Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2020

The Current Transcript for March 13, 2020

Host: Matt Gallaway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Everybody out here sweating the coronavirus, everybody wants to go buy the toilet paper, the water. I'll show you how to beat the coronavirus. Check it out. Good old fashion. Dirt snow.

MATT GALLOWAY: Yes. So maybe don't eat the dirt snow. The news is admittedly overwhelming these days, more confusing day by day. And there are a lot of questions about the coronavirus and a lot of disinformation being dangled in front of an increasingly unsettled population. This morning, in an era of hand hygiene, why information hygiene also matters? That's first up. Also, as infection rates rise, school is cancelled in parts of this country and travellers are urged to stay put for March break. A conversation with three frontline health care workers about what they're seeing and where this might go from here. And later.

SOUNDCLIP

It's about these children. We can't turn our back on them. They're our little brothers and our little sisters. They're our future. We can not let them down.

MG: It has been nine years of civil war in Syria. And as the refugee crisis spills over to Europe, a look at who's being driven out and what's being done for those stuck in Syria. We begin, though, with the search for answers in anxious times in a sea of misinformation. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

Back To Top »

As misinformation spreads, 'snake oil salesmen' are profiting off anxiety over coronavirus, says reporter

Guests: Justin Trudeau, Tim Caulfield, Carl Bergstrom

[Music: Theme]

MG: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joins us now from Ottawa. Prime Minister, good morning.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Good morning, Matt.

MG: These are anxious times and we'll start with the times in your own household. Your wife has been diagnosed with COVID-19. How's she doing?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: She's doing fine. She's basically got a mild flu like symptoms. She's getting lots of rest and drinking lots of fluids. And we're paying very close attention to what the medical professionals are saying. I'm feeling fine. No symptoms. The kids are all fine. Happy to be staying home from school. We're you doing well. I'm working from home. We've got a cabinet meeting on COVID on the phone in a few minutes. Yesterday, I spoke with a number of world leaders. I spoke with a number of our ministers were really focussed on obviously the health side of things and on the economic side of things. And we're going to have lots, lots of work to do and lots of amount announcements to be made.

MG: Let me talk about the economic side of things. There's real anxiety in this country right now. People are worried about their livelihoods. They can't go to work. Businesses are suffering. What can be done to help people now?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Well we've put out a number of measures already to support businesses with access to credit. But we know that there's lots more to do. People are going to be having to stay home. They're going to be worried about paying the rent, supporting their loved ones, taking care of groceries, you know, really, really tangible things that are going to be worrying people. And we are going to be putting in place measures to support people, to make sure that they can make ends meet, that they can focus on their families while we're going through a really difficult time economically, where a lot of people are going to be, doing like me, working from home. Others won't be able to and will need that extra support. And that's exactly what we're focussed on.

MG: Measures like what would you consider, for example, rent and mortgage relief for people who are worried about actually paying those bills to keep a roof over their head?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We are looking at everything. We know that on top of the worries about their health and their loved ones, health, they shouldn't be worried about whether or not they're going to be able to make rent or whether or not they're going to be able to afford medications or groceries. We are looking at many different ways. We'll settle on one soon to be able to make sure that people have the money in the pockets they need during this really difficult time.

MG: How soon can that money get out the door? Again, people are worried now about what's happening.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: People are worried and as are we. And that's why I had a long conversation with our finance minister last night. I've been talking with other world leaders, from Boris Johnson to Donald Trump to Giuseppe Conte to others about what they're doing, what mechanisms they have, what ideas they they've found I've worked for them. We're going to make sure that we're getting help to Canadians. That's what people need right now on top of everything else. And we're going to do that.

MG: We've been hearing from health care workers this morning. They're concerned that an already stretched system which sees people being treated in hallways and in dining rooms, in hospitals, that that system could be put beyond the brink if the wave of cases that people are expecting actually arrives. What can be done to prevent that system overload?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Well, the big part and people are talking about this, making sure we're flattening the curve. And that means following medical advice and health professionals advice and staying home. If you start to have symptoms, if there are any concerns that you have looking to really, you know, reduce your contact, particularly if there's questions of vulnerability, whether it's a more elderly people or issues around respiratory illnesses or conditions pre-existing. We're going to be moving forward with more measures at airports. We're going to be moving forward with more measures to ensure that people know that there are behaviours that are going to keep us all safe. And as I said a couple of days ago, this is a global situation, but instead of feeling completely powerless, Canadians do have the capacity to affect how this unfolds here in Canada, and to a certain measure around the world, by making smart decisions now. And I think that's what we're going to keep encouraging people to and enabling them to do with things like income supports.

MG: As you say, this is a global situation. We've seen the United States controversially close its borders when it comes to flights coming in from Europe. Some provinces are recommending that people stay home for March break and don't travel. What else are you considering when it comes to border security?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: We are looking at making a recommendation that people not travel outside the country except for essential purposes. That announcement will probably be made a little later today. There are a number of measures we're going to be bringing at the airports. We are coordinating closely with the United States on the measures that they're putting. Forward, as you'll remember a number of weeks ago, we didn't make the same decisions that the Americans did around closing the borders, and we relied on our public health officials and our experts on how we needed to keep Canadians safe. And it worked quite well. I mean, we were able to make sure that Canada stays very low in terms of cases. And we were able to trace and in control the cases. We seemed to be approaching a different phase right now. We will make sure that we follow all the advice of our very top experts.

MG: Just finally, I know that you're going to be addressing the nation later today. These are anxious times and people are really worried. What is your message to Canadians? People were lining up in grocery stores trying to buy supplies. People are worried about, again, their livelihoods, about kids not going to school. What's your message to Canadians want to be?

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: The message is one of reassurance that, yes, there is reason to be worried. There is reason to make smart choices. But we're going to be able to get through this, that if everyone does follow the advice of our medical experts and professionals, as I'm doing, as everyone is trying to do, we can make a positive difference in how this unfolds. We will be there for each other. This is what Canada does. And a reminder that unlike many other countries around the world, Canada has a really strong fiscal position that allows us to invest and support people during this time of crisis that is going to allow us to bounce back from it once we're through it, so people can have confidence that we have the means to help each other out. And that's exactly what we're going to do.

MG: Mr. Prime Minister, appreciate your time. And as I'm saying to everybody these days, it seems like, stay healthy.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: That's the plan. Thank you so much.

MATT GALLOWAY: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa. Well, at a time when the prime minister's wife has been diagnosed with coronavirus, the news of the day can seem almost unbelievable. Some of what's being said about the coronavirus, well, it really should not be believed.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: This influenza that is now circling the goal, you're saying that silver solution would be effective.

VOICE 2: God gave us this product. Yes I believe.

VOICE 3: I believe at least 27 people reportedly died from alcohol poisoning in Iran while trying to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Some of the citizens had heard that...

VOICE 4: As the world [unintelligible] for cure for coronavirus...

VOICE 5: BJP legislator. The state assembly astounding. She said the remedy may be [unintelligible] which is cow urine or...

VOICE 6: Toothpaste, this stuff kills the whole SARS, corona family...

MG: Might be the only thing spreading faster than coronavirus. The misinformation bug as this real pandemic continues in the physical world. The other is catching on online. Jane Lytvynenko has been tracking misinformation about the virus. She reports on disinformation and online security for BuzzFeed. Jane, good morning.

JANE LYTVYNENKO: Hi.

MG: I got a little taste of it there. What sort of misinformation are you seeing when it comes to COVID19?

JANE LYTVYNENKO: We're seeing something of every flavour. COVID-19 is really the perfect storm for mass and disinformation online. So we're seeing conspiracy theories falsely speculating that the virus may have been a bioweapon, or one country blaming another. We're seeing a lot of snake oil cures as well. And a lot of fake infections; a lot of people saying that certain actors or political figures have gotten sick when they haven't.

MG: Let's walk through some of those things. We heard Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist and many other things off the top there. Where does he fit into all of this? He has a big audience.

JANE LYTVYNENKO: He does have a big audience. And Alex Jones, sort of known for promoting false conspiracies and known for selling products against that. But he's not the only one. We've seen pretty much every snake oil salesmen come out of the woodwork and go from selling silver water, vitamins, hemp oil — some going so far as advising to drink bleach as a preventative measure against Corona virus. And so in terms of where Alex Jones fits in it really as an ecosystem,.

MG: You put together a long list of some of the most egregious bits of misinformation run us through some of them.

JANE LYTVYNENKO: It's a we've been tracking this misinformation since January. And so that's why the list is so long. Initially, we saw a lot of false numbers of infections are being reported. Sort of a lot of false news around the quarantine. But now it really is all about the sort of fake cures that are really earning people money.

MG: How does that work? How does it how does somebody make money from selling something that obviously doesn't cure the coronavirus?

JANE LYTVYNENKO: Well, this is you know, this is really a time of a lot of panic and people are looking for any kind of solution that might work. There are a lot of online communities that have already relied on what they call natural medicine. So that's teas, essential oils, vitamins. And those communities have already purchased a lot of products like that to help them with other ailments. And it's those communities right now. They're really being targeted with this sort of false cures because they have this sort of distrust of traditional medicine, distrust of vaccinations and distrust of official narratives.

MG: Part of this is also just the social media era that we live in and how quickly people spread information that they think might be true. It may not be true. There was this tweet around Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, which was retreated quickly by many people, many people who perhaps you might think would know better. What does that tell you about that? It looked like it came out of an official BBC site and it wasn't.

JANE LYTVYNENKO: Right. Right. And that tweet was sort of sent in just by an account that had 125 followers. So if you were to click on the profile, you would definitely see that it was a fake account. But even I have fallen for misinformation, having tracked it for over a month. And I think what it tells us is that there's a lot going on. And it's really, really difficult to sift through what we see online, whether it's real or not, because there's just so much being thrown at us right now.

MG: There are people who are saying it's those social media companies that have a huge responsibility to try and clear fact from fiction. Kevin Chan speaks for Facebook Canada. Have a listen to him.

SOUNDCLIP

What we are doing is working directly with the Public Health Agency of Canada, making sure that if Canadians search for COVID-19 or coronavirus on Facebook, that they get redirected to the public health agency of Canada's website. We are removing misinformation about COVID-19 that could lead to real world harm.

MG: What do you make of Kevin Chan's words?

JANE LYTVYNENKO: Look, social media companies have taken really good first steps. They've worked with governments, they have put in warnings, but the misinformation on their platform is still spreading.

MG: And you see it, they have a real responsibility to try and tackle them.

JANE LYTVYNENKO: Absolutely.

MG: Jane, thank you.

JANE LYTVYNENKO: Thank you.

MG: Jane Litvinenko is the disinformation and online security reporter for BuzzFeed News. Now, more than ever, we need accurate information about this pandemic. So how do you practice information hygiene? Tim Caulfield is a professor of health, law and science policy at the University of Alberta. Carl Bergström is a professor of biology at the University of Washington who studies how global information flows. Good morning to you both.

TIM CAULFIELD: Good morning.

CARL BERGSTROM: Good morning, Matt.

MG: Carl Bergström, what sort of misinformation are you seeing that concerns you the most?

CARL BERGSTROM: It's been changing over time. Early on, we saw a lot of misinformation, as Jane mentioned, that was coming out of all kinds of conspiracies around what most going on in China, that there was a much larger pandemic than anyone was admitting, that it was a bio weapon, all kinds of false threats like that. Now, here in the United States, the biggest and from misinformation that we're getting is really coming out of out of the White House in an effort to sort of downplay the seriousness of the crisis or as of this morning, to deflect the blame.

MG: Tim, for you. What are you most worried about?

TIM CAULFIELD: I'm I agree with everything that Jane and Karl said. But I'm obviously really worried about the fake cures and the marketing that's going on around the coronavirus. It really is amazing. If you think about it. You have these individuals, these proprietors, they're really leveraging the fear and uncertainty to sell stuff. And so it's pretty infuriating.

MG: This works in part as we seeing with Jane because of the area that we're in. Carl, in some ways, this is a social media pandemic of her. People refer to this as what does that do when it comes to the spread of misinformation?

CARL BERGSTROM: Well, the thing is, is that we're communicating with one another in a different way than we ever have during any previous disease outbreak. So much of the information environment that we live in is now moved online. And that means that the information that we're receiving is coming from other individuals, often much like ourselves as content creators, and what we end up viewing is determined by what our friends choose to pass on, rather than by what's been vetted by a professional editor's note through traditional media. As a result, you can get misinformation that gets massively amplified very, very quickly through these cycles of sharing and reassuring and so forth.

MG: Tim, is there some good that can come out of the social media platforms we saw in France? Health officials there going on Twitter saying that no, despite rumours that are being out there, cocaine cannot prevent you from this virus. Is that the right way to address myths and misinformation?

TIM CAULFIELD: Yes. I think what we need to do is look. Social media is not going away. If celebrities talking about this, that's not going away. So we've got to leverage those tools to get across the good information. Yes, I think we need more of that. We need we need entities like the World Health Organization and scientific organizations to step up when they see misinformation about a cure to immediately give a clear response on social media. The reality is, and we've seen that the ISSCR International Society for Stem Cell Research saw that there are people out there selling fake stem cell cures, if you can believe that. They quickly stepped up just a couple of days ago and said, no, these do not exist. So let's have let's have more of that.

MG: We are, and part of this is, you know, the fault of the social media platforms. This is addictive technology. And so we end up spending a lot of time looking at information that perhaps we wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. I've read about something called the negativity bias. Tim, how does that affect how we consume information in an online era?

TIM CAULFIELD: Yes, Jane made a really good point. This is the, you know, the perfect storm for for the spread of misinformation because we have social media now. But it also plays to our cognitive biases and we are hardwired to negativity. Negativity bias tells us this. We're hardwired to- we act more strongly to scary stuff, to negative stuff. And that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. So that's one of the reasons that a lot of this news gets so much traction. Layer on top of that, the uncertainty. The desire to fill in the narrative, to fill in the gaps with the conspiracy theory or some kind of misinformation about a cure. And that really facilitates the spread of this misinformation. So what we've got to do, of course, is push back on those exact those exact elements.

MG: Carl, how do you do that? You want to stay informed, but at the same time and this can lead to a real spike in anxiety and just drive you into that spiral of constantly checking negative news.

CARL BERGSTROM: Yeah, I think it's important to be aware of the exact kind of tendencies that Tim described and to get to recognise them in yourself, check them in yourself, and then to recognise also that this is a crisis that's unfolding in slow motion. This is not like a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or an act of war where the world completely changes over the course of an hour because this is something that's going to unfold. You know, it's been unfolding for months. It's going to continue to unfold for months. There may be some surprising governmental responses. But in terms of what the disease itself is doing, they're not big epidemiological surprises that are taking place. And so it's not a situation where you need advice or information that's, you know, current to the hour. And so if you allow yourself to slow down and say, well, you know, yesterday's newspaper stories are all I need to know, I don't need to give into this temptation to get onto the Internet and try to figure out what's been said in the last half hour, then you're going to end up, first of all, not getting into this sort of panic spiral. But you're also going to be accessing more reliable information than you would if you tried to get fresher information. And then ironically, ended up, you know, subjecting yourself to all of this information out there online.

MG: Tim, what's the long term effect of all of this misinformation on public health?

TIM CAULFIELD: Well, I think that this is a really good example of what happens when we know we allow sort of this embrace of magical thinking. I think it also reminds us of the power of misinformation. We've seen that with the vaccine is another element of that. So I'm to try to be hopeful here, Matt. I hope this is another reminder of how important it is to fight misinformation, how important it is to embrace good science and how important it is to have experts who, you know, aggregate scientific information in a way that the public can trust.

MG: And Carl, if somebody around you is, you know, spreading this misinformation, what do you do to gently correct them? You don't want to shout at them and jump on them. But what do you do to kind of jazz's a gently kind of redirect them?

CARL BERGSTROM: Well, I think you've got the keyword there, which is gently. And you never really make any progress in these sorts of situations. If you leap into this in an antagonistic way and rather approach it charitably recognise that most of the people, especially the ones that you know, personally, are only trying to help out and acknowledge that when you when you say when you going to bring this up and say, you know, I know you know better. You know, I'm worried about my family, too. It turns out this one isn't true. Turns out this is misinformation. You could perhaps direct the person to fact checking site like Snopes.com. You could direct them to appropriate, you know, fact based media, an ad and. But basically approach it with this error charity. And then you're not going to get people's backs up and lead into the sort of flame wars that the takeover across the Internet.

MG: It's good to speak with you both about this important stuff. Thank you.

TIM CAULFIELD: Thank you very much.

CARL BERGSTROM: Thanks.

MG: Tim Caulfield, professor of Health, Law and science policy at the University of Alberta. Carl Bergstrom, professor of biology at the University of Washington. The CBC News is next. And then we'll speak with three health care professionals on the frontlines of this pandemic. That's coming up on The Current.

Back To Top »

Frontline health workers

Guests: Maral Nadjafi, Kathleen Ross, James Downar

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, Syria has hit another grim milestone as the conflict there enters its ninth year., We'll look at basic survival in an act of war zone.

SOUNDCLIP

When you're moving through the military frontlines. And that line changes on a day to day basis. It's not easy.

MG: But first, we're off to another frontline. This one at the edge of a pandemic.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Everyone must understand that if you are not very careful in controlling the spread, this disease will overwhelm your system no matter how efficient, good, modern, it is. It's worse than a bomb. Because, you know, Bob is at one event limited in diameter his base. This is an event that, you know, keeps increasing and it's contagious.

MG: If there were an award for the least reassuring chuckle, that perhaps would be it. Giacomo Grasselli is a senior government health official in Italy, and he has seen how COVID-19 is overwhelming hospitals there. Today, we're asking what Canada can learn from countries like Italy. Health care workers are preparing for a possible surge in cases. But how ready are we really to find out. I'm joined by three doctors, Dr. Maral Nadjafi is a specialist in internal medicine at North York General Hospital in Toronto. Dr. James Downar leads the palliative care division at the University of Ottawa. He's also a critical care physician at the Ottawa Hospital. And Dr. Kathleen Ross is a family physician based in Coquitlam and president of the advocacy group Doctors of B.C. Good morning to you all.

KATHLEEN ROSS: Good morning.

JAMES DOWNAR: Good morning, Matt.

MARAL NADJAFI: Good morning.

MG: Really, really important to have you on the program. And I know these are stressful times, so I appreciate the time that you can give up to us. We'll get into the specifics in a moment. But how are you all doing in the midst of this? Dr. Nadjafi, we'll start with you.

MARAL NADJAFI: Good morning. Thanks, Matt, for having me. I think I'm doing okay. I am confident and I'm optimistic, but I am anxious. I feel confident and optimistic and that we've been doing a lot of preparation. You know, for the past six to eight weeks, we've been in the preparation mode. And I feel that we are ready to take on the challenge, although I'd be lying if I said I wasn't anxious. We're all reading the news coming out of Italy and we know an outbreak and overwhelm of our system is a real possibility.

MG: So I want to talk about this preparations and that anxiety in a moment. Dr. Downar how are you feeling right now?

JAMES DOWNAR: I feel okay. You know, so to speak, this isn't our first rodeo. And we've had going back even to SARS in recent memory, several, you know, near pandemics or issues that came up that stressed our system a little bit. And I think we have some notion of what to expect in that context. This looks like it might be a little bit bigger. And obviously what's coming out of Italy is very concerning. I know many physicians and I've had some firsthand information passed to me from them. And so, you know, it's very sobering. There's no question.

MG: Dr. Ross, for you. What about in British Columbia, where that in many ways has been a critical place for the spread of this virus?

KATHLEEN ROSS: Well, I agree with you completely. This has been the centre focus in the country. I do share the sense of urgency in the sense of anxiety that has been related going here. We're starting to feel the pinch of the supply chain. We want to ensure that those on the front line in the community that are assessing patients and doing testing do have the resources that they need. And that's something that we're really focussed on right at the moment.

MG: Maral Nadjafi, you have been treating COVID-19, 19 patients already. Is that correct?

MARAL NADJAFI: We've been seeing patients coming in through the [unintelligible]. Yes. Both in the emergency department, but also have been admitted in the inpatient service.

MG: I would just briefly walk us through what is that like. When a presumptive case comes in? How does this look?

MARAL NADJAFI: So for the most part, what I've been seeing is a manageable number of cases. They've been- our emergency department for the most part has been seeing these patients. They come in because they have mild or moderate symptoms. But a lot of times they're driven by anxiety because they've had some exposure to either through travel or someone who's been diagnosed or someone who's been travelling to where there's an outbreak. Some very few of the cases have actually been ill and often need to be admitted to the hospital. Majority of cases are tested, re-assured, and we send them home. Now they you know, they require quite a bit of isolation to, one, make sure they don't infect other people, but also to try to protect their health care workers. And when patients have needed admission, again, that requires quite a bit of work in terms of protecting the health care workers and other patients in terms of the spread of the infection. So when I walk in to see a patient, I have to wear my personal protective equipment, which is quite a bit. I have to wear a gown, I have to wear gloves, cover my shoes, cover my hair, I wear and then night and N-95 mask, which is currently the mandated procedure in Ontario. It's not the case in other parts of the country. And I wear a face shield and we, for the most part, keep up at the moment, keep our patients in what's called a negative pressure rooms. There's a two door room and that's is involved in getting in to see the patients. And then you come out and then you have to make sure you take all of these equipment. And off in a proper manner in order not to contaminate yourself. You've done all the right things up until then, you just don't want to then contaminate yourself or other health care workers.

MG: You talked about the preparation that you have done leading up to a moment like this. But in that moment, I mean, how do you feel? Is it an anxious moment in spike in the heart rate? How did how does that feel in that in that situation?

MARAL NADJAFI: Let's be honest with you. Yes, I think you called it. I have been doing a lot of simulation. I have practiced it. This is what I do. I've practiced these skills of putting on the proper equipment and taking them off. But, you know, every time I walk into a room with the patient is under investigation or it's proven that there is that call that positive patient in there, any heart rate does go up a bit. And there is a bit of an emotional toll to treating this illness and dealing with this. What we've been doing, you know, we have the luxury of having very few numbers of what we've been doing is I ask somebody to watch me, to watch me put on my equipment and more importantly, to watch me take off my equipment just to make sure that I'm not exposing myself to the infection, to remind me to wash my hands long enough. You know, we're very busy. So it's easy to just do things quickly. But I have I always make sure somebody's watching me. And you've been doing this for each other to provide emotional support, but also provide safety.

MG: Kathleen Ross, you're a GP and so you are in primary care. If someone's feeling ill, they call you. What do you tell patients who are worried that they might be infected with this?

KATHLEEN ROSS: So we take seriously everyone that phoning with their respiratory illness right now. And we're trying to screen for those at the high fever or shortness of breath or dry cough that would more signify the possibility of coronavirus, unlike our colleagues in the hospital, when we have patients come into the office we have to be very careful how we bring them in to avoid contaminating both ourselves, but actually also to avoid contaminating other patients that need to be seen through the office. The resources that are available in primary care are somewhat limited compared to what was just described in a hospital setting. We don't have those isolation spaces. Many of the offices are small and have that waiting spaces that are crowded. We don't have the same resources for the personal protective equipment that we just heard about. And often, unfortunately, family physicians don't have the same practice or even the staffing resources to watch each other put on and off of these protective devices.

MG: So where does that leave? Where does that leave you then?

KATHLEEN ROSS: It is a little bit of a challenge and we're working very hard. Our public health system in British Columbia, in particular, our public health officer, have been incredible in trying to stay ahead of the curve. We're doing more telephone triaging, akin to what we would normally do in an influenza season but even at a higher level now. Many practices are implementing more telemedicine, pre-screening of patients. And then we're trying to establish in each region dedicated testing centres so that we can hold our resources and our risk related to testing in those separate areas.

MG: James Downar we heard in the introduction that Italian health officials saying that's the situation there is worse than a bomb and that their system is overrun. How worried are you about that sense of a system being strained beyond its capacity, beyond its limits happening here?

JAMES DOWNAR: Well, so, yes, I mean, this is really the question on many minds in the critical care community right now is how bad is this going to get and how quickly is it going to get that bad. You know, when we plan for a surge or a pandemic event, we sort of go through those classically the four S's. Right. You sort of hear what's called your stuff, your staff, your space and your systems. And those are all things that we need to have some notion of what we're going to do with and be ready for. So you have to stockpile equipment and medications. You have to make sure you know how many ventilators and how many critical care devices you have which are at your disposal. In terms of your staff you need to know who's going to be able to actually care for these patients, who is actually qualified, who may have training, who isn't currently working in one of those areas, but could potentially. In terms of space, you know, to what degree can you identify places like operating rooms or post-operative care areas that might serve as critical care areas for surges and acute care needs. And then having your systems in place for how you transfer and move patients around, how you protocolize treatment, et cetera. In normal times, you must understand that, in Canada, or acute care and critical care resources operate at or near capacity and then often over capacity. So a mild surge up to about 20 percent is something we can kind of handle as part of our normal operation.

MG: You might see that during flu season, perhaps.

JAMES DOWNAR: We see that actually not even very quickly and we see that normal. Flu season yet bumping up to 20 and more percent, that would be a mild, sometimes getting into a moderate surge. At moderate surge, you have to start to think about cancelling some services and repurposing your rooms and using some of these extra assets that you don't normally use. You know, and that's why it's very important to know what your stockpiles and reserves are to activate those. And then when you get to the severe surges, so 100 percent or more above what you normally operate, that's where you start to have to institute and make real selection. You're cancelling electives. You're cancelling even core services. And that's a situation where you may not even be able to get people into acute care or into critical care who might need it.

MG: So how do you do that? Because we're seeing that in Italy already. Doctors saying that it's in some ways, you know, like a war situation where you have to make tough decisions about who to treat and who won't get treatment. How do you make those decisions?

JAMES DOWNAR: We're fortunate in some ways because we've had - some of the world experts in this, actually. Are Canadians. And so a lot of the publications around this and we've had in Ontario published pandemic plans in place now for more than a decade. Those have not been signed off and finally approved. But we've had something on the table that at least we can talk about. That's probably the one area of our current pandemic preparations that still needs to be finalized. And the people haven't quite settled on whether that's something that we all agree on and what we're going to do, and where a lot of that also depends on getting a bit more clinical information about the virus. Because the idea in a triage scenario is you have people who are, you know, too well to need critical care. You're going to have some people who are a little too sick to benefit from critical care that their outcomes are not going to be affected by whether or not they get critical care. And then there's this sort of middle group where what you call the highest incremental benefit. So these are the people where critical care is likely to have the most impact on their outcome. Figuring out who those people are and trying to figure out how long, you know, their disease course will be. It seems like COVID has a longer disease course than influenza does. So normally you might reassess at two days or three days or four days to see whether this is working and whether or not it's not working for a COVID you might have to go a little longer. Also, some of our usual scoring systems seem to be maybe a little less helpful for COVID than it were than they would be for influenza morale.

MG: Maral Nadjafi, does that sound familiar? I mean, we're already - and you see this across the country, people talk about hallway medicine, where people are being treated in hallways and dining rooms, in conference centres, whereas the space in the hospital like yours - if that surge that James Downar was describing, if that arrives.

MARAL NADJAFI: Yes, that's correct, Matt. We know, to be honest with you, we are always at at capacity. We're operating at capacity. And we've got, you know, especially during colder months with the regulatory illness as an influenza, we are often working above capacity. So I think our institution has been doing quite a bit of simulation and trying to figure out where this capacity will come from. You know, the single rooms will have to become double rooms. And as doctor Downar mentioned, they will have to figure out other places where to put the patients. But this is where the anxiety comes from. That's, you know, at a system where we're already operating at or above capacity, very little will push us over. And all of our preparation has been to try to prevent that. But what we need is also the help from the public. You know, the healthcare system, we are ready. We have been preparing for this. But we also, you know, there is a reality of F.B. all of a sudden have a surge of many sick patients coming into the emergency departments and need admission and need extra services such as ventilators that we will overwhelm our system. So this is where our public education and public participation comes in.

MG: Kathleen Ross, as again as a GP, you see this from such a different angle. Part of the role of a family doctor is keeping people out of the hospital, but in NBC there's a shortage and then there are a lot of people who don't have family doctors. So what happens then? Are there enough to deal with the demand? Do you think?

KATHLEEN ROSS: Again, we think we're looking at it at multiple pronged approach for this. If we can address increasing capacity in our primary care system so that the patients that are mildly to moderately ill get managed at home and we can keep them isolated so that they are reducing the number of people that they're infecting, that will be helpful. We have a number of online platforms for physicians to use, both inside of the office practice and in episodic fashion outside of a dedicated primary care home. I echo everything that's been said. This containment at this point in limiting the spread, flattening the curve is a shared responsibility. Physicians have put in place protocols to protect staff and other providers, telephone triaging, etc. The government doing their job with public health to ensure up to date worker information for public as well as professionals. But the emphasis on what the public can do to limit this process is as a message I'm trying to get out very, very clearly: ensuring people stay home if they are sick, even if they're not sure. Washing your hands. Not touching your face. Not going directly to a clinic or an emergency department without calling ahead. And certainly good personal hygiene practices around sneezing and coughing. These are all things that will help to contain the number of people that are infected.

MG: This is a conversation that's happening right through the health care system. Have a listen to Linda Silar. She's the president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.

SOUNDCLIP

If there's a building that's about to be demolished or renovated and there's a slight possibility of asbestos, workers would not go in that building without proper personal protective equipment. But we're asking nurses, we're asking personal care workers, we're asking doctors to go into the health care facility when the science is not clear on how this virus is transmitted from one person to another. And that is purely insulting.

MG: Dr. Nadjafi, what's being done to protect frontline workers in the midst of this crisis?

MARAL NADJAFI: So I think we know that this is a respiratory illness with which spreads by droplet [unintelligible], by droplets. And therefore, we can prevent it spread to our frontline workers, myself included, by wearing the proper personal protective equipment. At my institution, we have been doing quite a bit of education. You know, we have been all reminded to get tested for our mask sizes, just ensure that we all know our mask sizes. We are in infection control and then the hospital has put together quite a lot of videos on and reminding everyone how to put these personnel equipment on and off. And we've been sort of doing a lot of simulation in mock sessions. I've been practicing, putting them on, putting them off. And we are trying to prepare for that. And I think part of it is also, as I mentioned, we watch for each other and providing emotional support and reminding each other of all the personnel practices that we can do to protect ourselves and each other. I think there has been quite a bit of education around that. But, you know, it is always it is a challenge to just keep at that.

MG: Can I ask you just all three of you in the remaining couple of minutes that we have about that a more emotional support? These are tense times. There's a lot of anxiety and people are wondering what's going to happen not even next week, but later on today. What sort of toll is this taking on you? Let's start with you, Dr. Nadjafi.

MARAL NADJAFI: So, you know, as I mentioned, it is you know, it is a responsibility and a privilege to care for sick patients. And I take that very seriously. But, you know, it is anxiety provoking, too, to sort of deal with the unknown. This is the first pandemic of my career. I have not dealt with this. I wasn't in medicine when I when SARS occurred. I've had to speak with my colleagues. We'll rely on each other about what happens if somebody gets sick. You know, we've come up with multiple schedules. We think knowing what we will do in that case a pandemic has lessened the anxiety. But I've also had to have conversations with my friends and family. What happens if I need to be on quarantine? What happens? You know, I have little children. And you know what happens if I get sick, et cetera. So it does take an emotional toll. But, you know, we as health care professionals are somewhat more used to it than the rest of the population. We do care for sick patients and we do care for vulnerable patients. And I think, I hope, we have developed an emotional resilience to be able to work through this.

MARAL NADJAFI: Dr. Downar, tell me more about your emotional resilience.

JAMES DOWNAR: You know, I think I can identify with a number of things that Dr. Nadjafi just mentioned. And I have four children. And so my dad is a cardiologist. He's still practicing at 77. So I have the range of everything to think about people. You know, I'm obviously most concerned about people close to me and people who I know who are maybe a bit older and have some co-morbidities who are probably most at risk. I think my own risk is probably not that high. I think most of us who you know, most of who work in health care are not going to be at risk of having severe health consequences from getting COVID, but the emotional stress of like a prolonged period of time and I went through this during SARS when I was in training and I was working in the ICU and I had to put on these tapper suits like the moon suits, you know, on a daily basis. And that was, that was challenging, you know, having to wear these masks every day in social distancing. After several months of doing this it actually becomes quite emotionally difficult and a bit tiring at times. I think, to point this out to Maral, I think, you know, this is our job, right? This is an honour and a privilege to be to be the people who are responsible for handling a crisis of this nature. And we're very honoured and privileged to have that. And I think a lot of this is going to require patience and understanding among our colleagues and support among our colleagues. And as long as there's solidarity, we feel like this can go well.

MG: Dr. Ross, briefly, just from you. How are you handling this crisis?

KATHLEEN ROSS: Well, I think everything has been said is actually it is quite true. The collegiality and collaborative relationship between organization doctors in B.C., the specialists in B.C., the Ministry of Health and Public Health. This has just been, it's been phenomenally inspiring. This is actually, I guess, my third pandemic because we went through H1N1 as well as SARS. And many of these practices have been in place and we've adopted them annually for influenza season. But there's is a different urgency and anxiety with this one now because of so many unknowns.

MG: You're all doing excellent work in the face of this. I really appreciate your time this morning on this. Thank you.

KATHLEEN ROSS: Thank you.

JAMES DOWNAR: Thank you, Matt.

MARAL NADJAFI: Thank you.

MG: Dr. James Downar, head of the Division of Palliative Care at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Morale Nadjafi, specialist in internal medicine at North York General Hospital. Dr. Kathleen Ross, family physician in Coquitlam. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to the current on CBC Radio One, and we have just enough time to sneak in some mail with the coronavirus dominating headlines. The inbox for the current is no different. Senior producer Karin Marley joins me to sift through some of your messages. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Hi, Matt. Yes, we definitely are getting quite a few pandemic letters this week.

MG: Yes, indeed. The first comes to us from St. Lambert, Quebec. Richard Sears writes, My wife and I just returned from New York City two nights ago. And though we appear to be fine, we were very surprised that there was absolutely no monitoring or more importantly, testing at the airport. This seems basic to us. There seems to be a lack of intensity in Canada regarding border crossings.

KARIN MARLEY: Yes, it's interesting. What will change at the borders. We'll see. This next one comes from Heather in Nova Scotia.

SOUNDCLIP

Hi, Matt. I recognise the balance between disseminating information for the public good versus information that would generate fear and panic, and rightly so. Indigenous leaders are raising questions regarding their vulnerability in northern remote communities. But the Atlantic Canadian premiers are not speaking out about their particular vulnerabilities. The consequences could be catastrophic in the Atlantic region if and when the virus takes hold. They're a bit like Italy. The parallel being the demographics is similar in the population regarding seniors. My concern is that there seems to be little discussion about Atlantic Canada and the challenge specific to those provinces. Nova Scotia being the province with the highest number of seniors among an entire East Coast region that proportionately had the highest senior population in the country.

MG: You're bang on. Heather, thank you very much for that. Atlantic Canada does indeed have Canada's highest population of seniors. We also asked Leslie Bridges to read her letter. This was in response to our coverage of cruise ships under quarantine.

SOUNDCLIP

I came down with a very bad respiratory infection on our last cruise in September of 2019. Two things about my experience gave them cause for concern. Firstly, I went to the medical office to report my illness, expecting to be told to self-quarantine. But their response was simply that I should carry on roaming the ship and wash my hands frequently. The second alarming thing was what I discovered about the crew's lack of health benefits. No wonder disease spreads rapidly on board. As awful as it has been for wealthy passengers to experience these COVID-19 outbreaks on cruise ships. My heart goes out to the cruise of all these ships who are not allowed to disembark, who received no medical leave and who work under appalling Dickensian conditions.

MG: Thanks for your letter and thank you, Karin Marley, for helping us sift through the mailbag. Important subject that a lot of people have thoughts on. Thank you.

KARIN MARLEY: Anytime.

MG: Senior producer Karin Marley. If there's anything that you hear on The Current that you'd like to comment on, get in touch. You can reach us through the Web site, cbc.ca/thecurrent. You can tweet us or find us on Facebook. Just look for The Current CBC. Coming up in about 90 seconds, we will head to Syria where nine years ago a civil war began. That civil war continues, a refugee crisis continues to unfold. A look at the humanitarian crisis for those who left and those who have been left behind. That's on its way. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stay with us.

Back To Top »

Syria crisis

Guests: Margaret Evan, David Beasley

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Matt Galloway. Nine years ago this weekend, the Arab world changed forever. What began as a revolution in Syria has turned into a knot of violence and displacement. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. Millions more are struggling to rebuild their lives in neighbouring countries. But after nearly a decade, those countries to say that they are under pressure. The CBC's senior Europe correspondent Margaret Evans has just returned from Turkey Greece border. Margaret, good morning.

MARGARET EVANS: Good morning.

MG: What did you see on the border?

MARGARET EVANS: Well, we saw a lot of people stuck in pretty miserable conditions. And, you know, they had gone up to that border with Greece. As you mentioned, at the invitation of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Some were even bussed up there. They were directed to specific border crossings. They told us only to find it closed and lined with Greek border guards who were, you know, using some pretty aggressive tactics to repel people.

MG: Tactics like what?

MARGARET EVANS: Teargassed for one. But we had a number of people talk to us, say mainly the young men - we didn't have any of the women and children tell us this story - but the young men said that they were basically, when they got to the other side of the border, which sometimes involved crossing a river, which kind of mirrored the border, became the border that they were rounded up by the Greek border police, held for a couple of hours and then stripped of their belongings and their clothing and their shoes and sent back to the other side in their underwear.

MG: Given what they've gone through, that must be incredibly difficult for them to experience.

MARGARET EVANS: It was clearly a humiliation tactic, and that's how they felt. They felt humiliated, they said. And of course, it left them with no options as well, because they didn't have their money, they didn't have any I.D. cards. Their mobile phones were taken, they said. And, you know, we met one Turkish aid agency, actually, the only one we saw up there in one village who told us that they'd seen about 300 people sent back that way. And they were basically handing out, you know, shoes and shirts and things like that for people who'd been sent back shivering. It was effective. It was very aggressive. But, you know, for the people that we were meeting, they were almost the lucky ones because they were on a perimeter. We were only allowed to get to about six kilometres from the border. But there were a lot of people trapped because the Turks were not letting the migrants come back when they were sent back. So they were really, really, really stuck.

MG: You spoke with a number of those people who were on the move. Let's have a listen to one of those conversations.

SOUNDCLIP

MARGARET EVANS: Did you try to cross this morning.

VOICE: Yes. No, no, no. Last night.

MARGARET EVANS: Last night.

VOICE: About 8:00 o'clock night. But we go inside the border and they call us, come, when we go they ask us where are you from. We say that we are from Afghanistan. And they take our shoes our pants, our everythings; I.D. cards. Moneys. We have nothing. Mobiles. Turkish peoples help us. Their mobiles, everything.

MARGARET EVANS: What will you do now?

VOICE: We didn't know. What do we do? Like nothing here. Just we, now we don't have anything, no money to go back some safe place. We have childrens, womans.

MG: Couple of things there, Margaret. One is it sounds very busy. There's something there's a lot of people around you are having the conversation.

MARGARET EVANS: There were a lot of people up there. And, you know, it wasn't just young men. That was a young man who's 28 from Afghanistan, as he said. He said he had been travelling with his father, who was injured and taken to the hospital. He had kind of lost track of where he was. We saw people, young people coming from Iran. We met a woman with two kids camped out. Nothing but a fire going to sleep beside that night from [unintelligible]. But she was originally from Syria. It's not a new wave of refugees or a lot of people who are already in Turkey, clearly not happy with their circumstances and seeing this as a chance. You know, one memorable conversation is with a young man named Ibrahim. He was 18 today, but he was 12 when he left Syria as a refugee. He fled Idlib with his brother because his parents, he said he had lost in Syria. So there's just you know, there's a world of hurt going on there.

MG: This is so incredibly difficult to hear it interest in terms of the scale of this. Why is this happening? What happened? There was this deal that the EU signed with Turkey to avoid this sort of situation unfolding. That was back in 2016. So why is this happening now?

MARGARET EVANS: Well, I mean, a couple of reasons. I mean, I think the main one is basically Turkey is under enormous pressure. They already have four million refugees. We see the Turks backing one side in the Syrian conflict, the Russians backing another. And that's kind of almost a side show. You know, they came to to near blows in direct conflict, but it's almost a sideshow to the refugees on Turkey's southern border, on its Syrian border. You know, there've been since December, I think it is a million people displaced from their homes and running for the Turkish border. As the Syrian regime backed up by Russian air power, is making this advance into this last stronghold in Syria where they've spent, you know, a decade corralling its opponents. And it's coming for them. And civilians are getting caught in the way. And they're all along that border. They see Turkey as their defenders. And Turkey is terrified that it's going to have another million refugees. And so the Turkish president, Erdoğan, gambled. And most analysts would tell you in Turkey, it backfired. He said to the Europeans, you won't help me. You won't help me deal with the potential threat of these refugees. We need more help. Then, you take them. You take them. And the Europeans this time said we're not going to do it.

MG: And these are refugees, again, that aren't just coming from Syria. There are, as you mentioned, Iraqis. We heard from that young man from Afghanistan as well. What's the mix? What's the complexion of those who are fleeing across the border?

MARGARET EVANS: It's really hard to know. I mean, people keep saying there are no Syrians there, but we met a number of Syrians. So again, though, people who are already in the country and a lot of Syrians, as I said, four million of them in Turkey are already there, you know, either in camps or they've found jobs or they've got their kids in school. So they're not the ones that are that are fleeing in large numbers. It's, you know, other people who are trying to make their way. And the Europeans accused Turkey of weaponizing these people. The Greeks, of course, have been accused of, you know, abandoning all international norms when it comes to people's rights for asylum. The repelling of them. But we've also heard reports, seen reports in some of the Western media about they call a black site where people were being kept in saying that they weren't allowed to claim asylum. We've seen some images of the Greek Coast Guard being aggressive with boatloads of people trying to reach the Greek islands. And Greece, of course, it has common cause with Turkey because it also accuses its fellow member states of failing to show solidarity and help share the burden of the refugees. So this is what Turkey is saying. It saying, you've promised us money. We're still expecting some of it. But you also said you'd take some of the refugees and that you would ease visa restrictions on Turks in Europe and that you would improve trade ties. None of that's happened. And the Greeks are saying we can't cope with this. So it's a huge mass. But the cause of it is, of course, the conflict in Syria.

MG: This conflict has seen a ceasefire in recent days that Russia has brokered with Turkey. Is that going to hold? Is that going to create any sort of relief to the situation that you've been describing on the border?

MARGARET EVANS: I think very few people think it will hold. That's why I don't think you see huge numbers of people in Syria going back to their homes. Turkey and Russia have come up with this agreement that's going to see them doing a joint patrol along a key highway, six kilometres either side in Idlib in this last bastion of opposition. There have been breaches of the cease fire already. You know, the Syrian regime smells the end of this war and they want to go after the opposition elements they see still in Idlib. And there isn't an awful lot of, I think, western sympathy for that, because there are these hardline Islamist groups still operating in Idlib. But, you know, the aid workers, the people in the hospitals that are consistently being targeted would tell you that there is a huge civilian population that has nothing to do with that. So I think there would be little optimism that that cease fire is going to hold.

MG: Just finally, we are about to speak with a representative from the World Food Program. The executive director who has seen what's happening on the ground with that population. What happens to those refugees that you saw?

MARGARET EVANS: It's unclear. I mean, when we were there, I mean, we spent a few days up there. And when we started, as you said, it was crowded around us. We were surrounded by people with, you know, putting tarps up because they had no shelter and things like that. By the time we'd left, they'd been cleared out of the way. There was no sign that they'd ever been there. I think there are still some trapped between the borders up there. But their plight, of course, is very different from the refugees in Idlib in the south, who have nowhere to go. And they'll be hoping and there are some people think that, you know, maybe what's going to happen there is that that's going to become some kind of a very narrow, safe zone. And Turkey will be asking for help from its NATO allies, including Canada, to protect that safe. So that's also a possibility.

MG: Margaret, thank you.

MARGARET EVANS: Thanks for having me.

MG: Margaret Evans is the CBC senior Europe correspondent. Surviving as a refugee is challenging enough. Getting basic staples in a war zone is another matter entirely. David Beasley is the executive director of the World Food Program. He, too, was in that region recently, specifically inside Syria. David Beasley, good morning to you.

DAVID BEASLEY: Good morning.

MG: We just heard from Margaret Evans about the humanitarian crisis. What do you make of what she saw and what she was describing?

DAVID BEASLEY: Well, it's a pretty good picture of the reality that we're faced in on a day to day basis. And it is really a catastrophe in particularly in the Idlib area. The rest of the country is struggling and suffering from nine years of conflict. When the Idlib, which is an active war zone and it is very difficult place to operate right now.

MG: Tell me about the biggest challenge you face in feeding people under those conditions.

DAVID BEASLEY: Well, anytime you're feeding people in the midst of a war, whether it's in Yemen or whether it's in serious, always complicated because you're having to negotiate moving cargo, food, in this case, water and many other types of supplies that are critical to people just barely surviving. And so when you're moving through the military frontlines, and that line changes on a day to day basis. It's not easy because you have to negotiate between all the parties involved with as Russia, Syria, Turkey, rebel groups, whatever the case may be. But God bless the humanitarian aid workers who are out there putting their lives on the line because they know what's at stake and they'll do whatever it takes to really get the food and the locations that people can, in fact, get the food to survive. And we're doing that. But it is not easy.

MG: For those people who are caught in that crunch, who are desperately needing relief?

DAVID BEASLEY: In the most desperate situation. We have what we call RTEs; ready to eat rations. So the least keep them on the move if they would meet them where they are. Other than that, it will be your basics, whether it's lentils and other type basic commodity products that keep people alive with the right nutrition.

MG: How do you get those, whatever it is, whether it's the RTEs or the other staples, how do you actually get the food to those who are on the move?

DAVID BEASLEY: Well, in Syria, for example, my warehouse is trucking operations and you watching the situation as it moves daily. It will have distribution points. But then as people are fleeing, then we try to meet them where they are. And that literally is moving trucks, vehicles, working with our local NGOs in the particular area who know the back roads, who know how to get things moving around. And we maintain contact with the different authorities from the different security. This constant negotiation and constant given take in terms of what's taking place as the frontline changes on a daily and if not an hourly basis, that is people are being displaced. You know, you don't know what's could be displaced next. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you'll get a tip off. Those could be a military action over here so we can move supplies in a direction early in advance. But obviously it gets very sensitive because where we move to can also send messages about what's about to happen next. So as you can imagine, very complicated.

MG: You use schools as a distribution point for food?

DAVID BEASLEY: Well, we use schools as an opportunity to bring kids back into the schools. That's one of the things we've really worked hard on in the last two years because the schools were shut down in Syria throughout the entire country. And so we're now assisting 782 thousand children in schools. A few days ago, I was in the Idlib area and Hama area with Henry and Afor head of UNICEF. And we were partnering together and showcasing why we must get schools back open. We must get the children back in the schools, because you've got an entire generation of Syrian children literally have missed out on education. And it will have dramatic implications on the future of those families and the future of Syria.

MG: This is a war that's going on, as I mentioned, for nine years. And there are a lot of people who believe that what's happening now, the humanitarian crisis is perhaps the worst that we have seen over the course of those nine years. Why does it continue to get worse?

DAVID BEASLEY: It's politics. Manmade conflict. And this is what this is all about. And, you know, quite frankly, we've seen the hunger rate for the first time in decades go back up worldwide when we've been able to take the global hunger rate down dramatically over the past few decades because of all the technology advancements in and some of the things that we can do so wonderfully. But because of manmade conflict in the Idlib area is just a perfect context of the worst case scenario for humanity. Man made war. It's nothing more complicated than that.

MG: In that particular area, when you say politics, though, as part of this, also just about the fact that the eyes of the world, which were once on what's happening in Syria aren't anymore. You have a U.S. election underway. You have the coronavirus crisis that's happening around the world and the attention that that we outside of Syria, we're paying to that to that crisis that was unfolding is now elsewhere.

DAVID BEASLEY: Well, Matt, this is one of the things that I actually have been pretty loud about in the last six months is, you know, it's not just Syria, but also Yemen and South Sudan. And let me keep going on. And these are manmade conflicts in world seems to be so distracted with some of the other things that I've been telling the leaders. You got to slow down and come together and stop in some of these war.

MG: What do you mean when you say you've been telling the leaders?

DAVID BEASLEY: Well, I've been telling them that I think some of these issues are solvable. But the leaders, the major leaders, the powers that be have got to step up and step in and bring the pressure to bear on all sides in these conflicts. Otherwise, people could continue to suffer and die unnecessarily. And this is what we're having here. And in fact, this is spiralling out of control as we speak. And I would saying at the Munich Security Conference, just a couple of weeks ago, that when you take in consideration what's happening now in Syria, in the Lebanese economic literal collapse, which is compounding an already dramatic problem in Syria, coupled with Yemen, Iraq, the Sahel region, literally unravelling as we speak. Sudan is at a magical crossroads. South Sudan, the Somali area, Ethiopia DRC. I said you don't have enough money set aside to address all of these issues. And just like in Syria, if you don't address them strategically, comprehensively, you are going to have a mass problem, for example, in Syria, because we did not address the situation early enough. Let me let me give you just the mathematic financial dynamic. It cost us about 50 cents per day to assist, feed Syrian in Syria. That same Syrian in Berlin or Brussels, the financial humanitarian package supports about 50 to 100 euros per day. Now, what's really sort of the good news is the Syrian people don't want to leave home.

MG: They want to stay where they are.

DAVID BEASLEY: They won't do it. And that we feed about 90 million people in any given day, week or month. And so we survey people all the time and people don't want to leave home. In fact, in the Syrian conflict, people will move to three, four, five times before they'll eventually leave home. But if they don't have food for their children and some degree of security, they do what any of us as parents would do. They will find that the most available place to have food and security. So this is what we're talking about now. When I was saying that to the European leaders, for example, in the U.S. a few weeks ago, this was in the height of the desert locust just now coming into eastern Africa. That was before the Corona virus was really taken a global dimension that it is now. And so it is really going to be a crisis year for humanitarians in the year 2020. I think it's going to be probably the worst year we've seen since World War Two.

MG: Just before I let you go, where do you find optimism in this? This is a bleak story and it's been bleak for nine years, but it's particularly awful.

DAVID BEASLEY: Now, we know if you'd asked me two years ago, which country did I think was the least hopeful, Sudan. And it's looking at what's taking place in Sudan is remarkable turn of events. And I'm very, very hopeful. But it's a it's a limited window of opportunity. And if we don't take advantage of that limited window of opportunity with this new leadership desire to move Sudan in the right direction, it will be exploited by the extremist groups and it will destabilise and create a condition in that area that will be worse than what it was before. So we must act and we must act now.

MG: And you see the success. There is something that is inspirational in some ways that that could that could perhaps be a model for success or at least that show that success is possible elsewhere.

DAVID BEASLEY: Matt, I do. And let me say this. I'm on the ground all the time in war zones and areas of conflict. And people ask me, sir, how do you continue to go on with those misery? And I say, when I hit the ground and I'm in the most desperate situation, I see the little children with their eyes and their hearts. They're still so much hope. Their interest inspire you to go on. And that's what it's all about. It's about these children. We can't turn our back on them. They're our little brothers, our little sisters. They're our future. We can not let them down.

MG: David Beasley, good to speak with you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

DAVID BEASLEY: Thank you.

MG: David Beasley is executive director of the World Food Program.

[Music]

Back To Top »

Teaching bridge to a new generation

MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One, my name is Matt Galloway. You know, the kids have a lot vying for their attention these days. Right now, there is a movement to pull those kids away from screens and introduce them to a much older and slower form of entertainment: the game of bridge. In cities like Toronto and Edmonton, kids meet once a week with senior bridge players who introduce them to the intricacies of this game. And this week in Calgary, about 100 of those kids gathered in the gym at St. Philip Fine Art School for the end of year Bridge Tournament and the CBC. Jennifer Keene dropped by.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Hi, my name is Bernie Verum and I'm the principal at Saint Hill of Fine Arts School. And what you have here is the second annual bridge tournament with elementary students. These kids, most of them had no clue about bridge. They might have known a grandparents or a parent that played bridge. And the skills they learn are amazing. So it isn't your typical curriculum, but it's it's critical thinking. It's working as a team. It's the strategy building. And then there's the also the etiquette. You'll notice it's quite quiet. And that's because if you're bidding aloud, you could be giving your strategy away to the next table. These are all great fours, fives and sixes. So you're talking 9 to 11, something might be some 12 year olds here and they just love it. They've fallen in love with the game. They were upset when they had to choose between going to a rehearsal for our school production and bridge. And I just said, don't worry about it. Bridge trumps it.

VOICE 2: Pardon the pun.

VOICE 3: Card playing. Should we bid now?

VOICE 4: Now, my name is Keegan. I'm in grade fiver at Laurier Ale. I wasn't sure what it was at first. I heard it was a card game, but I kept thinking it was like building bridges out of cards. So I just wanted to try something new.

JENNIFER KEENE: And what do you think about it?

VOICE 4: I think it's a lot of fun.

JENNIFER KEENE: Really? Does that do any of your friends think it's sort of nerdy?

VOICE 4: No, not really.

VOICE 5: I am Diesel grade six and I go to St. Jude. I got involved in playing bridge because I love cards. Cards is really my favourite thing to do and outlook and I love to learn new card games and maybe I can teach it to my mom and then we can play with the whole family.

JENNIFER KEENE: What about I mean, there's so many things you could be doing like video games and you know, that kind of thing. Does this compete?

VOICE 5: Definitely, actually. It really does compete. I will video games and this is actually just made me think. It gives me like the same joy of video games.

VOICE 2: The heart. Call the heart. Okay. And now you're in your hand. And you win that trick.

VOICE 6: My name is Myron Acton and with the ACBL Unit 3 [unintelligible], a Calgary unit of the American Contract Bridge League. And my role is Youth Education Coordinator. I want to start by telling you I don't own a cell phone, okay, which is rare in this day and age. And it kind of sickens me when I see kids attached to their phone and their environment exists between their eyes and the phone, and that is it. This game takes kids away completely from technology. So it puts them into a social situation where they're engaged in a live environment with other students and they're learning because it involves coordination, thinking and most importantly, what I call adaptive thinking. Adaptive thinking happens when you are on a certain path and then the opponent does something that takes you off that path and you have to create a countermeasure to respond to that. Something like chess, your opponent makes a tactical move and you have to create new strategies in your mind to work around the strategy that the opponent created. Bridges Very much that way.

VOICE 7: My name's Derrius. I am form [unintelligible] school. I'm in grade five.

JENNIFER KEENE: Tell me what you guys are doing here today.

VOICE 8: Oh, we are currently right now playing bridge.

JENNIFER KEENE: How does it compare to other card games like Go Fish?

VOICE 8: I find it a bit more complicated because gaffed a bit like something like one of spades or so. It's not as easy as go fish.

JENNIFER KEENE: Some people would say this is kind of an old fashioned game. What do you think?

VOICE 9: I would say so too.

JENNIFER KEENE: Do you like that about it?

VOICE 9: Yes. Because it's like I'll know fully to say it's history, but it's sort of like it to me.

JENNIFER KEENE: Who's winning the tournament? How are you guys doing in the tournament so far?

VOICE 9: The first round I had last time was nobody bids so we couldn't play. And then we won that one. And last one we want to. And this one I think we're going to do good on. So hopefully we're going to win.

MG: What's old is new again, thanks to the CBC's Jennifer Keen for that. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for Q. Our pal Talia Schlanger is in for Tom Power. You will hear a conversation, Jann Ardern. She is the newest inductee into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. That's on its way on CBC Radio One. You don't need me to tell you that this has been a tough week when it comes to news. The stocks have been plunging. Illness spreading. People quarantined. A lot of the things that help us unwind, that give us distraction from the Daily News. Those things have been cancelled as well. You can't watch an NBA game or an NHL game. Big concerts are out, too. At The Current. It is our job in many ways to keep you informed. That's a big important thing to do. But we also know that life can feel heavy sometimes and you need some distraction. You need something to change that channel. Going into the weekend, my hope is that you stay safe and healthy, but that you also find those little moments of joy in the midst of all of this heaviness. Maybe this song will offer you a bit of that lightness. It's from an album called Good News for People Who Love Bad News. This is Modest Mouse and a tune called Float On. My name's Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to The Current and be well.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Good News for People Who Love Bad News by Modest Mouse]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

Friday March 13, 2020 Full Transcript

More Stories Like This