'It's safer than COVID': Canada's 1st vaccine recipients, health-care workers hope others follow suit

Guests: Lucky Aguila, Tamara Dus, Patty Hajdu

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[Sounds from first COVID-19 vaccine shot administered in Canada]

MG: That's the sound of history being made. 89-year-old Gisele Levesque became the first person in Canada to get the COVID vaccine at her care home in Quebec City. And Montreal's Bev Spanier was not far behind.

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VOICE: It's an absolute miracle that they have this vaccine. It was fine. It was like a normal flu vaccine. No problem. I think that the main thing now is to go forward and see if we can get everybody vaccinated worldwide and change things back to a little bit of normalcy.

MG: In Toronto, 27-year-old Lucky Aguila was one of the first to get the vaccine. He's a registered practical nurse at a long-term care home. Tamara Dus gave him the shot. She is a registered nurse and the Director of Health Services with the University Health Network, and they are both with me now. Good morning to you both.

LUCKY AGUILA: Good morning.

TAMARA DUS: Good morning.

MG: Lucky, you got the shot yesterday. How are you feeling this morning?

LUCKY AGUILA: Same as yesterday pre-injection. Doing well.

MG: Sore arm or anything like that?

LUCKY AGUILA: It's sore at the site, but no swelling, no fever, no redness. Doing well.

MG: No big deal. No big deal. You were one of the first people in this country to get this vaccine. Why did you want to be there at the front of the line?

LUCKY AGUILA: I decided to take the vaccine because, you know, I've experienced COVID -- the good, the bad, especially the bad. And I don't want to see or lose anyone else due to the vaccine and that is why I decided to take the vaccine.

MG: Were you nervous at all?

LUCKY AGUILA: I was nervous for sure, especially there's a lot of attention with you during at that moment, but I was thinking to myself, protect myself first, protects other people around it.

MG: What is this about you not telling your parents and they saw it on television?

LUCKY AGUILA: I didn't want them to worry too much. But I know deep down they were supporting me because I got home, they were cheering me, clapping when I opened the door.

MG: What is that like to get cheered and clap just for getting a needle?

LUCKY AGUILA: Feels great that you're contributing to finally try to get rid of the COVID.

MG: Tamara, you were the one who gave Lucky the shot. What was that like on your end to administer one of the first COVID vaccines in Canada?

TAMARA DUS: Absolutely incredible actually. It was overwhelming. And as I listened to Lucky, I think I was incredibly privileged to be able to be part of that and hopefully put an end to this terrible pandemic. Hopefully 2021 will be better than 2020.

MG: What was overwhelming about it? You've been giving vaccines for a number of years, right?

TAMARA DUS: Yeah, I think that this is monumental. You're right. I've been giving vaccines for, you know, my 25 plus years as a nurse and I've run vaccine clinics, but we've never been in a pandemic. I've never had the ability to be part of such a major potential change in how we all go back to normal life.

MG: Giving a vaccine these days is kind of a routine thing. This is not routine. Did you have a sense of what you were part of?

TAMARA DUS: You know, I had a sense, but I think it was afterwards that I really realized, wow, we could make a difference. We can save even more lives. Vaccines always save lives. Without them, we would have terrible, terrible disease and, you know, we've seen so much tragedy and death with this disease and we've been living it every day. And to be able to be part of stopping that is incredible.

MG: Lucky you'd said that you had seen COVID and you'd seen the bad in particular of COVID. You work in a long-term care home. Tell me a bit about what it's been like for you to watch this virus arrive in a facility like that.

LUCKY AGUILA: It was difficult in the beginning because nobody knew when it was coming, how it will affect everybody. It took a lot of strain on everybody, especially the workers have to do double shifts. But we were able to pull through.

MG: For a lot of people, I mean, having, you know, this vaccine arrive is the light at the end of the tunnel. But I mean, I think of what it was like in March and April and May and June where there was no hint of a vaccine. Did you have the sense that this was going to be a long, long haul as you're there working in those months and that first wave?

LUCKY AGUILA: To be honest, I was taking it one day at a time during the beginning because we don't know when it's going to end. But then as the news go by they're working on the vaccine and I know different countries are on the road, work together to make this vaccine and now we're here administering the first worldwide vaccination. There's hope.

MG: You yourself had to pay a cost for this. I mean you weren't able to afford to live at home in the midst of that first wave, right? Where were you living?

LUCKY AGUILA: In the beginning I was at home, but we were given a hotel nearby to stay, so we can protect our family and ourselves.

MG: What was that like?

LUCKY AGUILA: It was difficult, to be honest, not being able to see my family, being isolated. But it's part of the job. We have to protect ourselves, our family and the residents, our patients.

MG: And so what's it going to be like for you now to be able to go to work knowing that you've begun the vaccination, but also that the residents that you take care of will soon have that shot as well?

LUCKY AGUILA: I hope to inspire other people to take the vaccine and be a good example of hope for everybody.

MG: Tamara, is that hope something you share?

TAMARA DUS: Oh absolutely, I think my friends, my family, people who know me well, I'm a very social person and this is hard on all of us. And I see hope for social gatherings again in the future. I see hope for prevention of death and long-term illnesses from COVID, long-term suffering that a lot of people are having post-COVID.

MG: We spoke with the CEO of Pfizer, Canada last week and he described this vaccine in some ways as the most valuable substance on the planet right now. You have a job in which you need to get it into people's arms and you don't want to waste a drop. Tell me about the process. Again, it's stored at, what, -70 degrees as well. So how do you go about making sure that every little bit gets into the arms of people?

TAMARA DUS: Yeah, so that's part of the pilot. And that's why we were chosen along with Ottawa and various other places across the country to see how we can roll that out, how we can make it efficient, effective and not waste any. So it is stored at -70. It has to be thawed for a couple of hours in the fridge. Then it gets mixed and it's only good for six hours after it's mixed. So it's a lot of coordination, a lot of scheduling. We're ramping up very slowly. Yesterday we did the five people with the one vial, so that we could ensure we had a process set up and fine-tuning that a little bit, today we'll give more doses and each day we'll continue to ramp up. So it's super exciting.

MG: When will you get the vaccine?

TAMARA DUS: The minute I can.

MG: The minute you can?

TAMARA DUS: Yeah.

MG: What would you say, just finally to people who I mean, there's a lot of anxiety around this. For people who are nervous and anxious about getting this, Tamara, what would you say to those Canadians?

TAMARA DUS: I'm nervous and anxious about COVID as well. There is and I understand the vaccine hesitancy, especially with something that is perceived to be very new. A lot of the products that are in here in the RNA and how it's been manufactured seems quick to people, but we've never been able to have the entire world focus on something the way we have this. Manufacturers and scientists from all over the world have been working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and there was a large variety of people that were able to try this drug. So there were 30,000 doses given before it was ever released in trials. So I feel very confident and it's safer than COVID.

MG: And Lucky, for you, you said you wanted to be an example. What would you say to people who are nervous about getting the shot? What's your advice to them?

LUCKY AGUILA: You know, it's a big step to overcoming this pandemic and we have to start somewhere. You know, there's a lot of increase lately of more people getting the virus and hopefully we can instil confidence to people and have them take the vaccine cause we as health care workers are taking itm so we can protect them, protect ourselves.

MG: It's a big step and you're right there at the front of it. Lucky, it's great to talk to you about this. Thank you very much.

LUCKY AGUILA: Thank you for having me.

MG: And Tamara, thank you.

TAMARA DUS: You're welcome. Thank you.

MG: Bye bye.

TAMARA DUS: Bye.

MG: Lucky Aguila is a registered practical nurse at the required centres for long-term care. Tamara Dus is a registered nurse and the Director of Health Services with the University Health Network. They were both in Toronto. Patty Hajdu is Canada's Minister of Health. Minister, good morning to you.

PATTY HAJDU: Nice to hear your voice, Matt.

MG: And you. What were you thinking yesterday when those first vaccines were administered?

PATTY HAJDU: Well, I had the privilege of going to Montreal and being a minister at one of the long-term care homes that was vaccinating residents and that met Madame Lalouvre, who was the first person in that centre to receive a vaccination. And what she said to me was that she has lost her life through COVID-19, figuratively speaking, of course. She's been trapped for nine months or longer without being able to see friends of family. She told me she's a people person. I said I was too. And she said that this was the first step to getting her life back and to being able to connect with her family who she hasn't seen in so long. I was very emotional. It is a light at the end of the tunnel, as we've been speaking about, but nothing could prepare me for the well of emotion that I felt in that moment.

MG: What did it mean to you? What does this moment mean to you? I mean, you were brought to tears by what she said.

PATTY HAJDU: Well, I just, you know, it reminds us of the incredible human suffering that's happening across the country and indeed the world as people are losing loved ones, as people are struggling with. I call them moral dilemma of whether or not to, for example, visit with an elderly relatives who's pining and lonely versus potentially introducing COVID to their lives. You know, it is just astronomical, the amount of sacrifice that Canadians have been making and indeed world citizens. And and it does feel like the beginning of the end. And I think it's been a long, hard road for everyone. We still got a ways to go, but there was hope. I think I heard somebody say hope and there was hope in that moment that I haven't felt in a very long time.

MG: Who is next to get this vaccine? Who's next in line?

PATTY HAJDU: Well, these are decisions that are made by provinces and territories using national and provincial guidance. And obviously they're focused on two things, I would say. First of all, saving lives and you heard that come through in the interviews this morning, but also stopping the spread. So who's most likely to die if they contract COVID-19, and who's most likely to be in close quarters to people that are affected or potentially affected with COVID-19. So the real goal here is those two those two factors and so provinces and territories have been doing their own prioritization, as well as using the national advice from the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.

MG: What's your goal in terms of how many people we would expect to be vaccinated every month?

PATTY HAJDU: Well, it depends a lot on the delivery schedules of the vaccines. As you know, we're anticipating six million doses by the end of quarter one and then the flow really, the tap really turns on after that, all things considered, of course. The more routine or regular vaccines, the more traditional style vaccines, we anticipate, you know, approval sometime in quarter one depending on the manufacturers and the clinical trials and how they proceed. But my goal and my hope is that by the end of 2021, anyone who wants vaccination will have had access to one and ultimately as many Canadians as vaccinated as much as possible as my goal. I really like Tamara Dus's comment that vaccines are safer than COVID. I think it's something to remember for all those folks that are sitting and watching and wondering. Of course, there are people with lots of questions about vaccination, but it is the only way out for us.

MG: But just to be clear, I mean, this is the Pfizer vaccine. You're suggesting that the Moderna, the Johnson andJohnson, the AstraZeneca ones, those you're expecting will be approved by the first quarter of 2021 or sooner than that?

PATTY HAJDU: Well, I can't actually speak for the regulators, to be clear. I know Dr. Sharma yesterday said that the regulators are very close to a positive sign on Moderna. They're just waiting for the remainder of data on the manufacturing site. I did note that she commented that they have reviewed other products from that manufacturing site. But nonetheless, you know, this is this is a very rigorous scientific assessment. So, you know, I take Dr. Sharma at her word that that this is nearby and that they will have a decision on Moderna in the very near future. The others are a little further along. AstraZeneca, as you know, had a bit of an anomaly and some of the clinical trials in terms of dosing. And so that data is getting sorted out. And of course, Johnson and Johnson has also applied for a regulatory review. The neat thing is, you know, early on we sort of anticipated the the need for a investing in the regulatory body and doubling, tripling, in some cases, the capacity of the regulator. So we have a team of regulators 24/7 attached to each vaccine as the data is coming in, being able to analyze, in some case, duplicate the data, to replicate it, to make sure that it's sound. And these are toxicologist, immunologists and all kinds of different scientists and researchers who are really rigorously assessing that data. Because, of course, Canadians expect and I expect that whenever we approve it safely is here in Canada.

MG: In the meantime, supplies are limited. There was a report that the NHL was going to try to secure vaccines for its players and its staff. The NHL then backed off somewhat, but there will be other private companies that are seeking the vaccine. I'd heard a comment last week that, you know, bankers have never waited in line behind bus drivers for anything. What is it that the government can do to ensure that people don't jump the queue?

PATTY HAJDU: Well, at the federal level, listen, we've procured, paid for and bought these vaccines and we expect that there isn't queue jumping. Obviously, we distribute them to provinces and territories who then also have their own processes. But I will say that our expectation is that these public goods are not sold in any way. These are public goods. And the the prime minister has been very vocal in committing to Canadians that anyone who wants to be vaccinated will be vaccinated for free and furthermore committed to the federal government paying for all of the vaccination, all of the logistics, all the ancillary equipment.

MG: Right. But if somebody wants to pay more and jump the queue, is that is there anything the government can do to prevent that, given the fact that the people are scrambling to get this vaccine?

PATTY HAJDU: Well, we do have the Canada Health Act that actually can penalize, as you know, provinces and territories who charge for health care. As you know, our health care system is based on the need, not the ability to pay. And so the government of Canada would take appropriate action if there was findings that a province or territory had sold vaccines that had been purchased by the Government of Canada for use by all Canadians. In terms of the NHL, I mean, I understand that, you know, they can obviously procure from any private corporation that will sell to them, but I know that Pfizer's CEO has been very clear that their contracts are with countries, not with private enterprises.

MG: At the same time, there are NGOs that have accused Canada of vaccine hoarding with more doses per person than any other developed country, five to six per person. Are we hoarding more than we need?

PATTY HAJDU: I think no, I don't think that's the case. I mean, first of all, you know, we are full in on the Kovacs partnership. As you know, Minister Gould announced yesterday an additional 485 million towards vaccination and support for developing countries. And, you know, quite frankly, our purchases were made on the advice of our vaccine taskforce, which, as you know, was comprised of a variety of different experts, including experts from the pharmaceutical industry and really guided us in terms of placing our bets on seven promising candidates. Now some of those candidates may not evolve to be successful vaccines, and that was a risk that the government of Canada was willing to take to ensure that we would have access to any Canadian who wanted it.

MG: Are you supportive of the idea of an immunity passport? I mean, some people will be vaccinated before others. Some people may choose not to get vaccinated at all. Is this idea of a passport that shows who has got the shot and who hasn't something that you as health minister support?

PATTY HAJDU: I've said publicly that vaccination at the federal level would never become mandatory. Of course, there may be rules and different kinds of settings, and we've seen that before with, for example, in schools where proof of vaccination against childhood illnesses is required and or some sort of waiver. If there is a specific reason why a child can't be vaccinated, I think we can anticipate those types of roles and different kinds of settings. But at the federal level, this is completely voluntary and there are no federal laws that would apply.

MG: But if somebody wants to travel, for example, there could be a passport that would say, yes, you've got the shot, you can get on the plane and you can go somewhere where as somebody who hasn't got the shot, they may not carry that passport. Is that acceptable?

PATTY HAJDU: There are countries that require proof of immunization for specific illnesses around the world. For example, some countries in Africa require proof of immunization against yellow fever. I think we can anticipate that countries will need to, different roles which might apply in terms of vaccination as we get further down the path and we understand more about access, etc.. But again, those decisions would be made country by country.

MG: Just in the remaining few minutes that we have, I spoke with you at the beginning of this pandemic when things were really it felt like out of control in some ways that we didn't know what was going to happen day to day, let alone hour to hour. Would you have expected to see a vaccine less than a year into this pandemic unfolding?

PATTY HAJDU: Well, I don't think anybody expected that level of rapid scientific discovery. I think, as your earlier commentator mentioned, that we've never seen this kind of collaborative effort on a solution that led to such a rapid, you know, development of an effective vaccine. Yes, I'm surprised, but I am ecstatic as well, because you're right, we've had very many dark days without really understanding how we're going to get out of this mess as a world, never mind as a country. So the arrival of a vaccine is an incredibly powerful tool. And it really does bring some hope that, you know, we will be able to get back to normal faster. But I will also just reiterate that we aren't out of the woods yet. And I know that this is it sounds negative, but we do have to continue to practice the public health measures that are protecting us all in the interim until we have a level of vaccination that we can be certain that spread has really slowed.

MG: Just a few seconds left. What will you do after you get your vaccine?

PATTY HAJDU: Well, I will follow the public health advice that will come with the vaccine, no doubt. I mean, first of all, it depends on the kind. Sometimes, you know, with the two shots, so, of course, you have to be very careful and cautious between the two shots. And again, you know, vaccinations are not 100 percent effective. These are reportedly 90 to 95 percent effective, which means that we still have a risk of contracting COVID and we also potentially have the risk of spreading COVID. So we have to continue to be careful, as I said, until we really, truly see the decline of COVID-19 in our communities.

MG: Minister, we'll leave it there. It's good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

PATTY HAJDU: Thanks very much.

MG: Patty Hajdu, Canada's Minister of Health. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

[Music]

Brayden Bushby found guilty in death of Indigenous woman

Guests: Alvin Fiddler

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

[Music: theme]

MG: Still to come, as the much anticipated vaccine begins to roll out, a look at the parallels between polio and the COVID-19 pandemic. But first, a welcomed verdict in Thunder Bay.

[Music: theme]

MG: In July of 2017, Barbara Kentner died five months after a man threw a trailer hitch at her from a moving car. Yesterday, a judge convicted that man, Brayden Bushby, of manslaughter. He remains out on bail until the sentencing hearing in February. Barbara Kentner was from the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation in northwestern Ontario. She was walking along a residential street in Thunder Bay with her sister Melissa, when the attack happened.

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VOICE 1: A lot of community members here that say this is all about racism in Thunder Bay and how it is.

VOICE 2: It is, well, look at, look at the colour of his skin. He gets to go spend holidays with his family and that's it, you know, it aggravates me because right now I can't be with her. I got to be here.

MG: Alvin Fiddler is the Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation in Thunder Bay. He joins us now. Grand Chief, good morning.

ALVIN FIDDLER: Good morning.

MG: When you heard that verdict yesterday, how did you react?

ALVIN FIDDLER: I think a lot of these people up in this area, we were a bit surprised because we've been so used to expecting the worst from the courts when it comes to, you know, going to court, you know, whenever one of our people dies by the by the hands of a white person and most of the times they end up walking free. So it was a bit of a surprise for us to hear that word from justice yesterday, the word guilty.

MG: How significant to you was it that it was a manslaughter conviction, given that the initial charge with second degree murder, but it was downgraded from that?

ALVIN FIDDLER: Again, you know, despite the verdict and the decision yesterday that there's troubling question that remain with this case. It was the fact that, for example, you know, at the top of your show you mentioned when this happened, you know, January of 2017 and the fact that there were two other people in the car with Brayden Bushby and yet they were never held accountable for their role in this very tragic death, that they were never tried. They were never, I'm not sure if they were even questioned for their role. It'd be like me getting, you know, getting involved in an armed robbery, driving a getaway car and, you know, I'm not complicit to a crime, and yet they were not ever held accountable for that. And then the fact that, you know, the charge was changed to manslaughter again was very troubling. And also the fact that during the trial here a few weeks ago, that the judge allowed the defence lawyer to to keep trying to criminalize Barbara as well as her family, that was just really disgusting to hear that in court.

MG: Suggesting that she had other pre-existing conditions.

ALVIN FIDDLER: Yeah that's how much she was responsible for her own death.

MG: During the trial, Brayden Bushby's defence lawyer said, and this is a quotation, "this was not a racially motivated attack on an Indigenous woman, despite media attempts to frame it that way." There were questions after yesterday's verdict as to whether this should be viewed as a hate crime. Do you think this should be viewed as a hate crime?

ALVIN FIDDLER: Yeah, right off the bat, it should have been treated as a hate crime. I mean, there's no doubt about that. And just, you know, just the long history here in Thunder Bay with, you know Thunder Bay has long been designated as the hate crime capital of the country. And this was no different. And I think Melissa yesterday said it best when she was asked that question. You know, she just pointed to Mr. Bushby, who is white, you know, gets to spend Christmas with his family this year, you know, and despite being convicted of a very serious crime. And yet we have Indigenous people here in Thunder Bay at the district jail that have been in jail for many months that, you know, and not even be tried in court. So, you know, that's how the system has been for many, many years. It's how stacked up it's against the Indigenous and people of colour in this country.

MG: Tell me more about that. Sol Mamakwa, who is the NDP minister of parliament for the region, said yesterday the killing of Barbara Kentner is not a single incident, but part of a long standing pattern of several cases involving Thunder Bay throughout Ontario.

ALVIN FIDDLER: Yeah. I mean we can talk about this for the whole day there Matt. Just how tragic, you know, this the history of it all, right. You know, it's unfortunately, it's not just about Barb Kentner. It's you know, it's what we've been seeing you know right across the whole country, especially during this pandemic, but even but even going back years and just how Indigenous people have been just brutally attacked and killed. And yet, you know, if it's a white person, they get away with it and you can go back to even in 1971, when Helen Betty Osborne was brutally murdered by a bunch of young white people there and the whole town knew about it and yet nothing ever happened. So it's you can go back, you know, even before that and just make a list that sort of shows that systemic racism, the colonial, you know how our people have been treated. Even even in death, that somehow they're held at a lesser value.

MG: What is it about Thunder Bay in particular? Again, Sol's point was, was that Thunder Bay continues to be an unsafe place for Indigenous people, especially women. In 2020, why is not the case?

ALVIN FIDDLER: Well, I think that's the question we're still asking ourselves. You know, why is it that Indigenous women, especially, are still vulnerable in a place like Thunder Bay? And you know, as a dad, I worry too, because I have two daughters and that's something that's always on the back of your mind, when they go out.

MG: What are you worried about?

ALVIN FIDDLER: I don't, that they're going to be, that they're going to get hurt or that they may not come back home safely. And that's something that I think all parents worry about. And, you know, I don't know what the answer is. Like I don't know, I mean, I think we know parts of what the answer is, but it's just the fact that, for example, in Thunder Bay, we've heard for a long time that Indigenous people they get subject to somebody tosses out things at them, and you know that whether it's pizza or garbage or pieces of whatever it is that's in their car. But in this case, you know, Brayden Bushby took it to a whole new level when he took a trailer hitch and threw it out the window. And we hear these stories over and over again and yet nothing really, nothing really changes.

MG: I was going to say, do you think that this verdict might signal a turning point for justice in Thunder Bay? Is something like that possible out of this trial?

ALVIN FIDDLER: I think, you know, I really hope so. I think and then it all depends to on what happens on Feburary the 9th with the sentencing of Mr. Bushby. You know that I hope it's a significant punishment for what he did. You know that I know that the manslaughter charge and once you're convicted of that can be a wide range. Like yyou know, you can be put on probation or you can be put life in prison. So I hope the judge sends a signal to not just to the Indigenous people of this community, but to everyone that Indigenous lives do matter and that, you know, and that if you go out and hurt or kill an Indigenous woman, especially, you know just senselessly, that you're going to be held accountable and that you're going to be spending a long time in jail.

MG: Just finally, end on that. I mean, you started by saying that you were in some ways surprised by this because the community had long believed that the system was stacked against it. What would the message of, in the sentencing, what would the message of a strong sentence be for the Indigenous communities in Thunder Bay?

ALVIN FIDDLER: Well, I think the other thing that we want to do is to make a submission to the courts, a community impact statement and that's something that is relatively new in the province of Ontario, that these were just, you know, allowed to, you know, for a community to make these submissions to court just last year in 2019. So that's something that we are considering doing, similar to what happened to earlier in the summer with Dafonte Miller where community communities made submissions to court. I think that's something that we will consider doing.

MG: And Defonte Miller was the young man, a black man who was beaten by off-duty police officer.

ALVIN FIDDLER: That's right. That's right. So I think that these are opportunities that we are considering doing as a community to outline all these issues and to you know, outline our concerns and just to make these submissions to court in terms of how we see this case should be handled moving forward with respect to sentencing.

MG: Grand Chief, it's good to speak with you about this this morning. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

ALVIN FIDDLER: Thank you for having me.

MG: Alvin Fiddler is the Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski First Nation. He was in Thunder Bay.

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Holding up an iPad in the ICU, this social worker connects isolated COVID-19 patients with loved ones at home

Guests: Scott Graney

MG: You're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. No one ever wants to end up in a hospital's intensive care unit. It is a ward reserved for the sickest of patients. And it's even more difficult to be there during COVID-19 because family and friends cannot be by a patient's side. This leaves phone and video calls as the only means of connection. But someone inside the hospital has to help facilitate these difficult conversations and that person is often a social worker, someone like Scott Graney, who does that job at St. Joseph's Health Centre as part of Unity Health in Toronto. Scott Graney joins me now. Scott, good morning.

SCOTT GRANEY: Good morning.

MG: Describe what your job is. What do you do on a daily basis?

SCOTT GRANEY: So the role of an ICU social worker, it's a dynamic role. Mainly I support patients and families. I facilitate communication between various health care practitioners and patients and families, and sometimes I advocate for the wishes of patients and families.

MG: And how has all of that changed since this pandemic arrived on our doorstep?

SCOTT GRANEY: It has changed. So as a social worker before the pandemic. One of the skills of the profession of social work is interpersonal communication. And there's so much communication that happens non-verbally. One of the important differences to what I do under COVID is now my role is facilitating communication between family members and the patients. And we do that with video calls predominantly. And so you lose that element, that really important element of non-verbal communication, that interpersonal communication.

MG: Tell me more about that. I mean, you're wearing a mask and a gown and you're, you know, trying to be safe, but you're also trying to facilitate what is a pretty personal conversation between family members. How do you do that?

SCOTT GRANEY: You're absolutely right. So I would have on the full PPE going into that room, I would talk to the family members beforehand to help set realistic expectations. For example, if a patient is on a ventilator and sedated, I want the family to know that it's not likely that their loved one is going to open their eyes in a purposeful way at the sound of their voice. I think those are the kind of important communications to set realistic expectations. You don't want families to be, you know, continually disappointed when their loved one doesn't open their eyes. So and then during the conversation between the loved ones and the patient, often one way communication because the patient is not able to respond, I'm just there. I want them to, I want family members to pretend that I'm not even there, so they can be as free and open and honest and communicate in a heartfelt way as much as they want.

MG: And if you don't mind me asking, what are they saying?

SCOTT GRANEY: They are encouraging, pleading with their loved one to keep fighting, you know, reassuring their loved one that they're in a safe place, that they're getting the best care, that as a family member, they're there for them. Even though they can't physically be there, they're there. And words of love and encouragement predominantly. Sometimes we also use that technology at end of life where unfortunately, despite our best efforts, the patient is going to die and family are informed of that and they're using that as an opportunity to say goodbye.

MG: These are very intimate conversations. I mean, it is the most personal of moments. What is your job in that moment while that communication is happening?

SCOTT GRANEY: You're absolutely right, and I'm very humbled to accommodate families on that journey right up until the end of life, in some instances. You know, my role is really to be a facilitator for that communication to just really be supportive, provide emotional support. But almost, I almost want the families to forget I'm there. And a lot of times that's what families are able to do. They're just able to be, they're providing very heartfelt communication, very raw, very honest communication. And as I say, it's you know, it's really a privilege role to to be able to facilitate that at that moment in time.

MG: And when those conversations end and you turn the iPad off at the end of one of those calls, what's that like?

SCOTT GRANEY: Oh, that's a great question. I just had this huge, you know, deep breath, sigh, because it takes me back to those moments and it's difficult and sometimes and I hate this part of my job. Having a loved one with COVID who's fighting covid and unfortunately is losing that fight, there are necessarily there has to be limits on that communication because, you know, there's another family that is perhaps waiting for that same communication. And my resources, you know, I'm just one person, it's limited. So most of the time, it's not end of life where we have to do that and sometimes, you know, sometimes families, they need permission to to sort of end that call. You know, it's I think it's probably one of the hardest things they have to do. So, yeah, it's a very tough, it's one of the worst parts of my job.

MG: That's incredible to be in that moment. And I mean, again, outside of this situation, you wouldn't normally be there. You wouldn't normally be the one facilitating those conversations. Are there moments or stories or people that that really stick with you in having dealt with this?

SCOTT GRANEY: There are. There are. There have been moments where I've been facilitating that communication with family and during that communication, the loved one has passed away. And even if you're prepared that this is going to happen as a family member, it still comes, you know, as quite a shock when it actually happens. And so I remember feeling quite helpless in those moments to have to explain to somebody from a distance that their loved one has just passed away while they were on virtual communication.

MG: Is there anything I mean, in the best case scenario, those family members would be there with their loved ones and be there with them personally and physically in that space. Is there anything that has come out of this use of technology in this way that's been positive, do you think?

SCOTT GRANEY: Yeah, I think the technology is here to stay and so we'll be able to use this in the future in a way to engage with family who are living at a distance, even after we've beaten this virus. I think that will continue to be a way that we can support families in that way. I think that's one positive, if you can call it, you know, out of supports that we have available in dealing with this. And I'm surprised that they are very appreciative and grateful and thankful. It's a very limited amount of time that we're able to offer, you know, for this communication, but families, you know, by and large, they're just so appreciative to have that little piece of opportunity. So they're, it's very meaningful. It really supports how meaningful the work is, because that's the kind of feedback that I get from families all the time.

MG: How have you seen that appreciation? I mean, what's happened in that moment, which is a really difficult moment where a family member has shown that generosity or gratitude.

SCOTT GRANEY: One story to share, so there was this complete surprise and moment of joy, a grateful family member out of the blue, we were told, had provided lunch for the entire team. You know, they were so appreciative that their loved one had survived COVID and was able to get out of the ICU. And that's their way of showing their appreciation, not just to me as the social worker, but to the entire team.

MG: And what does that mean for you when somebody is able to get out of the ICU?

SCOTT GRANEY: Oh, it's tremendous. You know, it's it's so uplifting and we just, we really thrive on those stories that come back to us about how somebody has thrived once they've gotten out of the ICU and survived this virus.

MG: We are many, many months into this pandemic and people are feeling fatigued and they are looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, but they're also, it's just it's a lot for people to carry. What do you want people who don't work in a hospital, who haven't been in an ICU during this pandemic, what do you want them to know about what you are dealing with?

SCOTT GRANEY: I think it's important for people to be aware that the resources are scarce. As I say, we have one intensive care unit for all comers, COVID positive and COVID negative. What that means is that visitor restrictions apply to every patient that comes into the ICU, whether they're COVIDor not. And that might seem incredibly unfair to people who have a loved one that's in the ICU postoperatively that, you know, they don't have a concern of having COVID, for example, but unfortunately, those are the guidelines that have been laid down by the province, by our health network and those are the guidelines that we all need to abide by.

MG: How do you think you'll remember this year? We're almost at the end of 2020 and it's been some years. How do you think you'll remember this year?

SCOTT GRANEY: Well, this is the year that we were all conscripted in the war against the coronavirus. I mean, I didn't go into health care ever imagining that I would be considered a frontline worker on the front lines of a war against the virus. So I think that's our reality. And I'm just hoping that next year we're all going to be able to celebrate V-day, Victory Day, vaccine day, where the majority of us have been vaccinated and this becomes much, much, much less of an issue, hopefully, you know, on the scale of getting your flu shot once a year.

MG: And how do you think what you have done over the course of this pandemic is going to change you and the job that you do going forward?

SCOTT GRANEY: I don't know. I honestly don't know. I'll have to give that one some thought, and I think over time that might become more apparent. I also am one of these individuals that is closer to retirement, closer than the beginning of my career. So I have to be honest, you know, thoughts of retirement, sort of that fantasy kind of helps you get through some of the tougher moments as well. I think it would be very tough to be somebody at the beginning of their career in social work, considering going to work in the intensive care unit, for example, it would be hard to not consider that this could happen again. Right? And so the idea of being a front line worker as well as a health care provider, I think that's a reality that all the social work schools are going to have to come to terms with.

MG: Scott, I appreciate talking to you. Thank you very much.

SCOTT GRANEY: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Scott Graney is a social worker at St. Joseph's Health Centre of Unity Health in Toronto. These are tough times dealing with the pandemic, whether it's up close, like what Scott is doing or just in the way that it's turned all of our lives upside down. People need a bit of a break and the holidays aren't going to be the holidays that we're used to, unfortunately. So tomorrow we are taking a little breather from all the heaviness and we are dedicating this show to the things that lift our spirits and bring us joy. I'm going to speak with people who are pursuing their dreams, people who roll around in the snow, who swim in the winter to find exhilaration, people who find joy in helping others. We're going to have live music as well. The musician Alex Cuba will perform for us. In the midst of all of this weight of the moment that we're inm we're going to bring you a little bit of joy, a special edition tomorrow on The Current. Stay tuned for that. Coming up after your regional update, could history be repeating itself this time for the better? In 90 seconds, you'll hear the historian Jill Lepore reflect on the similarities between this pandemic and polio and the moment when people saw a way out of the polio crisis. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in a minute and a half. Stick around.

[Music]

Polio vaccine set off wave of relief, and a wave of resistance. COVID-19 era may be similar, says Jill Lepore

Guests: Jill Lepore, Pierre Oberg

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

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The news is on everyone's lips. Polio has been beaten, beaten by the genius of a modest man named Salk and the army of dedicated medical and scientific people, who's one and only ideal, is a world free from disease. In Toronto and the rest of Ontario, the reaction of the people was the same as though the announcement had meant the end of a terrible war.

VOICE 2: I would like to conclude only with a paraphrase of Sir Winston Churchill by saying that on the basis of these data, the future does not seem to be completely veiled in obscurity.

MG: Just as the development of the first vaccine for polio was met with cheers in April of 1955, so was the news last week that Canada had approved the first vaccine for COVID-19. The Salk vaccine, named after its developer, the American Dr. Jonas Salk, halted the spread of polio known as The Crippler because it could cause paralysis amongst its mostly young victims. When I spoke with her in June, the Harvard University American history professor Jill Lepore was looking back at that terrifying epidemic and how it ended, as a way to shed light on what we were living through then. We are replaying that interview today now that this moment in time, as she called it, has arrived for the COVID pandemic as well. Here's our conversation. For people who might not remember, remind us what the 1950s polio epidemic looked like and the devastating impact that it had on people's lives.

JILL LEPORE: Sure, yeah. Polio was terrifying, especially to parents of young children. At first in the U.S., it first showed up really an epidemic proportions in 1916 in New York City and returned relentlessly every spring. It was really far worse in the summer than in any other time of year. And it affected children, especially children under 12. Most of all, children under five. Sometimes people called it the baby plague. You could certainly die of it. More often, you would be crippled by it. So polio hospitals opened up. There were really kind of physical therapy centres. Children were braces. If you lost the use of your lungs, you'd be put in a almost like an iron coffin called an iron lung that would breed for you. Miraculous invention, but a horrible way to live. Well, while hoping for some for some relief. And there was an incredible public health crusade to try to find a vaccine and as we hear all the time, finding vaccines for viruses generally, historically takes decades. One of the worst epidemic years in the history of the virus came in 1952, but that was also the year that there seemed to be a real breakthrough in terms of the vaccine.

MG: Cities like New York were hit really hard by this and were shuttered in a way that seems kind of similar to what's happening now with schools being closed and the swimming pools in the in the heat of the summer being closed. Are there echoes that you see of that time in our life now?

JILL LEPORE: Yeah, it's actually so fascinating to me that these stay at home campaigns that were waged in the 1930s, 40s and early 50s for polio were a routine part of life in many parts of the world.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: This is the season when polio is at its worst and every precaution is being taken to stop the disease from spreading. In the Halifax area, for example, officials have postponed the opening of school as a safeguard. Here's Graham Allen with the details.

VOICE 2: The school ban is one of a series of developments which come quickly in the last few days as it became more and more apparent that this is the most serious polio situation we've had since 1942. City health authorities proclaimed orders banning children under 16 from schools, theatres and churces. The town of Dartmouth across the harbour from Halifax adopted the same rules and suburban communities are following suit.

JILL LEPORE: The best thing to do, the only real way, you know, as with the coronavirus, the only real way to defend against a virus for which no one has any immunity is to just not be exposed to it. And it's really hard to keep kids inside, especially in the summer. And polio happened to be particularly easily transmittable by water. So all summer months, kids want to go down to the creek, they want to go to the lake and jump in a swimming pool and it was it was a real hardship to keep them in. There were all kinds of campaigns, radio campaigns, to keep kids indoors. You know, sort of a different phenomenon than than ours. In some ways, it's an upside down corona virus because it's kids who are the most vulnerable, whereas now it's kids who are best protected from this pandemic.

MG: How did kids and their parents respond to the fear of something that they couldn't see?

JILL LEPORE: You know, it's interesting. I was working on an episode about the polio virus this fall for the podcast and listen to a lot of public health programming, both on the radio and in like these little movies that I remember from, like health class kids to I would they were filmstrips when I was a kid, but there are also films. And they would try to explain to kids what what a virus was and how to avoid them and why you should wash your hands and why you should cover your nose when you sneeze. That's hard for kids. It's hard for grown ups to do that, but it's a lot harder for kids.

MG: How did the epidemic of polio change the way that people understood truth and scientific evidence? Because as you mentioned, there's this wild search to try and find a vaccine. We're seeing this now, but we're also seeing people questioning science, questioning truth. How did that shape what was going on during that time?

JILL LEPORE: Yeah it's this kind of crazy pattern with viruses and their successful defeat. The defeat of smallpox, say, through vaccination programmes, was both celebrated and also highly suspected. So at the beginning of the 20th century, when the first vaccination programs are becoming successful and widespread, a lot of governments require vaccination. State governments and national governments require vaccination, compulsory vaccination. And this leads to the forming of the first anti-vaccination societies. There's an American Anti-Vaccination League and the British Anti-Vaccination Society. And what they're opposed to in some ways, they question the science and the utility of vaccination, but they are also essentially libertarian. They questioned the state's authority to require parents to get their children vaccinated on the grounds that that is authoritarianism. Right? So in the US, the anti-vaccination movement in the early decades of the 20th century is really closely aligned with opposition to national health insurance, which libertarians decry as socialism. So there's this weird tangled up like this is like the 19 teens and, you know, the era of the Bolsheviks revolution like that. It's Bolshevism. That it's Bolshevism to require kids vaccinated. It's Bolshevism to require people to have health insurance. So there's this and that actually is kind of those things have been always tangled up together somehow. And so now where we have already winning a vaccine for coronavirus who are desperately waiting for the thing, but already anti vaccination forces are lining up to oppose it on the grounds that, you know, that it's socialism in the U.S. in particular, where there's such a strong libertarian strain. There's already already people are like ready to fight the battle to defeat compulsory coronavirus vaccination, which is shocking to me, but goes back well over a century.

MG: The vaccine for polio is announced. Its existence is announced on the 12th of April, 1955.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: A New York newspaper, The Royal Telegram and Sun said today in a copyrighted story that it had learned from an unimpeachable medical source that the Salk polio vaccine is 100 percent effective. This reporter has learned from an equally reputable source.

MG: People have compared laws that moment to the end of the Second World War. How big of a moment was it?

JILL LEPORE: Oh God, you know, it's shocking to me to listen to the television coverage of it. The radio coverage of it. Just look at the newspaper headlines. It's almost like commentators, their voices, they're cracking, reporting it. I mean, the Jonas Salk had developed a live virus, a very risky virus. He's sort of the tour to use the hair of the tortoise and the hare race. This guy, Savan, developed a killed virus that replaced the Salk virus pretty soon afterward. But Salk that you know, we can't wait for a safer vaccine. We're going to use a live virus and went into field trials, the biggest public health field trial ever conducted in 1954. So everybody was waiting to 18 months to test this very promising vaccine. And then there was going to be a big announcement at the University of Michigan. Hundreds of reporters show up. There's a, you know, big photocopied set of documents reporting the results of the field trial. There you can see photographs of the reporters just just cramming almost like a stampede of reporters trying to get hold of that press release. Well, a team of doctors, you know, stand on the stage and issue the report that the vaccine works. And then it's just like this cry that goes out across the land vaccine or their vaccine works. There is a vaccine and it's April, right. It's just before the star onset of summer, the warmer weather that's going to expose children and make them much more vulnerable to this virus. So there's this incredible, incredible swell of relief around the world. And Canada, France, Frances Ontario has set up in anticipation of compulsory vaccination programme. The U.S. has not. The new secretary of health, education and welfare in the Eisenhower administration is a highly conservative woman, a vehicle Pobby, and she believes the federal government in the United States should have no role in the distribution of the vaccine. So she has nothing set up through waiting 18 months to find out whether it works. There is plenty of time to set up a plan for the manufacturer and distribution of the vaccine, and she just isn't that socialism to her. So it becomes this huge mess in the United States. This whole problem of of the federal government's failure to act, it's chillingly like this moment.

MG: Eventually, the vaccine is distributed. You did a thing for The New Yorker podcast, The New Yorker Radio Hour, in which you talked about how each generation gets a timestamp. And you talk about the timestamp for those young people in particular, who, as you mentioned, it's April, they're waiting to get the polio vaccine.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: There's a generation of Americans whose most significant early memory is of waiting in line to get the Salk vaccine. I have a colleague who I once asked about this and he said, I can remember the taste of it in my mouth, it was like a sugar drop. It was almost like a lollipop. And my mother said, this will save your life. You will have a life. And I think about that. And I think about the generation of kids who we can only hope will remember the day that they go to get the coronavirus vaccine and it'll be their time stamp.

MG: When you were talking about this on The New Yorker podcast, you got really emotional when you describe this and it was enough the way that you described that moment, I was running and I stopped what I was doing and the hair, kind of stood up on my arm as you were describing this. Why did that moment hit you in the way that it did?

JILL LEPORE: Yeah, it really knocked me down, I have to say. I mean, I had all fall been working on this episode for the podcast about the controversy in the U.S. over the vaccine. And I'd listen to all this radio footage. I'd listen to the announcement that the vaccine works. I'd listen to the stay at home campaigns. I listen to radio interviews from the 40s and 50s with kids who were in iron lungs. I'd been affected by it. I mean, the way that you are good, you know, good sound. But it seemed at such a remove to me like, oh, polio. Thank God that's in the past. And then when I was, you know, editing and working on a story and after the coronavirus came and I listened to that same set of tape every time I fell apart, I just I couldn't believe how much more immediate it was to me and how much more vulnerable, how much more raw, how emotionally exposed, what little emotional stamina I had to contend with the despair of these stories and the exaltation at the wonder of the news. And so when I tried telling that story to the New York radio, our producer, I just couldn't hold it in anymore. It's embarrassing to fall up on the radio on. But it also it's how I felt.

MG: But it speaks to the moment, right? And it speaks to like, what would the timestamp be for this generation under the coronavirus? Where there are different stakes and different things are happening, but people are being affected in incredibly dramatic ways. And the things we keep keep saying is the things that we took for granted six months ago are now on the shelf and nobody knows when they're going to get them back.

JILL LEPORE: Yeah, and the tragedy of it, too, is for something like polio, those generations who suffered through it, who were terrified by it, who had to watch where they went and who they talked to and what time of day they went out of the house and maybe had to stay home and listen to the radio all day. They remembered what that what that area was like, but their children had never heard of polio, didn't know what they you know, I I was born after the polio years. I remember my mother telling me about friends of hers who were felled by polio and it sort of removed from you and for my kids, I don't think they would get that at all. And in a way, that's what makes the resurgence of anti-vaccination possible. Like people haven't seen their children die of measles and so suddenly they're suspicious of the measles. That's crazy. But it is actually a kind of lived experience. It's in your bones. It's in your blood, you know, it's in your heart. You know what that feels like. And kids, now, you know, my kids watching my kids worry about, you know, their grandparents and know people who are really sick and certainly many people who have lost their jobs in the kinds of suffering. I mean, you know, my family is spared and blessed in so many ways, but we know so much about how dreadful this is. This is not a thing they will forget. And what we can hope for them and pray for them is that they will forget some of it. But what they will remember the importance of the public health crusade.

MG: Ida Pinckney is a woman who contracted polio when she was a baby in Brooklyn in 1944. Here she is talking to NPR about the perspective that she has that that experience has given her in terms of what we're in the midst of right now.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: When my parents would take me out of the apartment building that we were in you could hear everybody get silent, you know, and kind of move away, which is very much what it feels like now. I live with hope. I live with the anticipation that we will be on the other side of this. I don't know what that looks like. It doesn't even matter as long as people are not getting sick and people are not dying.

MG: Do you share that hope that a vaccine will be developed quickly? There's been a lot of talk around timelines and things like that.

JILL LEPORE: I don't know how quickly it can be developed and of course, the mitigation and its safety against the speed. But I do very much believe that there will be a vaccine and this time is not a permanent new way of living and I hope that the lessons learnt will have force.

MG: Can I ask you both those lessons? There's a lot of talk now about who we'll be when we come out of this and what we might be and whether people who want to go back to the way things were because the way things were didn't work for a lot of people. How often in history has a crisis served as a catalyst for change?

JILL LEPORE: You know it's very difficult to predict how that would be. I think there's a lot of fantasising on the part of people who are involved in movement politics that this will accelerate reforms that had been stalled or we're going nowhere. And, you know, God bless. Like I have many hopes for a more equitable and just kinder, better world with a greater sense of common wheel. We all, I think, hope for that. But we already see the kind of political disarray, certainly in the United States where, you know, is being very closely observed day today, a kind of decay from a sense of shared purpose and shared suffering. It really it it does require. A great deal of leadership to transition from the crisis to the post crisis with the spirit of common cause intact. I mean, that's where the leadership of FDR during the Great Depression himself, of course, a person who had suffered from polio and had been crippled by it, really mattered during the 1930s. Whose economic dislocations are not unrelated to the long term consequences of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. But, you know, it's really interesting when you listen just thinking about the power of the of the human voice. Eleanor Roosevelt always said that FDR's voice changed after he got polio. He was a grown man when he contracted polio. But he was an aristocrat. He'd never really been deprived of anything and he was deprived of his ability to walk. And that you could hear his voice changed and you could hear in his voice that he understood suffering.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: This great nation will endure as it has endured. We'll revive and we'll prosper.

JILL LEPORE: And so in 1933, when he is inaugurated as president and the country's facing the worst economic crisis ever, and he goes on the radio and he tells people, look, I'm gonna have to shut the banks because it's the only thing we can really do. We're gonna have to shut the banks. Let me tell you why and I know you're scared. It's the right thing to do. I know it's the right thing to do because the right thing to do for all of us.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: So, first of all, let me put my firm belief that the only thing we have fear is fear itself. Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

JILL LEPORE: That when people heard his voice, they they trusted him because they knew that know they were suffering, but they they could hear in his voice that he was somebody who understood what it meant to lose something. What it meant to fear that you would lose everything. And it really mattered. It mattered every week that he was on the radio, every time that was on and he was on the radio every moment that he was on the radio. People talk about you could walk down the streets of New York and you could just hear an entire FDR speech without ever having your own radio, because every car had it on every storefront, had loudspeakers out front that had it on. You could walk for miles and you could hear the entirety of an FDR speech. And that is not just because of what he said, but it was because of how he said it. And that had just been slight huskiness in his voice. That slight kind of emotional crackle that spoke to you when you were running. I mean, not to sort of.

MG: Yeah.

JILL LEPORE: Say something about my own voice. But he wasn't faking it. Like he was really worried. And he you know, he knew some people don't like FDR, you know, think the New Deal went too far. All fine. But you cannot question what it meant and what it did for the nation's sense of purpose, that he communicated that in a crisis we stick together and we don't have that right now.

MG: It's hard in the midst of something to see beyond the moment that you're in. People are living through this moment now and they say it's unprecedented and they can't imagine what the next few weeks are going to look like, let alone the next few years. And they may not even be able to remember what the last six months were like as somebody whose job it is to see that sweep of history. What do you think the moment that we're in right now can tell us about the bigger picture or what the bigger picture can tell us about the moment that we're in right now?

JILL LEPORE: Oh, I love the clip that you began the segment with about that sort of vaccine ending an era cloaked in uncertainty or the mystery of uncertainty. And that's one of the lessons here is how our capacity to tolerate the unknown and the uncertain is, I think, quite a bit worse than it used to be. There's a we have a kind of false belief in the certainty because of how highly predictive our world is, like data is predicting everything. Like you look at the latest polls so that you can know exactly what's going to happen next.

MG: You don't get to choose what you're going to watch because Netflix tells you this is what you're going to like.

JILL LEPORE: Exactly. You know what the weather is going to be like tomorrow. There's an app for that. You know what the best route is, because and where there's going to be a traffic problem because there's an app for that. You know what you should watch and what's going to be the right you know that the TV show that's going to be interesting to you because there's an app for that. What book you should read, you're told. I think we actually just have considerably less tolerance for the unpredictable, the unknown and the uncertain and that's why people are obsessed with the curve. I mean, not like the curve is, of course, the curve is an important piece of information. I don't mean to dispute that, it's not like I know nothing about the curve, but just that you open up your newspaper app and there's the curve and, you know, then there's the various projections. Like in scenario one, the curve will go like this and then in scenario two, will go like this. If we open today, it'll look like that. We don't really actually have that kind of control. We certainly need to take responsibility for our own actions, but just our utter impatience with the unknown is, is I think a real liability for having the stamina to deal with this extraordinarily difficult time. I mean, I don't begrudge anybody, their terror of the unknown. Just kind of remarking as a historian, I think there's a kind of shift. Like for most of human history, nobody has any idea what's going to happen next, you know, from the weather to anything else.

MG: When we get out of it then, how do you think we'll look back at it at this time?

JILL LEPORE: Boy, you know, that's a kind of trajectory question. Historians are terrible at making predictions. I I guess I would say that the patterns you see in the past is that there'll be a whole long period of trying to figure out who to blame. That's the nasty version of what will happen next. We're already kind of in that. We're not even over this and just so many people are making so much political hay and a lot of people are, frankly making money over blaming other people. So there's a lot of cause for despair about that. But I think that for most people, what they will carry forward are, you know, the tender moments of compassion that they shared with fellow human beings and where they found strength by being together. Even in this almost impossible situation in which thing you have to fear most is intimacy with other people.

MG: It's a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.

JILL LEPORE: Thank you so much.

MG: Jill Lepore is a professor of American history at Harvard University, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of several books, including, This America: The Case for the Nation. She's also the host of a podcast called The Last Archive. I spoke with her in June, and I'm looking forward to speaking with her again in the new year. When that interview originally aired, it inspired Pierre Oberg to reach out directly to Jill Lepore. In an email, he wrote, "As a person who works with art students at a small and remote community college surrounded by the boreal forest in Northern Canada, I wondered if there was an opportunity for emerging artists in our community to create artworks utilizing this idea of a timestamp. That remote community is Lac La Biche, Alberta, which is 220 kilometres northeast of Edmonton. And that is where we have reached Pierre Oberg. Pierre, good morning.

PIERRE OBERG: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What was it about that interview with Jill Lepore that made you stop and think about getting your students to create their own stamp?

PIERRE OBERG: Well, we, I work at a place called Portage College, and one of our campuses is in Lac La Biche, Alberta. We're one of Alberta's oldest communities and we're culturally very diverse and very rich. And because we're small, we work with a lot of different groups of students within our college. And I thought, you know, we get to know the students every day a little bit more because we are small. We not only talk about the arts, but about how current events are affecting us. And we really get to know each other as a community. And I thought, you know, we were all experiencing and still are experiencing the pandemic up north here. And our students are so courageous and they inspire me every day and I just thought, you know what, I'm going to introduce this idea to them and see what they think about it.

MG: You wrote to Jill and I read a little bit of that email that you wrote to her and she wrote back to you.

PIERRE OBERG: She did. Yeah, I was very surprised. I thought, you know, as a courtesy, I would reach out to Jill Lepore and just let her know that her interview with yourself Matt, inspired us to contemplate a show called Time Stamps: The Art of Relief. And she wrote back very graciously and very generously. Was thrilled to receive the email.

MG: What are your students doing?

PIERRE OBERG: Well, we are, the name of the show is Time Stamps: The Art of Relief. And what struck me from that interview was when Jill, it was actually the moment where you were out for a run. I was also working from home that day listening to The Current, which we love in our house. And you were out for a run listening to that point of the New Yorker podcast where Jill was referring to, I think, a colleague who experienced getting the vaccine, the Salk vaccine and what a poignant and important moment that was in her colleague's life. And your conversation was just like radio can deliver so beautifully, was just so raw and to the point and very human. And I just thought about all the students that I work with every day and a number of our students, because we draw from so many programs, some of them are younger, some of them have families, some that have children of their own. And we have a 12 year old daughter at home as well and I just related so much to the moment. And then I thought about my own mom, who as a young girl growing up in Oregon and and talking about many of the things that Jill Lepore was talking about when she got the Salk vaccine when she was 10. She remembers the day and even has the certificate from that moment from May 25th, which is going to be part of the exhibition as well. It just really resonated with me and I had to stop like yourself and just sit down and listen to the rest of the interview.

MG: So how do you think your students will be inspired by creating their own time stamp in this moment that they are living through?

PIERRE OBERG: Well, I just I'm just so appreciative of the students at Portage College, how they inspire each other and inspire me every day. And it was an interesting moment, I came to the students and I proposed the idea and because we draw from both fine art students, native arts and culture students, open studies students and university transfer students, we have a rich, diverse range of people in the classroom every day. And right away, as soon as I said that, one of our students said, I remember exactly when I got that vaccine, one of our more mature students. And so I just sat back and let that student talk to the younger students about her experience and then there was this collective shared moment of empathy and compassion for each other.

MG: And so they'll be creating art that's based around the moment that they're in?

PIERRE OBERG: That's right. Yeah. And they'll be, we're doing a bit of a play on the words stamp with time stamp and release. There's a strong tradition in the arts, especially in sculpture and printmaking of relief, printmaking and relief sculpture, but also what this sense of relief is going to be like for our students and their families and our community and our world when that moment happens. So students will be working in various art media and sharing their perceptions and their experiences from our community during this pandemic.

MG: And your mother's certificate will be part of that exhibition?

PIERRE OBERG: That is correct. Yeah, my mom, Renee. Yeah.

MG: That's quite something. I mean to take the moment that we're in and get students to be inspired by it, by something that you heard on the radio.

PIERRE OBERG: Absolutely, and I hope to inspire them to become CBC Radio listeners as well.

MG: We could all hope for that. In the meantime, it's a real pleasure to talk to you, Pierre. I appreciate the fact that you were listening, but also that you wrote Jill and that something that you heard on the radio has turned into something for your students. Thank you very much.

PIERRE OBERG: Thank you so much, Matt, for your interest and for the phone call today.

MG: Pierre Oberg is a fine arts instructor at Portage College in Lac La Biche, Alberta. He got in touch with Jill Lepore after hearing our interview. And we were glad to connect with him to hear about what he's going to be leading his students through in the wake of that interview. That is The Current for today. Tomorrow, a breather from the doom and gloom of this pandemic. We are dedicating the show to things that bring us joy. We could all use a little bit of that, especially now. Tune in to CBC Radio tomorrow for a special edition of The Current. Coming up next on CBC Radio One, it's Q. Tom Power speaking with Jose Feliciano, the 50th anniversary of the recent release of "Feliz Navidad," a song that will either bring you joy or perhaps just get stuck in your head and be unable to be removed from your brain. You'll hear that coming up on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current. Take care. We'll talk to you tomorrow.

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The Current Transcript for December 15, 2020

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

'It's safer than COVID': Canada's 1st vaccine recipients, health-care workers hope others follow suit

Brayden Bushby found guilty in death of Indigenous woman

Holding up an iPad in the ICU, this social worker connects isolated COVID-19 patients with loved ones at home

Polio vaccine set off wave of relief, and a wave of resistance. COVID-19 era may be similar, says Jill Lepore

Dec. 15, 2020 episode transcript

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