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The AIH Transcript for April 09, 2020

Hosts: Carol Off and Chris Howden

Prologue

CO: The new abnormal. Today Justin Trudeau told Canadians that life as we knew it won't be coming back any time soon. We'll ask our guest how to improve that prognosis.

CO: Voice of experience. As debate rages over the use of a largely untested drug to fight COVID-19, author Eden Robinson is sharing some hard-earned knowledge: that drug can have some harrowing side effects.

CO: If you billed it... For years, customers at a Georgia restaurant have been taping dollar bills to the walls. Now, the restaurant's owner has painstakingly removed each one and donated the money to her out-of-work staff.

CH: As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that guesses every rose has its horn.

[Music: Theme]

Part one: Ontario testing folo, Eden Robinson: Hydroxychloroquine, resto dollar bills

Ontario testing folo

Guest: André Picard

[/sc]

CH: Prime Minister Trudeau was echoing the advice of Dr .Theresa Tam. Today, Canada's Medical Officer of Health told reporters that it will be some time before we can do without measures like handwashing, social distancing, and the mantra of "test, test, test". But Dr. Tam acknowledged that one province, Ontario, has fallen behind when it comes to testing. André Picard is the health columnist at The Globe and Mail newspaper. We reached him in Montreal.

CO: André, we learned today about best case and worst case scenarios for Canada. What role would better testing play in improving our odds?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, testing is really important because it will give us a sense of how many people have been infected and what the attack rate is. So the attack rate is how many people actually get sick. And we don't know that. Now we know who's gotten sick, but we don't have an idea of how many people could get sick in the future.

CO: Why don't we know that? Why don't we have better testing?

AP: Well, because we've had a shortage of tests for a bit. And now we've just been sort of slow. And it read depends on the province. So being Canada, things are very different from one jurisdiction to the next. So some jurisdictions like Alberta have been great with testing. Some, like Ontario, have been terrible for reasons we don't fully understand.

CO: And this has been a big criticism because we heard at the beginning from Ontario that it was on top of this. This is not going to be another SARS. And yet, we heard the premier yesterday saying, he said, there's no excuse for how bad our testing is. What are we to make of that?

AP: Well, his frustration, I think, is justified. He said he wants to province doing 13,000 tests a day. They're only doing two thousand 2,250 now. And it's not clear why anymore. At first, it was a lack of reagents, so the chemicals. Then it was a lack of swabs. So there were some technical issues. But now it's not clear what the reason is. Ontario has a very bureaucratic public health system; has a lot of people in charge of different things. And if you contrast it to say to B.C., B.C. has been praised for the way it's handled this. It's very clear there's one person in charge, and it's one person running the show. And Ontario has five or six people doing different things. So I think it's a technical issue. It's a structural issue.

CO: But could people in Ontario be forgiven yesterday when they heard the premier say that, and saying that they're only doing 3,000 tests while having the capacity, as he said, to do 13,000 tests per day. Could they be forgiven for thinking that maybe that he has some responsibility for that?

AP: Well, the premier is the boss, ultimately. But I don't think he can go in the labs and do it. So I think he's been giving his blurb, you know, get stuff done. And I think he reached the end of his rope. Because, again, it's not really clear why things aren't being done. There's not really any excuse for it anymore.

CO: Well, if we did have better testing, we've seen places — countries and districts — that have done extensive testing, and they seem to be places that have had the best results, or the lowest numbers of cases and deaths. Is it possible that Canada could go to that rate where you have everybody tested the way… Or most people tested the way they are in some places?

AP: Well, it's possible, you know, we're not going to test every single person in the country. But we can do much more extensive testing. And in Alberta, Premier Kenney, in his address the other night, said that they're going to really ramp up testing dramatically. So we're going to see what happens when Alberta does this. It's important because it'll tell us people who are in the community who have had this virus or who have it now, but aren't sick. And those are the people who are spreading it elsewhere without us knowing. So once you can surround them, figure out who their contacts are, that's how you're really limit the spread. And that's countries like South Korea is the big tester. And that's what they've done very effectively is find out who has this, and then stop them from spreading it to other people. Until you do that, until you limit the number of people that each infected person spreads to, the numbers continue to rise.

CO: We spoke with a doctor last night, who said that he has long-term care facilities for people coming in. And he's taking in more patients. He's done swabs. He's tried to get them tested. They said, no, no, we're not going to test those people. Can you appreciate how frustrated some of these facilities must be, where they really are the front lines, these nursing homes, for this disease?

AP: Well, it is really, really frustrating for the long-term care homes. We know they're at the highest risk of any part of society. We know that half the deaths in Canada have happened in long-term care homes. There's really no reason that every single person who is in care should not be tested immediately. And again, Quebec said it's going to do it. Ontario keeps promising to do it. Is doing it. Alberta is doing it. B.C. is doing it. So it's certain to happen. But it should have happened sooner.

CO: You have had a front-row seat on this. You have studied and watched and written and considered just about everything about this pandemic. What could Canada do better? What do you think, what kind of a mark would you give our performers at this point?

AP: Well, I think we're sort of a middle-of-the-pack. We could have acted sooner. We were not very organized. There's different reactions in different parts of the country. So it's hard to give an overall mark. Different places have done better on certain things. And again, we have, I think, a real pension for incrementalism in Canada. So we've brought in these rules, but it's not really clear what the rules are in any given place because they change so marginally from day to day. So I think we really have to have some structure and say, listen, these are the rules. This is what social distancing we have to do if we're gonna get this, you know, bring this number down. This is how we're going to test. And we have to pretty well do it. Not exactly the same everywhere, but have some consistency in our approach. And again, if you look at the countries that have done well, there’s really clear lines of communication, really clear actions on testing, really tracking down people who are infected and their contacts really relentlessly using things like cell phone contacts. Alberta has said it's going to do that, too. But this is stuff we could have done much sooner. So we're a little bit slow all the time. We're a little too cautious for our own good.

CO: You are in Quebec tonight. Despite all the testing, the numbers show that Quebec has far more cases. So what do you tell us about that?

AP: Well, I think Quebec had sort of a head start on this. A great part of it is just bad luck. Quebec had a much earlier March Break. People from Quebec, as you know, love to go to Florida. One of the hot spots in the U.S. We brought back a lot of disease to Quebec very early. And that's still being reflected in the numbers. Now, the flipside of that, Quebec was one of the first to actually crack down, to have public health measures. And I think what we're going to see in Quebec is probably the first province to peak. So, you know, we have to get to the peak. You have to get to the worst before you can get better. And they're predicting that's going to come in the next couple of weeks. And then numbers start to fall. So that's that's the upside. It's not too bright of an upside because it's meaning thousands and thousands more cases. But there's some light at the end of the tunnel, as the premier said.

CO: All right. André, we'll be following your work. And thank you for what you're writing and what you're telling us about this disease. And then thank you for coming on the show.

AP: Thank you.

CH: André Picard is the health columnist at The Globe and Mail newspaper. He spoke to us from Montreal.

Eden Robinson: Hydroxychloroquine

Guest: Eden Robinson

CO: Eden, can you tell us, first of all, why were you taking hydroxychloroquine?

EDEN ROBINSON :I was taking hydroxychloroquine for my arthritis’. I have two forms of rheumatoid arthritis.

CO: And I know that it had limited benefit for you. For others, there’s great benefits, or at least they've been able to function because of it.

ER: Yes. If your arthritis responds well, it is such a blessing because it's inexpensive, you know, relatively well-tolerated. And if you can find a drug that makes your rheumatoid arthritis or your lupus respond well, if it can get your pain management and your inflammation under control.

CO: When you hear Donald Trump saying what do you have to lose? And say, look at the benefits of hydroxychloroquine, what do you say to that? What do you want to say to Donald Trump?

ER: Oh, my goodness. Well, you know when you have those commercials for drugs, and at first, they give you all the wonderful things it can do. And then they have that very soothing voice that comes afterwards and tells you all the possible side effects? I think we're missing that soothing voice, thinking strictly from my own experience. After month five, I started seeing floaters. And the floaters just kept increasing. And then I started getting eye pain. And if you've ever had a migraine, you know, if you can imagine your migraine in your eye. That was my experience with hydroxychloroquine — which I call Plaquenil because that’s the brand name that I was using. If you take this medication without being medically-supervised, you could win the worst lottery ever. If you are one of the rare people that have, you know, retinal detachment as your side effect. When you're given Plaquenil from a doctor or a rheumatologist, there's a protocol that you have to follow. And you have to get a baseline eye exam from an ophthalmologist. And you go back every six months, so that they can monitor if there's any build-up in your eye. And, you know, when towards the end of the eight, I was seeing so many floaters. It was like a snow globe. It made it really hard to drive, really hard to read. So, you know, I wish that there was like that soothing voice telling people that, you know, informing people of the potential side effects.

CO: What are the other side effects you know are caused by hydroxychloroquine?

ER: You know, one of the more common ones is like mood changes. You get paranoid hallucinations, or suicidal thoughts. If you have an underlying heart condition, you know, you're in danger of heart arrhythmias. If you have an underlying heart condition that hasn't been diagnosed — you don't know about it because it hasn't interfered with your life — then you will find out after you start taking Plaquenil because you blackout.

CO: So what do you say to those people who are now not just thinking they can treat COVID-19, but lots of people trying to get hold of the drug because they believe what the president said, that it can prevent them from getting it?

ER: If you're hoarding this drug to prevent or treat COVID-19, you know, there's no real studies yet that sat that it can do this. And you are risking your own health. And at the same time, you're taking drugs away from people who actually need it. You're taking drugs away from a very vulnerable population. People with rheumatoid arthritis and people with lupus, who do well on this drug, need to take it regularly. If you don't take your arthritis medication regularly, you risk having an arthritic flare. When you have a flare, your symptoms come back. And sometimes they come roaring back. When I have a flare, what that means is my inflammation levels go up. You know, all the symptoms return. And if the flare is really bad, I'll have an increase in pain.

CO: So people need these drugs. People need these drugs, and they shouldn't be going to…

ER: People need these drugs. You know, if you are taking this for lupus, that's even more critical. Lupus is an autoimmune disorder that attacks your body the same way that arthritis does. But if it starts attacking one of your organs because you can't take your medication regularly, then that puts you at risk for organ failures. And if you have one of your organs failing during a pandemic, when your immune system is compromised, you know, the results are pretty grim.

CO: We should point out to people that there are studies and tests going on to see if drugs, hydroxychloroquine can be any kind of a treatment where someone has COVID-19. Right now, it's regarded as a kind of a last-chance kind of medication. And there is absolutely no evidence that it can prevent anyone from getting it. So in case anyone is wondering about that. And so for yourself, why did you feel it was necessary to put this message out? I know you got a piece coming out in The Globe about this. You're talking to us. What is it you wanted to let people know?

ER: Well, when Donald Trump kept saying what do you have to lose, I just wanted to be the little voice that comes after on the commercial that tells you these are the possible side effects. Just to raise people's awareness that, you know, these aren't Tic Tacs. These have potentially life-altering side effects.

CO: Well, Eden, thank you for being that voice.

ER: Thank you for having me.

CO: All right. Take care of yourself.

ER: You too. Bye.

CH: Eden Robinson is the author of "Son of a Trickster" and many other novels. She's a current "Canada Reads" contender. And she's a former hydroxychloroquine user. We reached her in Campbell River, B.C. For more on this story, visit our website at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Sombre guitar]

Resto dollar bills

Guest: Jennifer Knox

JK: Yeah, it was sad. It was shocking. And it was the right thing to do, you know?

CO: Okay, but profitable. How much money did you take off the walls?

JK: We got $3,714.

CO: Wow! And there’s some foreign currency mixed in there, too, right?

JK: Yeah. I obviously don't know how much that accumulates to U.S. dollar. But we even got a Canada, eh? We got a five-dollar from Canada.

CO: Five dollars!

JK: Um-hmm.

CO: They're not getting their five-dollar back. What are you going to do?

JK: No, so the $3,714, and then when people heard what we were doing, they actually donated an additional $390 in just cash. And we were able to give four of my bartenders and two of my musicians $600 each. And it just blew their mind. A lot of tears were involved.

CO: Tell me some of the stories as to what that meant for those people?

JK: Well, we had one bartender, she also bartends at another place, so she said, actually, Jen, I'm good right now for like another month. And I would like to donate my portion to someone that really needs it. And I knew right away. Oh, my gosh! My friend Lydia, they've been struggling. You know, our season was just about to start. And we Facetimed Lydia, and told her what was going on. And you talk about the tears, man. She's able to pay her rent. This money just goes so far. It was like a beautiful story got even more beautiful. And there's a lot of love going on right now on our little island. It's pretty awesome.

CO: Yeah. I can't imagine anybody when they're stapling their money to the walls and ceiling could have ever imagined what it would mean for somebody at some point.

JK: And that's the thing. When people heard what was happening, they weren't like, oh, I want my dollar back, you know? [CO dryly chuckles] They were like, oh my god, my late husband, this is exactly what he would have wanted. And I didn't ask for permission. I sort of just assumed that people's hearts were in the right place right now. And they were. I mean, the response has been overwhelming.

CO: So when the Sand Bar reopens, and it's going to, and you're serving margaritas to people who are coming from the beach, how different is the bar going to look?

JK: It's gonna look a little fresh and clean. So not to shock you all. But it's gonna be the same old dive bar, same bartenders and there's means going out, like, does my bar miss me? We do [chuckling]. We do miss you. And we're really looking forward to getting back in there.

CO: Jennifer, what a great story. Thank you.

JK: Thank you so much.

CO: You, too. Bye-bye.

JK: Bye.

CH: Jennifer Knox is the owner of The Sand Bar restaurant and bar. We reached her in Tybee Island, Georgia. And you can find more on that story — including some photos of the bar — on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Electronica]

SOD: I Miss the Office

CH: This pandemic has changed a lot of things about our nine-to-five. For example, many parents trying to work from home now refer to their children as, "co-workers" — airquote-un-airquote. As in, "My "'co-worker' barged into my meeting naked and started screaming for goldfish crackers. Again." And as our daily realities change, so too do our fantasies. In the before-days, many a desk-jockey gazed upon a tropical sunset — also known as a screensaver — in a mostly futile effort to escape the challenges of modern office life. But now, we're awash in a sudden nostalgia for days spent bobbing amid a sea of cubicles. Enter I-miss-the-office-dot-EU — the brainchild of a German consulting company.

[Sound: Audio that replicates the sounds normally heard around an office. So there are phones ringing

and people chatting inaudible.]

CH: Ah! Let the gentle waves of an office audioverse wash over you, as your cares drift away. And if the "I Miss the Office" website doesn't sound officey-enough, you can up the number of colleagues; turn on the photocopier; invite a guest to sit on a rather noisy chair. Hey — your business is your business. Now, we don't recognize all the elements in this particular soundscape. It appears that German office life holds mysteries to which we are not privy.

[Sound: Lip-smacking as somebody eats particularly loudly.]

CH: EW! Actually, it's possible that the point is to cure any reflexive yearning for the way things were. Nevertheless, this one goes out to all the co-workers, air quotes or no. And that's our Sound of the Day.

CH: Take a deep breath. We're in this for the long haul. That's the message from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today. He said that Canadians will likely need to stay home and practice physical distancing for months. And on the question of when life would fully return to normal, he said that won't happen until a vaccine is available. The timeline: perhaps a year-and-a-half. But a new study from scientists at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph suggests there may be a way to fight COVID-19, while easing some of the extreme isolation measures at the same time. Researchers are calling it "dynamic distancing". Ashleigh Tuite is an assistant professor of epidemiology at U of T, and the study's lead author. We reached her in Toronto.

CO: Professor Tuite, in simple, layman's terms, can you describe what is dynamic distancing?

ASHLEIGH TUITE: Sure. Basically, what it is, is it's distancing that can be turned up and down. So dependent on what's happening with the epidemic, we can ramp it up and have more. And if we don't have a lot of COVID in our community, we can have less.

CO: Tell us when you would ramp it up and when you would ramp it down?

AT: Right. So when we have a lot of transmission happening, so when we have a lot of cases, when we have a lot of people in hospital and we have a lot of deaths happening, we want to have fairly restrictive distancing measures in place. And when we start seeing things come under control. So when we're, hopefully, on the other side as the epidemic peak, and we start seeing, you know, fewer cases in our community, and start having room in our hospitals, then we can talk about easing up those distancing measures.

CO: And people would get, what, a memo, or some kind of a message that you have to behave differently today than you did last week?

AT: So in terms of how this is implemented, I am an epidemiologist and a modeler. So I will say that you know, this is fairly hypothetical at this point. In terms of how we would actually implement this in the population, I think that's something that we're going to have to figure out. But the idea is really that, you know, early on, we need to have really restrictive measures because it's the best tool that we have at hand to control transmission. But we're going to reach a point — because the measures that we have in place right now are working — is at a certain point, we are going to reduce transmission. And we're going to have to start thinking about how do we return to normal? And that's going to involve easing up on the various response measures that are in place right now. But the important thing to remember is that this isn't really a matter of we control the epidemic once and then we're done. We're going to be dealing with this for a long period of time, probably until we have the vaccine. And so we're going to have these dynamic or reactive response measures in response to what's going on in terms of the epidemic.

CO: Okay, so you don't have a practical description of how this works. But basically, it ramps up when things look bad. They say, okay, today is not a good day to get COVID-19. So let’s get some more distance. And then later, next Thursday, maybe we can all go up to the bar?

AT: Yeah. I mean, I think what this is probably going to look like is not so much, you know, a daily forecast in terms of how much physical distancing do we need to do? I think it's going to be a little bit more modulated. So it may be something along the lines, you know, next week we have a lot of capacity in our ICUs, our hospitals are looking good, we can start thinking about having small gatherings of people, or we can start thinking about having some of our smaller restaurants open up, or have, you know, various sort of returns to normalcy. And we’ll constantly be watching what's happening in terms of, you know, how many cases are we seeing, how many hospitalizations are we seeing? And then in response to that, say, well, you know, things are looking oak, let's continue as we are, or maybe think about opening things up a little bit more. Or the alternative may be, well, you know, we're starting to see a concerning increase in admissions to ICU right now. It's time to start to think about spending some more time at home.

CO: How do you plan for that? I mean, if you're going to be... How do you say, well, we're going to hire these people or open this restaurant or even decide what day you're going to have your birthday party if you don't know from two or three weeks down the line whether you're going to be able to have that freedom?

AT: Yeah, no, it's a really difficult question. And I think the important thing with all of this is that we don't... We can't really plan anything. And so the alternative to this is to say, well, just keep everything shut down for the next year or so. And you know, what I'm saying is just sort of hypothetical here. I don't know what the coming months are going to hold for us?

CO: Well, the prime minister's saying something like that, so, yeah, we can maybe go with your idea.

AT: Yeah. Yeah, so just so you know, for the next year, we're going to shut everything down. And, I mean, that's that's an option. But we know based on what other countries are going through and, you know, their various response measures, is that at a certain point, you know, the costs in terms of societal costs, economic costs of keeping everything shut down don't make a lot of sense. But I think the important thing to note is that it's not going to be a one-time thing. So, you know, I think if you're thinking about possible scenarios, and again, I sort of caveat all of this with the idea that, you know, we don't really know what's going to happen over the coming months, but you basically have a situation where you say, well, we just we keep everything shut down for the next several months or the next year, or we think about how do we basically figure out some sort of optimal balance between having some degree of normalcy. And note that, you know, it's not going to be life as usual, you know, in general, we're talking about basically trying to navigate this balance between controlling disease spread and also living our lives.

CO: Okay. But we know the incubation period can be up to two weeks, 14 days. We know that it can actually be another week before somebody is sick enough to require being in intensive care. So we're talking about three weeks of lag time. We're always looking back, we’re looking in the rear-view mirror, aren't we, in all cases of trying to predict. So, again, I don't understand how you could say what we might do today when what we're looking at is what happened three weeks ago.

AT: Right, right, and that's an excellent point. And that's another another component of our response is that we need to have better testing. We need to have a better handle of where we are on the epidemic curve at any given point in time. And we're certainly not there yet. I think, you know, over the coming weeks, we are going to improve our testing capacity. And I think we're going to be detecting more cases, particularly the less symptomatic cases. The other issue is exactly as you said, is that everything is delayed and lagged. And so what we see today does not necessarily reflect where we are right now. It's a snapshot of where the epidemic was a week or two ago. But the reality is, is that we know we can use models and statistical methods to infer from the data that we do have today what that underlying epidemic curve looks like? And we can use that information for planning purposes to plan what we need to do over the coming weeks.

CO: All right. We'll leave it there. Professor Tuite, thank you.

AT: Oh, you're very welcome.

CH: Ashleigh Tuite is an assistant professor of epidemiology at U of T. We reached her in Toronto.

CH: There's something tremendously special about holding your newborn baby for the first time. But during this pandemic, that special moment is being postponed. The Jewish General Hospital in Montreal is not allowing spouses or family members to accompany women giving birth. That meant that, when Alfredo Paolilleo's wife, Vanessa, gave birth on Tuesday, he was at home. Alfredo Paolilleo spoke with CBC Montreal's Let's Go yesterday afternooon about what it was like.

[sc]

ALFREDO PAOLILLEO: We found out together, we found out a couple of days before the birth. I mean, I think it was Friday, if I’m not mistaken. We were sitting down on the couch, watching TV and she went on her phone just scrolling on her social media. And then she saw like a little ad on Facebook, a little thing saying, you know, husbands weren't allowed. So she obviously had been down. She was freaking out. And I don't blame her. And I don't blame any other woman out there that had to do that. So to try to calm her down, and you know, try to explain to her. I went, listen, we're in a rough time right now. We have to be strong, me and you. You know, it's very easy to just be sad, and kind of like give up in that sense. But, She feeds off of me, and I feed off of her. So I know if I remain positive and kind of focussed, she feeds off of me, you know? and she needs it more than ever, so.

SABRINA MARANDOLA: And so, Baby Gennaro was born yesterday. Have you seen your son, Alfredo?

AP: Yes, yes, well, what happened was that yesterday we were calling each other. You know, I'm checking in on her. How's everything? Good, good. What happened was she called me, telling me that she was ten centimetres. I said, oh wow, great! So told her call me when it’s done. So no joke, ten minutes later, she called me back, and I just saw my newborn son laying on my wife, and I saw him for the first time.

SM: Wow! So first of all, that was very fast!

AP: Oh yeah, yeah yeah, it was incredible.

SM: And what was it like for you to see your son, but through a screen?

AP: Oh, it hurts. Like, I was happy, right? Everything went well, and the baby was healthy. I think that it’s just, you know, you want to be there. You want to be there, even to hold your wife, to support her, to like, you know? To see your son, to touch your son. It sucked. You know, I was sad. But again, I understand why they did what they did.

SM: Tell me, Alfredo, when are Vanessa and Gennaro coming home?

AP: If everything goes well, later tonight.

SM: Okay! So I'm excited for that, and counting down the hours.

[\sc]

CH: That was Alfredo Paolilleo speaking with the CBC's Sabrina Marandola about how his wife had to give birth without him at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal.

Honkus

[sc]

MARY LOU FINLAY: Mr. Naperstak, when did you decide you'd had enough of honking in your neighbourhood?

AARON NAPERSTAK: Well, it was around Christmas time. It was right before Christmas time of this year. And I had just started working out of my house. And was spending a lot more time at home during the day than I had in the past. And also, it's just, you know, Christmas time in New York, things get really hectic. Specifically, there was this one... There's always been a lot of honking on this on this corner that I live on. That’s something that, You know, I've just sort of had to deal with.

MLF: Why was it so bad that day?

AN: Well, you know, I've actually studied the honking problem on my corner.

MLF: Yeah?

AN: To some detail. And it has had a lot to do with the way the lights are timed.

MLF: Yes.

AN: And it also has a lot to do around Christmas time, with the fact that they're selling Christmas trees right up a block north of my house. And it creates a lot of extra congestion.

MLF: Right. And people were just going nuts? Cars get stuck, and they start leaning on their horn?

AN: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

MLF: Yeah.

AN: And this one guy was just leaning on the horn, just non-stop. Not like a toot-toot, you know [MLF chuckles], please move kind of thing, but just a [imitates a fog horn] non-stop leaning on the horn.

MLF: Right. So what did you do?

AN: I decided that if he was still leaning on his horn by the time I got back from the refrigerator with a carton of eggs, [MLF laughing] then he was going to get some eggs on his windshield. So, you know, I got back to the window with the eggs, and I even have double windows. I've got storm windows because of all the honking.

MLF: Yeah.

AN: And as I opened the first window, and I opened the second window, and he's still down there just [fog horn again] leaning on the horn. And I chucked the first egg, and it wasn't very accurate. It hit the back of his car. And then I took the second egg and hit the top of his car. And I was like, no, you know, I want windshield. I sort of had this in my mind.

MLF: Right.

AN: And by the time the third egg did hit his windshield, he was getting out of his car. And he just went insane. He went ballistic, started yelling at me.

MLF: Oh-oh!

AN: Cussing, swearing, saying things I couldn't say on the radio. He's screaming at me, he’s saying, I'm going to come back tonight. I'm going to kill you. I know where you live.

MLF: Oh my!

AN: And he did. He knew where I lived. You know, I was leaning out my window. People start blasting their horns at him, and he's still ranting in the middle of the street. And he finally drives off. I got his licence plate and everything. I was like, okay, if he kills me, then…

MLF: You'll leave a note to the police, yeah.

AN: That's gonna do me. But basically, you know, it was at that moment that I decided that, okay, throwing eggs at the honkers is not the right response. MLF laughs. Like, that did not work.

MLF: Uh-huh.

AN: That did not improve my situation.

MLF: No, this is when you decided on poetry as a solution?

AN: Exactly. So I decided that I needed a different approach. And I sort of sat down, and I started writing these little haiku poems about honking. And I called them honkus. And I, you know, at first, that was it. I was just like, I'm just writing these little poems. And I didn't really have any big plans with them. And, you know, a couple…

MLF: I can hear them now. They’re coming to get you!

AN: What’s that?

MLF: They're coming to get you.

AN: Exactly, I’ll open the window a little bit so you can get some sound effects [sound: Several sirens and honking] of lovely Brooklyn, New York in action.

MLF: Aaron, shut the window!

AN: Yeah, go F.D.N.Y!

MLF: Okay, poetry, we0 were talking about. like a quiet haiku.

AN: I know, quiet. So, yeah, so I started writing these little honku poems — little haikus about honking. And a few weeks later, like in the second or third week of January, I went out and I printed up 50 honkus — the same poem fifty times. And I went out and I posted it on lampposts throughout the neighbourhood.

MLF: What did it say?

AN: It said, you from New Jersey. Honking in front of my house. In your SUV.

MLF: Complete the sentence.

AN: Right.

MLF: They're all from New Jersey, of course.

AN: Actually, they're mostly not. Like, that first haiku — or honku — was very specifically aimed at sort of rallying support in the neighbourhood against two easy targets, which are people from New Jersey and SUVs.

MLF: Right [laughing].

AN: You know, a little bit of a cheap shot. But I thought, you know, okay, I want to rally support here.

MLF: okay [laughing].

AN: So the honku went up, and that was it. You know, that was all. I just felt very good about that. I was like that, you know, it was sort of like a therapeutic exercise.

MLF: Yeah.

AN: You know, it didn’t stop problem, so two weeks later, I went out and posted a second honku.

MLF: And it said?

AN: Oh, forget Enron. The problem around here is all the damn honking, because Enron was like very much in the headlines at that moment.

MLF: Sure. Okay. And then they started proliferating.

AN: Yeah. Then like a couple weeks later, I went out to post my third one. And first of all, like the very first one, I started taping up, this woman, like, walked by and she was like, you're the poet of Clinton Street. I love your work! [MLF laughs] And, you know, I was like, okay, that was interesting. That's kind of cool. And then and then I started walking down the street and posting more. And I noticed that other people had started posting their own on lampposts, you know?

MLF: Wonderful!

AN: And they're copying the format. And, you know, they're like “Honku Number three”, you know, and there are a lot of them.

MLF: Isn't New York wonderful?

AN: It is wonderful.

MLF: So now everybody in the neighbourhood is composing honkus?

AN: There are,

you know, there are a lot of them.

MLF: Yeah?

AN: Actually, this weekend, a whole bunch more appeared. Let's say at its peak, about three or four weeks ago, there were about 20 different poems on the streets.

MLF: Listen, Aaron it's a wonderful, wonderful story. Good luck. We wish you good luck.

AN: Okay. Thanks.

MLF: Thanks for talking to us.

AN: Okay. Thanks a lot.

MLF: Bye.

AN: Bye.

[/sc]

CH: From our archives, Mary Lou Finlay speaking with Aaron Naperstak on March 26th, 2002. He's the inventor of "honkus" — haikus about honking. And while Mr. Naperstak was driving the project, a lot of you were happy to hitch-haiku. Here are just a few of your poems, from Talkback.

[sc]

[A message machine beep]

CINDY: My name is Cindy Sears, and I'm calling from the United States — from suburban Washington, D.C.,. My neighbourhood is very different from the Brooklyn neighbourhood. So here's my honku from the suburbs of Northern Virginia. The honking won't stop, but it's not, truck vans or cars. Damned Canada geese!

[A message machine beep]

ROD: Hi, my name is Rod Jacob. I'm calling from Whitehorse. I have a Hinterland honku for your show. On this Yukon Road, only the moose are horny. Blaring answered Bulls.

[A message machine beep]

STEVE: This is Steve from North Bay, Ontario. When I was a young lad, dad would always holler at me when I got to raising a ruckus, there. He would say, here, no, here, no. Keep it down. You'll wake the baby. And it took till I was about seven or eight years old to realize that I was the baby of the family. And the logic of the phrase was lost, but the meaning remained. And the honku goes like this. You’ll wake the baby with random nighttime honking. Patience is hard-earned.

[/sc]

CH: From 2002, just a fraction of the honkus As It Happens listeners offered on Talkback.

[Music: A Tim Burton-like eerie instrumental]

Part three: Delhi air pollution, pandemic home sounds

PEI health minister

CH: He's Prince Edward Island's Health Minister. And he's being accused of not making the healthiest choice when he returned from a trip in mid-March. James Aylward came back from Ireland on March 13th. But he didn't self-isolate. In fact, he went into the office. The province's chief public health officer told him to go home. And he did. But he stopped at the grocery store on the way. Here is PEI opposition leader Peter Bevan-Baker speaking to the CBC.

[sc]

PETER BEVAN-BAKER: I was surprised and deeply disappointed. You know, we haven't heard a lot from Minister Aylward over the last few weeks. And, you know, this is a time when the island needs strong, principled leadership. And we've heard that from a number of people here on the island. Principally, Dr. Heather Morrison, and others. And, of course, from around the country and around the world also. So it's a time when people look for strong leadership. And, you know, he's been largely absent. So for the first time, for him to speak publicly on something to be about a directive, a clear directive, that he received personally from the chief public health officer, you know, it was quite deeply disappointing for sure.

WAYNE THIBODEAU: Now, obviously, they're saying in those early days, there was some confusion. Some grey area, I believe, is how the premier referred to it in terms of what people should be doing in isolations. What are your thoughts about what the premier had to say about this?

PBB Well, yeah, I mean, I do appreciate it, of course, that it was early in the crisis. However, it was perfectly evident to anybody who was paying attention what was coming, and that it was already at that time a serious issue. Particularly, somebody like Minister Aylward, who had been in Ireland, you know, a place that was a few weeks ahead of us in terms of the curve of the arc of this disease. So I think there's no there's no doubt that he should have been acutely aware that this was a serious issue, and that we all have personal responsibility to make sure that our collective efforts to combat the spread of COVID, that they rely on personal responsibility. So, you know, for me, it was a sort of stunningly irresponsible act.

WT: The premier said he's not entertaining disciplinary action. Should there be?

PBB: Well, you know, that's not my decision to make, of course. But, again, at a time when I think we need strong leadership the islanders can all have confidence in. I just find what happened was clearly more than disappointing. It was irresponsible for somebody who's in a position of leadership. The minister of health and wellness, across Canada and around the world, people in his position have been stepping up and taking leadership roles and being part of the daily press conferences to the people in their jurisdiction. And we haven't seen that from Minister Aylward. So I think his absence was already being noted. And for his presence now to be to be part of a story like this is, again, deeply disappointing.

[/sc]

CH: That was PEI opposition leader Peter Bevan-Baker speaking with the CBC's Wayne Thibodeau, about the revelation that the province's health minister did not immediately self-isolate after returning from a trip to Ireland in mid-March. The island's chief public health officer said James Alyward returned to PEI during the early stages of self-isolation, and that he likely wasn't alone in not understanding what self-isolation required.

[Music: Sad piano]

Delhi air pollution

Guest: Arvind Kumar

CO: Professor Kumar, just by looking outside your window, how does Delhi look different in the last couple of weeks?

ARVIND KUMAR: Well, Delhi had never looked as serene and beautiful ever in the 40 years that I've been in the city as it is looking these days. In the morning, when you open the windows, you can smell that freshness in the air. There is no dust. And you can see, for the first time, you can see a blue sky in the daytime. And also, for the first time in many years, you can see the stars at night.

CO: Good heavens!

AK: So it's a different city today.

CO: Wow! And any people who are listening, who know the great Delhi looks like, they also know what it smells like. What does it normally smell like?

AK: Yeah, it smells of that smoke coming out of the automobiles. There is lot of dust. You hardly see the blue sky because it's all hazy all around. And you hardly ever see the stars at night because of the thick layer of smoke, which is there, up there in the atmosphere. But for the last 14 days, since most of the vehicles are off, most of the industries are off, so we are seeing nature at its best.

CO: Wow!

AK: Not only in Delhi, but everybody, all friends, relatives from around the country are discovering new cities in their native city.

CO: What effect is it having on the health of people? How is it changing the way they're able to breathe?

AK: Well, all the respiratory patients who have been on various kinds of inhalers, and they used to still have issues despite that. So everybody is now feeling better. So their inhaler requirements, they're saying it's less. But, overall, there is a huge feeling of well-being, wellness. Elier, everything was fought by a thick layer of smog, which used to be there. So everything used to look smokey. Now everything looks fresh. And the patients are also feeling this difference, you know?

CO: It's a bit of an irony, isn't it? Because this is happening out of fear of this virus, COVID-19, that attacks the respiratory system, that people are dying of, what happens to their lungs when they get COVID-19.

AK: Yeah, it's actually an irony that, on one hand, there are people who, you know, we've lost about 160 people till now because of respiratory complications. And on the other hand, the lockdown, which is imposed because of the virus, is actually helping respiratory patients. It's an irony.

CO: For several years now, we have covered the story, interview doctors in India, about every year seeing pollution levels rise to such a level that people are getting sick and dying. And lots of people have chronic conditions because of that. What effect does that have on the combination of that with COVID-19? Is it because people have weaker respiratory systems because of the pollution? Are they more susceptible, do you think?

AK: So as far as our country is concerned, since we've had only 160 deaths, and that also has been spread across the country. Therefore... And it's early days. You know, all this has happened in the last ten days or so. Most of the deaths have happened in the last ten days. So it's too early for anyone to be able to compile that data and say how many of them did a pollution-related lung or heart issue were a direct or indirect contributing factor. So I'm not right now in a position to give hard data from India because the numbers are too small. And all this has happened in ten days. And there is no time to collect and collate this data. However, there is a paper from Harvard, and they have shown that the patients who were coming from highly-polluted areas had a much higher chances of dying. In the Harvard study, they said that for every one micrograms rise in 2.5, there was a 15 per cent rise in that probability of death. Not only is pollution making people more prone to develop COVID, it's increasing the spread. Because probably the virus latches onto the particles. So, one, it increases the incidence. Two, when people get it, if they have already a pre-existing disease, their chances of dying are much higher.

CO: Wow! I guess people are enjoying seeing this blue sky, seeing the stars, breathing, But at the same time, they're not working. And people are desperately needed to get back to their jobs. What's the situation for those who are locked down, who really quite live very close to the margins?

AK: So the situation is pretty bad because it's been nearly two weeks that people are locked down in their houses. You know, for people like us, it's bad in the sense that we are locked down the house. However, I actually empathize with those million of daily wages workers who were dependant for the earning of the day to be able to have their dinner. So now that there is no work for them, that they are in that situation. However, that a lot of social organizations and government machinery, which is working very hard to see to it, that no one remains hungry and everybody gets at least two square meals.

CO: Professor Kumar, We’ll leave it there. We'll let you go out and enjoy breathing freely, as long as you can. And thanks for speaking with us tonight.

AK: Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. And I wish you all the best.

CO: Bye-bye.

CH: Professor Arvind Kumar is a chest surgeon in Delhi. That's where we reached him.

[Music: Music: Pop]

Organ player

CH: With major league sports on hold, fans are missing seeing the breathtaking plays, and hearing athletes smashing into each other. But audiences can still get some of that stadium experience — from the comfort of their own homes. Josh Kantor is the organist at Boston's Fenway Park. Every day at 3 p.m., he hosts a live music show on Facebook called "7th-inning stretch". He plays 30 minutes worth of tunes on his own organ, live from his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[sc]

[Music: Josh Kantor plays “Take On Me” by a-ha on an organ]

[/sc]

CH: That's Josh Kantor, organist at Boston's Fenway Park. Here in Canada, hockey fans also got their own taste of one of their beloved gameday fixtures. Diane Bibaud has been the in-game organist for the Montreal Canadiens for 35 years. She recently performed a medley of some of her favorite tunes from Montreal's Bell Centre, on her home organ.

[sc]

[Sound: Diane Bibaud plays a medley of snippets of songs on her organ]

[/sc]

CH: Diane Bibaud, in-game organist for the Montreal Canadiens, playing on her home organ.

[Music: Piano]

Pandemic home sounds

Guest: Stuart Fowkes

CO: Stuart, it would seem to me that a pandemic might be the absence of sound. So what does it actually sound like to people out there?

STUART FOWKES: Um, so this is obviously a really unique time in all of our lives. And that's something of an understatement. But as much as that applies to the rest of our lives, it also applies to the sounds that surround us. And I think probably everyone listening has noticed a few things that are a little bit different about the way that their neighbourhood kind of sounds at the moment. So whether that's the fact that it's something simple, like there are a fewer cars around, less traffic, to the fact that you can hear maybe more birdsong, or different wildlife from before. So those are some of the simple changes. And then there’s also the fact that people are using sound as a way of kind of not just communicating with each other, but also kind of showing appreciation, for example, for emergency services. So you've got all around the world in various countries at 8:00 o'clock every night, you've got people applauding, people cheering, church bells ringing, people playing musical instruments, all as a tribute to frontline health workers, which obviously is not a sound any of us would have thought we'd be hearing even as recently as a month ago.

CO: Okay, we have some examples. And just so people understand, you have a map, and it has tabs on it. You can touch on the tabs and pull up different parts of the world where people have sent you their contributions. So we’re going to play some of those. And one of them, this is one of the sounds, and we'll get you to tell us what it is after we've had a listen. Here it is.

[sc]

[Sound: clapping and cheering and metallic banging]

[/sc]

CO: All right. What's that, and where is it?

SF Oh, yes, that is one of the recordings of people coming out of their doors, coming out of lockdown at eight o'clock in the evening, and making a lot of noise in Paris, to celebrate health workers and emergency services. So banging pots, applauding, cheering, all the rest of it. And that happens every single night in countries all around the world. And I think this is a really... When I first got that recording, and when I get sent others like it, I find them quite emotional to listen to. There’s kind of a lump in my throat as I listen to that. Because it's a very pure expression of how people are feeling.

CO: All right. We have another one here, and this is a bit more unusual. So let's just play this. And I think people know what this is.

[sc]

[Sound: A chapter from from “The Big Friendly Giant” By Roald Dahl read in Flemish.]

CO: [laughing] All right. No idea what that is.

SF: Yes. I don't know if you've got any Flemish speakers listening, but that was a chapter from “The Big Friendly Giant” By Roald Dahl being read out in Flemish. And that was sent to us by lady who lives in Helsinki, who is physically socially distancing from members of a family. Children, obviously. And so what she's doing is recording bedtime stories for them and sending them over to them. And that's kind of her sonic experience of life under lockdown. And so she she shared that with us with a really nice story about how she's keeping her family's kids entertained.

CO: So what tab can pull that one up?

SF: That's in Helsinki, Finland. So, yeah, everything sits on a map at www.citiesandmemory.com. And on there, you'll find 26 or so countries covered. And at each point on the map, if you click on it, you can hear the sound. And you can also click information to read the story behind the sound, and see kind of a little bit about that person's lockdown tale.

CO: You have a lot of sounds of nature, don't you? Because, again, traffic isn't there. And so there is birds. A number of ones I clicked on had rain or hail or something. And just everyone had a little story about how they felt about hearing nature right now. What effect did that have on you to hear that?

SF: Yeah, exactly. I mean, like the sounds of nature are kind of a particularly pertinent at the moment, cause, you know, the cars aren't really on the roads and the traffic noise is much lower. And people are starting to notice the sounds that are there all the time, but that they can't normally hear. So we've got, for example, sounds of bees in the trees in central London, which you absolutely wouldn't be able to hear because they're kind of operating in the same sort of frequency ranges as car noise. But now you can hear them. And you can hear potentially new types of bird that you can necessarily hear before, and you can hear a lot louder. So it sounds like, you know, in the centre of a city, you're getting things that sound like a dawn chorus in the middle of a rural area.

CO: And there was one from Warsaw, a man who had not heard the dawn chorus of birds in his city in so long. And there it was in all its glory. And just one more we're going to play the tape of, which is really lovely. This is from Senegal. And let's play that little bit of tape.

[sc]

[Sound: A coronavirus song on Senegal radio]

[/sc]

CO: All right. What's that about?

SF: So that is the sound of an anti coronavirus song being played on the radio in Senegal. So obviously these are very novel. And that's not a sound you would have heard even a few weeks ago. But people are free and musicians are very quickly composing songs like that. And playing them out on the radio in the hope that actually something done in song form will actually stick in people's minds a little more. And they will take the message away about, for example, how to wash your hands for 20 seconds. So it's kind of music as an educational tool. And that's being broadcast kind of on the airwaves, and it's from Senegal.

CO: We've spoken with you before on this program because you do this, you collect sounds. You've been doing this for years. But this is a very unusual project. And I wonder what do you want people to take away from it? What do you want people to actually experience when they go to your map?

SF: Yeah. So as you say, Cities and Memory has been running for about five years, and we've covered about 95 countries. And there are thousands of sounds on the map, and plenty of sounds from across Canada for people to listen to and enjoy. But with this project in particular, I think what I really would like is for people to listen to the sounds and read the stories that people are writing. And kind of just for us all to feel the whether, you know, you're someone in New York feeling like it's ground zero again, whether you or someone in Argentina worried about what the government might be doing, whether you're someone in Italy worrying about whether your business might be closing down, you know, in a couple of months time because you can't afford to keep it going. So we're all going through this together, and we're all kind of experiencing, you know, not exactly the same thing, but we're all experiencing the same pandemic. And, you know, I'm hoping that it will kind of bring a little bit of a feeling of togetherness by sharing these sounds and sharing these stories.

CO: Well, Stuart, thank you for sharing this story with us.

SF: Thanks very much.

CO: Takecare. Bye-bye.

SF: Cheers.

CH: Stuart Fowkes is a sound artist and the founder of the collaborative project Cities and Memory. We reached him in Oxford. And you can see and hear more on this story on our webpage at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

CH: A buckskin shirt, a pair of leggings, a knife with a feather bundle. They all belonged to the 19th-century Blackfoot leader Chief Crowfoot. And they're all finally coming home to the Siksika Nation in Alberta. The items are being returned after lengthy negotiations with the Royal Albert Museum in Exeter, U.K. Ouray Crowfoot is the current Siksika Nation Chief, and a descendent of Chief Crowfoot. Here is part of his conversation with David Gray, host of the Calgary Eyeopener.

[sc]

OURRAY CROWFOOT: The people at the time, you know, Chief Crowfoot didn't speak English that well. And so, you know, you know, who knows how that guy really got his outfit? So, you know, nonetheless, that's why we're finding these outfits, and the sacred regalias, and bundles all over the world. And we've been working with Exeter in England to try to get that Crowfoot output back.

DAVID GRAY: Now, is it fair to say that this is a bit of personal concern for you? Do you want to talk about that side of it?

OC: This is Chief Crowfoot’s, sure. And some of his belongings. And, like I say, he my great-great-great-great grandfather. He had signed the Treaty of Seven. So, you know, it's going to be really significant. And also, we’re coming up on, in six years from now, it’ll be 100 years that we signed Treaty Seven. So bringing this output back, we can use this for, you know, education. You know, we can educate our own people, we can educate outsiders, we can educate people from around the world when they come. Because Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park, it's not a museum, it's an interpretive centre. So, you know, it's a place that we can teach our culture to Blackfoot people, but also to people that are non-Blackfoot people. And so it's a interactive learning experience. And and they can see real history in front of them when they see these outputs like Crowfoot.

[/sc]

CH: Ouray Crowfoot is the chief of the Siksika Nation in Alberta. He was speaking to the host of the Calgary Eyeopener, David Gray.

[Music: Folk]

Jean Little obit

CH: They say to be a good writer, you must be a good reader. And Jean Little was both. But for much of her life, she didn't read books in the conventional sense. She listened to them. Ms. Little was born with scarred coronas and severely limited vision, that grew worse as she aged. Eventually, she only read by way of audiobooks — and only wrote by way of a voice-activated computer. But by various methods, she published dozens of children's books and a handful of memoirs. Jean Little died this week. She was 88 years old. In 1991 she spoke with Michael Enright on this program about being a juror for the Torgi Award for "Best Talking Book." And about how reading by listening changed what she read.

JL: I don't think they probably do that. They would do it differently, except that the only ones that are available mostly to say the people are abridged novels.

ME: That's right.

JL: But we listen to them unabridged, and so we hear the whole book.

ME: But do you think you would get nuances and inflections and cadences that I would miss, for example?

JL: I don't think so. You seem to be a reasonably intelligent man to me. I think you’d do just a fine, Michael.

ME: I just I wonder if there's a difference in perception because your auditory senses are probably much greater than mine.

JL: No, they’re exactly the same. I just use them more. I suddenly you couldn't see, you’d use them more so you don’t get killed. So you start listening for things that you never had to listen for because you could see. But I do think talking would mean a great deal more to blind people because they don't have access to print. When I lost my vision, I really think that I was close to being mentally ill. I was very depressed. And I think the talking books were what stayed between me and falling right over the edge. Because they don't expect you to be well-adjusted. They don't expect you to be wonderful. They don't ask you to be able to do things you can't do. And you can just start being blind while you're reading.

[/sc]

CH: Prolific children's book author Jean Little, speaking with Michael Enright on "As It Happens" in 1991. Ms. Little died this week. She was 88 years old.

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April 09, 2020 Episode Transcript

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