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The Current Transcript for September 14, 2020

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: Effective today, all night clubs and all stand-alone banquet halls are ordered closed until further notice.

MATT GALLOWAY: After a summer of relative freedom, restrictions on some of the things we've come to enjoy are beginning to return, as COVID case counts rise. What should we expect this fall? And what's the effect likely to be on an already weary population? Two experts explain in 30 minutes. Also this morning.

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[Clip from documentary, "76 Days"]

MG: That's what it sounded like in Wuhan, China, as that city's lockdown came to a close. A remarkable new documentary takes you inside Wuhan Hospital as the virus took hold. And later, something completely different. Your dog, Instagram, and bringing a bit of joy to the Internet. We start though with the woman who has been front and centre in this country as the pandemic has unfolded, Canada's top doctor, Theresa Tam, on the last six months and the months ahead. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Canada could avoid full lockdown in fall by targeting outbreaks and not taking 'our foot off the pedal': Tam

Guests: Theresa Tam

MG: Since this pandemic started, Dr. Theresa Tam has been the face of the national public health response. In the beginning, she urged us to plank the curve, now, Canada's Chief Public Health Officer is calling on all of us to keep COVID-19 at a slow burn. Dr. Theresa Tam, good morning.

THERESA TAM: Good morning.

MG: It's great to have you with us. You're busy, so I appreciate some of your time this morning. We have seen in Ontario three straight days of 200 plus new cases. There have been spikes in Quebec and British Columbia. There are cases popping up elsewhere in this country. We're learning this morning of an outbreak at the University of Western Ontario. People have talked about the idea of a second wave. Is that what we're in right now?

THERESA TAM: Well, I think what people are trying to describe is the shape may be of the cases going up and down, what we call the epidemic curve in Canada. And that's been sort of discussions, whether it's one way continuing at this low pace right now or that, you know, we may be expecting a resurgence. So what I can say is it's what we're experiencing right now is quite different from the initial escalation and that that that wave going up. What we have seen in the last week has been a slow but steady growth in cases in particularly the four big provinces, B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. So it's not like this is a very rapid sort of escalation of the exponential growth that we had at the start of the first wave. At the moment means that we can do everything that we can to continue these sort of learnt effective public health measures personally, but also as a community to just keep things at a manageable level. So it's been a number of weeks where, you know, we got down from about 1800 cases at the top of that hill, if you like, of the epidemic first, about 300 a day over the summer, up and down a little bit. And now we are sort of seeing that grow to over 600. We'll have to see what the numbers show today, but it's certainly over 600 cases per day across these, particularly in the four big provinces. So, you know, we are watching not just the numbers, but the speed of ramp up and how wide spread the cases are. Because if you can imagine if there's a rapid rise over a short period of time confined to a very specific location, what you're worried about is stressing the public health system and the health system in those areas. What I'm hearing from my colleagues is that it's at a manageable level from the public health system, trying to rapidly test, trace, isolate, quarantine, but that job is actually quite laborious and difficult if the public isn't also playing its role in minimizing the number of contacts and exposures, should a case occur.

MG: To that end, we heard from Dr. Kevin Smith, who's the president and CEO of the University Health Network in Toronto. A network of a number of hospitals. He said yesterday on Twitter that he's worried that UHN has gone from zero in-patients with covered for some weeks to seven, the majority in the ICU. Do you share his concern?

THERESA TAM: Well, I think that is a very important signal to pick up in terms of concern. So first of all, another interesting characteristic over the summer months and currently is that we're seeing a very different demographic being affected, which is young people, particularly around 20 to 29 year olds right now. So this is the group that we need to particularly pay particular attention to in terms of strengthening measures. However, you know, so the Western University, if I understood it wasn't because necessarily of the class, but it's people or a group of people outside, maybe not attending class, probably in the iuniversity community. So I think that 20 to 29 year old. probably between you know the under 20 at universities or other work places open up, what we are really looking for is an increase in hospitalizations. Certainly ICU admissions are signalling a sort of creep into the older age group that has generally a more serious outcome. Now anyone at any age can be infected. Anyone can potentially transmit to others. Serious outcomes are definitely more serious in the as you get older or if you have underlying medical conditions. So if we see that the age group is shifting back into the older population then you might expect increased hospitalizations and ICU visits. That is not a good signal. That's one of the signals that we look for, if, you know, more needs to be done. But it's not too late. You know, right now is manageable, as said, but it is the beginning of a signal which says we've got to be really vigilant and not be complacent.

MG: One of the changes we've seen in the last week in society in this country is the return to school. Kids are heading back and we're hearing from nervous parents and teachers. How concerned do you think those parents and teachers should be when it comes to the health of kids going back to school? Has enough been done to ensure that schools are safe places for kids to go?

THERESA TAM: Well, I think as I mentioned and so have my colleagues around the country, the chief medical officer, the key to getting school back for kids is the level of transmission in the community. So right now, what we're expecting and we actually started off in a really good place in Canada, we managed to flatten that curve, flank that curve, maintain a low transmission rate in the majority of the country. There may be a few little hot spots at the time, but, you know, quite frankly, we were at a low community transmission level, which means that we were well set up to open up schools. And so that is really one of the key issues. If you're seeing community transmission go up for other reasons, in other settings, you've got to keep re-evaluating that setup. But what we are learning from other countries is that we still need to watch to see if schools actual setting for driving community transmission. So far it doesn't seem to be the case. So if, whether it's in the community may be reflected in [inaudible]. One thing I think for poor parents is that as public health, local public health considers the reopening schools we learned you know over the months, but we still need to learn is that the impact on children is less severe than that in the adults, particularly in the young, you know sort of the under tens. They can transmit the virus. We have, you know, studies now to show that kids have virus, the viral load can be quite high and if they get infected, there's a potential for them to transmit. But they don't seem to be the key drivers of outbreaks in communities. But we have to watch that really carefully. So what is important because as you said, we've got to now having learned what we've learnt from the first way, we can just slowly rebalance the response and be open certain spaces. Schools are important to kids, but driving down the pandemic is also very important for our health and that of the children. So we will have to sort of look what happens at that as we go along, which is quite a difficult thing to do, is very stressful for people. But we've got to I think the majority of people feel that they should, at least in the appropriate setting where schools have plans to begin to reintroduce children because school is not just an educational experience, it is about more than that.

MG: What about this beyond schools? What about, I mean, we heard at the beginning the concern around businesses being affected and whether it's bars or nightclubs in British Columbia that have seen restrictions reimposed. Should other provinces, do you think, do the same if we're seeing these cases go up across the country and schools are a priority for people. Should we look at perhaps restricting the activities of other businesses?

THERESA TAM: Yes, so this is absolutely something that people need to watch for in their jurisdiction, because, again, you can't blanket certain businesses in one stroke. So what provinces and local public health is trying to do is what is the data showing in my community? Is it driven by food and drinks establishments? Is it driven by nightclubs? Is it driven by certain other settings? We know, of course, that what we've been talking about, the three Cs. You know close, crowded, poorly ventilated places where people have to take off their masks if they're going to eat, right?Face to face. Those are higher risk setting. It depends on what to what extent can you control those settings in terms of the measures, public health has been advising. But as Dr. Henry, I think at the beginning of your soundbite, is saying that they've tried, they've looked at certain settings, but they're still seeing outbreaks. And public health is having to chase down lots and lots of contacts. So they're using that data to drive the target as a response. So is it still maintain balance between keeping businesses open, but in a different way. You know, no restaurant looks the same anymore in terms of how they manage things. So when we look across the country, though, one thing that's important to remember is that the outbreaks that we're seeing right now is not necessarily businesses. It's actually private social gatherings and community indoor events, whether they be banquet halls or perhaps bigger weddings. We've heard a number of those, while a number of religious settings may have been safely opened, there's definitely outbreaks occurring with churches and other settings like that.

MG: Why do you think the message when it comes to those settings isn't sticking? I mean, how do you, we've talked about this idea of pandemic fatigue and we're months into this and people have been told what they can and can't do. How do you counter something like pandemic fatigue?

THERESA TAM: That is one of the key challenges right now. I have to say is, you know, everyone has tried so hard to flatten that initial curve and it's just, you know, keeping going and I keep saying it's like a marathon and you have to sort of make sure you take sort of some breaks, but you got to keep going. It's, you know, I think it is a major challenge. We need to do better targeted communication to this younger group right now that's driving the pandemic, but really what we're looking for, a sustained responses that are effective, we know they're effective, but that people can keep up with. So it is keep learning those adaptive personal measures, whether it's washing your hands frequently, observing the physical distancing measures that public health is indicating, as well as wearing a mask, particularly in these enclosed settings and when you can't keep the physical distance. That has to now be learned as sort of an everyday measure.

MG: But people know that. People already know that. So I'm just wondering what would be different about that messaging that would stick with people? If people know that already and they're willing to discard that message.

THERESA TAM: Yeah, so I think right now, as we know, we're shifting. So the academyology, how do you now because people need to connect socially, so how do we do that in an adaptive way and be a bit more specific? For example, if you were now essentially planning and social event in your home or wherever, how do we make sure it's not just businesses, but people doing it in their homes keep the numbers smaller. You know, it's not like a business where you can have, you know, well, you can potentially have signed up and try and distribute your physical space so that people can keep that social distance, etc. But it is something else that has to be learned. We know that there's a lot of holidays and religious celebrations coming up. That has to be adapted. So making a bit more focus on that. The other thing is, you know, while I think public health will continue to evolve in terms of some of these, but when you try to use behaviour inside knowledge to look at different populations to see if there isn't any improved ways. For example, to get the 20 to 29 year olds on board, which is not the same as, you know, me doing a statement and talking to the media. You have to engage them on social media and other platforms, gaming platforms, using peer based stories. So we put some personal testimonials from young people affected by the pandemic and the virus so that it reaches different populations. So we have to be a lot more sophisticated with education and communication.

MG: Just briefly, I was just going to say, the last point on this is we're moving to a point at some point in time, hopefully, where there will be a vaccine that would eliminate some of the need for those measures. But I'm wondering, there are some cautionary voices that are coming out saying a vaccine may not be some sort of magic bullet. Do we need to be ready for the possibility that a vaccine is not going to eliminate COVID-19?

THERESA TAM: Yeah, I think we need to can sort of expect a number of scenarios.So I've been saying I'm cautiously optimistic that I think it's incredibly unprecedented, this global collaboration on vaccine development is amazing, but we have to make sure that the vaccines are safe and effective. You have to wait and see what happens right now with a number of what we call phase three clinical trials, where tens of thousands of people are involved in the trials to see what the results are. So we actually don't know. We don't know enough. But every week, I have to say, brings a new piece of information that increases the level of sort of hope maybe that a vaccine will be on the horizon, you know, next year. But what we don't know is the degree of protection. However, if you want to get from where we are now to closer to normalcy, it means the population immunity has to being higher. We now know, based on our antibody surveys of zero, that they know that we did such a good job in the first way that very few Canadians are actually infected on the whole. It's less than one percent. So we know that there's a good ways to go between you can get a high enough level of immunity in the population. So we don't know, say if the vaccine is 50 percent effective. That's still good. It's still adds a very significant level of protection for the population. We will still not know how long the vaccine may last for. We don't know how many doses. We don't know which age group different vaccines may be effective for. So what I'm trying to say is that the vaccine is really critical, but the degree to which that layer of protection will function still remains to be seen. But it is going to be one of the most complex vaccine programs to manage because we we still are waiting for results. We have a number of vaccine technologies may have to be introduced. We may have more than one dose. We may have to use a different vaccine in different age groups. So it's a quite a complicated implementation approach, which we have to get upon very rapidly.

MG: Given that, let me just in the last, we just have a couple of minutes left. Let me ask you, you're going to be speaking with the federal cabinet today and briefing them on what to expect in the months ahead. How difficult do you think fall is going to be in this country?

THERESA TAM: Sorry can you just, I just missed the last part of your question.

MG: How difficult do you think gall is going to be in this country?

THERESA TAM: Well, I think, you know, we can, with a concerted effort, manage to, what I said, a slow burn. Keep the level at a manageable level that doesn't overwhelm your public health. [inaudible] But I think get the flu shot as well. We actually ordered more flu shot this this year. We may not see a massive influenza activity given the public health measures, but we never know with these viruses. And getting a flu shot will help protect yourself, your community and the health system from getting overwhelmed as well. Because every year, normally influenza can innundate your emergency rooms and take up a lot of hospital beds. So this is yet another layer of things that governments, but also the public can participate in to do this. So I think it will be a challenge because, you know, as I've said, I've been warning people right now to not be complacent, remain vigilant and the fatigue. But we can do it, we've done it before, so we need to just keep going and adapt our response, trying to get that balance between the need for social economic spaces to open and managing cases. But we've got to not let our foot off the pedal basically.

MG: Just in the last couple of seconds. This has been a very busy time for you. You're front and centre in this. How are you? Are you taking care of yourself in this moment?

THERESA TAM: Yeah, it has been a challenge, but I think, you know, taking some time to do a bit of exercise, that's important. And, you know, going outside is the best. And I try to you know atleast take a bit of a walk and I'm a runner, but I haven't been doing so much running. So I have to, you know, I'm just taking little baby steps. But, you know, keep [inaudible] for day right now, so that when you're outside, do as much as can be, but you can also still keep doing some physical exercise inside. But, you know, connect with your family and your friends, you know, socially, while physically distanced. That is so important for mental health and getting the help that you need.

MG: It's good advice.

THERESA TAM: Yeah.

MG: And we, I think we could all take some of that advice. I really appreciate your time this morning. We're in the midst of all of this, and I hope we have the chance to talk again as this fall unfolds. In the meantime, Theresa Tam, thank you.

THERESA TAM: Thank you.

MG: Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's Chief Public Health Officer. This is The Current. We're back in six minutes. Stay with us.

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Surviving the second shutdown

Guests: Ashleigh Tuite, Steven Taylor

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

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MG: Still to come, trading on the cute economy by making your pet Internet famous. But first, shutting it all down again?

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VOICE: We shut down in March, March 16th, to be exact. And at that time, obviously, it was a shocking experience, to say the least. We let go, laid off about 650 people at that time. And since then, it's been a learning lesson. Everyday everything changes kind of scenario and we're doing our best to adapt and keep up with what's happening, but we were thankful to reopen it at the end of May.

MG: Bill Kerasiotis owns Blueprint. It's a hospitality group in Vancouver. They run bars, restaurants and nightclubs. It's a company that's been hit hard by covered restrictions. And as he says, at the end of May, rules eased up and the nightclubs stayed closed. But his bars and restaurants were able to open back up again.

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VOICE: As far as the restaurant and bars were concerned, we did a nice job rolling out our protocols and and following PHO guidelines and we had some success throughout the summer, which was encouraging up until this week. I'm trying to see a pathway to get past these restrictions and it's very difficult and I'm extremely concerned. I just don't see how everybody's going to get through.

MG: He was speaking last week when restrictions started to tighten up again in British Columbia after a spike in cases of COVID. Now, bars and restaurants can't serve alcohol after 10:00 p.m. and have to close entirely at 11:00. Nightclubs and banquet halls are closed completely. With coronavirus cases expected to rise again this fall, other provinces may well have to follow suit, which is a tricky thing for governments and Canadians alike to manage. Ashleigh Tuite is an infectious disease epidemiologist and math modeler at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Steven Taylor is professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and the author of The Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of Infectious Diseases. Good morning to you both.

ASHLEIGH TUITE: Good morning.

STEVEN TAYLOR: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Ashleigh, you just heard Dr. Theresa Tam talking about the situation we're in right now where there are 200 plus new cases in a couple of provinces, spikes in British Columbia and elsewhere. Given what the doctor was talking about, how likely do you think it is that we'll see a return of some sort of restrictions on what we can and can't do in the months ahead?

ASHLEIGH TUITE: I think it's highly unlikely that we will start seeing tightening of restrictions. The biggest difference between now and what we saw in the springtime is that I think it's going to look different. We're not going to see this sort of sudden and expansive shutting down of everything across the province, for example. I think what we're going to see is, you know, we understand more about the disease. We understand what sorts of businesses are risky, what sorts of activity are riskier. And so I think we'll see something that's a bit more nuanced in terms of, you know, geographically specific. So, you know, if we have hotspots across the province, we may see those restrictions introduced in specific areas. And it's and I think, again, we're not going to see these really blanket restrictions where we're shutting down everything. We may see things like they're seeing in B.C., where you're sort of, you know, having bars shut a little bit earlier or shutting down some businesses that were initially shut down, but keeping other ones open.

MG: At what point do governments have to take that sort of action. If it's a gradual thing or if it's targeted, as you say, to specific areas that are known as hotspots, when does the government need to act?

ASHLEIGH TUITE: So the tricky part of this is that we really need to be proactive about this. And that's, again, what happened in the spring, is that when you start seeing your hospitals filling up, that suggests that, you know, it's time to act. It's a little bit too late. The goal here is to keep community transmission low and keep cases at a level where we don't have to have these massive shutdowns. And so it can be hard because you're basically making these decisions, you know, a little bit before things seem really, really bad. But if you do that and you act proactively, you're going to prevent more restrictions and larger shutdown. So you're really trying to counterbalance that that risk of seeing rapid increases in cases in rapid, overwhelming of our health care system with, again, you know what, not wanting to put people through the pain of having these restrictions put back in place.

MG: I want to bring Steven in in a moment. But just very briefly, I mentioned to Dr. Tam the comment from Kevin Smith, who is the president, CEO of the University Health Network in Toronto. We're hearing that other hospitals are concerned as well with cases that are popping up and admissions in hospitals. Are you concerned by that?

ASHLEIGH TUITE: I am concerned, you know, particularly right now with the reopening of schools, we're entering a new stage of the pandemic where we're expecting to start to see seek seeing cases increase. And so the fact that, you know, we're sort of at this inflexion point and we're already seeing increases in hospitalisations, it's a worrying stage to be in.

MG: Steven Taylor, given you know what he's been for, I think most people a relatively enjoyable summer in terms of things we can do that we couldn't do just a few months before that. How difficult do you think it will be for Canadians if there are further restrictions, even if they're targeted restrictions, as Ashleigh is talking about?

STEVEN TAYLOR: I think with targeted restrictions, it's going to be a lot easier as compared to the first wave of lockdown. And as we know from previous research on catastrophes and disasters, most people are resilient. So there will be a grumbling acceptance as people go into the next wave of restrictions and so forth. That said, however, it is going to be distressing for a number of people and there have been an increase in suicidal ideation in Canada as compared to last year and my concern is when we get into the gloom of winter and there then we get into the cold and flu seasons, targeted restrictions and so forth, that the mental health of Canadians will suffer. And so I think that although it's great that we're finding ways of reducing the spread of infection, we also should be very careful to make sure we have resources for monitoring and tending to people's mental health.

MG: Who has suffered the most under these restrictions thus far? I mean, there's a business concern, but there's a psychological effect as well.

STEVEN TAYLOR: Yeah, it depends on what you mean by suffering. The younger people are suffering. Their worries are about socio economic impacts of the of the pandemic, for example. And they get older. Medically frail people are suffering, too, because they're worried about getting infection. And then, of course, there are people who were isolated beforehand who didn't have a lot of people that could draw on for social support. And now they're finding themselves even further isolated. Those sorts of individuals are probably suffering from perhaps a risk of mood disorders. Various people are suffering in various ways. Moreover, people who have pre-existing mental health problems, like pre-existing health anxieties or obsessive compulsive tendencies are particularly suffering during this pandemic. Their anxiety is being fuelled by this threat of infection.

MG: Ashleigh Tuite, you mentioned school. How to school change the scenario when it comes to what we're dealing with in this pandemic.

ASHLEIGH TUITE: So the challenge with school is that we're increasing the number of contacts that kids and educators and their families are having. And so, you know, throughout all of this response, we focussed a lot on, you know, minimising who you're in contact with. You know, you have we have bubbles in social circles. And with the return to school, that all kind of falls apart because suddenly kids and teachers are interacting with a lot of other people. And so that means that we're going to have to compensate in some way. And so what that most likely means is that we're going to potentially reduce the sizes of gatherings that are allowed and advise people to reduce the number of contacts that they're having outside of their household as a way to compensate for the fact that we have this this basically this change in social networks and how people are interacting.

MG: Steven, if you take a look at the situation when it comes to reopening schools, I mean, there's a lot of stress that's around. And we've heard that over the last week, certainly from parents, but also from teachers and from students as well. How do you see the opening of schools affecting how people are feeling?

STEVEN TAYLOR: I think in the first week or two, it's going to be fairly stressful for many students and teachers and parents, particularly around the idea of the curriculum, what's it going to look like? What is the actual logistics of getting the school? And of course, these school openings will be they'll need to fine tune things to monitor how things are going and whether things are working appropriately in terms of social distancing. In a way, it's kind of like going back to school for the very first time. So many kids not be worried about grades or whether we are to learn properly from mixed learning formats of learning at home and at school. But having said that, I think after a couple of weeks, most kids will bounce back and adjust to the new way of learning.

MG: You're confident of that? That that resilience that we often talk about when it comes to kids will be demonstrated in this moment?

STEVEN TAYLOR: Yeah, it won't happen for everyone. Some kids will have a really tough time, but I'm confident that the moderate majority of children I mean, the research to time again shows that people are resilient. People bounce back. People learn to adapt to adversity. You would have thought a year ago that most of us would be okay walking around streets wearing masks. But we are so, you know, people are resilient. And, you know, you just need to look at hand. They had this massive water festival not long ago. There were thousands of people out. They weren't socially distancing, they were out partying.That's another indication of how quickly people bounce back from adversity.

MG: After, Ashleigh, a summer of people, you know, being on patios and having park hangs and learning how to to live in this moment, you talked about communication. How important is communication when it comes to trying to get Canadians on board for what might unfold in the next couple of months?

ASHLEIGH TUITE: I think communication is incredibly important. You know, we need to be empathetic. This is a difficult time. It's a challenging time. We need to be clear about our expectations. And, you know, it's really hard to communicate when I think the only thing that we can say with certainty is that we have a period of uncertainty ahead of us. And so, you know, it can be really hard for people to plan and to manage when, you know, you don't really know what the next month is going to hold. And so it's really important as we navigate this that, you know, we give people practical advice, you know, help them understand what they can do to protect themselves, you know, beyond just seeing a wash your hands and physically distant. But, you know, understand, you know, as the epidemic is changing, these are, you know, think about your. Think about who you're in contact with. Think about, you know, can you reduce the number of contacts? Can you you know, if we're starting to see increases in cases, can you worked? Can you go back to working remotely if you've been working, you know, going back into work and so really, you know, make sure that, you know, people understand that, you know, nobody really knows what we're doing right now. We're figuring this out as we go along. It's a new virus and everybody is facing challenges and that uncertainty is part of our new normal.

MG: What does that communicate? You talk about planning. What does that mean? Well, we have, as Dr. Tam said, a number of celebrations, cultural and religious, that are going to be happening in the next few weeks and months from the Jewish New Year to Thanksgiving, Christmas down the line. You have Halloween down the line as well. How do you go about planning for things like that in that time of uncertainty? And what's the communication meant to be around that planning?

ASHLEIGH TUITE: I mean, I think it's a really, really challenging question. I don't know the answer to that because I think the answer is you can't really plan. I mean, you have to plan with the expectation that your plans may go out the window. And so, you know what? We're trying to live our lives through this pandemic. But we also need to understand that, you know, the reality is, is that if you're planning a wedding in a month, you're you're not going to have a wedding with a hundred people, probably. So think about, you know, if this is something important that you want to have. Is there a way that you can continue with that celebration in a way that acknowledges that you may need to change, you may need to be innovative. And, you know, also acknowledge that risk is not black and white. There's not no risk vs. something that is risky there. There's a spectrum to that. And so there are ways to continue to live our lives and to continue to do activities that are important to us in a way that minimizes risk, but still allows us to you know, that doesn't result in us being paralyzed and, you know, staying at home and not doing anything and not seeing anyone.

MG: In the remaining seconds that we have, I'll ask you both thi, which is how are you personally going to deal with that uncertainty and deal with the possibility of new shutdowns, restricted or limit as that as they might be, Ashleigh?

ASHLEIGH TUITE: I'm starting to restock pile my pandemic supply, and also I'm trying to make the most of the nice weather that we have right now as a way to, you know, get outside and see people I love in a way that allows us to socially distance, but also, you know, acknowledge that we may be in for a rough winter. And so get that sort of out of my system.

MG: Steven, you talked about the gloom of winter, which I think gives a chill through most people at the best of times. What are you going to do and how are you going to survive the possibility of more COVID closures?

STEVEN TAYLOR: Right. I asked myself what went well last time, last lockdown and what didn't go so well and how can I prepare for this time? And I'm going to do a lot of what Dr. Tam recommended. I didn't exercise much last time, and I think I spent too much time working. So I'm going to exercise more, work less, spend more time connecting with my friends and family, but also make sure I did the things that worked around last time. And that was setting a structure, reminding myself, yeah, this is going to be over and that wearing them off and socially distancing are the best things that we can do to help them get over this pandemic.

MG: It's great to speak with you both this morning. Thank you.

ASHLEIGH TUITE: Thank you.

STEVEN TAYLOR: Thanks very much.

MG: Steven Taylor, professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia. He was in Vancouver. Ashleigh Tuite is an infectious disease epidemiologist and math modeler at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She is in an Ancaster, Ontario.

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From singing dogs to fat cats: Why Instagram pets could boost your pandemic spirits

Guests: Jessica Maddox

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway.

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[Clip of Instagram account of Buddy Mercury]

MG: Well, that's special. That's Buddy Mercury, a dog who stands on his hind legs playing the piano and singing, maybe howling. I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, whoever runs Buddy's Instagram account says he is the only beagle with an album on iTunes and Amazon. Not to mention he has 33,000 followers on Instagram. It is no secret that the past few months have been a bit of a dog's breakfast, but in many ways, if you're looking for a pick me up, the pets of Instagram may be the answer. Animals with their own accounts lovingly curated by their owners are all the rage.

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VOICE 1: I'm Theresa and I'm my pet is Waffles. His Instagram is @FatCat.Waffles. And I guess, as you can guess from his handle, he is fat. His account is mostly about how he loves food and is also trying to lose weight. So that's his persona. He's sort of fat positive. He embraces his curves, but he's also trying to lose weight to become healthy. He does like weigh-ins periodically to show his progress, although he hasn't really been making a lot of progress lately. You know, people really like to weigh-in. They say, oh Waffles, you're doing such a great job. Keep at it. And then some other people will say, you know, these humans are really mean for for making you lose weight. You're perfect as you are. I think we all really need some light-hearted fun in these times and it is light-hearted and it's positive.

VOICE 2: My name's Maddy Cowan. And my I have a dog named Ferris. He's about a year and I have a cat named Mosley and he's about four or five. I do normally one photo post a day. Sometimes it'll be them like cuddling together or on a hike with Ferris or Mosley playing with his toys. The point is to kind of make people smile or laugh just to make their day a little bit better. It's interesting because before Ferris had an account, people would sometimes give him solace on the street from their cars and say, what's his Instagram? We need to set up a play date. If someone follows you, it's because they really like what you're doing. It's a pretty good feeling to know people like what you're doing.

VOICE 3: My name is Lexi. My dog's name is Diesel. Like, as in the fuel. He turned five years old in August. I like to use the account to sort of express training techniques, things that I like, things that I'm trying to learn. I'm in sort of just the training journey that me and my dog have sort of embarked on. It's never really been super important, the cute factor for me, which is probably an odd thing, to be honest. The photo has to be nice. I won't post it unless it's what I feel to be a nice photo, but cute factor means nothing to me.

MG: Jessica Maddox has just published an academic paper delving into the people who spend time running Instagram accounts for their pets and why exactly they do that. Jessica is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama. Jessica. Good morning.

JESSICA MADDOX: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

MG: Thanks for joining us. That was nice. I mean, given all the bad news, it's nice to hear about people and their pets. Just briefly, why did you want to do academic research on the Instagram accounts that people run on behalf of their pets?

JESSICA MADDOX: Absolutely. So it should probably come as no surprise that I have two dogs of my own, and one day I turned to my partner and jokingly said I was going to make them an Instagram and he kind of rolled his eyes. And at that point, I wanted to prove him wrong and learn why people do things for their pets or why people make these Instagram accounts for their pets. And so I launched a whole academic study to win an argument with my partner.

MG: I mean, you may have won the argument. You get on the radio to talk about it and you learn more about this. How widespread are these sorts of accounts for people who perhaps don't understand what we're talking about?

JESSICA MADDOX: They are extremely widespread. If you search on Instagram, #catsofinstagram, or #dogsofinstagram, with cats and dogs obviously being the most prominent, you'll get millions and millions of hits. And of course, not all of these are coming from accounts of people that run Instagrams for their pets. But even when I set out to recruit people to interview for this study, the response was overwhelming and how quickly people would say, "Oh yeah, I have one of these," or, "I know somebody who does this," or "I've always wanted to do it." So they are in high supply on Instagram, that is for sure.

MG: What did you learn about why somebody would take the time to create an Instagram account for their pet?

JESSICA MADDOX: Yeah, absolutely. My research into about the two dozen people I talked to found three main things. And the first is that we use our pets to communicate about ourselves, even if it's an account devoted entirely to the pet and then you, the human owner, isn't even present. For instance, one of my research participants who I interviewed mentioned to me one day she was a college student and walking on campus and somebody said, "Oh, hey, good to see you. Good luck on your test. I saw it on your dog's Instagram," because she had posted a picture of, she brought her dog to the coffee shop and they were studying together and had posted something along the lines of "helping mom study for her test." So that was one thing that I found in the study, a second being kind of segmenting this content off to a specific Instagram account that's not the human owner's really challenge is this idea that we have that the Internet is for cats because we all know, you know, the Internet is for cats. It's for pictures of cute dogs and cats and pandas and horses and monkeys and penguins. But if the internet really was for cats, why would we feel the need to segment off of our pets into these particular Instagram accounts for them? And what the people I talked to told me was that when it comes to you, the human, your social media profile should be holistic and represent the many things that are happening in your life at a given time. You shouldn't just be posting about one thing, because that can give people a, leave a bad taste in people's mouth when they see your content on social media. And they also expressed this tendency. Now, I didn't say this. Some of my research participants mentioned they said they'd feel this way about people making a segmenting off content for their, all the pictures they post of their gym-going or even their children, things like that. That was one interesting thing. And then the last finding was a rather optimistic one. And that's we're actually willing to take care of each other on the internet, which can kind of be surprising given the depressing news and the bad news and some of the more problematic things we know about online behaviour. But I found that all of my, all of the people I talked to and interview just wanted to insert a little joy and a little happiness into into social media. And they hoped that's what people got out of their pet's accounts.

MG: In this time that we're in right now — we only have a few seconds left, but is something like this even more valuable when it comes to that you know cute economy than in the before times?

JESSICA MADDOX: Absolutely. I'm sure you, your listeners have probably seen on social media, people say things like, "Had a bad day. Send cute pictures of your pets." And this is very much related to what I found, is that we're willing to take care of each other and use these cute pictures to help ourselves feel better and break out of that doom scrolling, as we've started calling it, of just scrolling through all the bad news and negative news, and the cuteness and the cute pet pictures — asking for it or sending them out there can be a way to cheer each other up online.

MG: You have dogs?

JESSICA MADDOX: I do. I have two dogs.

MG: Do they have Instagram accounts?

JESSICA MADDOX: They do. If anybody wants to follow them, they are @themaddogs on Instagram.

MG: Jessica, thank you.

JESSICA MADDOX: Thank you.

MG: Jessica Maddox, an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama. Her research paper, an academic research paper on pet Instagram accounts has just been published in the journal, New Media and Society. Coming up, after your regional update, we will head to Wuhan, China, where the pandemic that we're all in and perhaps trying to be distracted from with pet Instagrams, where that pandemic began. For 76 days people in the city of Wuhan were living in a total lockdown. You get a glimpse inside through a fascinating new documentary that's screening as part of the Toronto International Film Festival. We'll speak with the director coming up. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. We're back in 90 seconds.

[Music]

New documentary takes you inside a Wuhan hospital at the height of the COVID-19 crisis

Guests: Hao Wu

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. The opening sequence is like something out of a horror movie. There's a handheld point of view shot. One health care worker is chasing another down a hospital hallway. Both are covered head to toe in white plastic hazmat gear and then one of them begins to wail.

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[Clip from documentary "76 Days"]

MG: Her father has just died and she's longing for one last goodbye, but her colleagues hold her back as a body bag is wheeled away on a gurney. This is a hospital in Wuhan, China, at the height of the COVID-19 crisis there and that moment is the opening of a powerful new documentary called, 76 Days. It's screening as part of the Toronto International Film Festival. Hao Wu is one of the documentary's directors and he is in New York City. Hao Wu, good morning.

HAO WU: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Tell me about that opening sequence. It's even just hearing it again is chilling, but to watch what's unfolding is really quite something. When you saw that footage, what did you think?

HAO WU: I was crying when I first watch that footage, even just in its very rough rush format. At that time, as I was doing research for a U.S. network about doing a COVID19 film in Wuhan and I've reached out to over a dozen filmmakers who have been filming Wuhan. But as soon as I saw that footage, I decided I wanted to collaborate with a journalist who shot that footage to make a film.

MG: What is the footage tell you about, I mean and we'll talk more about the things that unfold in this hospital over the course of the 76 days, but what is that footage tell you about what life was like in that hospital?

HAO WU: It was absolutely horrible and it's scary. And people, especially because he was in the very early days of COVID-19 pandemic. Very few people knew how dangerous the virus was. So everybody was just trying to be super careful, lucky, and mention that health worker couldn't even say goodbye to her father for the last time because her colleagues were trying to keep her away from from the body. So in order not to get her infected, even though they were all covered head to toe in TV. So it was really heartbreaking. And at the same time, it feel like when I watch that, I really did feel like it was almost as in sci-fi film.

MG: Well, there's the scene that shortly thereafter and it shows people who are banging on the doors of the hospital trying to get in. The doors are locked and they're banging and there's a crowd of people outside the door and they want to get in because they're worried that they might be infected, but there's not enough space for them. And so the hospital workers kind of open the door, one person comes in and they close the door and lock the door again. It's like something out of a zombie movie.

HAO WU: It did. It did look like a zombie movie. And just do us a slightly correct you on that, those people were diagnosed with COVID. They were just like, but then even after diagnosis, they were having a hard time because the hospitals in Wuhan were all overwhelmed at that time.

MG: So they'd already been diagnosed and couldn't find anywhere to be treated.

HAO WU: That's correct. That was correct.

MG: Part of this and these these two scenes kind of paint the picture of what it was like for health care workers in that city, in that hospital. Tell me more about about the challenges that those workers would face in Wuhan.

HAO WU: Yeah. There were a lot of challenges, especially in the beginning of the lockdown. I think the Chinese government made, excuse me, made a very quick decision to lock down the city of Wuhan, but then a lot of the other aspect of how to manage the lockdown they hadn't worked out the details. So there was a severe, first of all, there was a severe shortage of PPEs to protect the health care workers, at the very beginning. And secondly, you know, the hospital, there's so many people rushing who got infected by by the coronavirus are rushing to the hospitals. And the healthcare workers were having a hard time finding beds for them or to find ways to treat them. And lastly, a lot of health care workers were not trained in infectious disease, but it wasn't like a war zone. So anybody who know who is a nurse or doctor were sent to treat cold at night, came even though after after just a very short training.

MG: As the pandemic was unfolding in Wuhan, we spoke with people who were part of that lockdown, people who had been locked into their apartments and they weren't able to leave. You are able, through this project to get into the hospitals, as you say, where people were seeking treatment. Tell me how this project unfolded for you.

HAO WU: It was a long story to get this project going. First of all, usually I'm the kind of filmmaker who likes to do character focused stories rather than newsy topics, because I often wonder as a filmmaker, how much more can I add to a topic that's being well covered the media. But on January 23rd, the day Wuhan was put under lockdown, I flew back to China to spend Chinese New Year with my family in Shanghai. So it was surreal, even though I was in Shanghai, which is, you know, far from Wuhan. But as soon as Wuhan was put on lockdown, the entire country of China pretty much was shut down as well. During Chinese New Year, everybody just stay home and nobody was venturing out. The city of Shanghai, which is China's largest city, also looked like a zombie apocalypse movie set. So it was pretty shocking to me to see a country could be look like that. And after I flew back to New York when a U.S. network approached me to do make a film about this pandemic, I jumped down because for me it was personal. We had planned to take my kids, two kids to go to Shanghai during China New Year to visit their grandparents, because both my parents have late stage cancer. I don't know how much time they have left to spend with their grandchildren. So for a long time, I was feeling really sad. I didn't know how whether they would be able to see their grandchildren again. And also, right after Chinese New Year, my grandpa was diagnosed with late stage liver cancer and he passed away a month later. So this COVID and I couldn't go bac, fly back to China to say goodbye to him myself because China had restricted inbound traffic. So everything this COVID story has become very personal. So when a US network approached me to make a documentary, I jumped down and started researching and talking to people, filming on the ground and that's how I got in touch with my co-directors.

MG: How did the co directors get this access in the hospital? Because it seems as though they are as close to to what was unfolding as you could possibly get.

HAO WU: Yes, absolutely. So my two co-directors are both journalists in China. Weixi Chen, you know, who's getting credited by his real name, he's a video reporter for Esquire China. However, he went to Wuhan, not on assignment from Esquire China. He went there because he wanted to find out what's happening during the lockdown. And he found a way to embed himself with the medical team sent from somewhere else in China to support him. So he embedded himself with that medical team and spent a long time, I think, over forty five days with a medical team in one hospital. My other co-director, who didn't want to basically show his identity or get credit, I credit him as anonymous. And he's a reporter, photojournalist for a local newspaper in Wuhan. And he because he knew a lot of the hospitals, he was able to get really great access and he shot like straight in the hospitals, the footage of which I incorporated in the film.

MG: You see, those who work in the hospitals are wearing, as I mentioned, these hazmat suits completely protective. There are scenes in which, you know, they're taping up the sleeves of their gear so that the virus doesn't creep in. What sort of challenges did that pose for your two co-directors in terms of what they were able to film and how they were able to film?

HAO WU: I must say, I have huge admiration for my co-directors, because it was, especially in February when a lot was unknown about this virus, they were really brave in terms of just going inside a hospital and wearing the same protective gear and equipment as the health care workers and staff film in that way. They really put their own health and their own lives on the line to do that. And also wearing the PPE, holding a camera, filming four hours a day. It was really physically exhausting because the the material of the hazmat suit, you know, doesn't breathe as well as regular clothes. So it was really hot and a lot of times my co-director. Would feel that there were faint and and so so there's a lot of challenges. And also, once you put on your Pippy's, you'll have to stay inside as long as you possibly could, because once you get out of the contamination zone, you pretty much used up your quota for the day, for the PPD, for the for the for the cargo that the suits. And you couldn't go back in again. So a lot of them, they couldn't even get bathroom breaks because they just want to stay inside without coming out and taking off the suit.

MG: And one of your co directors actually got sick. Is that correct?

HAO WU: Yes, Weixi, soon after she started filming, he felt think he had all the typical COVID symptoms. So he stayed pretty scared. He was just, he had just married. So he was talking to his wife on the phone, but he couldn't see anyone. He was self-isolated in the hotel that's reserved for healthcare workers. And I think a week later, he did check himself into a hospital and got tested for the COVID-19, for the coronavirus and the result came back negative. But then it was during the early days and the tests were not exactly accurate. So we still don't know whether he had been exposed.

MG: And how is he doing? Is he OK?

HAO WU: Yes, he's OK now. He's OK now.

MG: One of the things we've seen this story play out around the world, but you really see it first hand in this film is the relationship between those who are taking care of the patients and the patients themselves. And there is a even in in frantic situations, a relationship that develops between those two parties. Tell me a little bit about the relationship, as you saw it, between health care workers and the patients and their families.

HAO WU: Yeah. So I think that's one aspect, the relationship between the health care workers and patients was definitely one aspect of the footage that really, really moved me. Other than the really dramatic life and death situations that had been captured by my two co-directors. It was those little moments when healthcare nurse tried to hold hands with her old grandmother was super scared by herself. It was those little moments that really moved me that showed me that in the diaries, in the most dangerous, most fearful situations we human beings can you manage to show our humanity. There's still hope that we can all live through this together. That's one of the reason that really prompted me to continue and finish this film.

MG: One of the nurses says to one of the patients, your family is not here. We're your family now.

HAO WU: Yes, absolutely. And then I think what my anonymous co-director wasn't paying attention to that male nurse at the beginning. But as soon as I saw that footage, I was like, you have to follow him. You have to keep on filming him because he just in a very quiet but dignified ways, interact. You know, the way he interacted with these patients was just so moving, but in a very, you know, understated way.

MG: That continued after the patients did not survive with COVID-19. There's a story of a nurse who's determined to help get the personal effects of the dead back to their families. There are bags and boxes of phones and identity cards and what have you. Tell me a little bit about that and how that unfolds in the film.

HAO WU: What the nurses did was actually against the regulation. Earlier, the government regulation was as soon as a patient passed. You have to burn everything but all their belongings. You cannot even, like, save anything because there was just not sure how dangerous the virus was. But those nurses at the Red Cross Hospital in her home, they decided to keep everything they feel are so important because the patients didn't get to see their families before they passed. They feel like it was super important to keep something, the personal effects for their families. So they have something to remember that, you know, that those patients by. So, yes, they they just clean the air after every patient passed, they would just clean up everything with alcohol, store them away. And after the situation got, you will come when they had more time. They will clean them again and gradually calling the family, trying to get in touch with them and try to, you know, bring those personally set back to the family. It was really, really heartbreaking because some of the family didn't even know their relatives or their parents or their grandparents had passed because it was so chaotic. And the beginning of this crisis, how the patients were admitted to the hospital, there was sometimes, you know, as shown in the film, several of the older patients couldn't get in touch with their family. It was really heartbreaking.

MG: What did you understand about how the health care workers themselves coped with everything that was going on? There are scenes in which they're drawing characters on each other's gowns and on the PPE. Tell me a little bit about what they're writing.

HAO WU: I think some of the health care workers, I can't speak to all of them, some of them definitely volunteered to go to the front line because they like one nurse said in the film, because they feel like this is such a special time. For their generation, it's rare for them to be able to become, "heroes." They want to get that sense of achievement or a sense of accomplishment by going to the front line. So many of them really like money to work on work with the patients. And they do a really brave. And but then the reality is that it was really hard, repetitive and also very demanding. Many of them got sick. And so as soon as the situation improved a little bit, they tried to find ways to relax a little bit. So what they did often was draw pictures and write out food they want to eat on eachother's, you know, hazmat suits. Because, you know, in the contamination zone or working in the hospital, they were eating the same bento box meals everyday, day in and day out. They got really sick and tired of it. And they're also trying to cheer each other up. But obviously, 76 days is just a snapshot of their lives during the lockdown. Afterwards, after lockdown lifted, there, you know, there are a lot of issues face with by these healthcare workers because many of them have sort of have post traumatic distress because it was so emotionally shocking and draining and scary for them to have having lived through those 76 days.

MG: You mentioned your two co directors and that one is identified, a reporter, as you say, for Esquire China, the other one is anonymous. What sort of risks do people on the ground in a city like Wuhan in the midst of that when everything is kind of falling apart, what sort of risks politically do they take in making a movie like this?

HAO WU: Yes, I think right at the beginning, both my co-directors were worried about the political risk. So we started collaborating in early February, but then by late March, when the geo-political fingerpointing between China and the US became really bad, they stopped collaborating with me. And because we just didn't know where I was taking the film, whether they will get into any trouble with the Chinese government, depending on how I edited the film. Essentially, I had to edit out my entire rough cut and show them and convince them of my creative vision before they would resume collaboration with me.

MG: Because they were worried that if the portrayal was in one direction, what would happen to them?

HAO WU: Exactly. Exactly. So what if I you know, I have ulterior political agenda to make China look bad? So that's one thing that were worrying about. And so I told them, I just want to focus on the human story. That's what is strong in their footage. That's what I find most moving based on their footage. So but then you know, I think for my co-director, because they live and work in China, they're worried about their jobs. That's one thing. Secondly, I think increasingly they're more more worried about Internet trolls, because right now anything you say about COVID, not just in China's social media, even here in the West on Twitter, for example, you always have two camps, right? Wearing mask or no mask, the two camps will fight against each other. So my co-directors increasingly are worried about what if the Internet trolls in China, you know, take some image, some clips from the film and accuse the co-directors of trying to benefit personally from from this immense tragedy and then that might have some blowback as well and affect their jobs in China. So that's why my anonymous director decided not to reveal his identity.

MG: What about for you? I mean, this film, you know, you could be at risk of it being seen as propaganda because you celebrate the workers who were there and talk about their lives. You could be seen as somebody who is portraying the situation in a negative light because there have been concerns that China covered up parts of the outbreak and the severity of what was happening in Wuhan. How did you manage to straddle that?

HAO WU: I think for me, one thing is I live in New York. I live and work in New York City, so I'm less concerned about any political blowback as my co-directors. And secondly, I feel like I can only do what I think is best, what we think is best for the film based on the footage we have access to. And I, I don't know. I have faith. I have faith overall in the audiences, in their intelligence. I think there will be, you know, some social media trolls accusing us of either this or that, but I trust based on early feedback from test screenings and also from some of the Twitter mentions of the film. So far at TIFF, I think people get what I'm trying to say, which is that in a catastrophe, our experiences across cultures, across national borders are very similar.

MG: How China handled the outbreak has become an issue in the U.S. presidential election. You have the president, Donald Trump, who alternately either praises or criticizes how China handled this. What did you learn about how China handled this outbreak based on what you were able to pull together through this film?

HAO WU: Yeah, it's a roller coaster ride watching all this geopolitical debates or arguments about how China handled the COVID-19 crisis. So I think it's still too early to tell because we're still living through this crisis. To be honest at the very, very beginning, I was angry. I was really angry at how China handled Wuhan. In the first week, during the Wuhan lockdown, it was absolute chaos. I think it was not just me. The entire country was angry. How could this have happened? How could people be dying? So many people were dying. How could our healthcare workers lack PPEs on the front lines? But as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York, I was in New York in March. I saw it coming. I was actually on the street filming because in the beginning we were thinking about doing a tale of Two Cities, just contrasting the Wuhan story, Wuhan response with the New York response. When it hit New York, I suddenly realized it's the same. Whenever we're faced with a sudden outbreak or a natural catastrophe, no society could be prepared for that. In the US, we saw the same story be replayed all over again. So that's how I decided that maybe it's too early to say who did right, who did wrong. So that's why I decided to make the film, let's just focus on the individual experiences.

MG: What's the image from the film that stays with you the most? I mean, given what you've seen, but also what you lived through in Shanghai and then back in New York and having seen this footage, what is that one image that stays with you the most in this film?

HAO WU: It's that male nurse holding the hand of the scared grandma. Because I couldn't be there for my grandpa when he passed. I couldn't be there to hold his hand. So that image really stayed with me. That just shows we all trying to reach out to each other in times of crisis and luckily, we do have some people who are willing to be in touch with each other, despite the fear.

MG: It's a really powerful film. I mean, as I said, it starts in a very gripping way, but the human stories that come out of this and to your point, the relationships that develop between those who need care and those who are giving the care is quite something. It's great to talk to you about this. Thank you and congratulations.

HAO WU: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Hao Wu is one of the directors of 76 Days, a film about the beginning of the pandemic in Wuhan, China, inside a hospital where health care workers were treating those who were, as I said, banging at the door, trying to get in and get that treatment. The film, 76 Days is screening as part of the Toronto International Film Festival. There are many great films screening as part of TIFF, which is largely a virtual festival this year. Later on this week, we'll speak with another filmmaker whose work is being shown at TIFF. The legendary director, Werner Herzog, he has a new film out called Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds. Fireball is about meteorites, and Werner Herzog is fascinated by their mythology.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Well, there are different mythologies. For example, the film ends with people at the Torres Strait Islands. And they believe that the souls of the departed, so to speak, ride on meteorites into the netherworld. For example, Mecca in the south eastern corner of the Kaaba, where millions of pilgrims circumambulate and pray, this embedded the so-called black stone, which with all probability is a meteorite. We cannot actually study it scientifically. That's a no-no. Not allowed because of religious reasons. It has formed some not belief systems of Islam, but it's very venerated amongst the faithful and probably venerated a thousand years before Muhammad, the Prophet who founded Islam. So there's many, maybe many things in historical events that all of a sudden gives legitimacy to the House of Hapsburg. And so it's a very fascinating bouquet of events and mythologies and historical shifts that we have received and witnessed through meteorites.

MG: The unmistakeable voice of Werner Herzog, who you could talk to about just about anything. You'll hear him speak about meteorites later this week on The Current. That is it for The Current for today. Q is up next on your CBC Radio One. Tom Power sitting down with Sir Anthony Hopkins, his new film, people are saying this is perhaps one of his best roles. You'll hear all about the film. You'll hear about his struggles with growing older, his Asperger's diagnosis and more. That's coming up in just a few moments on CBC Radio One. We end today by remembering Aline Chretien. The wife of the former Liberal prime minister died on Saturday. She was 84-years-old. A very private woman, but Jean Chretien gave her credit for having an enormous influence on him and ultimately on the politics of this country. He often referred to her as his most trusted adviser. They'd been married for 63 years. I'm Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

ALINE CHRETIEN: We are always talking, you know, when I have lunch, breakfast at night. Sometimes I sit in his office and he says, you know what? Today I have a cabinet meeting to do. I have this. It's like I'm part of the team too. And sometimes the team is there and I'm there. So he will say, well, what do you think about that? And I give him my advice.

JEAN CHRETIEN: I said, she is the Rock of Gibraltar. She'd tell it to me as it is, and it's better for me to listen.

[Music: theme]

Sept. 14, 2020 episode transcript

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