Health-care workers worry about bringing COVID-19 home to their kids

Guests: Dr. Sabrina Akhtar, Dr. Alex Wong

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RAGHU VENUGOPAL: My name is Raghu Venugopal and I'm an E.R. doctor at three Toronto hospitals. A day in my life in the E.R. first means serving those who have sought our care. My day is often in the graveyard shift overnight when most of the city is sleeping. I never question why our patients come to the E.R. We see countless worried patients about coronavirus. We follow our guidelines on who to test. That means some patients will not get tested. But we try to use the encounter to calm rattled nerves. We try to reaffirm the normality of being scared. We remind people to wash their hands. And above all, social distance. I think about one of my mentors in medicine now fighting for his life on a ventilator infected by the coronavirus. Our days are soaked in hand sanitizer. Our hands are raw from hand-washing. We smell like bleach. It would be a lie to say I'm not scared to go to work, but in the heat of the moment, like putting someone on life support, like last night, all the staff and I care about is the patient in front of us. This is what we were trained to do. This is our job. There are times the E.R. is eerily quieter than normal. We're all bracing for this storm. Everyone feels the waves of severe illness lapping on our shores. Everything is topsy turvy. Even a Tim Horton's across the street from the E.R. is closed and there are no family visitors. Every patient you see could have coronavirus. You never know. I want to take my mask off to show my face to my patients. I want to examine patients with my bare hands. But I cannot. Life in the E.R. means patients continue to come with problems that have nothing to do with coronavirus. They may have an overdose, a stroke, a heart attack or an asthma exacerbation. We cannot forget to provide them excellent medical care as well. Life in the E.R. means overnight someone kind brought coffee for the nurses. It means you clean the phones and computer keyboards like never before. Everyone is worried about getting sick. I've had one negative test already. Every odd sniffle you have worries you and you worry about your family. To everyone out there listening, please stay at home, please social distance, please make all the risks we take in the E.R. and work we do worth it for you.

MG: Health care workers are putting a lot on the line to help us through this pandemic at work with their patients and once their shift is done at home, facing worries about bringing the virus back to their loved ones or getting sick themselves. Alex Wong is an infectious disease doctor at Regina General Hospital. His wife is 18 weeks pregnant. They have two young boys at home. Sabrina Akhtar is a family doctor at a COVID-19 assessment centre in Toronto. Her husband is also a doctor and they have three young daughters. Good morning to you both.

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: Good morning.

DR. ALEX WONG: Morning.

MG: You're very busy, so thank you for taking some time to speak with us. I want to start with you, Sabrina. What are you dealing with in this assessment centre on a day to day basis?

Dr. Alex Wong: Well, much like you just heard countless, countless people who are worried. Many people who are symptomatic, we're seeing lots of people being referred from public health, from other offices and even from emergency departments, just signage that's turning them from the emergency department to the assessment centre if they're worried about COVID. Still, we have a line-up around the building. All the hours we are open and people are in, being assessed for a swab. And we spend our time counselling, talking to them. And if we offer them a test week, follow up their results.

MG: A line-up around the building. So how many people would you see every day?

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: Well, you know, an eight hour shift day, we're usually seeing somewhere between 50 and 60 people.

MG: And how sick are they?

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: Most of them are walking. Many of them have mild what we would call mild to moderate symptoms. So they may be coughing. Some of them may be feeling short of breath and, runny nose, a sore throat, all the symptoms of the coronavirus. Some of them have a fever, but many of them are well enough to walk.

MG: Alex Wong, you're also interacting with patients who may have COVID-19. Tell us about your role and how it's different now.

DR. ALEX WONG: My role's a little bit different, I'm not necessarily right immediately on the frontlines in terms of assessing people who are not differentiated, whose status isn't necessarily known. So, you know, I'm seeing patients in the hospital who have symptoms and who may or may not need to be tested. You know, we have a small number of people in our centre here in Regina who are positive and who are hospitalized to, you know, require ongoing follow up. And, you know, I've been calling people on the phone as well who are positive and isolating at home, who, again, like Sabrina says, have mild to moderate illness and may have other risk factors or medical conditions and questions. And so I deal with that in a remote manner. And in combination with all of that, you know, there's all the other sort of responsibilities of people coming in with infections and other problems that still needs to be dealt with on a day-to-day basis.

MG: How advanced is the situation in Saskatchewan?

DR. ALEX WONG: You know, I'd say we're a little bit we're behind, you know, the big four provinces. That's for certain. I think that our best analogy is as Alberta and we're probably somewhere between seven to 10 to 14 days behind Alberta in terms of what we're expecting to see with our numbers and so forth. So it's difficult to compare what's happening in downtown Toronto, for example, to what is happening in a place like Regina. You know, I grew up in Toronto and the dynamics are very different.

MG: How worried are you? Given what you're doing and the people you're coming into contact with, Sabrina, about catching the virus yourself?

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: I mean, there's inevitability to it. I think, you know, you start with a bit of fear. And once we see just how pervasive it is, we see our colleagues, one at a time being infected, many with mild, mild symptoms and mild disease, so that's reassuring. On one hand, but I think there's a bit of acceptance in the back of your mind. You are always worried. You are always waves of panic sort of come over you when you think, am I going to be a very sick person? But then, you know, usually that's tempered by the fact that this is this is largely a mild illness. And I'm going to get it eventually. And all I can do is continue to buy time.

MG: Alex Wong, does that sound familiar to you, that sense of inevitability?

DR. ALEX WONG: I think it does. You know, you try to be rational about it, but, you know, when I kind of setting foot into the room, like of my first patient, I had sort of all my PPE on without the N95. You know, there were moments when I was interacting with that person as I otherwise would. And I just sort of caught myself thinking, you know, what's my risk here? Right. But again, fear, especially if the patients see the fear. You know, it has a profound effect. And it's something where for patients as well as, you know, for other staff members and people in the hospital, I think they look they look to us and frankly, they probably look to someone like myself as the purported I.D. specialist to really show confidence and calm in a time like this. And so, you know, I try and balance those pieces out. But at the same time, you know, acknowledge the fact that, you know, anxiety is part of it. And, you know, that there is an inevitability, as Sabrina says, to all of this for all of us.

MG: What do you do, Sabrina, to make sure that you're not bringing the virus home?

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: So there have been lots of nice material that's floated around and, you know, all of us have adapted one version or another, we kind of have a little protocol of how we prepare ourselves for work. It involves a lot of washable bags and easy to wash clothing and, you know, a separate pair of shoes. And then we all have lots of hand-washing procedures at work. And and on the way home and I'm talking step by step, you know, take your scrubs off, wash your hands, put your clothes, street clothes on, wash your hands, do sanitize your bag. And then we all have the same when we come home from work. So the shoes off in the garage, clothes off in the garage into the laundry machine, hot showers immediately. So we all have sort of little rhythms that we're all getting into to avoid bringing things home. Pens are no longer allowed in the house from work.

MG: You have three young daughters as well. Where are they?

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: They are at their grandma's house a couple of towns over. We kept them home from school and we saw this coming and quarantine them for seven to 10 days. So they were showing no symptoms to them and dropped them off while we sort of hit the ground running with all of this.

MG: How long do you expect them to be there? Your husband's a doctor as well.

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: Yes. So the two of us, we didn't really have much of a plan when we heard the sort of drop them off. But I think once the assessment centres went up and we just said, well, we just have to see how this goes. That being said, we're realising we can't live without them indefinitely. So I'm hoping to bring them back in another week or two depending on how things are going. Everything is changing so fast it's hard to make a plan for even a few days down the road.

MG: What about you, Alex? How do you ensure that your family is protected when you get home from work? What are you doing?

DR. ALEX WONG: Well, I'm not necessarily going to quite the same degree as of yet, but honestly that could change depending on how, you know, things go here in Saskatchewan. I mean, our numbers are lower. And so, you know, I'm trying to take a slightly more rational scientific approach, but that still means, you know, cordoning off the area that we come into sort of that's kind of gated off. I don't necessarily take all my clothes off right there on the spot, but I leave all my you know, I leave my badge, my pager, my cell phone, all of those types of things there. And then enter the house. I go and I immediately change. I don't necessarily go and do the laundry right away. But, you know, and then from there, I sanitize all of that material, you know, before I bring it into the house. And again, we keep that area sort of gated off from the kids. I've got two young boys, three and a half, one and a half. And so they get everywhere. I sort of have to keep that area clean and I wash my hands obsessively. I always did, though, is an infectious disease doc. So it isn't really new for me to do something to try to not get viruses.

MG: You said a couple of times that you try to be rational. Do you have moments of of irrationality? We all do. I mean, we're all in the midst of this. And even if we're thinking clearly, we will wake up in the middle of the night, you know, that 3:00 in the morning kind of panic. I would have you do have those moments of irrationality too?

DR. ALEX WONG: Absolutely, and you know, so, I mean, the example that I bring up with others is that a few nights ago, for whatever reason, I woke up, and I wouldn't say I was anxious, but all of a sudden I had I just I just thought to myself, I have not sanitized my vehicle, my car. I've never I've never actually wiped it down. You know, I've got hands that are dirty and they're touching the wheel and everything else in my car. So I got up in the middle of the night, went out to the garage, got like a Lysol wipe and basically proceeded to wipe down, you know, my entire vehicle. And so I spent 15 minutes in the middle of night just doing that so that I could make myself feel better that I had actually done that. And, you know, again, I mean, that's entirely irrational. I mean, not wiping my car down every single moment of every single day or after every day. I just maybe I will. I don't know. But again, trying to be rational about it, I try to think about it like any other virus. And but again, I mean, it's easy and it's easy to have those moments. And with everything kind of going on around us, all the media, all of it, it sometimes fuels doubts.

MG: Sabrina does that sounds familiar that sometimes your mind starts racing and gets away from that rational thought?

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: Absolutely. I think a you know, on the one hand, exactly as Alex said, you want to be that model of strength and ration and fight the fear with facts. And that's what I tell patients all day. I use that line all the time, I say, 'Listen, when you're afraid, fight that with facts. Just remember what we know about this virus, how it's spread.' But then, of course, like I'm the one who's washing my scrubs and taking my socks off in the garage. And at the end of the day, especially when you're tyred and the two of us have both come home from hospital, both have spent 18 hours thinking about the virus. It's easy to let that anxiety kind of wash over you and you start thinking about things you haven't done and wiping down surfaces that, you know, that make you feel better. But, you know, in the morning, generally things seem clearer and then you start again. And so on.

MG: How are you coping with being apart from your girls?

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: It's tough. I mean, it again, it comes in waves. So on the one hand, it's we feel enormously lucky just to be able to have my parents look after them and give us a bit of space to work and to be with patients and to be very present in so much of the organisational, oh, I mean, overhaul that's happening every day, you know, on the hour. So we've been able to, we've been able to work and we're grateful for that. And at the same time, you know, when we do come home at night, it's there's a profound emptiness and sadness. And, you know, you try to just put it aside and watch some TV. But it's been tough. It's not sustainable. It's probably the best way to put it. It'll be okay for a couple weeks.

MG: How old and they?

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: They are two, four and six.

MG: And so can you say anything to them that that helps them understand what you're in the middle of right now?

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: We talk to them, telling them that we have our job to do with this virus, this outbreak, and they've got their job to do. And so we try to, you know, empower them just like, you know, we've heard a lot of stay at home, you know, telling the average person at home was not working how to what they can do. They can stay at home. So we tell our kids you can who you can help by being brave, you know, being brave from I mean, daddy and staying home. And they have fun with grandma and grandpa. That's your job. And our job is to get the hospitals ready and look after the patients. And they buy it. They're pretty happy. They're little. So they've been pretty happy and kind of willing to accept that.

MG: Alex Wong, can you imagine being away from your kids? You have another one on the way.

DR. ALEX WONG: Yes, it's you know, it's a tough idea. But again, we've made plans, you know, for example, if I end up kind of getting exposed, which inevitably I probably will and, you know, so that probably will involve me basically just kind of living in a separate space, like an airbnb or a hotel or something like that for the two weeks initially I just kind of. First of all, thought that I would just come home and because again, rationally, you know, the virus is unlikely to cause any of us to be significantly ill. And then I started thinking, well, you know what? In the worst-case scenario, if I were to bring it home and then my wife gets sick, what might happen to our unborn child like what might happen to her? I mean, again, the data would suggest right now that, you know, that that's probably not high risk. But again, you have these moments of anxiety and you just think worst-case scenario and you want to try to avoid that. So, you know, I try not to think about that. And we don't talk about it with our kids in terms of thinking that, you know, okay, maybe you won't see daddy for two weeks or longer or whatever. But it's you know, I would struggle. But, you know, I've been away for business and so forth for five or seven days. The kids cope, you know, and so and they're resilient, too. So they understand. And they just you know, they'll probably say Daddy's away on another trip.

MG: What do you do? What does this say? What are you doing in the middle of this? To take care of yourself? You worry about the kids and the kids being resilient. But what about yourself?

DR. ALEX WONG: I can't say I'm doing a really good job right now. Like four to five hours of sleep me a night. But, you know, I mean, there's other responsibilities that I have in terms of like the system stuff and trying to advise it sort of, you know, levels of government and policy in regards to what we can do about all this. So, you know, I'm on call right now when I come home, finish with all my patients stuff. And then I basically, you know, try to spend a little bit of time with the kids, and my wife, which is probably like my only saving grace of the day right now. And then when the kids are sleeping at about 8:00, 8:30, I pretty much come down here, sit in the office and bang out, you know, material for another three or four hours to try to get ready for meetings and debriefs and presentations and, you know, answering bazillions of emails. So I'm not really doing a great job. But at the same time, you know, I'm pretty good at sort of hunkering down and doing kind of what needs to be done to realise that I need my sleep and I need to maintain basic routines, too.

MG: Sabrina, you are agreeing with what Alex are saying in terms of not taking good care for yourself.

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: Well, there's no hours in the day, just for the last couple of weeks, no doubt. But yeah, basic, basic things. You know, you got you got to set the bar low for yourself at this time and be kind to yourself. So that's what we keep telling ourselves. You know, we've probably been doing more than a fair share of takeout. You know, probably not eating as well as a good. But, you know, people have also been enormously supportive. You know, in little ways, you know, neighbours have offered to cook and they have. And we've been we've been grateful. That helps. And just little things like sleep, you know, making sure you getting to sleep on time, spending a bit of time in front of TV, if you can. But it's simply the absence of hours in the day as Alex is saying, it doesn't end with patient care. You know, there's so much work to be done that that's outside of those hours that there's just for now the windows of opportunity to kind of do anything besides focus on the virus are so small.

MG: So in the last minute or so that we have doctor Akhtar what would you say to Dr. Wong?

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: Well, first of all, good to chat with you, Alex. We went to medical school together. So it's a tiny, tiny world, you.

DR. ALEX WONG: [Unintelligible] I heard your name. So, yes, absolutely.

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: Thank you for reminding me that we're all in it together. That's a huge part of this is feeling part of a collective. People have been so supportive and hearing others' stories just makes it easier to get through every day, every hour.

MG: Dr. Wang, a couple of words for Dr. Akhtar..

DR. ALEX WONG: I would say this saying, you know, I was U.W.O Med's 2005 and Sabrina was 2007. So again, I mean, you know, she's in downtown Toronto now and I'm, you know, out here in the prairies. But, you know, I really want to say, you know, to Sabrina, you know, you're doing you're doing you're doing the important. The most important work of being truly on the front line, seeing undifferentiated people, you know, and making a superb difference. And you're probably to some degree, you know, at that higher risk. And so keep yourself safe. Make sure that your colleagues stay safe and, you know, continue to support efforts, because really we got into this to help patients and to do the right thing. And, you know, there's no more important time for all of us to step up to the plate than now.

MG: Thank you both for stepping up to the plate and for what you're doing and for taking time to talk to us, take care of yourselves.

DR. SABRINA AKHTAR: Thank you, Matt. Thank you.

DR. ALEX WONG: Thank you much. Take care, Sabrina.

RAGHU VENUGOPAL: Sabrina Akhtar, a family physician in Toronto, Alex Wong, an infectious disease doctor in Regina. A lot of people have a lot of questions about the time that we're in and the virus that has led us to these times. We'll hear from one of the country's top infectious disease experts with some answers. That's coming up on The Current.

COVID-19 and surface transmission

Guests: Dr. Allison McGeer

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

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MG: Still to come, President Trump's response to this pandemic; not so great, says David Frum, the Canadian former speechwriter for President George W. Bush has some choice words for this president. And we'll hear that coming up. But first, let's get right to your questions about COVID-19.

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MG: It can get dizzying trying to figure out what's okay to do right now and what is not. Yesterday we put out a call for you to send us any questions you have about COVID-19. We received a lot of really thoughtful inquiries. Many of you are wondering how best to care for loved ones, how contagious this virus is, how long to self isolate and much more. We're lucky to have Dr. Allison McGeer with us to tackle your questions. She's an infectious disease specialist, clinical scientist with the Sinai Health System in Toronto. Doctor, good morning.

ALLISON MCGEER: Good morning.

MG: How are you holding up?

ALLISON MCGEER: I'm good, thanks. How are you doing?

MG: I'm okay. I mean, everybody asks and I think it's important because we're all in this, as we say, together. And these are bizarre times. What kind of questions are you getting? What's the one question that you, as a doctor, maybe get asked the most from friends or family?

ALLISON MCGEER: So I get a lot of questions now from health care workers who are worried about their families. You know that the natural consequence of coming to work. And I think health care workers are happy to accept some level of risk to themselves if there's no alternative. You know, their job is taking care of patients. But they worry a lot about their families. And I get questions from essential workers who are equally are dedicated to what they do and keeping us going, but are naturally worried about what the risks are and how they can protect themselves. I think those are the two big ones.

MG: We got so many questions from listeners, specifically for you, specifically about that to your point, how they can take care of themselves, how they can take care of their families. You're very generous and giving us some of your time. So let's get straight to the questions. This is one from British Columbia.

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My name is Jenny Messenger and I'm calling from Chilliwack, British Columbia. And my question is, if somebody does contract COVID-19 and looks recover, does this cause long term damage to their lungs or respiratory system? Will it make them more susceptible to pneumonia in the future? Or is this something that the body is able to repair and rebuild on its own?

MG: Dr. McGeer, do we know whether there is any potential for long term damage from this virus?

ALLISON MCGEER: The great majority of cases, no. So this is a pneumonia. It's one more thing that causes pneumonia. The vast majority of people who get pneumonia recover completely. And there are no adverse events. If you get a very serious case where there's a lot of damage to your lungs, you spend time in the intensive care unit, then there's a possibility that the scarring on your lungs could lead to Long-Term Complications. But that's really unusual. For most people, this is just one more infection. All of us get some infections in our lifetime and we recover completely.

MG: If people are recovering from COVID-19, do we know whether there's anything they can do to help that recovery process?

ALLISON MCGEER: No. You know, it's just like recovering from any other infection. You need to take care of yourself. But, you know, recovery is natural. The great majority of people who get this infection are going to recover and go back to normal.

MG: We received a lot of questions about asthma inhalers. This is one from Philip Swarbrick, who wrote us on Facebook. He's 65 years old. He has asthma, had read a report that if used incorrectly, anti-inflammatory, steroids could perhaps worsen this infection. Do we know whether it's safe to use steroid inhalers for asthma during this time? And could that compound the effects of COVID-19?

ALLISON MCGEER: So we don't know evidence of steroid inhalers do. And I think control of your asthma is probably the most important way to protect yourself from complications should you get infected with COVID-19 and have asthma. So there's and I think we also need to remember that the rumour and it appears to really have been a rumour about nonsteroidal interfering and making things worse with COVID-19 is really not substantiated. For people who need to be on inhalers, people who need to be taking nonsteroidal for underlying conditions, there is no evidence that they make things worse at all.

MG: There was some reporting coming out of France suggesting that Advil and ibuprofen could exacerbate COVID-19, and that some doctors were recommending using Tylenol or acetaminophen instead. What is that? Correct?

ALLISON MCGEER: Well, no, this is the problem. Nobody knows where that came from. The French minister of health said it one day, but there's just nothing behind that. It is generally true that acetaminophen has fewer adverse events then Advil or ibuprofen. So that current recommendation is that, you know, the first thing you go through, if you need to control fever, pain is acetaminophen, not non-steroidal. That's absolutely true. But there is no evidence that taking non-steroidals does any particular harm. If you get covered.

MG: This is why it's important to have you here, because there's such conflicting information out there. People don't know what to believe.

ALLISON MCGEER: You're absolutely right. And a piece of this is, you know, this is an outbreak of a new virus. Outbreaks of new virus, we learn things. Two things happen. The first is we don't know everything. And when we don't know everything, then you get some differences in opinion about what the best thing is. Physicians, scientists are used to that, okay, this is how we live. But it's really hard to be on the receiving end of it. And the second thing is that we learn more about this virus every day. And as we learn more, things change. And I think, you know, the hardest thing in outbreaks is that things change and it just feels like it's arbitrary and it's coming from nowhere. But the truth is, change is good because change means not only that we're learning, but they were acting on what we're learning. And so every time something changes about the advice of COVID-19, you take a deep breath, allow yourself to be irritated and then say, okay, this is good. We've learned something. We're doing better.

MG: This question comes on Twitter. It's from Mark B, he asks: Is there a difference in the severity of coverlet, infection symptoms based on blood type? I heard type A has less severe symptoms. Does blood type matter?

ALLISON MCGEER: It's possible that blood type matters a little bit. There is evidence from other infections that your blood type, which is associated with some characteristics of your immune system, makes a little bit of a difference. Two issues about this; there's nothing you can do about it. So there's no point in wasting your time worrying. And the second thing is that those effects are almost always really small. So the chance that there's a big enough effect that that we're going to actually care about it, I think is slim to none.

MG: Is there any research to suggest that the virus that affects people differently based on genetics?

ALLISON MCGEER: Oh, it's almost certainly true. You know, it it must be true that your genetics, your specific genetics in great gory detail affects how you respond to different infections. But it's been stunningly hard to figure that out. The best information we have is, is from tuberculosis, where it is clear that there are some specific genes in your immune system that tell you how you respond to different microbes that make you more or less susceptible to getting ill with tuberculosis. And we believe that it's true for many other infections. But it's generally so far we've not been able to find that out. And that's because the immune system is really, really complicated and isolating specific issues has been very difficult.

MG: We're answering your questions about COVID-19. Dr. Allison McGeer, infectious disease specialist, is with us. This next question is an audio clip about self isolating. Have a listen.

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My name is Jenny Forté and I'm calling in from Sudbury, Ontario. So my question pertains to essential workers who can't stay at home. What steps can these workers take to keep their family safe when they come home at the end of the day? Should they be sleeping in a different room, using different washrooms, if possible, washing clothes, daily, bed sheets daily? Any information would help. Thank you.

MG: Dr. McGeer. There are a lot of people who can't work from home. They need to be out and they are coming home to their loved ones, wondering what they can do to stay safe. What would you say to them?

ALLISON MCGEER: You know, again, this is really about all of us doing our piece. The actual numerical risk that you will get COVID-19 at the moment is still, you know, less than one in 1000, maybe one in 10000. And so you have to you have to try to scale your response to that. And then you have to make a decision about what you're going to be most comfortable living with. You know, for some people, contact with their family is critical for their mental health and they're willing to accept a small additional risk of COVID-19 is still really small. If your workplace has been, you know, taking precautions and you've been cleaning your hands religiously. For other people, they're going to say, well, you know, for two weeks, if I sleep in a different room, maybe it's not going to protect me that much more, but I'm going to feel better about it and more comfortable and thinking that I'm putting my family at less risk. No reason not to do that either. Right. So it's really a again, this is hard, but it's got to be a personal decision for you about what matters the most to you, what's going to make you feel best in these very difficult times.

MG: This is sort of a related question and it comes from another listener with elderly parents.

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So my name is Liz Martin and I'm calling from St. John, New Brunswick. And my question is around how to keep my parents safe during this pandemic. I have two parents who are both over the age of 70 and who have done a great job in terms of social distancing. And although I'm following all the guidelines and I do have to go into their home to help them with different things. So I'm wondering, how do I balance social distancing and self isolation while still caring and helping my parent?

MG: This was a question we'd received from a lot of different people. Is it still safe for people to come and go from an elderly person's home in order to look after them? If that person needs care.

ALLISON MCGEER: So that's trade-off, right? People need care. And so you need to think about how to deliver it safely. So that's about cleaning your hands before you come into the house. It's about maintaining distance while you're in the house. Right. This is a droplet spread disease. As long as you're staying far enough away from people, it's not going to be transmissible. So, you know, if you clean your hands before you come. If you're careful about cleaning surfaces. The more you stay away from people, the less risk there is a transmission. The concern, of course, is that for those of us who are younger and healthier and providing care, there's increasing evidence that you can transmit this disease when you have no symptoms or very mild symptoms. So that really means that you want to be extraordinarily fussy about cleaning your hands and staying away. It also is a really important message about keeping, finding a plan, for keeping those visits to the minimum that is necessary to keep people going.

MG: That means you mean not staying as long and figuring out when you absolutely need to be there.

ALLISON MCGEER: Not going as often. Not staying as long. Figuring out what absolutely needs to be done. Yes.

MG: This is a question from Christopher Canham. We're going to keep cycling through these because we have a lot of them. Hi, this is from Christopher Canham. He wrote to us on Facebook: I've heard that because it starts in the throat and then moves to the lungs at the first signs of a throat discomfort, gargling warm salt water often, gargling vinegar water and drinking. Lots of water can stop the progression of COVID-19. Is any of that true, Dr. McGeer?

ALLISON MCGEER: Sadly, none of that is true. You know, when you get infected with a virus, the virus is actually inside the cells that line your throat and anything you do to the outside of them will not make a difference.

MG: So, again, these are things that are that are circulating online. We're going to be speaking a bit later on with the representative for Facebook in Canada. How concerned are you? Part of that is about information changing, but also just how concerned are you that ideas like this have some currency, that it's not just a random being spread, that these are these are ideas that are being shared widely through social media platforms and other ways as well?

ALLISON MCGEER: Yes. You know, one of the one of the interesting and challenging things about this pandemic is, is how quickly and easily it is to spread. Misinformation, I think the discussion about nonsteroidal and the French minister of health is, you know, one tiny slip up in a news conference. And, you know, suddenly people around the world are afraid. So I think it behoves each of us to be thinking carefully about what we're reading on social media, being careful not to amplify messages that don't make sense. I think we do need to be worried about people who might have an interest in making money out of this and selling things that they say will help you without any evidence that they do. So it is really important on all social media to check the facts before you before you believe it or before you amplify messages.

MG: This question comes from the staff here, the program. It's something we were talking about. It's about the sense of smell and COVID-19. There was a report in The New York Times this week that said there were many people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 who said that their sense of smell was gone. What do you know about that doctor McGeer?

ALLISON MCGEER: Exactly what you know. Okay. That somebody has reported that in the cases they've seen, people lost their sense of smell. And, you know, opinion in among my colleagues, I think is divided between people who are rolling their eyes. People who think that there might be something in it and people who, you know, respond by saying, yes, you know, when you get a cold right. Your nose get stuffy and you can't smell the way you can when you don't have an infection. I think that might be normal. So, you know, so it's something that, now that it's raised, people will ask the question. And we'll sort it out. Personally, I think that it is extremely unlikely that it's going to be helpful. It may well be true that some people complain of loss of smell or loss of taste. But it's really unlikely that it's going to be a strong enough association that will actually be useful to us.

MG: We received a number of questions from people who are already immunocompromised. This next one picks up on that. It's an audio question. Have a listen.

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My name is Sheila Rose. I'm currently self isolating and Markham, Ontario with my daughter and my parents. And my question is, my daughter is six months post chemo for Stage 4 Burkett's lymphoma. We know from blood tests that her neutrophils, white blood cells and lymphocyte counts haven't recovered since chemo. She's about half that of low normal. How do we protect her other than isolation and hand-washing? We have spoken with her oncologist, but are really struggling for answers about how we keep her safe.

MG: Dr. McGeer, Sheila's worried about her daughter, recently finished chemotherapy. What can people whose immune systems are already compromised due to protect themselves beyond washing hands and self isolating?

ALLISON MCGEER: Well, it's washing hands and social distancing that matter. So what we can all do to help people whose immune systems are compromise is keep them physically distant from us. Make sure that if we have to be close to them, that, you know, we've cleaned our hands ahead of time and make sure that we're also getting them the things they need to get them to the isolation. Right. So this is the time when you want to buy groceries for your immunocompromised neighbour, when you want to make sure that there's that phone call so that people who are really isolated and can't be physically close to people, can be socially close to people. You know, this is a time when we need to be taking care of our immunocompromised population while staying physically distant from.

MG: Want to get in. One more question about self-isolation. This comes from Elizabeth Renouf, who asked about this issue, or some people with suspected mild cases are being asked to self isolate and they aren't getting tested. She asks: How long for an entire household to self isolate if there is one or multiple suspected cases?

ALLISON MCGEER: So the answer if everybody else stays well. It doesn't develop any symptoms at all. Is 14 days.

MG: And if somebody develops a symptom?

ALLISON MCGEER: Then you restart the clock and run 14 days from that person.

MG: And that goes until there are no symptoms for 14 days.

ALLISON MCGEER: And that goes until they're no symptoms for 14 days. It's important to remember that even in households, the risk that another person in the household is going to get it is on the order of one in six or one in seven. So in most circumstances, with somebody at home self isolating, other people in the household will not get infected.

MG: We talk a lot about the efforts that people are making to self isolate and flatten the curve. Greg Gail on Facebook asked this question: It's been just over a week since the prime minister began to self-quarantine and told us that we should all stay home as much as possible. Assuming that most Canadians heeded this instruction, should we be seeing the infection numbers dip now? Is social distancing working?

ALLISON MCGEER: A complicated question and a good one about when we're expected to see things change. I think one of the issues is that although, particularly in Quebec, people the premier was very definitive about social distancing. I think it took many of us across Canada some days to really absorb it and to make significant changes to what we were doing. So, you know, normally you would expect the cases you have to wait the two weeks, like there's a lag at the time that you start social distancing measures. There are a substantial number of people who are already infected. They've been exposed, but they don't have symptoms yet. The time from when you're exposed to when you develop symptoms is go is a median of about five days, but goes as long as 14 days and it takes usually two to four days from the time people develop symptoms until the time people present to the hospital. This can start as a really mild illness. So you don't always act on the first couple of days of illness. And then, of course, we have a testing backlog. So it's another two or three days before those tests get through the system and are reported as positive. So there's a variety of reasons why there's a substantial delay between when we put social distancing measures in effect and when we're going to see a response to them. I think we need to be at least two weeks after this started before we can expect to see something. And it wouldn't surprise me if it takes even longer because of that issue of it taking a while for us to actually really take seriously social distancing.

MG: How seriously do you think we're taking it right now?

ALLISON MCGEER: I just what is one of the difficulties that I don't think that we have a really good measure of that. But I think from the people I know, from the pictures of the streets, from the discussion, I think people are- I think the great majority of people are taking it seriously. I think that based on what the models tell us about what we have to be doing, I think we're beyond that. I think we're doing enough that there should be a difference. But again, you know, this is unprecedented. We don't know with confidence exactly how much social distancing we need and where we're going to find out.

MG: Can I ask you a question that I get asked a lot? Some of it comes from inside my household, but it's also just other people around, which is if you has essentially been isolated for 14 days, that you're doing the social distancing for 14 days after that 14 days is done, can you see other people who have done the same sort of thing? Can you start to expand your circle, perhaps beyond your immediate family?

ALLISON MCGEER: All of us need to be seeing as, physically seeing, as few other people as possible. Last thing you want after you come out of your self-isolation is to say this is over. I can now see all these people social distancing for every single one of us means pairing your physical contact with other people down to an absolute minimum. Get through your 14 days. Please don't change your behaviour yet. Let us bend the curve before we start letting it up.

MG: In the last minute that we have, you and I spoke at the very beginning of this and it seems like it was months and months ago, wasn't that long ago. Where are we at in this pandemic, do you think?

ALLISON MCGEER: A really interesting question because we're watching China now let up on on on measures and waiting to see how well they will do. I think there are some people who are hoping that the rate of mild symptoms and mild infections has been high enough that a substantial fraction of the population in China is immune now, or at least in Hubei Province, is immune now. And that we are, they are, past the worst of it. But really, the truth is we don't know and we're not going to know. I think we're only at the beginning of it.

MG: You have been so generous with your time, and I really appreciate it. Take care of yourself and thank you very much for taking the opportunity to answer these questions.

ALLISON MCGEER: You take care yourself, too. Bye.

MG: I will. Thank you. Dr. Allison McGeer, infectious disease specialist and clinical scientist, the Sinai Health System. She's in Toronto. Questions from you. Kids, we want to hear from you now. Kids, do you have questions related to Colvard 19? Anything you're confused about, something you don't understand? We're all in that boat, by the way, but we really want to hear from kids. Children. E-mail your questions to thecurrent@cbc.ca, thecurrentcbc.ca. You can also send a voice memo and if you're interested in being on the radio because that's fun. Let us know the best way to get in touch. Monday, we'll be joined by Tai Poole from Tai Asks Why. Dr. Brian Goldman from White Coat Black Art. Kids. Get in Touch. thecurrent@cbc.ca. We're back in 90 seconds with a look at what's happening south of the border. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stay with us.

Spread of COVID-19 into 'Trump country' could pose problem for president's re-election hopes: David Frum,

Guests: David Frum, Serena Ryde

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

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, [unintelligible]. This is the new hoax. But, you know, we did something that's been pretty amazing. We're 15 people in this massive country and because of the fact that we went early, we went early. We could have had a lot more than that. We're doing great. Our country is doing so great. We are so unified.

[Cheers]

MG: Well, that seems like a long time ago. That 15 has jumped dramatically, in just a matter of weeks. More than 65,000 Americans have contracted covered 19. This was President Trump yesterday.

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DONALD TRUMP: We commit to social distancing. So important social distancing, such an important phrase. And we do it right now. The more lives we can save and the sooner we can eventually get people back to work, back to school and back to normal.

MG: David Frum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. David Frum, good morning.

DAVID FRUM: Good morning.

MG: How difficult do you think it's been for President Trump to come around to the message that we heard from him yesterday?

DAVID FRUM: Enormously difficult. And he's not staying on the message. President Trump, from the beginning, in the early part of the crisis, was guided by two rules. One, he wanted no part of anything inherited from the Obama administration. And second, he envisioned that virus is something that only travel if a human being got on an aeroplane and brought it. So they did nothing through December and early part of January, then he banned air travel from China in a kind of leaky ban and thought he'd done the job, because he didn't understand how the virus moved, because he wouldn't accept guidance from his predecessors. He is now becoming very restive about the horrifying impact of the disease on the American economy and the world economy, and is now talking about ending social distancing in time for Easter on the 12th of April.

MG: To your point, his tone has been very different than some of what we've heard. Listen to this exchange.

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INTERVIEWER: Why do you keep calling this the Chinese virus? There are reports of dozens of incidents of bias against Chinese Americans in this country. Your own, aide, secretary [unintelligible] says he does not use this term. He said ethnicity does not cause the virus. Why do you keep using this? A lot of people say it's racist.

DONALD TRUMP: Because it comes from China. It's not racist at all. No, not at all. It comes from China. That's why, it comes from China. I want to be accurate.

MG: David Frum helped me understand that. Why would the president call it the Chinese virus?

DAVID FRUM: Donald Trump is not a very good manager, but he's a genius marketer. And so his approach to this problem has been- he did not prepare for it. He did not anticipate it. He didn't think about it. But once it struck, he became very shrewd about how do I shift blame. How do I use my marketing abilities to shift, blame, blame for the crisis. You know, it's not like no one had thought about this before. The Obama people in 2009 were struck by a swine flu epidemic, and that was that bad epidemic, which was not a serious as the present disease, happened to the time, but also financial crisis. And it wasn't managed superbly well. But the world got lucky with the severity of the virus. And so out of that experience, the Obama people left behind a playbook. They develop they began more gaming for. And many people have been thinking about this. The Gates Foundation has for a long time, have been overwhelmingly concerned with this. And Bill Gates has poured enormous amounts of resources into planning, which he's made available to all the world's governments. And you can see at the state level, one of the reasons that states like New York and California have been able to respond as effectively as they have was that leftover from the 9/11 experience. They developed state level disaster planning agencies. So this infrastructure was in place. But at the federal level, you need to have people to make it go. And from 2017 onwards, for a variety of reasons, the Trump administration dismantled what it inherited from the Obama administration and then shelved a pandemic problem to the back of its mind. It's not like Trump wasn't ready for some problems. As compared to the last year of Obama, he has increased defence spending by almost $100 billion a year aimed at China. But he was not able conceptualize any kind of threat other than the 1960s threat from missiles, battleships and aeroplanes.

MG: What damage has that done?

DAVID FRUM: Well, we have missed a lot of time. Now it's important always to keep in mind that this is a failure first and foremost of the Chinese state. They did engage in cover up for three weeks and they lied to the World Health organisation. They barred the World Health organisation mission, which is headed by a Canadian which was supposed to have arrived in China in the very first days in January. They delayed it until the middle of February.

MG: But then took extraordinary action and tamped this virus down, many people believe.

DAVID FRUM: But the time to do that was in December. Their first concern, as always, was the control of information. So the Chinese response in December was extremely defective. It began to spread the way that it couldn't be denied in the early part of January, the Canadian headed World Health organisation mission didn't arrive until February. But there was satellite information. I mean, the United States doesn't rely on China to know what the Chinese are doing. The information was available. These briefings were given early enough that important members of the U.S. Senate could engage in insider trading on intelligence information in January.

MG: There has been talk that some of I mean, much of what he's doing, the president is in terms of responding to this, is around electability, around his concerns about the election later this year. The fact that many of the cases, many of the areas of outbreak in the United States are in coastal areas, on the East Coast, on the West Coast, along part of the electoral map, perhaps where Democrats are strong, not Republicans are strong. Some people are suggesting that perhaps that not has driven his response, but in some ways that that has allowed what we heard at the very beginning for him to shape this initially as, the conversations around it, as a way from the Democrats to undermine him. Is there anything to that?

DAVID FRUM: Well, that's [unintelligible] inability to look around a corner. His inability to think ahead. Donald Trump lives entirely in the present. That's why he is able to lie so much. The past and the future are unreal to him. So everyone can see happening is, yes, it hit the centres of global trade and traffic. First, it hit Seattle and New York first. But it's not like it's going to spare Florida and Michigan, which is so crucial to his hopes, has as over 2000 cases now and rising very, very fast. The Trump state, the Trump voting states, tend to have - I don't want to generalize - but tend to have less sophisticated governments. And I don't mean nothing to the people in government. I just mean that the mechanics of government in the blue states. The government of Mississippi is less comprehensive than the government of California. And so when it hits, as it's now hitting in Louisiana, for example, those governments are going to be overwhelmed faster. They have less capacity than the Richard Blue states do. It is going to sweep through Trump country, too. He's just going to come a little bit later because Trump Country is a little less network to the rest of the planet. And this is as we- this is just something for all of us to keep in mind after it sweeps through the developed world. It's going to hit, of course, Africa hardest. It's going to hit Africa last because Africa is less networked, but Africa has less capacity. What does hit Africa are the toll there will be the worst of all.

MG: And people are concerned about India. You see, India is under this massive lockdown for three weeks. There are other areas of the world that are under lockdown or living under serious restrictions as well. The president spoke with Fox News at the White House earlier this week. Have a listen to what he said.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID FRUM: Easter is a very special day for me, and I see it sort of in that timeline that I'm thinking about and I say, wouldn't it be great to have all of the churches full? You know, the churches aren't allowed essentially to have much of a congregation there. And most of them I watched on Sunday online and it was terrific, by the way. But Ortolan is never going to be like being there. So I think Easter Sunday and you'll have packed churches all over our country, I think would be a beautiful time. And it's just about the timeline that I think is right.

MG: Easter is in 17 days. David Frum, what is the thinking and not that you can read into the president's mind, but in the White House, what is the thinking around getting Americans back to work in 17 days time, easing these social or physical distancing restrictions in interest a couple of weeks?

DAVID FRUM: I think it's- In other White Houses, when the president says something like that or says anything like that, that would reflect some kind of White House process. And ideally, some kind of administration wide process that people have thought about it. And maybe it was the presidency even taking a controversial point of view, but he would be expressing a considered policy. I think you have to keep in mind that it's very possible that those words reflected nothing more that what Trump was saying on the phone to a few of his rich friends and Fox News pals the night before, that there may not be any plan. And indeed, one of the things that we are really heading to is because the federal structure, you know, Trump has not ordered anything closed. I don't know how Trump reorders that trick, but the closing of churches and other institutions, those are actions by state governments. One of the risks that Trump is heading toward is a world in which different state governments have different policies. And if, for example, New York and California have fairly stringent regulations, and Florida and Mississippi and other such states have very loose regulations, you may see the rise of interstate barriers like the international barriers and the undoing of a single American market. And that is the thing that can truly turn this from an economic shock into a Great Depression.

MG: He's been saying for the last couple of days that the cure can't be worse than a disease, that you cannot destroy the economy of the United States to try and flatten this curve. The economy is incredibly important, on the macro scale, but also on the individual scale for people who have found themselves torn out of work because the restaurants they worked in, the bars they worked, and the stores that they worked in are now closed. Can you give him credit for prioritising that economy?

DAVID FRUM: No, Because, of course, it's true that the goal here is to reopen the economy and not just the national economy, but to revive ideals of international cooperation. I read big article going into the Atlantic just today about how we have to return to a world of open trade and investment. But these are not two separate problems in competition with one another. They are one problem, one very complicated problem where you need a comprehensive strategy. And Donald Trump has never done that. He's never thought of that as his job. His job is to go on TV and complain about the work of others, not to lead the work. So, yes, what a responsible president would now be doing is looking at projections and saying, how do we move past the crisis point as quickly as possible and then let's have a a plan. What reopens first? What reopen second? That's absolutely part of the process. But the way you do that is not by going on television and nattering about it without connection to you, your state governments, the federal government, the state governors and friendly governments.

MG: But in say in saying this, do you think there's an inevitability, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs or Sweeting essentially saying the same thing, is there now an inevitability that the shutdown, such as it is in parts of the United States, won't last?

DAVID FRUM: No, I think it's quite [unintelligible]. If I have to make a prediction. I think Trump will try to reopen the economy around the 5th or 6th of April beginning then at the end of his so-called 15 days. Some states like Mississippi and Florida will co-operate to some degree. Other states will refuse. The quality of social distancing will degrade. So you will not see the reduction in the pace of interactions that you see in other countries. And if you just do the simple maths on the present trajectory, by Easter, more Americans will be dead from this disease than died in the Korean War. By the next week, more American, you will be looking, we'll be moving toward the 100,000 mark, which won't crumple, panic and seek even stricter, more strict state controls. The key to understanding is he cannot read an exponential chart and he cannot think about the future. Future is not real to him. . The way to understand Donald Trump is he's like he's been a chronic bankrupt through most of his adult life. And what he has done at every stage of his adult life is to try to figure out how do I keep my creditors at bay only for the next 24 hours. And that's the approach he using.

MG: I was just going to say the way that people are trying to understand him is through these daily briefings that he's giving. He's part of this coronavirus task force. And that offers him the opportunity to speak extemporaneously, but also to be asked questions by members of the media. Have a listen to this interaction between the present and NBC News reporter Peter Alexander last week.

SOUNDCLIP

INTERVIEWER: What you say to Americans who are watching you right now, who are scared?

DONALD TRUMP: I say that you're a terrible reporter. That's what I say. I think it's a very nasty question. And I think it's a very bad signal that you're putting out to the American people. The American people are looking for answers and they're looking for hope. And you're doing sensationalism.

MG: What happened there?

DAVID FRUM: What happened there is an augury of why these briefings are very soon, in my prediction, likely to stop. Trump inaugurated the briefings as a source of narcissistic supply for himself, and listeners have not had the misfortune of a classist narcissist personality. A narcissist need reinforcement. Psychologists call it the supply. And Trump used to get it from his rallies. Rallies have stopped. We turned to these briefings as a source of them. Obviously the president should not be at these briefings. Medical officers should be there. But what happened, what's begun to happen is reality is intruding into these briefings. And instead of receiving narcissistic supply, Trump is receiving, as you just heard in that exchange, narcissistic injury. He's been confronted with his own failure and he cannot bear it. And so the way a personality like Trump deals with failure is by refusing to see it. And my suspicion is that within a very few days, he stops attending these briefings and then the briefing cease altogether because the other people, the briefings, have real work to do.

MG: You've hinted at this already, but you're also seeing leadership across the country, whether it's the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, or the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, step into the breach and in some ways take control. In the relationship, particularly between Cuomo and the president has been an interesting one. It was very pointed for a longtime. Then they seem to be on the same page. Now they're certainly not. What's at stake for the United States? For a city like New York, if these two leaders can't agree on how to move forward on this?

DAVID FRUM: Well, I think Cuomo, after some hesitation, got Trump's number. It's like dealing with an extremely balky toddler, that there are a lot of things. I mean, the toddler, you shouldn't have to praise the toddler for not throwing dinner on the floor. But when you have a balky one, you say, I like how you're eating your carrots. Trump requires constant praise and Cuomo has figured that out. And so he Cuomo's putting pressure. I need more ventilators, but also praising Trump in the hope of getting some cooperation from him.

There is some hope from California that it looks like a case of infection in California did not move as fast as in New York. California had a little more time and was able to put in place some social distancing. So we may hope that that will be an optimistic story. At least as of yesterday, it was looking better. But watch the numbers Florida, watch the numbers from Mississippi, watch the numbers from Louisiana. I think that's going to be the next wave of this. The states made it kind of an article of support for the president not to do the social distancing. They're less densely populated. They're less urban. They're less connected to the rest of the world. Viruses don't care, they just move slower.

MG: And the last minute that we have. Do you think the election happens this year?

DAVID FRUM: Yes, it would. It would take a legislative action just to stop it. So I don't think it'll be very hard for Trump, but we really have state election systems. It'll be hard to [unintelligible] it. And I also think the worst of the epidemic will be well over by November. But the economic problems, the economic shock will be very much with us. I think it is just a brief moment that President Trump is doing well in the polls. Jimmy Carter saw his poll numbers rise in the early stages he ran hostage crisis as people thought he was doing something then reality [unintelligible].

MG: David Frum, good to speak with you. Thank you.

DAVID FRUM: Nice to talk to you. Bye bye.

MG: David Frum, staff writer for The Atlantic, a former speechwriter for President George W Bush.

[Music]

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway special guest in studio.

TOM POWER: Hi, Matt.

MG: Tom Power. He's the host of Q. Hi, how are you?

TP: Listen, I know it's been really nice to have such information on the future of democracy, on the American election, on how our neighbours to the south are doing and how it affects us. I feel like I have something even more important to talk about. Musicians singing online.

MG: It's important. How are you doing? You okay?

TP: I'm doing just fine. Thank you for asking.

MG: Good. Tell us about this. This initiative that is help being artists share their music while they perhaps are stuck in quarantine, not able to get out and play in front of their fans.

TP: I love this thing. The National Arts Centre has launched this concert series called Canada Performs. And what they do is they give artists a thousand bucks to perform a concert virtually from their own homes. These contests are live streamed, ideally to help us all feel connected across the country during social isolation. And they created this bond to help artists who've taken a bit of a financial hit during the pandemic. Or, say if your comfortable say if you have a Scrooge McDuck-esq pool of doubloons, you can donate doubloons. That thousand dollar.

MG: We reached top power in the time-- [cross talking].

TP: He said Let's save your wearing your monocle and you feel like putting on your one piece, a head to toe swimsuit and jumping into a pool of doubloons. You are able to do so and donate $1000 to the charity. Serena Ryder is one of the artists who is Lifestream in her performance tomorrow. I had the chance to catch up with her on the phone all about it.

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TP: Hi, Serena.

SERENA RYDER: Hi, Tom.

TP: How are you holding up?

SERENA RYDER: I'm holding up, but it's very strange. Like, it definitely feels like it's a bit of a dream for sure. But what I've been doing, I've been doing lots of cooking, lots of meditating and like trying to figure out how to balance being on line. Because it's like it's our only, you know, [unintelligible]. It's our only way to kind of see what's going on out there. But at the same time, it's like, I don't know how healthy it is to be on it all the time, just finding that middle ground. Right.

TP: Oh, yes. Let's talk about this home concert series put on by the National Arts Centre. So you're on the Line-Up for is raising money for musicians who are hurting right now. Tell me tell me a little bit about it.

SERENA RYDER: Yes. So it's for artists that are affected by what's going on right now, which is every single artist. And they're giving a 1000 dollars to each artist to do a concert, do a live show. And I'm doing the live show to bring awareness to the fact that this is an option for artists, which is amazing. I think it's key right now. I mean, none of us are working. And like you said before, where it's like there's not just one person involved in someone's career. And the bigger the career, the more people involved. There's so many people that I consider in every decision that I make. And, yes, it's scary times.

TP: And especially, you know, I think of you as an artist and obviously any artist is vulnerable right now. But I think back to like maybe when you were starting out, how devastating this would have been for you to have to be off. Not to say that it's not devastating now, but how devastating it would have had to have been if you were just starting out to find yourself in this situation.

SERENA RYDER: Absolutely. I mean, because when you're first starting out, you don't have you don't have anything put aside. You don't have anything saved. I mean, in times like these, you don't even know your head from your ass, really. You know, it's difficult. But I think it's also an opportunity for us to to really realise that we are all in this together. You know, right now we're on the same position and this 1000 dollars is going to help a lot of people and a lot of artists. So I hope that the money keeps coming in and people keep going to check out Canada performs and put there, put a little video out and fill out the forms and see if they can get a live show. Because it's important.

TP: Outside of the whole pandemic, tell me what you're going to do with the show? Are you can take requests. Are you going to...?

SERENA RYDER: I'm going to. It's going to be so cash. I'm totally, totally, totally taking requests. I think I'm not even going to make it like it's like a show, because I think what I'm just going to do, what I have been wanting to see, which is I want the interaction. I want like when I comment something, I want the person to be able to see it and say something back. So I'm going to do kind of equal performing to questions because I think that is really, really important. So having that direct and live interaction is huge. But yes, I will definitely take requests. Whatever people want me to play, I'm going to play.

TP: I hope you like Anne Murray, because that's what's coming for me.

SERENA RYDER: Yes, baby, of course I do.

TP: I know it's hard not to like Anne Marie. Anything you want to say to the folks who were wondering how they can support artists right now in our last minute here.

SERENA RYDER: Yeah, I think that the best thing to do is to, number one, I think take care of yourself and then if you are taking care of. I would definitely find something that you personally believe in and donate into that. I think, you know, support you and your family and your passions. I think that's really, really important. We all support each other.

TP: That's great, Serena. You got enough snacks there? You're going to be all right?

SERENA RYDER: I got snacks. Thank you.

TP: You got chips and all that, you good?

SERENA RYDER: I got chips. I got salsa.

TP: All right. I'm not worried about you. You know what? I've already crossed bag of dill pickle chips that I meant to stretch over three days when it went about three hours.

SERENA RYDER: That's my favourite kind of chip. My favourite chip.

TP: Me, too. One of these days we'll get back together again in a room and we'll eat dill pickle chips one of these days.

SERENA RYDER: That would be a dream.

TP: I would love this, Serena. Take care.

SERENA RYDER: Okay. You, too.

MG: CBC's Tom Power speaking with Serena Ryder. We could talk about chips, all day.

TP: Matt, I got to tell you. I have mentioned dill pickle chips so often on this program that you might be asking the question, ethically, is Tom trying to get a deal? Pickles, chip sponsorship?

MG: In the pocket of big dill pickle chips?

TP: Answer: yes. I'll take it.

MG: Duly noted.

TP: I'll take it.

MG: Have you been watching these live streams? I mean, these concerts have been fascinating. And the range of musicians who are signed up to do this has been, it's some of the biggest names in Canadian music. I've watched so many of them. I will say one of my favourites was last night. It wasn't a Canadian artist, but Questlove from The Roots. Jemmy Fallon's house band is also an incredible deejay and was doing like an hours upon hours live reggae deejay set last night. He's doing it every single night. I just put it on in the background. It makes my life perfect.

MG: You're going to be back a little bit later on in the program with some news from Mr. Alan Doyle.

TP: You can bar the door and a Newfoundland or we'll get in here to talk about it.

MG: He has some project, a pandemic project.

TP: He's been raising money for kids help phone as part of his, you know, not just putting on these concerts like the NHC trying to use this time everybody's home trying to use this time that we're all sitting on our phones watching concerts for good to raise the money.

MG: I look forward to that. Tom, thank you.

TP: See you soon, Matt.

MG: Tom Power, host of Q. You need a bit of feel good music. In these uncertain times, this comes courtesy of Serena Ryder. Before her livestream show tomorrow. This is Stomper.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Stomper by Serena Ryder]

He found them.

MG: Serena Ryder and Stomper, the CBC News is next. And then there is much new information about COVID-19 being discovered every single day. There's also a lot of speculation and myth being shared. We'll speak with a reporter for CBC Covered Fact Check Unit about what's true, what's just noise. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

Disinformation, COVID-19 and surface transmission

Guests: Jamie Lloyd-Smith, Andrea Bellemar

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, he was known as the bard of American Theatre, Terrence McNally has died after contracting the coronavirus. We will honour the late playwright coming up. But first, I don't know who on your friends list needs to hear this, but it turns out you can't trust everything on the Internet.

[Music: Theme]

MG: There is a lot of disinformation in the air about covered 19. And you don't have to spend much time on Google to find all sorts of speculation about where the virus came from, false cures and misleading claims on how to prevent getting infected. It can be really difficult to sift through it all and figure out what's actually true and what's nonsense. The CBC is Andrea Bellemar has been looking into some of these stories. She is a reporter with CBC New COVID Fact Check Unit. Andrea, good morning.

ANDREA BELLEMAR: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What sort of stories are you looking into?

ANDREA BELLEMAR: Well, obviously, the most popular type of information that we're seeing online relates to cures. People are obviously very concerned about that. We see quite a lot of information about things that will either cure or prevent the virus that are just not true. We see rumours about things that purport to be 'this is happening right now' and it's not happening right now. Maybe it's something that's never happened or it's happened in the past, in a different situation. For example, on the weekend, we actually started seeing rumours that the Canadian army was moving into Montreal. And what actually happened is that they were moving equipment back from Alberta for a training exercise that was cancelled and someone took a video of that and then began circulating that and saying things about it that weren't true. So we're seeing a lot of disinformation and misinformation online.

MG: What's the difference between the two disinformation and misinformation? People will often conflate those two right ideas.

ANDREA BELLEMAR: Yes, misinformation is when people circulate something because they think it might be true. So a good way to think about that is maybe the relative that sends you something. They're acting in good faith. They're just trying to help you out there, say, I saw this and I think it might be true. So you should do X. That'll protect you. Disinformation is when people are circulating something that isn't true and they're trying to deceive you. And there can be many reasons they're doing that. Sometimes they're trying to make money or they're trying to scam you or they're just trying to do it for fun, but they're trying to deceive you as the point of disinformation.

MG: You were recently working on a story that debunks a conspiracy theory suggesting that this disease was what created in a lab. What did the researchers discover?

ANDREA BELLEMAR: So this has actually been a theory that's been going around since almost that we have started hearing about this virus. In first people started saying, oh, that they thought it had escaped from a lab in Wuhan. And last week, a team of five scientists published a paper in Nature Medicine, that's part of the Nature family of journals, and they looked at the genome of the virus and they were able to determine that it was not created in a lab and actually was able to track down the senior author of the paper. His name is Robert Garry. He's at Tulane University in New Orleans. And here's what he told me.

SOUNDCLIP

Engineering of a virus, genetic engineering, very often to things, putting the pieces, splice them back together. I suppose if you were, you know, a very clever mad scientists like you might see in a comic book somewhere, you could maybe figured out how to not be detected, that it's not that easy to avoid those kinds of artefacts., If you're trying to piece together. You could usually see where something had been cobbled together.

ANDREA BELLEMAR: So when I spoke to him, I just thought, oh, that's a really great way to make it very simple for me to understand, because obviously I'm a journalist. I don't know anything about engineering viruses or not. And I mean, obviously, their paper is much more technical, but they look at it and they say, you know, this virus wasn't that similar to other viruses that we knew about. And, you know, if you're going to start engineering something, you're going to make it similar to a virus that, you know, causes sickness in people. And he actually told me that after they sequenced the genome, Chinese researchers, other researchers went back into their tissue bank. So they store things that they might have found. And then they did discover a bat virus that was similar to this, but they didn't discover it until after the genome had been sequenced. So I thought that was very interesting.

MG: If that research is already out there, why is this theory keep circulating?

ANDREA BELLEMAR: Well, part of the reason is that it went from something that maybe conspiracy theorists liked to talk about on Internet message boards. And now it's sort of become a geopolitical weapon. And I found it was very interesting. So, for example, on Sunday, Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, actually said, you know, I'm not sure if it's true that the United States created this virus, but I don't know. And so maybe I won't accept some of the help that they've offered because he actually speculated that it had been created to target Iranians. Then we had a U.S. senator, Tom Cotton, who went on Fox News and thought, you know, speculated that maybe China had created it. Then U.S. researchers are- U.S. officials came out and said that Russia was pushing disinformation, that the U.S. had created it. You know, then China, a few Chinese officials floated the idea that the U.S. had created it. So you're starting to see that this is becoming a political weapon rather than just something that conspiracy theorists are talking about.

MG: You're talking about cures as well. There's a lot of misleading advice in this area.

ANDREA BELLEMAR: Yes. Really, some popular ones that we're hearing about right now relate to heat and drinking water. So, you know, just in the past couple days, I've seen e-mails that say if you drink warm water, it will kill it. If you drink cold water with salt, it will kill it. If you gargle with salt, it will kill it or heat that will kill it. And I think it's worth mentioning that the top two myths on the World Health Organization's Myth buster page right now debunk the fact that hot weather and humid weather has doesn't seem to kill it. We know that you can still get it if you live in a hot climate and also cold weather doesn't kill it. So, I mean, we're seeing a lot of misinformation about that.

MG: What is the role of social media organizations like Facebook in controlling this misinformation and ensuring that it doesn't spread?

ANDREA BELLEMAR: Yes. So I think one of the big issues for those groups right now is there's just so much misinformation. And I know like many of us, people at work at Facebook are struggling to adapt to work from home. And yesterday, Facebook actually mentioned that they're setting new usage records almost every day on things like WhatsApp and Facebook and Instagram. So, I mean, they have a lot of stuff that they are looking at. One of the things that that Facebook has done is they partnered with third party fact-checkers. So what that means is there's a network of fact-checkers around the world. They have access to a database. So when you go on Facebook, can you flag something you say, I think this isn't true, that'll pop up in this database and fact checkers can go and look at it. They can fact check it. They choose what they fact-check. They have complete editorial oversight and then they will flag that to Facebook. And then Facebook what it does is it actually will limit the spread of that misinformation. And then when you go to click on it, it will say, hey, this has been proven to be false or it has been proven to be dubious and it will link you to that fact check. So that's something that's been very helpful. But of course, we'd always love to see more of that happening. And, you know, things being taken down. And I know Facebook is saying that they are taking down some things that are that could be a danger and endangering people's health.

MG: Something that we will raise with the head of public policy for Facebook Canada coming up a little bit later on in the program. Andrea, thank you.

ANDREA BELLEMAR: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Andrea Bellemar is a CBC reporter. If you come across a story online about Covered 19 and you're not sure whether it's true or not. You can send it along to covidcheck@cbc.ca. And as I mentioned, in an hour or so, I'll speak with the head of public policy for Facebook Canada about what that company is doing to control misinformation and disinformation and whether those efforts are actually making any sort of dent. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. Time moves very quickly, if you can believe it. It's only been a couple of weeks since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. And one of the most nerve wracking things about this virus is how easily it seems to spread. Scientists, though, are digging deeper. They're trying to understand just how contagious this virus is and why. Jamie Lloyd-Smith is a professor of psychology at evolutionary biology at UCLA and the co-author of a new study looking at just how long the virus remains infectious on a range of different surfaces, he's a Canadian, originally from the Greater Toronto area. Jamie Lloyd-Smith, good morning to you.

JAMIE LLOYD-SMITH: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What have you found about how long this virus remains dangerous once it's on a surface and you think of the surfaces that are around them looking around, now there's a metal door handle or maybe a cardboard box. How long does it last on the surfaces?

JAMIE LLOYD-SMITH: Well, I was part of a study where my collaborators at a lab at the National Institutes of Health contaminated various surfaces and then resample from them six points in time. And they found that the virus could remain viable and infectious for periods of several hours or up to several days depending on the surface. So on smooth, sort of inert surfaces like plastic and stainless steel, they were able to recover infectious virus up to 72 hours after they had contaminated it. And on cardboard, it was 24 hours on copper, which is known to have some anti-microbial properties, it was just four hours.

MG: Why would there be that difference between those various substances?

JAMIE LLOYD-SMITH: I can't claim I know for sure, but the suspicion in the field is that if you have non porous surfaces that don't have any particular chemical activity against the virus, then that's a relatively benign environment for it to remain in whatever droplet or fluid it was deposited into a steel or plastic or other smooth surfaces may sort of fit that definition. Cardboard, which is a bit more porous, might be sort of absorptive and drain away whatever fluid the virus was suspended in. Copper, as I said, is known for other viruses to have certain chemical activity which actually acts against the virus's lifecycle. And so it is less surprising that copper was a less hospitable environment for it.

MG: There was this report that came out, I guess, earlier this week from the U.S. Centres for Disease Control. Got a lot of attention. And it showed that traces of COVID-19 were found in the cabins of the Diamond Princess cruise ship - That was the cruise ship that was quarantined with so many people who fell ill on it - that these substances were found 17 days after the passengers and the crew left that ship. What did you make of that?

JAMIE LLOYD-SMITH: Well, I certainly got my attention as well. You know, one crucial distinction is that the technique they used for that finding, and for many others that you might hear about, it's something called PCR. And that's a laboratory technique which basically detects whether the genetic material of the virus is still present. They can pick up the little bits of genome that may remain on the surface. And that's kind of a key point. You said traces of the virus. That's what they found. They did not demonstrate that the virus was still viable and able to infect cells. And that's a crucial step that our collaborators on this recent paper did do. They worked with the live virus and then they took these samples from various surfaces and actually inoculated them to life cells in culture so they could see whether the virus is still able to actually infect. So I should say it's not clear one way or the other from that finding from the CDC, whether at 17 days the virus remained infectious. But we can't conclude for sure that it was still infectious after such a long time.

MG: We were answering questions earlier in the program from some of our listeners about COVID-19. We did get one the deal specifically with this issue. A listener named Donna Murray asked about the best way to clean fruits and vegetables to make sure there's no virus on them. Is that something that you need to worry about? You go to the grocery store, you bring home an apple or a 10 blueberries. Should you be worried that the virus could be there on that fruit?

JAMIE LLOYD-SMITH: Well, like to be absolutely clear, this is not something that was tested in our study. But I can tell you what I sort of personally draw from it, which is that it's clear that this virus can persist and can remain infectious on sort of foreign objects for a period of hours or even days. One thing I should emphasize after that is that exactly what duration that is will depend heavily on sort of how heavy the contamination was in the first place. So, you know, if somebody sneezes directly on your tomato, then it's going to have a potentially a longer period of being infectious than if someone just walks by or, you know, sneezes 10 feet away. In any case, I think it is prudent to wash basically anything you're going to eat. If it's been out in the outside environment in the produce aisle, it certainly makes sense to wash it. Minimally the mechanical action of kind of scrubbing it off would do some benefit. Better still, I suppose if you have one of those produce washes or something, which frankly I've never used, that may help further. But, you know, I certainly do want to induce panicky fruit washing here. All of these are kind of risks at the margins. This is not thought to be the predominant way this virus spreads. And so I think out of an abundance of caution, or if you're in a particularly high risk group, then you might think to take those measures every day. Beyond that, it's the messaging that we've been getting from all our public health officials. You know, distance yourself, mothers, wash your hands frequently. Certainly I wash my hands after I get back from the grocery store and I certainly wash them before eating. But I don't view every object around me as sort of glowing with virus at all times.

MG: Just before I let you go, we have about a minute or so left. Is there the sense that this virus might start behaving differently from what we've been seeing? Can it mutate? Can it change? Can it get even more dangerous?

JAMIE LLOYD-SMITH: Well, it's important to recognise that all viruses mutate. It's sort of part of what they do and especially these so-called RNA viruses, which are the sloppier replication of their genomes. That does not necessarily mean it is mutating to change its function in particular, or certainly it is mutating to become more dangerous. So that is possible. This is a virus which is never transmitted among humans before. And so it's encountering a new environment and it may well adapt one way or the other. But at the moment, we have no basis to believe that it has done so in a meaningful way. Or if it does that, it will do so to sort of get scarier.

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

JAMIE LLOYD-SMITH: Thank you.

MG: Jamie Lloyd-Smith, Canadian researcher and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA. He co-authored a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine that looks at how long COVID-19 can remain infectious on a range of different surfaces.

[Music]

This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway.

[Music]

MG: That's the original Broadway production of Ragtime. If the Great White Way were not dark at this time, there would most certainly be a tribute this evening to Terrence McNally. Terrence McNally is known as one of the greatest contemporary playwrights, was involved with several Tony Award winning productions, including Ragtime. He was 81 when he died earlier this week of complications from coronavirus. And for more on his legacy, joined once again by Tom Power, the host of Q. Hello].

TP: Hi, Matt.

MG: Critics, as I say, are calling Terrence McNally one of the most important dramatists of the last 50 years for people who may not be familiar with him. Tell us a bit about him.

TP: Well, he was just an incredibly prolific playwright. Four time Tony winner, lifetime achievement. Tony winner. As you mentioned, Ragtime is certainly what he's best known for. But also he did the musical version of the Full Monty Kiss of the Spider Woman, the Reds. I mean, these were groundbreaking plays at the time, especially for representation of queer people on stage on Broadway.

MG: More than 30 plays, parts of four operas, books for ten musicals, screenplays for film and TV. How is he being remembered?

TP: Well, I'll give you a couple. So, American playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, of course, well-known from Hamilton said, heartbroken over the loss of Terrence McNally, a giant in our world who straddled plays and musicals, deftly. Grateful for his staggering body of work, his unfailing kindness. I really love Rufus Wainwright, great Canadian musician, posted on Instagram about going to see the Lisbon Traviata at 14 with his father, Loudon Wainwright the third. They were going through a rough time, sort of perpetually throughout their lives together. But he said, I will forever cherish it as one of the foundational artistic experiences that helped cement the delicate relationship my father and I reforming. Dad may not be into opera. I may never be into bluegrass. But we've both to this day adore the theatre and the fateful evening Terrence's wonderful play brought us closer together.

MG: As fondly as Terrence McNally is being remembered wasn't always that way. There was lots of controversy around his work as well.

TP: Well, yes, you look at his first Broadway play and things that go bump in the night. He was 24 when he put it out. It was panned. Newsday called it ugly, perverted and tasteless. It closed in less than three weeks. McNally often said that he would win the competition for worst, worst reviews, first place reviews or any play reviews. But with lower ticket prices, people who weren't typically going to see Broadway shows started coming to Terrence McNally plays and his success at his ticket sales became undeniable and eventually won over his critics. It was interesting as the AIDS crisis spread. Terrence McNally began to reflect on his own community and it fundamentally changed his writing. His work, Andre's mother, which was said a memorial service for an AIDS victim, was groundbreaking. Mothers and Sons was the first time a married gay couple was portrayed on stage. Terrence McNally is the kind of the right kind of artist because he's an artist that critics had to catch up to. But he knew what he was doing all along. I brought along this clip. Take a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

I first planned things that go bump in the night, had the first gay character who is sexually active. Before that there had been gay characters. They're are usually hairdressers or interior designers or alcoholics who committed suicide during act two. [Unintelligible]at school write what you know? You know and I know about gay men.

TP: You can hear right there. I mean, this is someone who knew what he was and knew the stories he wanted to tell at a time when no one else was telling those stories on Broadway. And like I said, critics and popular consensus caught up with him.

MG: He adapted the Broadway version of the Full Monty from the British film, Wildly Successful. Tell me about the touch that he put on a production.

TP: So for one, he took out of England, brought it to Buffalo in New York. You know, so he brought it to a situation that Broadway audiences can understand. And most importantly, he took the gay relationship between two characters, which was just kind of a small plot point in the original film. He made it into a focal point of the whole show and ended up getting rave reviews and really ended up helping make it into the cultural touchstone it became. Patrick Wilson, the really famous actor. He starred in two shows written by Terrians, including The Full Monty. He tweeted: He had a monumental impact on my career and will be missed.

MG: Tom, thank you.

TP: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Tom Power is the host of Q. He'll be back a little bit later on in the program with news about Alan Doyle's covered 19 related project. Before that, though, here's a bit of music from the Full Monty.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music from The Full Monty]

MG: Big finishes you'd expect. The man who helped adapt that from the original British film for Broadway, Terrence McNally, died earlier this week after contracting the coronavirus. He was 81 years old. Coming up in about 90 seconds time, this extended version of The Current continues and we'll talk about the coronavirus and addiction. Isolation can be dangerous, even fatal if you're struggling with addiction. Recovery groups have had to adjust very quickly to support people in need. We'll talk about battling addiction during a pandemic. That's coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. Stay with us.

Substance dependency and the pandemic

Guests: Karin Ward, Theo Bouwsema, Laurence Willis, Yonah Budd

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

SOUNDCLIP

Filling, my time is necessary. I'm over 18 years clean and sober. So recovery for me isn't just not using. It's trying to get to meetings where you can get that support. And a lot of that support has been cut off because a lot of those meetings are not available anymore.

MG: People recovering from addiction know it's important to stay busy, stay focussed and stay social. Those who feel tempted to relapse can turn to a sponsor or a support group. But that's not so easy. During this pandemic today, we'll look at how COVID-19 is affecting those who struggle with addiction. We begin in Vancouver's downtown east side, which is already struggling with a different public health crisis. The opioid crisis that is sweeping across this nation. Karen Ward is a longtime advocate in the neighbourhood. She's a drug user herself, is currently working with the city as a crisis response coordinator. Karen, good morning.

KAREN WARD: Good morning.

MG: Yesterday was check day on the Downtown East side. Explain what that means and how things are playing out in that community.

KAREN WARD: Well, it's the day of the month when it's actually been kind of stretched into a couple of days where everyone who is on social assistance, per usual social assistance, that welfare and disability, gets their support checks and that's that. I mean, there's not very much money. You're on basic welfare. That's a total of $706. And your shelter portion is 375. There's nothing to rent for 375. So it's always really cutting it close. And so February with a long month. Or February-March was a long month and we call it a five weeker. And so everyone was desperate to get something in their pockets. I mean, the last two weeks have just been- I've never seen it so bad. Like, it's just people were like selling all their possessions on the street all day long. It was you know, there has been so much hate, like small crime, theft, violence, just horrible because, you know- and there's nothing to- You know, people get their checks and all the stores are closed. You can't stock up. People who are seeing all these other people going and buying toilet paper, buying groceries and stocking up. And just like watching that happen. And you don't have it. You don't have a cent in your pocket.

MG: When you take a look at that in that scenario, how much awareness is there on the Downtowny side about the pandemic that's happening right now?

KAREN WARD: Well, we have no media. I mean, we don't have it. We even have a couple free newspapers. We don't have those don't printed, print edition anymore. Some people have the access to, you know, smartphones and Internet. Some don't. Some have never used it. So we really do struggle with fact. We don't actually have shared common facts anymore. So it's always a: hey, did you hear about this? An instead of a discussion about what it is. It turns into a debate about whether it exists or not. It's very- And we don't share spaces, because everything is, not that its territorial. It's that people aren't allowed in other spaces. They're not allowed inside community centre, for example, because they are banned, because they were drunk or high or something, or they don't go to this place because that person- this whole very territorial. I Mean, there's a legal aspect to it as well. People are red zones from certain blocks, which is to say that there's an order against them declawing going in certain blocks.

MG: Do you know whether there's any testing that's going on there of people who might have been exposed or been infected with the COVID-19?

KAREN WARD: There's a kind of standard protocol where they people do. If you're in housing or you're connected with something and you're showing some sort of symptoms, you're a worker in your building or your social worker or what have you, will ensure you, as just as anybody else is. There is talk of a screening chance, but it hasn't materialized yet.

MG: It's a very dense area. I mean, I was there a couple of months ago and there's a lot of people you think of, especially in the evening when people are out on the sidewalks there and spring has arrived. We keep hearing about this idea of physical distancing, but staying two meters apart from each other. Is that possible there?

KAREN WARD: No, it's not possible. I mean, our sidewalks are that wide. You know it. And they're packed as it is. And now there's so many more people out. And I was saying in the fall that, you know, it's actually our space that we inhabit is getting smaller. It's like we're crushed, we're being kettled. We're being pushed in on ourselves. And because the social housing buildings have now restricted guests and visitors and that includes partners, relatives, friends, buddies who would come and stay on people's couches and hang out and be inside. Now they're all outside wandering around with suitcases and backpacks. And there's like so many more people out. It's real. It's added, I mean, least at least 800 or 900 people get to the unhoused population. And there's nowhere to go. All the parks are closed, libraries, the security centre, any spaces like there's nothing, places are boarded up. So it's really I mean, Travis Lupick wrote his book about the history of [unintelligible] actually today. It was called Fighting for Space. I was thinking you've never seen a fight like this. I mean, people are literally pushing each other in the sidewalk, stepping over each other.

MG: You started by saying this. You know, the downtown east side has its own public health crisis, which is opioid abuse. What about the supply of opioids there?

KAREN WARD: It's actually overdose and poison. It's not just opioid it's [unintelligible] and the poison drug, you know.

MG: What's happening with the supply of drugs in the middle of all of this?

KAREN WARD: I, well, think of it, if toilet paper was unregulated and criminalized, it would probably be, you know, the prices would go up and people would start selling things that wasn't really toilet paper. I mean, it's not that there's less of anything except the contamination is accelerated. This is purely speculation on my part, what I'm seeing because we had a drug check, we had a spectrometer to check drugs, to see what the contents were, so you could track it over time. And the health authorities went on hiatus with it. So we can't actually do that. I mean, we had, the last long time we've had a benzodiazepine analogues in the so-called Down the Sentinel or what have you.

MG: Right.

KAREN WARD: All kinds of strange things that [unintelligible] animals tranquilizer--

MG: Things will be even exacerbate the danger.

KAREN WARD: Oh, absolutely. I mean, the point is that you don't know. People do not know what they're consuming. It adds to the danger.

MG: You're working with the city on this. What are you doing with the city?

KAREN WARD: It's been like four or five days at this point. But we're trying to assemble a crew of residents and we're trying to communicate fact, things that are important to know, you know, we got a couple hundred people out to get a bank account in over the weekend, so that, in an effort to avoid line-ups that are typical of the neighbourhood. Like everything you have a line up for; food, welfare checks, bank, like everything. You know, any kind of thing you want you have to line up for pretty much. So you're trying to avoid that by facilitating access to getting bank accounts to be able get a direct deposit. And there still, gee, it was awful. I mean, you can say, you know, I was talking to one person yesterday and it was like, you know, oh, well, I heard about this distance thing, but where else am I going to stand? You know, it's like, well, how does it make any difference down here? No one cares. No one cares anymore. And you know, and that's a heartbreaking thing. It's just like, yeah, I know. Doesn't matter.

MG: What are you most worried? Just before I let you go, what are you most worried about?

KAREN WARD: I'm worried that, you know, there's a couple thousand homeless people, you know, unhoused. This is like a concentrated, you know, the site where people who are Canadians, who have been discarded, who have been targeted by the violence that everybody tolerates. Wind up. And I was calling you the death spiral a year ago. And I worry that the rest of Canada, if you do abandon all these people, that they've already abandoned repeatedly, and then in this particular kind of an emergency, let's be would love. People would love to go inside and stay home and stay safe. We would love that. And not, you know, produced endless cycles of this virus. We would love that, but we can't. You know, we'd love to take care of everybody else and be part of a, you know, healthy public health like, you know, community. But we're not even allowed to do that. We're not even allowed to take care of each other anymore. And that's what's frustrating me now.

MG: Karen, take care of yourself. And I appreciate you telling us what was happening in your community.

KAREN WARD: Thank you, Matt.

KAREN WARD: Karen Ward is a longtime advocate in Vancouver's downtown East Side. She's working with the city as a crisis response coordinator. Laurie Willis and Theo Bouwsema both live in the Edmonton area and they are both in recovery from alcohol addiction. Laurie is a semi-retired business owner. Theo is a youth counsellor. Both men attend the Sunshine Coast Health Care Centre for treatment, and they're now part of the SCHC Edmonton Area Support Group. This is a weekly meeting led by a life coach and vital connection for both men in the midst of what they are in. Now in the age of social distancing and physical distancing, those meetings aren't face to face. They've gone online. Laurie and Theo. Good morning to you.

LAURIE WILLIS: Good morning.

THEO BOUWSEMA: Morning.

MG: Laurie, you just got back from your winter home in Palm Springs. Tell me about being in isolation and what that's like for you.

LAURIE WILLIS: Well, my routine down in Palm Springs with my recovery is I'm in the gym three days a week. Pilates three days a week. And I'm much more fortunate than the people before. And I go through every day. My day was kept very, very busy. And then all of a sudden we had to come home into isolation. And we're in day six right now. So all of that is gone. And, you know, boredom is probably one of the most, one of the bigger reasons, you can relapse. And I suppose if I was going to relapse, it would be because of that. I'm not because I'm very mature in that. And I've learned to fill the void. And one of the way I fill the void is SCHC has provided us with online meetings now instead of face to face. I also attend smart meetings online, which did run three days a week as well. So I am coping actually pretty good considering on what's going on.

MG: What about you, Theo? Take a look at the weekly group meetings. What is the place that they play in your lives.

THEO BOUWSEMA: In this situation that we're all in, loneliness is just takes over so quickly and you very quickly realise all the things that you've been taking for granted. And so for me, being able to see those people and, you know, just it's obviously not the same as seeing someone in person, but it's a reason to kind of like keep going. I look forward to them all week. If it takes away a bit of that loneliness. It completely fixes things.

MG: Tell me more about that. Your ears. These meetings are now happening online. How is that going for you?

THEO BOUWSEMA: So I've tried other groups like AA and things like that, Smart Recovery, Recovery Dharma. But I've never found a group as supportive, as non-judgemental as this particular alumni group that Laurie and I are a part of. If someone doesn't show up, you get messages from people that are saying like, hey, we missed you. And, you know, it's more than just people that you're in recovery with. They become your friends. And, you know, to a certain extent I'd go even further and I'd say, like they become your family.

MG: If you agree with that, Laurie?

LAURIE WILLIS: I sure do. We call each other a band of brothers, basically. I only know Theo through SCHC meetings. He's a brother to me. Very comforting.

MG: And so when that brotherhood, I'll use your phrase, when that becomes a virtual community. What do you end up missing? Laurie?

LAURIE WILLIS: I miss the handshakes and the hugs. You kn. ow, the personal contact, I guess, which is so important simply to me.

MG: Are there things there that just aren't the same when you're meeting online?

THEO BOUWSEMA: Yes. It's for sure. In my experience, there's a, there's kind of a cultural taboo for four men in particular, of physical touch. You're expected to be very, very stoic, self-sufficient. Just, you know, you always have to be that rock. Going into these groups and just like giving another man a hug like, I can't even, I can't even describe it. But even talking about it puts a smile on my face.

MG: When you can't do that, then? Then how do you compensate, Theo? Because it's really important, as you said, for the process and the journey that you're on to have that sense of community around you, that family that's there. So if you can't get that personal touch, that physical connection, how are you coping with it?

THEO BOUWSEMA: For me, it's about creating a routine. It's been a particularly tough time of isolation. My grandma passed.

MG: I'm sorry.

THEO BOUWSEMA: You're like since this began. And so, you know, not being able to see her. And more and I guess I'm in the traditional way I've had to really create a plan and be very intentional about what I do. So, you know, every day doesn't look exactly the same. But yes, I'm just very mindful about everything I do, you know?

MG: What would you say, Theo, to people who are listening, who are in recovery and who might have a regular support group, they might have a network there. And that's been disrupted and blown apart by this pandemic that we're in. And they can't go to the meeting. They can't meet with people. What would you say to them?

THEO BOUWSEMA: I would say that when- I think part of that need for connections is a need for something to be bigger than ourselves. So whether that's friendship, volunteer or spirituality, some of those things aren't really possible right now, but there are ways that we can modify them and still get some fulfilment out of it. Like I know a lot of religious groups have moved to doing their services online. You know, you can still call, face time, a friends. You can still donate to charities and those who are helping the less fortunate. There's things we can do to connect to others. It just looks a little bit different. And honestly, it's a little bit harder. It takes more work now.

MG: Laurie, what would you say to people who are listening, who might be in the situation that you're in?

LAURIE WILLIS: You know, the human contact is definitely missed, but I guess one good thing that has come about this is that I've learned to know more about my wife and she's actually a pretty good person. And I enjoy the physical contact with her. But, you know, there is help online and I would urge him to seek it. If you motivate yourself to get it, it's there.

MG: I wish the best to both of you and appreciate you speaking with us this morning. Stay well.

LAURIE WILLIS: Okay. Thanks.

THEO BOUWSEMA: Thank you.

LAURIE WILLIS: See your Tuesday, Theo.

MG: Laurie Wellis is a semi-retired business person who splits his time between Palm Springs and Leduc County. Theo Bouwsema is youth counsellor who lives in Edmonton talking about what life is like in recovery. In this time of the pandemic, Yonah Budd has been listening into our conversation. He spent more than 40 years helping people with addiction and mental health issues. He's also the clinical director and co-founder of a residential treatment centre and Stouffville, Ontario. It's called The Farm. Yonah, good morning to you.

YONAH BUDD: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for joining us. You've been listening to Laurie and to Theo. When you think about what these two men are going through, what do you make of how they're handling this situation that they have been thrown into?

YONAH BUDD: I'm really impressed. Kudos to both of them for being able to reconnect through whatever services are available versus shutting it down, saying if they can't get through my meeting, I'm not going to do anything, which a lot of people are saying. So I give them, you know, huge points and huge points to their own groups and those that are organising things to keep them connected. It's a big problem because the whole concept of anonymous meetings is such that it's a platform that's highly secure. Number one, that's one thing. And number two, there's no way to get a hold of people. Right, because it's, hi, I'm Dave. I'm an alcoholic. Hi I'm Bill, I'm an alcoholic. You don't get their last name, phone number, email address and so on. So you have to step outside of the standard rules of 12-Step in order to make this work. And I'm really impressed with those that are doing that.

MG: Tell me about what you're doing at the farm. This is the residential treatment centre there. Are you able to keep business and operations as usual in the midst of a very unusual time?

YONAH BUDD: Yes, well, as usual. I mean, we're seeing patients we're taking patients. We treat our facility like a hospital. So, people that need care, need care. What we're not doing is we're not- We're virtually providing support for families because we have a very active family program that people typically show up to. Our aftercare programs, which are our one-on-one sessions after patients leave. They used to come to the building to do that so we could see them. We could, you know, provide a urine test and so on. So we're doing all that virtually. But in terms of individual patient care, we're very busy with a tremendous backlog of those that are trying to get in the door and be seen. And we're just taking patients one at a time, assuming that we have good contact with their medical providers and they've been self isolating for at least two weeks before they come to us. We check in on them daily to make sure they're still self isolating before they come to us. So we're still seeing patients and and treating those in need. You know, as we heard from your previous guest and the woman who is spending time on the streets of West Hastings there, I mean, that's serious stuff. These are people doing serious work. But there's people that need their treatment and need their care. We can't close the door.

MG: If you had to close the doors, we're seeing doors close that have never closed before. Whether it's in religious communities, mosques and churches, what have you. If your doors had to close, what would that mean for the people that need treatment?

YONAH BUDD: People, some people, would die.

MG: It's as simple as that.

YONAH BUDD: Yes. I mean, we treat we treat highly broken people, you know, very sick people with generally dual diagnosis because we treat mental health and addiction in that order. And by the time they come to us, they've either been somewhere else or twice somewhere else before. They're at the last, their last legs, so to speak. If we don't provide, I'm not sure about us alone, but if there aren't treatment facilities available for those that are suffering with mental health and self-medication around that kind of behaviour, they have nowhere to go. And they're going to- I'm seeing it now. I'm seeing people I'm seeing people that I know that are on the street, that have been using high levels of opioids for years who are now, you know, not getting the support from the injection sites and the support groups and the drop in centres and the clinics. And people are dying. I mean, they're really dying on the street.

MG: We heard from Laurie, from Theo, the importance of the routine. And that routine can be going to the meeting. It can be just having a regimented system. It can be having a plan. All of that gets thrown out the window in a situation like this. What is that uncertainty and that additional stress mean for people who might be grappling with addiction?

YONAH BUDD: So the schedule and routine are are critical components of the healthy and satisfying recovery. So you take that away, you put people very much at risk. But, you know, if you don't have a meeting to go, there's something you can fill that space with. And I talk to people about this all day, every day. So I'm going to give you the speech. You can still get up in the morning, still have your breakfast or do your workouts or do your medications. Still do your reading. So do your journalling. Get online, connect with friends, you know, do your work. Do you? You know, I'll do whatever support work you need to be doing that day. You know, if you're doing your job from home, do your job from home. You have to create the routine that you had when it wasn't virtual and the virtual world. And I am so impressed with what's out there these days in terms of people providing support and meetings and free clinics and free therapy and all that kind of stuff for people that want to dial into it. So there's lots of stuff out there that people can do to continue to keep their schedule in check. And once that schedule is not in check and you start to slide sleep in a little bit, you know, don't eat the meals when you're supposed to, because eating is very important. You know, you don't take the time to breathe and meditate like you're supposed to, as part of your regular routine, then you're it's a slippery slope.

MG: We saw across the country provinces allowing beer and liquor stores to stay open. They were closed in P.E.I. and then reopened some of them in order to help people who might be at risk from alcohol withdrawal. There's been a conversation about whether you keep the liquor store open as an essential service. What do you make of that conversation?

YONAH BUDD: Oh God. You're asking me if liquors are essential product? The answer is obviously no. But, you know, at the same time, there are people that for whom not having a drink- I have three. Three right now that we're detoxing. I'm helping detox at home, going from 40 ounces of nominal, forget litres and stuff, 40 ounces of alcohol a day. And we're turning them down to 12 beers, eight beers, six periods, five beers, forebears until we get to the zero. You know, if they don't have access to alcohol, many of them will seize or have a heart attack. If they're long term users and they're over the age of, say, 30, 35. The chance of a seizure high tech is very high. You know. Listen, man, I think, you know, are people going to drink more because they're secluded? 100 percent. Is this going to impact people that have a drinking problem? A 100 percent. Does that mean you close the liquor stores? Gosh, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I just think that things like having the marijuana stores, the liquor stores opened certainly provide people with the opportunity to maybe buy more than they might if they're not at home doing their job. And closing them, what does that mean to people that are in recovery or in withdrawal? You know, that's a tough call. I would say just cutting people off that need to drink every day is a very dangerous, very dangerous move and likely would keep the emergency rooms very busy.

MG: Do you worry that it plays into what Karen was saying at the beginning of this conversation, which is that a community that has been marginalized already is going to be further kicked to the curb?

YONAH BUDD: Oh, yes, sure. You know, the people living in cardboard boxes and trying to make a life for themselves that have mental health and addiction issues and those that are living in ivory towers, that have mental health and addiction issues. You know, marginalized or not, if services start going away and providers don't make things available, don't adjust and adapt, if you will, to make services available to people, the death toll for those that are marginalized will be far greater than those that have COVIDV-90.

MG: To your point, though, addiction is something that spreads right across communities. It doesn't matter. You know how much money you make or how little money you make and sell for people who are listening who might be having a tough time themselves, what piece of advice would you give?

YONAH BUDD: Well, connect with friends. Connect with friends. Connect with friends. Keep busy. Make sure you have some means by which to vent your frustration. So a good walk, a jailhouse workout, which is something you could do in your basement, push ups, sit ups, kinds of stuff. You have any ability to punch a heavy bag or something, that's great. But just being able to vent the frustration and just the sort of the anxiety of kind of living in a constrained environment. But connecting to people, you know, trying to keep your routine in check in terms of being regular, don't seclude, don't hide, don't self-medicate and seek help. There's lots of help out there. Lots of my colleagues across the country are providing free video chat help and it's out there. So just to hang in there and this will pass and this will make us better people on the other side. You know, people are now reflecting and learning about each other. I have some couples that we're in the midst of divorce that aren't now, that reconnected. So it's a lot of positive stuff. So stay positive and stay in the moment. Don't worry about yesterday because it's gone and tomorrow you can't really predict anyway. Stay in the moment.

MG: We'll take that advice. Yonah, it's good to speak with you. Thank you.

YONAH BUDD: Thanks for having me.

MG: Yonah Budd is clinical director, co-founder of The Farm. It's a residential treatment centre in Stouffville, Ontario. This extended edition of The Current continues on CBC Radio One in six minutes time. I Matt Galloway. Stay with us.

Facebook’s Kevin Chan on fake news; Jenn Agg on challenges facing hospitality

Guests: Kevin Chan, Jen Agg

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come on this extended version of the program, Mr. Alan Doyle of Great Big See, that band is known for big lively concerts. Now, Alan Doyle is performing solos to help kids through this tough time. We'll hear from him coming up. But first, just because it's in your timeline doesn't mean it's true.

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MG: As health agencies urge Canadians to stay home and connect with friends online. You've probably been spending a lot more time on social media like Facebook. It has been a crucial way for friends and family to stay connected. And for communities to organise, to help each other in the midst of this pandemic. But you may have also noticed a lot of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Well, to talk about how Facebook is dealing with this COVID-19 pandemic, I'm joined by Kevin Chan. He is the head of public policy for Canada at Facebook. Kevin, good morning.

KEVIN CHAN: Good morning, Matt.

MG: How much more time are people spending on Facebook these days? Do you know?

KEVIN CHAN: Well, we don't have sort of specific numbers at this time, but I think it's clear that people are spending more time online, given that they're now practicing social distancing. So they're staying at home. We've seen a similar kind of uptick in activity. So some of the numbers that we have released in the short period that we've seen this is, you know, we are looking at people increasing the amount of text messages they send. So I think that's up to around 50 percent increase. And then also, of course, video and audio calling. We've also seen tremendous increase. So about 100 percent increase in the countries where this has been the most acute.

MG: How's Facebook coping with a surge in demand?

KEVIN CHAN: Well, I mean, that's one of the things that we are very much used with at this time. You know, we all have to do our part at a time of global health concern. And for us, one of the key things that we are focussed on is just making sure that the platform remains stable and reliable for people as they go about their day. They expect the ability to be able to stay connected to family and friends while they're at home. And so we obviously are doing all that we can to make sure that the infrastructure behind the service and behind the platform remains, remains stable and available to people.

MG: This is important because in many countries, Facebook is the Internet. It is the way that they connect with people in outside of the country and perhaps outside of their own home. There are a lot of people who are using it to connect, but they're also sharing a lot of information that is not true, that is not accurate, and that can be incredibly dangerous. What steps is Facebook taking to address the false information that's out there?

KEVIN CHAN: Yes, I mean, if I could just back up a little bit, Matt, I mean, I know we talked about the importance of keeping the service up and available for people. And that's one of the key things were seized with. I mean, if I could just say the two other things that we're looking at would be the second one. And I think this is very important is actually getting timely and accurate information about COVID-19 to Canadians. And so in that regard, what we're doing is we're working with the Public Health Agency of Canada on that, as well as with global health experts around the world. And so what we're doing actually is for the 24 million Canadians that are on Facebook, we're actually sending them notifications directly in newsfeed, directing them to the Public Health Agency of Canada, where they can actually get the most accurate and reliable information. And so that's the piece we're doing on information, making sure people have the right information. But then, you know, the other third piece that I really want to get out to your listeners is obviously there are many communities that use Facebook that are affected by the The Current challenge that we're living with. So I'm thinking about small businesses. I'm thinking about reporters who are using the Internet and using Facebook to get things out. And I'm also thinking about performing artists. And in those three areas, we've also put together various programs to help support and do our part in this time of, you know, in this time of global health concerns.

MG: And those are all incredibly important initiatives, but they don't deal with the issue of accurate information. There are people who are posting things on Facebook saying that this was created in a lab, that the virus has created a lab in China, that if you gargle, you can prevent the corona virus, that you can tell if you have it by holding your breath for 10 seconds. This is dangerous stuff. What is Facebook doing to ensure that the information that is being shared on your platform is accurate?

KEVIN CHAN: Yes, we agree that where there are things that are actually being said and spread on our services that are a risk to harm to individuals or Real-World Harm. Those are the things that we're actively looking to remove. Whether we do this because we have found it or if others report it to us. But so, again, it's really a, one, to punch line they say. No one is we're trying to get accurate information to Canadians by working with the Public Health Agency of Canada and directing people to that information. But two, where there are people who, for whatever reason, they have a belief or an opinion or are maliciously spreading things that lead to real harm. Like you say, potentially saying, hey, if you drink bleach, this will cure, you know, COVID-19, something like that that we know in working with global health experts and we know scientifically it is false and can actually lead to harm to individuals if they follow those kinds of beliefs. Then we will remove that from the source.

MG: So how are you doing that? How is Facebook tracking that misinformation?

KEVIN CHAN: Well, we're doing it in one of two ways. I mean, one is just through our automated systems. And so it's very similar to the types of systems that we had. I think some success was during the election that we had here in Canada just a few months ago of us looking at building artificial intelligence systems that can recognise these sorts of things. We identify these things first working with global health authorities. So we need folks like the W.H.O. We need folks like a public health agency of Canada to tell us, you know, from based on their expertise, what are things that could lead to, if followed, could lead to real harm. Once we have that information or able to build systems that try to proactively find these things where they exist on our service and we move them. But then, of course, another big part and this is something that I hope your listeners can also help them do their part in this. If you see these sorts of things on Facebook that someone is saying, then you need to report those things to us, because we're working very quickly to take control of those reports and move very swiftly to take action against them and remove them from the system.

MG: So some of that is being shared in public posts. But you have a messenger app that is wildly successful among friends. Facebook also owns WhatsApp and there are WhatsApp groups in which that information is being and misinformation is being shared there as well. Are you tracking that misinformation on those parts of your platform?

KEVIN CHAN: Well, I mean, WhatsApp is it a different case because, of course, the messages are private, they are encrypted. I think these people who want to keep their kind of private conversations private, but in those cases, we've actually built systems into the actual messaging service itself. And so we have put a two big things that we've done is we've made sure that there is labelling, very prominent labelling when messages are forwarded that tend to be from people you don't know. But we've seen that this information can usually propagate that kind of way. And so we have lots of labelling that kind of flag things that people are more aware. The other thing we've done is we've drastically reduced the number of people you can actually forward information to. And so we're trying to really retain the value and the benefit of private communication, because I think people valuable things that we're trying to limit the ability for people to reshare things that they don't know the provenance of.

MG: But if I may know what's our group with a bunch of friends and people are sharing misinformation, if it's not being forwarded, there's nothing really that you're doing about that because as you say, this is private communication.

KEVIN CHAN: It is a private communication, and we also obviously want to be careful that even at a time like this, you know, people's ability to express themselves have and have the freedom to be able to speak their mind is important.

MG: Even if what they're saying is false and perhaps can be really dangerous?

KEVIN CHAN: Well, no, but again, as I said, where we draw a limit and I think either it limits or not just us as a company places, but I think if you look at just sort of the way liberal democratic instead of countries operate to our limits. You cannot, for example, shout fire in a theatre. You can't. And in this case, you can't say things that if people were to follow, it would lead to real world physical harm.

MG: You talked about the information from Public Health Agency of Canada that is being shared through Facebook. We saw that some of that information was being marked as spam as of being blocked. Why is that happening?

KEVIN CHAN: Yes, that was an issue that we had with our automated system that's been fixed, but that happened I think about a week ago. These are glitches that we have in the system from time to time. It was a spam filter, so it designed to remove spam. You know, things that people don't want to see on the platform, things that are actually click [unintelligible] and that are not actually quality content. That was not working as it should at the time. But we have fixed that and also restored all the posts that were that were removed because of that glitch.

MG: And so that information that is accurate information, important information is no longer going to be flagged spam.

KEVIN CHAN: Well, I actually it was a broad set of things and it wasn't, some of it was, I think, related to COVID-19 because a people were sharing it, but it was really more of the behaviour, the [unintelligible] behaviours that seem to have not worked properly. And so we fixed that error and we've restored all the posts. So it wasn't just about a particular subject.

MG: One of the things that happens is that this moves so quickly, information around the world and misinformation is the you know, the clichés, a lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on, that that there is this idea that things spread quickly and you can try and clamp down on it. But by the time you do that, it's been seen by hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Do you worry about the lives that could be put at risk between the time of false information or false claim posted, and then when Facebook is able to take it down?

KEVIN CHAN: Well, I mean, look, Matt, if I could be, you know, if I could be, you know, honest about this, I do think that, you know, when you look at the totality of information that's being put into Facebook about COVID-19, a lot a lot of this is going to be the information that is actually factories factual and accurate. What we're doing, I can give you some stats on this, again, to reiterate, we're partnering with the World Health Organisation, the Public Health Agency of Canada and many other public health authorities around the world. The numbers we have in the short period of time since about, January, mid-January, when we've been sort of sending notifications out to users, we're looking at 100. That's where I think we're looking at somewhere on the order of a billion notifications have been sent to people and about 100 million people have actually clicked through it to get accurate information. So I think when you talk about, you know, are we giving good information to people, I think we absolutely are. And I think the numbers are impressive by any stretch of the imagination. In the areas where if there are people who are sharing things that are dangerous to themselves and dangerous to others, and global health authorities have confirmed that, we are moving very swiftly to remove these things oftentimes before people have even been able to find these things on their own. But again, I think it's so important it does come down to the we all have sort of a walled off from of digital citizenship that we're in this kind of digital hygiene. If people do see these things, they should report them as well. Help us be able to move very swiftly to remove them from the system.

MG: Does this then set out a new model perhaps for how Facebook could work when it comes to information that is shared on its platform? We've talked about the problem of misinformation around elections and the democratic process given, as you say, the company is seized with its responsibility here. Could that trickle down into other areas where misinformation is shared through your site?

KEVIN CHAN: Well, I mean, you know, we are this is a very important and special case because clearly when we think about public health emergencies, the risk to real world harm is very high. And so actually, when you look at our community standards, if you look at the rules that govern speech on the platform, we have always had this provision that basically says if there is a speech that can lead to real world harm, that that's a violation of our content policies. And if there are violations, we will remove them.

MG: But you know what I'm getting at there, that the criticism that has been levelled at Facebook in past is that that is in the eye of the beholder. In some ways, that interpretation is there in the eye of the beholder. And that has led all sorts of noxious information be spread on the site that perhaps should have been pulled down. So will what you're doing now influence what you do in future when it comes to making sure that what people see on the site is true and accurate?

KEVIN CHAN: Well, we're always learning and evolving in terms of how we're thinking about these things. But I would say to your point, you're absolutely right. It is in the eye of the beholder. It is not in many cases, especially political speech, because political speech is something that, you know, again, it's so tied to freedom of expression. Being able to express your opinions. I just want to come back for you and for your listeners. I mean, when it comes to things like a public health emergency, the door is not really this kind of question of eye of the beholder. This is really about what do global health experts tell us. What does Dr. Teresa Tam tell us. And when they say that these sorts of things, saying that you can drink bleach and then suddenly be, you know, be cured. They say social distancing doesn't lead to any kind of of a reduction in contagion. When they say those things, we need to act. We need to remove these things precisely because there are no shades of grey. It's very black and white. And we need to take it off the system, because if people saw it and if people believe it and if people practise it. It could actually lead to harm to themselves and to others.

MG: Kevin Chan, it's great to talk to you about this. I appreciate your time today. Thank you.

KEVIN CHAN: Thank you for having me.

MG: Kevin Chan is the head of public policy for Canada at Facebook.

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MG: This is The Current on CBC One. I Matt Galloway, you know that running a restaurant is tough enough to begin with. In mere weeks, the entire industry in Canada has all but collapsed. Some restaurants are trying to scrape by on takeout alone. Others say they need a bailout to survive the pandemic. It's a bleak landscape. Jen Agg is a founder and operator of some of Toronto's best loved restaurants like La Swan and Grey Gardens. She shut those restaurants down before it was mandatory. Jen, good morning.

JEN AGG: Hey, Matt. How are you?

MG: I'm well. Tell me about the decision to close your restaurants.

JEN AGG: Well, you know, it was a hard decision, but also it wasn't a hard decision. You know, it was just so obvious that that was what needed to happen. So we acted as quickly as we possibly could.

MG: Why did it seem obvious to you?

JEN AGG: I mean, I was following the news. It was getting more and more clear that this was becoming an emergency. That, you know, a lot of people had seen coming months prior. And yes, it just it's crazy to me that we sort of left it so long here and now it's kind of past the point of no return. But yeah, it just seemed very obvious that we had to just [unintelligible] public safety.

MG: I said at the beginning that it's difficult to run a restaurant and be in the restaurant business. What sort of knife edge do you live on? Between making it and not making it?

JEN AGG: Well, I mean, that's what I think a lot of people, especially our government, don't understand, is that even busy restaurants are putting out so much money every single week with payroll, with buying product to run the restaurant with fixed costs like rent that if your revenue just stops. Everything stops. It grinds to a halt. You pay your staff, you pay your suppliers and there's nothing left. And our restaurants are successful. So I think if we're looking at major restaurant groups asking for donations for go fund mes, which I don't know about that, but it's serious. It's a it's a huge problem. I know. It's - yes, there's this. Everybody's panicking. Restaurants are not going to make it through this.

MG: The first of April is coming. And you have been saying you have concerns about rent and that you're not paying some of your April rent. How will your landlord respond to that?

JEN AGG: Well, I have a couple I've had a couple of conversations already. So I have five landlords and two of them that I've spoken with have been reasonable and understanding. I mean, I think that they're thinking in terms of deferral, which, you know, I don't really understand why landlords should be immune from market forces. How do they think we make our rent? And if we're unable to make our rent, you know, why should we pay? I understand there are a mortgage to be paid. This is all top down. This is all systemic. So if mortgage relief is being offered, I think we have to find a way to work with our landlords. Now, whether that means one or two months of free rent throughout this process and it's free, some kind of deferral, some kind of, you know, 25 or 30 percent rent, I don't really know what the answer is. I know that I'm going to try and work it through with the two landlords, that I expect it will be a more difficult conversation with in a couple of hours.

MG: What do you think could happen? I mean, is there the possibility you don't pay the rent? You could end up, you know, with your building being padlocked or something like that?

JEN AGG: Well, I don't think that. I mean, I think anyone that's thinking like that isn't seeing the big picture here. And I think anyone that's looking at their short term gain like a landlord wanting April 1st or rent is an understanding that, you know, we're great tenants. We've never missed a payment. We've never caused a problem at any of the properties. In fact, we've vastly improved all of the properties with, you know, all told, millions of dollars worth of leasehold improvements. Many of those dollars that now belong to the building. So anyone that's thinking long term is going to want to work with us. And I get the feeling, even the landlords that I have, you know, less good relationships with, I get that that like at the end of this four months, six months down the road when we returned to not normalcy, but something whatever the other side of this looks like, that they're going to not want empty buildings. So for maybe the first time ever, it feels like a buyer's market in terms of being a tenant. So they need to understand that, too.

MG: What do you want from the federal government? A lot of money is going out the door already when it comes to aid and relief. What do you want specifically?

JEN AGG: I want them to understand that we have fixed operating costs. Like, for example, rents. So if we were to get some help, we could pay our rent. We could keep some of the gears of the economy grinding and not just, you know, slowing to a halt. I'm working with someone now to get some granular data in front of the right people so that they actually understand what it is we're going through. So I think part of the problem, never mind that this is moving so quickly, but also that, you know, people in government maybe have no idea how restaurants work. The Cheesecake Factory is not paying its rent, you know, so this, is if big corporations are unable or unwilling to pay their rent, how are small restaurants supposed to do it? And we're talking about over a million people in Canada. Never mind all of these sizes. This is that the supply lines that lead to restaurants, never mind, you know, that 70 percent of the workforce is small business. So this is a really, really huge issue. And we just want to put it into graphs with a very simple explanation for this is what we're going to be opening the doors with down the road. This is what kind of debt we're going to be in. So we need help with that. That's what I want.

MG: Just in the last minute that we have, you talked about the other side of this. There was a report that it was looking at what's happening in New York, saying that there's a huge percentage of the restaurants in New York City that will not survive. What we're in right now. Do you worry about that?

JEN AGG: I know that it's true. It's not even a question of whether I worry about it. I absolutely know that a large percentage of restaurants won't survive this initial blast, if you will. But it's not just that, it's the restaurants that do somehow manage to hang in there and dig into those lines of credit or put their homes on the line, which a lot of restaurateurs already do to get loans to open businesses. And then we're talking about the six months to a year down the road. And then there's going to be another wave of closures. That's what I see.

MG: When you own the bill that you've deferred.

JEN AGG: Exactly. Can those bills become crushing. So that we really, really need a bailout and I really, really want to get in front of the right people and explain this to them.

MG: Will your places survive this?

JEN AGG: Yes. I mean, I have to believe that.

MG: Because you live in restaurants. I mean, this is your life.

JEN AGG: Yes. I mean, we're also you know, we yeah. We have a really strong team of people and a lot of will. Ah, because we've worked so hard on our culture. We have a big group of people who want the restaurants to survive, who believe in the restaurants and who also want to make sure that they survive. So we don't have our staff revolting against us or feeling like we've done the wrong thing. You know, we're keeping in close contact with everyone. And I'm so thrilled with the news from yesterday about the $2000 relief, because that was my major, major panic causing me sleepless nights was worrying about servers who were not getting enough relief. So that's a big relief.

MG: Jen, good luck. And it's good to talk to you.

JEN AGG: Thanks, Matt.

MG: Jen Agg is a restaurant owner and author based in Toronto. Coming up in about 90 seconds, your questions about COVA 19 answered. We'll hear from one of the top infectious disease specialists in this country. Stay with us. I'm Matt Galloway. This is an extended edition of The Current.

Alan Doyle

Guest: Alan Doyle

MG: Fresh into the studio, straight through the door, Tom Power, host of Q.

TP: Can I also make a plea for kids to write in?

MG: Yes, okay.

TP: I need kids to write in. Not because they need their fears to be [unintelligible]. That's certainly something for sure. But they are willing to ask the dumb questions that I'm too insecure to ask. I have all kinds of questions about this right now. And I need to feel like an authority or need to feel good around my cat. So I need the kids to write in so that I can ask these kind of questions. I can get answers and I can tell other people, yes, of course I know the answer.

MG: There are no dumb questions. We just want to hear them. And yes, kids will ask just about anything, which is great. You've been talking to musicians trying to figure out ways to cope with the fact that their shows have been cancelled.

TP: Such an amazing time of creativity right now. And it really shows that musicians are really stepping up in this moment, not just to give you something to be at, as we'd say back home, but also to try and do some good at the same time. Alan Doyle, lead singer of the greatest party band in history, the Elvis of Newfoundland and Labrador, the true premier of Newfoundland sorry, Dwight Ball. He is, of course, a great Bixi greatest party band. The role. What do you do when you can't party at all? What do you do when your solo tour where you're going to have packed audiences? We can't have any audiences. You go on Facebook live, you raise money for kids' help phone.

MG: Which needs some cash. We were hearing that they were being inundated with calls earlier this week.

TP: Alan's doing some really amazing work with his foundation, A Dollar a Day. And yeah, he's been helping kids help phone raise a pretty impressive amount of money for them so far. I talk to him about that. I really talk to him just about how my mum is doing back in Newfoundland. Here's our conversation.

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TP: Alan, how do you and how are you at?

ALAN DOYLE: I'm doing good. All things considered in this strange and wonderful time that we find ourselves in. Making the most of the time we got, I guess. Hey.

TP: How are you holding up?

ALAN DOYLE: Oh, you know, I'm disappointed to not be on the road. You know, the tour was to start this week, of course, the restart up in the rough side tour. And we're gonna be doing all the big markets in southern Ontario, in Toronto. You know, an auto I'm Kitchener in London and all that stuff. So it's a it's tricky business these days in the touring world, isn't it? But we keep postponing it and moving stuff down the road. And people have been kind enough to hold onto their tickets. And when the green light goes on, we'll be ready and we'll have some great nights when it's safe to do so.

TP: Tell me a little bit about this Facebook live concert you've been doing.

ALAN DOYLE: I started on Friday. I mean, it's been a lot of stuff from people, you know, just randomly posted songs. And that's all great. And encourage people to do that, of course. But I kind of wanted to do it with a bit of a focus and a bit of a purpose. And for the last couple of years, myself and a couple of friends have been run in the A Dollar A Day foundation for helping people with mental health and addictions. And we were doing a big bunch of stuff that along with my tour and all that. But I just there's been a great increase in the number of calls to the kids help phone line. And as A Dollar A Day loves to support mental health and addictions programs and facilities across the country, we thought we'd jump up and help them this week. And I said, well, that's a good focus for me to go on Facebook live. And so I started that at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday. I do a half hour every night and sometimes I do a little theme like last, you know, aren't coming through or whatever I did. All traditional new songs. And then, you know, one other night I might do a whole great big sea songs and then I might do some covers or whatever. But it's all leading up every night this week until Friday. And I got a big finale show for it on Friday. And I got a bunch of special guests who are going to join me virtually, of course, in the little broadcast that we're doing and just fun, fun for people. And they can text to give via their phone, you know, text to share five or share ten or whatever to the number 20222 and that goes to a directly to the pot we're setting up at A Dollar A Day for kids help phone or you can go on A Dollar A Day website and directly, directly join us there. And with all that, money is going to a great cause this week.

TP: I think I saw already a special guest, maybe one that lives in your house, Matthew, this week, is that right?

ALAN DOYLE: Yes. My son Henry did join me for a song already. He was the only guy I could get of course locally, it was me or him or my wife and then the dogs. That's it. And my wife and the dogs don't think so. And we had to do it. It was great.

TP: I'm glad you're doing it off on another topic. I think about songwriters to be that are home right now. People that are home with a guitar always dreamed of writing songs, found a little bit of time to do it. Now what's your advice to them?

ALAN DOYLE: Oh, you sing what you'd say. That's what I always tell people to do. If you're looking for something to sing about, well, sing about something that you talk about, you know. And if you don't say it, then don't sing it. That's what I always say. That's a good starting point.

TP: No shortage of things to be saying or saying in these days anyway now.

ALAN DOYLE: And it's you know, it's there's lots of time and there's you know, there's there's benefits to this time as well. It's a shocking time and all that stuff. And we're all going to feel this for the rest of our lives. Probably certainly in the [unintelligible] business we are. But there's lots of ways to make. Most of it, too, you know, and so I just encourage people to stay positive and let me come out the other end of it, we'll all get together again.

TP: And finally, I'm up here, up in Toronto. I got to say that I'm a little sad to be missing back home, even though I just be in the house with mum. But, you know, I think about the storm that Newfoundland Labrador just went through. You know, I think about, you know, they sort of, you know, rocky past couple of months. And now with this, just how are things back home, Alan? Tell me.

ALAN DOYLE: Oh, you know, it's great in one way to have people, you know, walk in and up and down the roads and seeing people from two meters away and all that. And as you say, join the join the big snow storm, state of emergency we already had. Like I was joking that myself and you and Marc Rich were the only three people on earth trying to fly into a state of emergency. You know what? It is weird. This one's weird, Tom, because I feel like, you know, whenever there's dark times, Newfoundlanders or you know, can stick together and make a good time out of it. You know, we'll make something good of it. But of course, it's almost like kryptonite has showed up. You're not allowed to get together. you've got to have a good time without getting together. What's the point in that? Now, everyone's hanging in there, I think. I think lots of people are out helping each other. There's all kinds of stuff going on here.

TP: Alan, before we go, give me one more plug for what time your concert isn't all that and how people can see it.

ALAN DOYLE: Alan Doyle page, I suppose, on Facebook will live at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time every night this week till the big finale on Friday.

TP: Perfect. We'll see you then. Alan, thanks a lot for doing this. And you're going to do jam or not a jam with me this week.

ALAN DOYLE: I love it. Let's do it.

TP: Alan Doyle joins us from St. John's, Newfoundland. And Labrador, as Alan mentioned, you can find him on Facebook. You can watch the performances there and you can donate to kid's health on there as well.

MG: That's Tom Power speaking with Alan Doyle. And that will do it for this extended version of the current. Today, we'll leave you with a little bit of a great big sea. This is ordinary day. Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current take herself.

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[Song]

The Current Transcript for March 26, 2020

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Health-care workers worry about bringing COVID-19 home to their kids

COVID-19 and surface transmission

Spread of COVID-19 into 'Trump country' could pose problem for president's re-election hopes: David Frum,

Disinformation, COVID-19 and surface transmission

Substance dependency and the pandemic

Facebook’s Kevin Chan on fake news; Jenn Agg on challenges facing hospitality

Alan Doyle

Thursday March 26, 2020 Full Transcript

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