Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2021

The Current Transcript for July 30, 2021

Host: Robyn Bresnahan

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

Reaction to Alberta's announcement the province will end nearly all COVID-19 restrictions

Guests: Lori Williams, Ilan Schwartz

SOUNDCLIP

We need to be looking at how we're going to live with covid-19 and we cannot focus on it as the single most important risk, and especially for kids, it is not directly the most important risk to their health. The important thing right now is to look not just at cases alone, but to be looking at, again, those severe outcomes as the primary reason that we had to employ the public health measures we've used over the last 17 months.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: That was Alberta's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw. On Wednesday, she announced the province is planning to lift nearly all restrictions related to covid-19 in the coming weeks. As of yesterday, Albertans who've come into close contact with someone who tested positive for covid-19 no longer need to isolate. As of August 16th, the requirement for those who test positive for the virus to isolate will be dropped. Universal masking will not be required once children return to school and by the end of next month, all Albertus covid-19 testing centres will close. All of this has people talking. Here's a taste of some of the calls received yesterday on the CBC Phone-In show Alberta at noon.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: My kids are vaccinated, but out of all of the group of their friends, they are the only ones. So they will be going into classrooms with the majority unvaccinated kids.

VOICE 2: If we keep treating it like this is big, dangerous thing that is what the extraordinary measures above every other danger we face in life, it's a really slippery slope to lose some personal freedoms for no other reason than fear.

VOICE 3: I want nothing more than for this to be over. And then I know that's the case for all of the parents that I know who are now struggling to understand how do we keep our kids safe? And with every doctor in the province that I'm following saying that this is unsafe and unprecedented.

VOICE 4: If I get the virus, I can't afford to take time off work. I'll just go to work. I don't care.

RB: Now is Dr. Ilan Schwartz, an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alberta? Doctor, good morning.

ILAN SCHWARTZ: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

RB: What word would you use to describe your reaction to this announcement?

ILAN SCHWARTZ: I was, I was flabbergasted. I was really caught off guard. And I think almost all of my peers were, as well as the rest of the province. I think we knew that, you know, at the end of the day, there's going to be some sort of shift where we do need to come to terms with living with the virus, where it's going to be an ongoing risk that is similar to other respiratory viruses like influenza. You know, this certainly isn't something that we expected we would be overcoming or eradicating, but I don't think that anybody would agree that it's the right time to be relaxing these measures. We have the emergence of a strain, the Delta variant that is considerably more transmissible, and we have rates of infection that are increasing to a level, at least with the reproductive value the R-not, that we haven't seen since the peak of the third wave. And so I think this is really a foolhardy time to be introducing these changes.

RB: At the same time, hospitalisations and deaths are fairly low. Should that be the bar now rather than daily case numbers?

ILAN SCHWARTZ: Well, I think that vaccines have been quite remarkable in being able to decouple cases of infections with severe outcomes like hospitalisations and deaths. But we still are seeing really bad outcomes. There's a considerable proportion of the population, about a third of Albertans are not vaccinated. And on top of that, we have sub-populations that remain vulnerable in spite of vaccination; those individuals who can't mount an immune response because of immunosuppressant use, perhaps because of, they're elderly. And so we need to find a way to protect these individuals and we need to look past just deaths and hospitalisations. We know that covid can cause lingering effects, what we call post acute covid syndrome or long covid. And this can happen even in the setting of mild infections. And so there's a lot of things other than just hospitalisation and deaths that have really important health implications.

RB: Responding to some of those criticism, Dr. Deena Hinshaw says that resources need to go into other illnesses, things like cancer and surgeries. Why shouldn't those start to be a priority again?

ILAN SCHWARTZ: So I think those are a priority. But, you know, there's no question that covid has transformed every aspect of our society and has really set us back even in those other illnesses. You know, we have wait times for surgeries that are now running in the years because of the shutdown of OR's, because of covid. Certainly we've seen across the country people suffering suboptimal care from a variety of illnesses and and and traumas, et cetera, because of the shift of resources to COVID. But I don't think we're at a point yet where it is safe to just let this virus rip through the community, which is essentially what has been proposed.

RB: Isolating if you're positive will be recommended but not required. Do you think people will do that?

ILAN SCHWARTZ: No, of course not. And the fact is that people aren't going to know if they're infected because now the availability of testing has been lifted so that tests will only be available if patients are so sick that a physician thinks that they might warrant treatment either for covid offer an alternative diagnosis. And so the vast majority of people who are infected, who have mild or self limited symptoms won't know that they're infected. And so the ones that do find out that they have a proven case of covid-19 are going to be recommended not to forth and spread it. But I think that's really going to be the tip of the iceberg. It's it's it's not going to limit the amount of spread in our community.

RB: And so how do you think that will play out? Where do you think that will play out?

ILAN SCHWARTZ: Well, I think that those individuals who aren't vaccinated are basically cannon fodder for this virus and they're going to be extremely vulnerable. This virus is going to tear through our community. People who are vaccinated can still transmit the virus. They're less likely to do so, but given the amount of virus that we're likely to see flooding our community, it's going to be inevitable that there's going to be high rates of circulating virus. Those that are unvaccinated or those that are unable to mount adequate immune responses to the vaccine are going to be particularly vulnerable and are going to have poor outcomes. And then over time, there's going to be a decrease in cases, but that's going to be at the expense of wasted life. And to me, that's that's truly a travesty.

RB: Dr. Hinshaw, when it comes to testing, she was saying, well, we do still have some metrics. We're going to be looking at wastewater metrics, for instance. Does that reassure?

ILAN SCHWARTZ: No. I mean, the monitoring of sewage for covid-19 is an established practise, but this is to augment other better established, more immediate measures of virus circulation like testing. And so we're going to be abandoning our ability to test and to monitor in real time the amount of virus and to make any meaningful sort of estimation about where the virus is. By testing the stool from an entire city, that's not going to give us any useful information about what sort of interventions might actually reduce morbidity and mortality from this infection. Although clearly the government has established that they're not interested in interventions at this point. They're interested in a rush back to normalcy, which is, in my opinion, foolhardy and reckless.

RB: What about kids under 12? They still can't get vaccinated. What's the risk for them in the interim?

ILAN SCHWARTZ: I think the risk for them becoming infected is extremely high. The risk of severe outcomes is low. And so on an individual basis, may be the gambit is in individuals' favours. But we also know that schools and children can foment spread and and that spread can then go back to the rest of the community. And so, you know, certainly we do see severe outcomes. We do see MIS-C, or the multi inflammatory syndrome children, and we do see children that are in ICU and even deaths. And so this isn't something that anyone should take for granted. You know, certainly influenza is something that we take very seriously. And we know that this virus is a lot worse than influenza. And so I don't think that we should be lowering our standard for how we approach this virus because we do a suboptimal job managing other ones.

RB: You heard the clip from the Phone-In from Alberta at at the beginning of this. And the last fellow said, I don't think it's worth losing personal freedoms for no other reason other than fear. What do you make of that opinion?

ILAN SCHWARTZ: So I think this is, you know, some of the dichotomous, polarised perspectives that we've seen throughout the beginning of the pandemic, that there's been a large vocal minority of individuals that have promulgated that this is just a hoax, that there's nothing to be afraid of. And the reality for those of us who have been in hospitals and to have seen the devastation in, you know, in individual families know that that's far from the case. And so, you know, we're concerned about public health. We're concerned not just about protecting the individual, but protecting the most vulnerable in our community. And so although an individual may have a low risk of a severe outcome, there's still those in our community that are extremely vulnerable. And and there seems to be no semblance of effort to protect them at this point.

RB: Just reading through the Calgary Herald this morning, there was a quote from a doctor in Alberta saying, this feels like a slap in the face that we've worked so hard to get here. And now this. What does it feel like to you?

ILAN SCHWARTZ: So I think health care workers across the province are extremely despondent and demoralised. And we've been through a very tough 18 months trying to care for each other and care for the community. And so now to to just relax all measures and to, you know, go full bowl scenario, as some have commented, is really upsetting. It's really draining. And I think that it's going to directly lead to a lot of burnout amongst health care workers across the province.

RB: Doctor, I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you very much.

ILAN SCHWARTZ: Thank you.

RB: That's Dr. Ilan Schwarz, an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alberta. We did also request Dr. Deena Hinshaw and Premier Jason Kenney for comment. Both were unavailable. Well, like everything else in the pandemic response, there are politics at play. Here to discuss that aspect of what's happening in Alberta. We're joined by Lori Williams. She is an associate professor of political science at Mount Royal University in Calgary. Laurie, hello.

LORI WILLIAMS: Good morning. Robyn.

RB: Calgary's mayor Naheed Nenshi said it was, quote, the height of insanity for Alberta to remove the last of its covid-19 measures. And the only possible explanation here is a political one. What's your take on that?

LORI WILLIAMS: Well, clearly, there must be political considerations here. It's it's hard to figure what the the hurry is, what the rush is if we don't figure politics into the mix here. So even though Jason Kenney is almost two years from the next Alberta election, we are moving into a season of certainly a municipal election in Alberta with an October municipal election where an equalisation referendum is on the on the ballot. And we also are looking potentially at a federal election. And in both cases, there are advantages or momentum, it looks like the premier wants to gain, in terms of a of just the politics of it. And he's also concerned about his right flank of the party. He's been governing basically since he was elected, as though he were very concerned. Remember, he came to power by uniting the right, by uniting the former Wildrose Party and the progressive Conservative Party. And the potential for another split, which is a huge risk, as we've seen at the federal level and certainly here in Alberta; his concerns about about losing folks on the right has certainly been a powerful influence in decision making, as we've seen throughout the pandemic and actually before that as well. So it looks and of course, he's got lots of challenges to his leadership. His polling numbers have been very low. We haven't seen very recent polls, but there have been a number of polls where Justin Trudeau is is polling higher than Jason Kenney in Alberta. So he knows that he's a bit embattled in terms of his leadership and his party. And the NDP is sitting ahead of them, according to the most recent polls as well. So he's looking to move things in a direction that helps him. He's demonstrated historically fairly high tolerance for risk, I would say a much higher tolerance for risk than most Albertans. So I think there's a significant political risk here as well.

RB: Do you think more people will support these moves in Alberta, these these loosening of covid restrictions than people who oppose them?

LORI WILLIAMS: Difficult to gauge, but certainly based on reactions and seeing online and phone in shows and so forth, this is too soon for a lot of Albertans. It was it's quite surprising; they were expecting this. They don't see the medical justification for doing this and for doing so this quickly, particularly when we're looking at the sorts of things that are happening south of the border. I'm seeing Alberta being compared to Kentucky in a number of contexts. And I think there are a lot of concerns, particularly about not just the Delta variant, but potentially others as well, and the risk to people's health.

RB: Let's hear from Alberta's health minister, Tyler Shandro. He said this move was inevitable. Here he is during a press conference yesterday.

SOUNDCLIP

I think other provinces know that this is is going to be, you know, the inevitable next step in in Canada for for all provinces. We we are leading the way in moving to the endemic response like we've led the way throughout the the the response to the pandemic, quite frankly. But I think this is going to be a situation where we are leading the way. Again, the response to the pandemic and there will be other provinces will inevitably have to be moving to this step as well.

RB: And Lori, Saskatchewan quietly made similar moves a few weeks ago. But that aside, what do you make of what Tyler Chandru had to say about Alberta being a leader in all of this?

LORI WILLIAMS: Well, clearly, again, there's a risk being taken that being the leader is a good thing in this case. And will it pay off both in terms of health care and and politically. And we won't know the answer to that until we actually see the numbers down the road. If it turns out that we are ahead of other provinces that we derive economic benefits from opening up more economic opportunities than other provinces have done. And we're ahead of the game, if we compare favourably to other provinces, then the province stands to gain, or certainly the party stands to gain. If, however, we compare unfavourably, particularly to other provinces, then as we've seen throughout the pandemic, Jason Kenney and the UCP are going to be a political price for that. Again, I think it's a fairly high political risk for potentially a relatively low reward, because the benefits of this, I don't think are really going to be evident for some time.

RB: You mentioned that two years out from a provincial election, but of course, a federal one could happen a lot sooner than that. And party insiders are saying the federal conservatives were stunned by Alberta's decision to reduce testing and drop isolation protocols for positive cases. What do you think this could mean for the conservatives federally?

LORI WILLIAMS: Well, we have seen, of course, the numbers for federal conservatives, not just nationally being relatively low. Obviously, they would prefer not to have a federal election because things don't look very favourable for them. But we've also seen very low support for Erin O'Toole here in Alberta. The support is quite low. And when you break it down, it's not just about the total numbers in the province. There are a lot of people in urban areas, particularly Calgary and Edmonton, that are very concerned about some of these moves. They've felt like the far right wing of the UCP party has been driving policy decisions more than they ought to do. And we're seeing fairly little support for the United Conservative Party and lower support for the federal Conservative Party in Calgary and Edmonton. So what that means in a federal election is potentially, if this doesn't go in a direction that is positive, if it doesn't improve the fortunes of federal conservatives in the upcoming federal election, it's possible that the Liberals could pick up seats in Calgary and Edmonton. I think this this decision being made by the UCP right now is meant to make that less likely. But again, I think the risk is significant that because this is so out of step with where sort of mainstream or centrist Albertans are, I think there are significant risks in terms of a political loss in a federal election.

RB: Lori, thanks very much for getting up early for us this morning. Good to talk to you.

LORI WILLIAMS: And good talking to you, Robyn. Thank you.

RB: That's Lori Williams, an associate professor of political science at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

Deadly floods in China and what's being done to prepare for future climate disasters

Guests: Keith Bradsher, Faith Chang, Roxy Matthew Koll

RB: First, it was Western Europe. Now it is parts of Asia.

SOUNDCLIP

[Noise]

RB: That's the sound of civilians rescuing a woman from rushing floodwaters in Zhengzhou. China's Henan province saw a year's worth of rain in just three days last week. At least 99 people have died. Hundreds of thousands more have been displaced. Zhengzhou, the province's capital, was hit especially hard by sinkholes, a highway tunnel that filled with water, trapping motorists and flooded subway cars with stranded passengers knee deep in water. Keith Bradsher is the Shanghai bureau chief for The New York Times. He has been reporting on the floods and he joins us from Zhengzhou. Keith, good to have you with us.

KEITH BRADSHER: Thank you very much.

You arrived there in Zhengzhou, a city of 11 million people shortly after the record breaking rainfall. Can you describe some of what you've seen?

Speaker 2: There has been a lot of destruction, particularly actually in the smaller villages around the city where you've had a series of landslides and flash floods. Those rivers have overflowed their banks in many small and medium sized communities. Here in Chuncho itself, there were many streets flooded right at the start. The city has drained fairly well over the last several days. The real tragedies occurred because of the speed with which the water fell, in particular in a single hour. The rainfall shattered all the records around here within eight inches in one hour. And in a city that is nearly flat, that meant that the streets filled the water, covered the curbs, it covered the sidewalks and it crept in under the doors of shopkeepers houses. The saddest part, though, was where the two incidents that you mentioned. One was the highway tunnel that filled nearly to the ceiling with water and had 250 cars in it. Most of the people were fortunately able to get out. The other very sad incident involved the subway train that you mentioned, and there were 14 people sadly drowned.

RB: What have you heard from people? What kinds of stories did they tell you about how quickly it happened and how they reacted?

KEITH BRADSHER: Because this rainfall was so far out of line with anything anybody had seen before. A lot of people didn't expect the level of flooding. And what really made the difference in some cases between life and death was how quickly people reacted, how quickly they realised this was not your average downpour. Now, there were stories of heroism along the way. And there was by just by coincidence in that subway tunnel was a former People's Liberation Army commando who had in training been used to swimming up to six miles a day, which is an extraordinary distance. And he reacted by going up and down the rows of cars, banging on people's windows for them to leave their cars, abandon their cars. And then as the water became so deep that cars were filling with water and sinking. He swam back and forth amongst the motorists and pulled them to safety at the side of the tunnel. And onlookers helped, then helped them get out of the water.

RB: You mentioned that the rains came fast. The floods came quickly. Was there any kind of alert system to let people know to evacuate?

KEITH BRADSHER: There were alerts in the form of short messages on people's cell phones telling them to move cars, for example, to high ground to park them so that the engines would not be flooded. But the city did not try to close businesses or closed the subway. And we have seen a flurry of announcements from Beijing in the past week saying from now on, cities must be quicker to close tunnels, in particular, in the event that there's going to be one of these extreme rainfalls again. In addition, you have promises from the central government to improve meteorology, in this case, you only had an hour's warning. And there is also talk of closing businesses and government offices when there's going to be extreme rain. They've also issued orders that much more junior people need to be allowed to stop the trains, reportedly the people at the subway station before the train filled with water. We're aware that water was pouring in, but did not have the authority to stop the subway trains that had to come from the highest levels of municipal government, the subway system. And they didn't have that authority.

RB: Keith, in terms of flood mitigation, I understand that there are some parks that have been built, built to absorb excess volumes of water. How effective were those?

KEITH BRADSHER: They were effective at doing what they are supposed to do, which is absorbing water over the course of a day or two so that it doesn't stay in the streets. So even though this is a nearly flat city, you didn't have the water just sitting in the streets for a week stagnant. It did drain into these very large parks that have recently been built. And from there into the rivers, the problem is the speed with which this water Fellaini eight inches an hour is practically like a waterfall and the water just simply couldn't reach these new so-called sponge parks quickly enough. If you think of a sponge in your kitchen. It's great if you slowly move it around a countertop where it has water and absorbs the water. But if you overturn a bucket of water onto a sponge, most of it's going to splash off the sponge and go everywhere. And that's what happened with these parks that are supposed to be working like sponges. They did absorb a lot of water, but they couldn't do it in a single hour.

RB: You mentioned the water levels have gone down. Now, when you walk around the streets, what does it look like? What does it smell like?

KEITH BRADSHER: Surprisingly, there is already a very big effort to clean things up. Now, I was walking up and down the street several hours ago and there were dozens of cars that still had a lot of mud on them. And there were people trying to to clear out the engines. So many cars were damaged in a nearly flat city. There was almost nowhere for people to move their cars to higher ground. But by and large, the there has been a very fast, extensive effort to to clean up the mud, to sweep the streets and so forth.

RB: Likely people are at this point focussing on the cleanup, on the aftermath of this. But in a wider context, how much is climate change discussed in China?

KEITH BRADSHER: Climate change is being discussed more. And as it happened, you had China's top climate negotiator promising last Saturday China would soon be providing more specifics on its plans to become carbon neutral over the next four decades. Now, there is a broad awareness, even before this week's tragic events, that China, like other countries, does face a real challenge from climate change and does need to work like other countries on addressing emissions so as not to face some of these very sad consequences from a warming world.

RB: Keith, I so appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining us.

KEITH BRADSHER: My pleasure.

RB: That was Keith Bradsher, the Shanghai bureau chief for The New York Times. According to my next guest, the recent flooding in China underscores the need for cities to do a better job building flood management systems. Faith Chan is an associate professor of environmental sciences at the University of Nottingham's campus in limbo. China, hello.

FAITH CHAN: Hi. Hello.

RB: What did you make, first of all, of those scenes in Henan province and the year's worth of rain in just three days?

FAITH CHAN: I think that is a very rare metrological situation. And because of the two typhoons, that one is just landed in [unintelligible] and other one last week is hanging around in Highland Island. So it forms very low pass wing bouts that stop in Zhengzhou or those off in China, which is really where because that is the semiarid area. Normally the rainfall for one year is just 500 to 600 millimetres, but it poured down in four hours in that event. It's a very rare situation,

RB: although you do hear climate scientists saying that it's going to become more frequent, these extreme weather events. If that is the case, how do you think China ought to be preparing?

FAITH CHAN: Yeah, I agree, but I think it's getting more intense rainfall in northern China. I agree with that. And I think it's very difficult to just change all the system in one day or in a very short period. I think for my experience or my for my real point is actually Chinese government can do more on the communication, the emergency services and responses. So I think especially for education, warning system and [unintelligible] on the community that needs media and also work with social media, also mobile technology, those things that China's government can do, that to raise awareness and preparation for people.

RB: How do you think that it is the communication infrastructure? Is that more important than addressing climate change?

FAITH CHAN: I think we need to use mix option. We need to use soft measures that what we just discussed. But we also need to be prepared to live with extreme climate. I think at the moment, Chinese government, they like what Keith said they use [unintelliglble] cities, they use different measures, which is very encouraging and also a positive direction. But I think sometimes for cities to actually develop very fast and also sometimes the land drainage system cannot cope with that. That's why I think the Chinese government really aware of this kind of situation. They want to improve the drainage system. That's why they inject this [unintelligible] city, want to use more sustainable direction to improve drainage system. But we cannot just change the infrastructure in a very short period. So that's why I think I agree with you. More rainfall will come, especially in some part that normally we will not face that much in terms of rainfall. I think at the moment Chinese government can do is I try to improve the warning system and also addressing these kind of climate resilience things other than- we talk about carbon neutralization, carbon emission, but we also need to deal with climate resilience in the COP26 up front in November.

RB: Yet China's coal agency is expected to boost production over the next four years. I mean, we often hear that China is one of the world's biggest polluters, that it's not doing enough to fight climate change. Do you think this is going to be a wake up call?

FAITH CHAN: From my observation China's government has initiated for a lot of carbon emission and also carbon reduction actions. For example, a lot of big cities, they changed public buses to electric buses and now they're changing rates of electric buses even faster than many big cities like Hong Kong and Singapore, like in the neighbourhood. So I think the wake up call has been initiated. But I think for JZhengzhou, you rent is another wakeup call for climate extremes by [unintelliglbe]. And that's why the effect to what I just said was just happening when the typhoon just land and [unintelligible] and also Longzhou area. But it has zero casualties. No people died. No people got serious injuries. I think that actually helps Chinese government in the outer areas to take more alert for these climate extremes actions.

RB: OK, well, we've been talking about China, but if you could stand by while we bring in another example in another country, because India has also seen unprecedented and deadly flooding this summer in parts of the western state of Maharashtra. The flooding has caused powerful landslides that have devastated villages and led to at least 200 deaths. Well, that was the sound of a video taken during a deadly landslide in the Sangla Valley. The video shows massive boulders rolling down the mountain, hitting cars, breaking a bridge in half. That landslide killed nine people. On the line with us now, Roxy Matthew Koll, a climate scientist at the India Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune. Hello.

ROXY MATTHEW KOLL: Hi, Robyn. It's a pleasure to talk to you on the monsoon floods of Maharastra,

RB: thank you very much for joining us. I mean, the sound of that landslides we're trying to picture it and describe it sounds quite horrifying. Can you walk us through why the flooding in the state has been particularly bad this year as compared to past monsoon seasons?

ROXY MATTHEW KOLL: Yeah, the race that we had were, in fact, unprecedented, the monsoon floods are common in India, but not at this scale. We had heavy, too extreme rains for almost seven days over some regions of the state. In fact, one of the stations recorded rains of about six and a millimetre in just one day. So Keith was talking about 200 millimetres in one hour in China. So this is an exceptional event similar to that in Maharastra. And this is a situation where we have been measuring the rainfall for over a century. It's a hill station in Maharashtra called my publisher. So the data is there to tell us that this was an exceptional rain breaking all time records.

RB: Do you think that it's a one off or do you expect that you will see more of this type of extreme weather in years to come?

ROXY MATTHEW KOLL: It's not that we will see in the future. Our research shows already there is a three rise in the number of extreme rainfall events across India, including Mahrashtra. And this is based on more than 70 years of rainfall data, daily rainfall data that has been collected over India. And there is also a 50 percent increase in the number of cyclones also coming from the Arabian Sea over to India. Because if you look at the configuration of India, it's surrounded by the Indian Ocean on all three sides. We have cyclones and extreme rainfall events coming up in the recent period. And there is it's not just the frequency of these extreme weather events, but also their intensity duration and also the area they are covering. All these factors are increasing across India.

RB: And in the short term, what is India doing to prepare for this kind of weather? I mean, we heard in China about these sponge cities to absorb the extra water. What's happening in India?

ROXY MATTHEW KOLL: I saw that firsthand was working on span cities. And we still don't have such kind of measures in India. And the first thing we are doing is we are depending on our forecasts and disaster and disaster management. So forecasts and disaster management have improved over time, for example in the recent we had an extremely serious cyclone recently and a lot of people have been evacuated. But we cannot keep on evacuating people based on forecasts every year because these kind of extreme weather events are increasing. We might be saving lives occasionally, but not their livelihoods. So there is a huge amount of damage to infrastructure. And also, in this case, in the recent floods, what happened was that this happened over the rural areas and villages. So generally we we are used to how monsoon floods in big cities like Mumbai or coastal cities. But this time it happened over the region, over the whole situation, which led to flooding of a river and towns downstream and small villages downstream, flooding the area for several days. And these people were not prepared. So we need to disaster proof, just like our cities, our villages and also the farms and agriculture places, and also train local administration and public on how to respond to these extreme weather events. We cannot keep on evacuating people.

RB: Every time we were talking to Professor Chen about the urbanisation, the role it has played in China, that it's happening very quickly. What about in India, how his land use impacted the severity of the flooding there?

ROXY MATTHEW KOLL: On the land, severe impacts on how the floods are manifesting, how the extreme weather events are manifesting, and what we can see that both over the cities and also the rural areas. So, for example, when a city like Mumbai is clear that it could be due to extreme rain events, but the severity of these floods are many fold increase because of the way the city is planned, for example, the city do not have the flood plains anymore, that mangroves anymore and the rivers anymore that used to absorb a part of this water that the flood water. And it's the same same state with the rural villages. Also, the cause of the river has been changed because of illegal construction along the river side. So the floodplain is closed. So when the river is bolting out, it is flooding the nearby cities. So the land use changes have a tremendous impact. And also in the rural areas like this time, we see that the land use changes also have an impact on the landslides. I like that this is an observation that we see with several of the recent floods that occurred across India, like Kerala floods in twenty eighteen and. The reason why Maharashtra splits because the land use changes make the hills vulnerable. And when we have more than enough rains that can be absorbed by that, by the soil, it comes down as baldies and sand and mud with all the water downstream impacting the towns, towns down. So this is happening again due to land use changes.

RB: Let's just quickly return to Professor Chan in China. Professor Chan, Keith Bradsher mentioned that more specifics are coming on plans for China to become carbon neutral. But what do you think will be the consequences if China does not act quickly, does not do more?

FAITH CHAN: To be honest, we need to be fair because their population and development rate and also the stages of development in China is very different compared to the Western world way. But as far as I see, the Chinese government tried to come meet with their COP26 agreement and also Kyoto Protocol in 2005. They also set the target and want to achieve that. So I was saying development is positive, so we just need to wait and see what happens. But I can see it more advertised on the Chinese government and encourage people to buy electric cars and to save energy as well. So I think that development is a positive and also suggests more energy, say solar power or wind power. And those hydropower system is still very popular as well. So I think the development is positive, I can say.

RB: Roxy, last word to you. Monsoon season isn't over yet. India, of course, is still recovering from the rapid spread of the Delta variant. How are people there coping?

ROXY MATTHEW KOLL: Well, as for me, I'm living in a bubble, but we see that the cases are still yet to come down drastically, that the Delta variant is also going around. It's it's a it's a tricky situation that we face here. In fact, I had a bad situation with one of my colleagues passing away recently. So he was working on coordinating the Indian Ocean experiments, which are important for observing the monsoon. So he used to coordinate the international monitoring of Indian Ocean observations and also the community. And so he he passed away recently due to Covid related complications. So this kind of thing-- so it's we are seeing the impact on the scientific community as well. And also we saw that there are challenges for us in terms of the observing systems because we ended up having fewer research cruises in the Indian Ocean to understand and observe the monsoon on a long time. In fact, several of the cruises were cancelled and we couldn't install or service, some of the observing systems in the Indian Ocean. So that have a severe impact on our monsoon forecast as well, and also on how we monitored the long term changes in the Indian Ocean that affects the monsoon conditions.

RB: Well, I'm very sorry for the loss of your colleague. Thank you both for talking to us about this today. Stay safe. Thank you both.

ROXY MATTHEW KOLL: Sure. Thank you.

FAITH CHAN: Thank you. Bye bye.

RB: Faith Chan is an associate professor of environmental sciences at the University of Nottingham's campus in Ningbo China and Roxy Matthew Koll is a climate scientist at the India Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune.

The pandemic fuelled a need 'to be seen' — even in Crocs, says psychologist

Guests: Carolyn Mair

SOUNDCLIP

Look what I just got. I love crocs, but I got a job, Justin Bieber collab with Crocs. Go get these Asef.

RB: OK, so if you're already lost, buckle up. That's D.J. Kalid, famous for his musical collaborations with everyone from Drake to Beyonce. And right there, he's giving a shout out to a pair of crocs. Not the reptiles, the shoes. You know, the ones: foamy floatable, colourful, comfy clogs. For a while in the early 2000s, these babies were everywhere. Then, poof, they went out of style. But then came the pandemic. And baby, they're back. Everyone from your grandma to Justin Bieber has been spotted in them. And the shoemaker is raking in record earnings, so much so that they are suing the likes of Wal-Mart and others for tens of millions of dollars for copying their, quote, iconic design. But time has done little to bridge the divide between those who think comfort and foam are king and those who are horrified at the sight of neon clad trotters.

SOUNDCLIP

VINCENZO RAVINA: Hi, my name is Vincenzo Ravina. I'm a magician and a writer and I started the website I Hate Crocs dot com in 2006. The very first time I ever saw Crocs. I was in high school and there was just one person in the entire school wearing them and I think they were the yellow ones. I saw them coming and I was with my friend Matt and we turned to each other and we said, What? What are those? Those are extremely ugly. But, you know, we only saw one person wearing them. So we figured, OK, they're just a weird outlier. But then it started spreading. It was kind of like a zombie movie. Suddenly everybody was wearing these crocs. Even the person that I had just turned to and said, aren't those ugly? And he said, those are extremely ugly. Those are the worst shoes ever. He was wearing them within weeks. It's just very strange to have them come back. And I don't really understand it, to be honest with you. And, you know, everybody always says, you know, they're extremely comfortable, but I can't imagine they're so comfortable that they, you know, override the aesthetics.

RB: Well, to help us understand why, to Vincenzo's horror, crocs are back, I'm joined on the line by Carolyn Maier. She is a behavioural psychologist and the author of The Psychology of Fashion. Carolyn, hello. Oh, hi. I think we better get this question out of the way early on. Do you own a pair of crocs yourself?

CAROLYN MAIR: No, I don't.

RB: Oh, why not?

CAROLYN MAIR: Because I agree with your previous speaker. I think they're extremely ugly. The aesthetic is absolutely not what I like in a pair of shoes, or in any object. But I can see why people do like them.

RB: What do you make of the fact that they're back in style now?

CAROLYN MAIR: Well, I think they answer a lot of questions that we want from our clothing and particularly from footwear. So they're comfortable, they're functional, they're light, they can be personalised and they're relatively affordable. So I think that [for] those reasons they've made the comeback, and particularly since the pandemic, when those characteristics was [were] something that people were looking for.

RB: You say that this partly comes from our need to be shocked, to embrace these products. What do you mean by that?

CAROLYN MAIR: Well, the way that we make sense of the world is that as we become more used to something, we stop paying attention to it. So when things become the norm, whether that's an item of fashion or an object or a person, when they become, when we become used to that, we stop paying attention to them. So the idea of having something that's ugly or extreme or extremely beautiful at the other end, if we if we consider crocs to be the other end of the spectrum, then we're going to pay attention to them. So the thing that grabs our attention is the difference about them, this shock that gets our attention. And I think this is what people are looking for now. They want to be seen. After having more than a year, almost a year and a half of being locked away and being unseen, people are looking for fashion items that really shout out and say, here I am. Look at me.

RB: So where have these appeared, where ordinarily you wouldn't see crocs?

CAROLYN MAIR: Well, on a runway show. So, for example, I mean, they have been shown previously prior to the pandemic. Christopher Kane had bedazzled jewellery-encrusted crocs in twenty seventeen actually in his spring and summer collection, but also in twenty eighteen, Balenciaga showed them, you know with platforms. And then recently in the spring twenty 2022 they showed a knee high rain boot from crocs, so they're diversifying in there, so they're not just making clogs anymore, but also very bright green crocs with a stiletto heel. So this is very unusual. And they've been seen a red carpet at the Oscars. And now Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber, you know clearly that we've mentioned. So these people have huge followings and people love to follow fashion to be part of the fashion system, particularly younger people who are not traditionally what we would call the trendsetters. They pick up on the trends earlier and then the masses follow.

RB: You did say high heel crocs, right?

CAROLYN MAIR: Stilettos even.

RB: OK, all right. Hopefully they're made of something other than rubber because that's an ankle injury waiting to happen.

CAROLYN MAIR: Definitely.

RB: How do you think the pandemic has changed our concept of fashion?

CAROLYN MAIR: The pandemic has changed us in ways that we could not have predicted. So normally when psychologists talk about behaviour change, we understand that is a long process, that we change one element at a time, and it's an iterative process that takes quite a long time. However, in the pandemic, in a matter of months, people began to change their behaviours, their habits, and consequently, after a year or so, people's priorities have changed. So they have begun to understand what matters more to them. And a lot of this is around valuing being with their loved ones, for example, but also valuing freedom, and the freedom of choice and the ability to be spontaneous and the ability to be seen. But also, it's really pushed the agenda around looking after the planet, because we've seen that the coronavirus didn't stop at borders, that we all occupy the same space. And I think the pandemic has really changed behaviour in a way that the psychologists or anybody else interested in changing perceptions and changing behaviour could have predicted.

RB: OK, well, Carolyn, I know you don't have a pair of crocs now, but I understand you did buy a fancy black velour jumpsuit. How's that working for you?

CAROLYN MAIR: Well, I still love it. You know, it's not something I would have bought prior to the pandemic.

RB: It was great to talk to you this morning. Thanks so much for your time.

CAROLYN MAIR: Thank you so much. Will be my pleasure.

RB: Carolyn Mair, a behavioural psychologist and the author of The Psychology of Fashion.

Revisiting the story of the now-disgraced fertility doctor Norman Barwin.

RB: Like thousands of other couples in Canada, Dan and Davina Dixon tried for years to have a baby. They ended up in an Ottawa fertility specialists' office, asking for help. The couple worked with Doctor Norman Barwin, using Dan's sperm to try artificial insemination. In 1990, Davina gave birth to Rebecca -- and they were overjoyed. But that wasn't the end of their fertility story. Eventually, they learned that Dan was not Rebecca's biological father, after all. Doctor Barwin was. In November of 2016, lawyers in Ottawa filed a lawsuit alleging the doctor was reckless in the handling of the Dixons' case. It grew into a class-action involving 226 plaintiffs -- who all allege Norman Barwin used the wrong sperm during their fertility treatments. And on Wednesday, the Ontario Superior Court certified that lawsuit, paving the way for a settlement of over 13 million dollars. The settlement also sets aside 75 thousand dollars to open a DNA database for Norman Barwin's patients -- to help children find their biological fathers, half siblings, and learn their medical histories. Journalist Alison Motluk produced this documentary for the Current back in 2016 when the lawsuit was first filed. It's called: And That's Why Everything is Different.

Speaker 1: Like thousands of other couples in Canada, Dan and Davina Dixon tried for years to have a baby, they ended up in an Ottawa fertility specialists office asking for help. The couple worked with Dr. Norman Barwin using Dan's sperm to try artificial insemination. In 1990, Davina gave birth to Rebecca and they were overjoyed. But that wasn't the end of their fertility story. Eventually, they learnt that Dan was not Rebecca's biological father after all, Dr. Barwin was. In November of 2016, lawyers in Ottawa filed a lawsuit alleging the doctor was reckless in the handling of the Dicksons case. It grew into a class action involving 226 plaintiffs who all allege Norman Barwin used the wrong sperm during their fertility treatments. And on Wednesday, the Ontario Superior Court certified that lawsuit, paving the way for a settlement of over 13 million dollars. The settlement also sets aside 75000 dollars to open up a DNA database for Norman Bargain's patients to help children find their biological fathers, their half siblings, and learn their medical histories. Journalist Alison Motluk produced this documentary for The Current back in 2006 when the lawsuit was first filed. It's called: And That's Why Everything is Different.

SOUNDCLIP

DAN DIXON: Dr. Barwin was a kind, gentle, fatherly type, Davina liked him as a gynaecologist, and I liked him because my background is genetics and he took me once and showed me exactly what he was doing. And, you know, I spin this and I add that and I spin it again and I do this and that and whatever. And he showed me the tubes that were labelled with my name and Davina's name and the date the specimen was taken and I can't remember what else. So I felt very comfortable.

DAVINA DIXON: He really believed in what he was doing and you buy into that, that fuels your excitement as well, the possibility that this is going to be the person that gives you success. We had tried so long and not had success that we didn't even realise it all of a sudden, it's like I haven't got my period. I can remember we went to the market to celebrate and then started telling people.

DAN DIXON: People would ask us quite often, when did you adopt Rebecca? Or family members would say, We've seen Dan. But we don't remember him being dark.

DAVINA DIXON: There were clues along the way, but when you don't think it's a possibility, you don't entertain those thoughts or you justify them or explain them away. I mean, Rebecca does not look like us.

DAN DIXON: Rebecca is petite. Davina and I are not. She has eyes that are so dark you cannot tell where the pupil ends and the iris starts. They are almost black. Davina and I both have blue eyes. Again, I have a degree in genetics and this is not supposed to happen. So I checked it out. And there are unusual circumstances where this can happen. So I ignored it. But her not being genetically ours never, never really came into our mind, even though maybe it should have, but it never came into our mind at all.

ALISON MOTLUK: Then there were health problems.

DAVINA DIXON: Rebecca has had Lorean for years and we decided to have her checked out and she has coeliac disease. So, of course, with the Google, I looked up and it isn't always hereditary, but it's mostly hereditary. Dan and I don't have it in our families to the best of our knowledge.

ALISON MOTLUK: They began to wonder if Dan really was Rebecca's biological father.

DAN DIXON: So I said, well, this is a quick way we could find out. And I said, well, why don't we get her blood type? Because I am blood type AB and Davina's blood type O. So if Rebecca were an O, we would know for sure she was not ours.

DAVINA DIXON: It took us a little while to decide when should we [unintelligible] with her. Do we leave it in her will?

REBECCA: My parents scheduled a tea date with me for me to come over to their apartment.

DAVINA DIXON: Because when do you tell somebody this?

REBECCA: My dad had been in the hospital the previous day, so when they said they had some news to share with me, I was assuming it was about my dad and his health. And then they told me that there was the possibility that my dad was not my biological father. I remember feeling a wave of shock. It's just not what I was expecting that day or or ever.

DAVINA DIXON: I think she was like, is this real? Like, seriously? But she knows we don't joke. So there were tears, it was a fairly short visit,

ALISON MOTLUK: a blood test confirmed. Rebecca could not be the biological child of Dan.

REBECCA: I think I had come to expect that that would be the case. I think it fit with not having looked like my parents and all of these questions I had had when I was growing up.

DAN DIXON: She called and she said she was blood type O and that she was in tears. I was in tears because that meant for sure she was not my child. We had no idea whose child she was, but she was not my child. And I just went to bed and cried.

REBECCA: When I first found out, I sort of felt disassociated with my body and my face. And so when I would look in the mirror, I, I felt like suddenly it wasn't my face. Features about myself that I had always liked or just always thought of as my own suddenly seemed like they might belong to someone else. And I didn't know who that was.

DAVINA DIXON: He had no idea what could have gone wrong and Dan was going over, well, this was the procedure because obviously he had a different experience when we went to Dr. Barwin, I think quite early on in the process. And I think Dan must have had thoughts over the years himself that he thought Dr. Barwin had used his own sperm because he thinks Rebecca looks like Dr. Barwin.

DAN DIXON: Dr. Barwan was so careful in showing me what he did. Mistakes do happen, but he appeared to be so careful. I guess maybe I thought it was so unlikely that it had to be him.

REBECCA: In the first meeting we had with the lawyers, my dad actually brought it up. And at that point, I couldn't handle that discussion and I couldn't handle it there. So we didn't go any further with it in that meeting. I think the lawyers wanted to raise the possibility with me because they also seemed to think that it was possible that Dr. Barwin was my biological father. We decided that we would go ahead and ask for a paternity test, and we were told we would have an answer by a certain date and then they weren't able to give us an answer at that date. And so everything was feeling kind of stalled.

ALISON MOTLUK: Rebecca had also decided to do some online genetic testing with the company 23 and Me,

REBECCA: I got my 23 and my results. There were a couple of cousins and there was one half sibling. That person's profile was an anonymous and there wasn't a way with the way the site was set up for me to reach out to that person. I was very struck by the idea of having a half sibling and realising then that there were probably more.

ALISON MOTLUK: Meanwhile, the family's lawyer had come into contact with another young woman, Kate Palmer, in Vancouver. She had also been conceived through Darwin's clinic. She had important information and might also be a half sibling.

REBECCA: And we started emailing back and forth. Kat had tested on another site. I believe it's family tree DNA. But she knew of a site where we could upload the raw data from the two different sites and then compare.

ALISON MOTLUK: They matched us half sisters in September. Full confirmation arrived last week.

REBECCA: Hi, Kathy. I'm talking to you. We just got the official DNA test back. So we're officially sisters, which is very exciting.

KATHY: But come in, OK, this is what I wanted all along, was to find a half sibling. So she's great. We are very similar giggly personalities. So we get along really, really well.

REBECCA: It's been amazing. I've been raised as an only child and it was just never something I could even contemplate having siblings.

DAVINA DIXON: They email and speak every day. Finding Kat has just some light to come out of the darkness. And that's exactly what it's been, a very dark, dirty, rotten place.

ALISON MOTLUK: The DNA tests showed that Kat and Rebecca share a biological father, and Kat was confident she knew who that man was: Dr. Barwin.

REBECCA: My parents had picked out who they thought would be the perfect person. I knew that my donor was German and Irish and he was a cello player and he was in med school. So to get my DNA back and to see that it was Ashkenazi Jewish, this completely contradicts anything I have known about who this person may be. That's when I went to Barwin asking him to explain how this could happen. I knew there had been situations where he had mixed up samples.

NEWSCASTER: A renowned fertility doctor who inseminated three women with the wrong sperm has been suspended.

KATHY: I thought it wasn't the one my parents picked. It was another anonymous donor. But never in that progression did I ever think it would be him.

ALISON MOTLUK: But Kat's aunt suggested she take a good look at Barwin.

KATHY: Have you looked at a photo of him recently? My initial reaction when I saw his photo as an adult was this guy looks like me.

ALISON MOTLUK: Kate made an appointment to speak in person.

KATHY: When I was in the meeting. I desperately, desperately wanted to ask him and I was looking at his face and trying to see if there was any resemblance. I was so confused. He told me that me wanting to know more about who my donor was, was obsessive. You're young, you're in a healthy relationship. Shouldn't that be enough for you? Did you know as soon as I walked into your office, did you look at me and say, oh, obviously, she's my biological daughter, so I'm going to make sure that she doesn't want to go looking and doesn't want to ask any more questions about this

ALISON MOTLUK: cat's online genetic testing. Put her in contact with a cousin who turned out to be related to Barwin.

KATHY: This cousin and I sat down and we wrote a letter basically saying, I've linked your name to my family tree. I'm not looking for anyone to be my father. I have a great dad. I'm very clear about all that. But I would like to speak to you about this. I was expecting that he would either ignore the letter completely or respond to it, but sort of deny the whole situation. He instantly responded, saying, here's my number, please contact me, and I asked him if he would agree to take a paternity test, which he agreed to and offered to pay for. Honestly, what I thought would happen is that we'd take this test and the results would come back positive, but he would deny it. He didn't. He said the test was positive that he was my biological father and continued to tell me how he has no idea how this could have happened.

LEON PALMER: I think she can break glass with her voice. It's interesting because Dr. Barwin's entire family is the same way. Musical theatre. That's one example.

[Music]

LEON PALMER: When Kat told me that he was the biological dad. I want to know what the hell actually happened. We were supposed to be a donor from menu. What the hell happened here?

ALISON MOTLUK: Leon Palmer is Kat's father.

LEON PALMER: I sent a letter to the doctor saying, OK, we now know that y ou are Kat's biological dad. That's really wrong. However, I would like to talk to you to see what exactly happened. We eventually went for a coffee down in the West End and the man was shaking. He was shaking like a leaf. He admitted to me and he and he told me that his he used his own sperm to test out a sperm counter. That makes that made absolutely no sense.

KATHY: We emailed back and forth mostly I just had very general questions. Please tell me about your parents and your grandparents and where did they come from and what professions did they have? Are there any things medically that I should know about? You just think what a sweet, what a sweet old man I feel so bad that I'm burdening him with with my problems. And then you walk away and go, no, you've created this problem.

REBECCA: I feel very strongly that secrets feel shameful, and one of the reasons I'm relieved every time I tell someone in my life about this and why I'm relieved in a way that it is now becoming public is that it takes away that feeling of shame because there shouldn't be any shame in it.

ALISON MOTLUK: This week, the Dixons filed a class action lawsuit against the doctor alleging that he used the wrong sperm, in their case, his own, instead of Dann's. The plaintiffs are asking the doctor Barwin make his DNA available so that all concerned parties can come forward and test against it. None of these allegations have been proven in court. Through his lawyer, Barwan declined to comment on the allegations. However, in emails to both Kat and her father, Leon, Barwin said that the mix up was unintentional.

DAVINA DIXON: I felt that trust issue of going to somebody for that level of care was damaged. I was furious. I felt violated. Dan never fathered a child. Rebecca's not who she thought she was.

DAN DIXON: My world has been turned upside down. And the only constant is that we have Rebecca. Everything else is shaken and tilted and our world is different. Rebecca is our child, but she's not our child. And that's why everything is different.

REBECCA: I think we would all like to understand how this happened and why. But I'm not sure. I'm not sure there will ever be a straight explanation for it. For me, none of this is about seeking revenge or trying to humiliate or put him in the spotlight. It really is about the truth and giving other people the opportunity to find out the truth and deal with that in whichever ways that they are able to and want to.

DAVINA DIXON: He fathered these children and he just had no right to do that. He had no right to do that.

RB: That was Alison Motluk documentary, And That's Why Everything is Different. Barwin was stripped of his medical licence back in 2019. A proposed settlement of over 13 million dollars was reached this week. The number of claimants could still grow and they will be back in court this fall.

Friday July 30, 2021 Full Transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode