerged, you know, Ebola, SARS, MERS, Zeka, West Nile, Avian Influenza, you know, just one after another. And some of them far more dangerous than this one. The idea that we're going to be immune to something like this in the future, I think is a fantasy.

MG: This starts the whole thing in terms of this project where the conversation that you had with the great director, Ridley Scott, who asked you to read a screenplay for a movie that wasn't made. Here we are in the movie. Do you think a film of your book is inevitable?

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: If you think anything is inevitable in Hollywood Matt, I've got to introduce you to some people.

MG: It would make a good film perhaps in years down the road when we're not in the middle of this though.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Yeah, well, we'll see. I'd love for that to happen. But you know, I, to be honest, I'm grateful he didn't make it when I wrote it before, because if this story hadn't been solved and also I hadn't done the research that I needed to do to truly understand how things would under unfold naturally. And, you know, once I decided to write it as a novel and I was released from the need to make it more cinematic or, you know, one thing or another, I got totally fascinated by the science and by the people that are involved in this. And I think, you know, it gave me an opportunity to do something I very much enjoyed, which was to research this book.

MG: It is a gripping read. And as they say, it seems as a ripped from the headlines, but with some twists and turns that we wouldn't expec. Take care of yourself in Texas and it's great to speak with you.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Lawrence Wright is a Pulitzer Prize winning author. His new novel, The End of October, is out today. This is The Current CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. Many of you have been writing in suggesting music that you're listening to to lift your spirits. Gary MacDougall lives on Prince Edward Island and writes, "My musical suggestion for these troubled times is a new song by PEI's Rose Cousins. It's off her new album called Bravado. The song is called "The Return (Love Comes Back)."And I should warn that it is a dangerous earworm, but if we have to have an earworm, one that contains the phrase love comes back is a good one. Thank you, Gary. Here is the great Rose Cousins and "The Return (Love Comes Back)"

[Song: "The Return (Love Comes Back)" by Rose Cousins]

MG: That's the great Rose Cousins and "The Return (Love Comes Back)." To our friends in Newfoundland and Labrador, we hope you will come back tomorrow. In the meantime, Cross-Talk is up next. For everyone else., stay with us. The Current is back in 90 seconds. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to CBC Radio One.

[Music]

Tom Power in conversation with Amber Ruffin

Guests: Tom Power, Amber Ruffin

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Tom Power, host of Q, joins us once again. Hello, Tom.

TOM POWER: Matt, what are you watching in the evenings? I mean, I assume you're reading articles and you're reading books and you're getting ready for the show, but what are you watching in the evening to chill out?

MG: The Last Dance, the Netflix documentary on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. And it's great.

TOM POWER: Isn't that fantastic? I love it too, man. You know, and I'm a newer basketball fan. You know, I didn't love it when I lived in Newfoundland. When I moved to Toronto, of course, I fell in love with the Raptors. But, you know, that whole thing missed me back then, so it's really well done.

MG: Yeah. What about you?

TOM POWER: You know, I've been reading a lot. I've been watching a lot of films. I've been trying to catch up on films I've never seen before that I probably should have seen. I finally got around to watching The Godfather, which is ridiculous. And I had never seen it up until now. And I've been checking into podcasts. I went for like an hour long walk last night and listened to podcasts. You're a podcast guy, right? I've heard of them, yeah, you can get them on the internet now. I know you from the podcast playlists and I used to subscribe to your mail order podcast system. So there's this new one from Audible featuring an A-list cast of actors and writers, including Amber Ruffin, who you might know from Late Night with Seth Meyers. She was the first black woman to write for a major in network and late night talk show. Here's our conversation about the new podcast, Escape from Virtual Island.

SOUNDCLIP

[Tom Power's conversation with Amber Ruffin]

MG: That's Tom Power in conversation with Amber Ruffin. And that is our program for today. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to this extended edition of The Current. Take care of yourself and I'll talk to you tomorrow.

[Music: Theme]

The Current Transcript for April 28, 2020

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Domestic violence is a shadow pandemic, says advocate

From temperature checks to plexiglass and higher wages – how COVID-19 is changing the grocery shopping

Return to school must happen carefully and thoughtfully

Yes, the pandemic is making us anxious, but it’s also revealing how resilient we are

Is isolation turning your pooch into one big furball? This vet has tips for home grooming

Tom Power in conversation with Avril Lavigne

Coping through laughter: Why comedy can help get us through the pandemic

US government’s response to pandemic was worse than Lawrence Wright imagined in his new novel

Tom Power in conversation with Amber Ruffin

Apr. 28, 2020 episode transcript

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