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The Current Transcript for April 16, 2020

Host: Matt Gallaway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Everyone understands we're in a once in a century event and to actually in the midst of that crisis cut the funding is truly shocking.

MATT GALLOWAY: The decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to suspend funding to the World Health organisation in the midst of a pandemic has been greeted by shock and dismay by many people. Others, including Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, say they have serious questions about the global health watchdog, how it handled the COVID-19 crisis and its relationship with China. We will explore those concerns and talk about the implications of cutting funding now in about 30 minutes time. Also this morning.

SOUNDCLIP

Good day, everyone. I'm coming to you, hopefully, to those who appearance in [unintelligible] before it made rush of dinner time.

MG: Like many women, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is juggling a lot these days. This morning, how this pandemic is affecting women particularly hard, from attempts to work at home to what they might encounter when the economy comes to life again. And later, Malcolm Gladwell has been thinking about life during this pandemic. And he joins us to talk about what we will hopefully learn from this crisis when it's over. And if you need a break. What about a singalong? The duo behind Choir Choir Choir we'll be here to talk about the power of singing together in a moment like this. Yes. Get your voice warmed up. They will be singing a tune. And audience participation is strongly encouraged. We start, though, on the new frontline of this pandemic: in a Long-Term Care home. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. This is an extended edition of The Current.

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Elder care

Guests: Rebecca Piironen, Janet, Simm, Carole Estabrook

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MG: Mr. Bill Mont is known as the king of flea markets in Halifax. He brought the first one to that city in the 1970s. He's a bit of a legendary businessman there. At 90 years old, he has seen a lot, but these days Bill Mont is scared. He lives in Halifax, Northwood complex. And like many long term care homes across Canada, it's struggling with an outbreak of COVID-19.

SOUNDCLIP

One concern is I'm wondering, who is it? What friends of mine is sick? Are they going to die? Myself? Well, I don't know, I've survived a lot of things and survived a depression, recession, war, all things. If I'm getting a little bit hardened up, yes. But I'm starting to get concerned that it maybe coming on over here, though.

MG: Yesterday we brought you stories of residents in long term care and their families. Today, we're hearing from the people who work inside those homes. Rebecca Piironen is a personal support worker at Ansen Place Care Centre in Hagersville, Ontario. Rebecca, good morning.

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Good morning.

MG: How are you doing?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Well, it's another day and just waiting to hear more bad news.

MG: Oh, my goodness. How many covered cases are there in Ansen place? Do you know?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: I was losing count. I think it was up to 16 or 19.

MG: But you've lost count.

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Yes.

MG: One of the things we hear is that there are residents who might be impacted by this and may be infected with COVID, but also those who work in the facilities. Have you been tested?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: I have been tested three times.

MG: Three times.

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Mm hmm.

MG: And what has been the result of the most recent test?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Negative.

MG: Negative.

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Even though I've been very, very sick. I don't understand.

MG: What have you been feeling? What are the symptoms that you've been having?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: I feel like I have a really bad cold. And fever that can let down for like six days. I've had some like a lot of pressure in my head, like having really, really bad headache and weakness.

MG: When did you first learn that there was an outbreak in the long term care home that you work in?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Well, they actually didn't tell us themselves, my home. It was the [unintelligible] Health Unit that released it out into media that we had COVID-19.

MG: So you found out through the media?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Yes.

MG: How did the fact that you did not learn from the administrators of the home, how did that impact morale in the staff?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Well, I'm sure my fellow co-workers felt the same, but for myself, I felt, I felt like she, she didn't find value in me in my own life, or in the residence by not calling, telling us. Like the morale is that I'll likely never trust her again.

MG: Her being the administrator.

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Exactly.

MG: Aside from that morale issue, that's a huge part because you need everybody kind of pulling together,

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Absolutely.

MG: But how difficult has your work been on the ground since this outbreak?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Well, I haven't been there since the 22nd of March, because I've been sick. But we, like a lot of us have become sick and had to stay away. And we're aware of it. We're in very close contact with our co-workers and some of the registered staff and, just trying to pull together and do the best that we can for these people inside, trying to get them resources and help and [unintelligible], for anybody to come in and give us a hand.

MG: Is it possible? We've heard stories from inside about how difficult it is because of the layout of some of these long term care homes for physical distancing to separate people. Is it possible to do something like that at Ansen Place?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: It's not possible. We need a new building. It's a smaller, smaller home. The rooms are wardrooms. Some rooms have four people in it. Some have two.

MG: Has that changed since this outbreak?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: No, no.

MG: We asked Ansen Place care centre to respond to some of the concerns they've been raised and they sent a statement, it says that they immediately implemented protocols following confirmation of the first case of covered. And, and this is a quotation: "any suggestion that we didn't share this information with staff or didn't follow protocols and public health are inaccurate". The statement goes on to talk about some of the measures that they're taking to stop the spread, including self-isolation, keeping healthy residents within their rooms. What do you say to that? To the statement that you're hearing?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Well, I think it's wrong. I know they got the first information of it on the evening of the 18th of March and it took to media release that like on the 23rd or 24th to come out, publicly, that's we have COVIE-19 and. Yes. I can't believe that statement to be anything but true. Like it? It's.

MG: It doesn't ring through to you.

REBECCA PIIRONEN: I think they're trying to avoid panic. And maybe slightly in denial. And it's- But it hit them in the butt. Like, there's a lot of dishonesty there and it cost people's life.

MG: One of the things that has been implemented just in the last day or so, although it will take a week or so to come into place, is this move by the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, to restrict long term care staff to work in just one nursing home. Is that possible? I mean, do you understand why people would be working in two or three different jobs to try and make ends meet?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Well, yes, it's a low wage job to begin with. And you can't find- it's very, very hard to find a full time position that's going to give you benefits and everything or just that the hours a full time job gives you. So I am lucky my husband works and I can live off my husband's wages, but a lot of people out there are single mothers. The jobs just aren't out there for full timers and that they're all part time jobs.

MG: You're speaking out about this. We're using your name. We're talking about where you work. Do you worry that this could put your job at risk?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: No. I'm a PSW. I my job is to care. And I can't stop, stop caring during this crisis. Like we've got to speak out now. And so much has gone wrong in my home. And PSWs don't have a background. Like we don't have a registry. We don't have a college of nurses or anything like that behind this. I would have really, really, I really could have needed a source, a place to go to get the directives for my profession.

MG: Do you think that'll change in the wake of this?

REBECCA PIIRONEN: I hope so. I am at the point right now and that without it, I'm not going, I'm not going to stay in this profession.

MG: Take care of yourself. It's important to hear from you, you're right there on the frontlines, but your health is important as well. So I hope you stay well. Rebecca, thank you.

REBECCA PIIRONEN: Thank you.

MG: Rebecca Piironen is a personal support worker in Hagersville, Ontario. Often they sit in quiet neighbourhoods, unremarkable, unnoticed. But with the deaths of so many residents across this country, the long term care homes that we've been talking about have become a focal point in this pandemic. Janet Simm is the CEO of Northwood in Halifax. Not for profit. It runs two nursing homes. Thus far, at least 38 residents and over 20 staff have contracted COVID-19. Janet, good morning to you.

JANET SIMM: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What are the last couple of weeks been like in your homes?

JANET SIMM: Well, I can tell you, we've been working diligently to respond to this pandemic. And like the rest of the province, the rest of the world, it has been a challenge because what we predicted and all those things that we expect in a virus have not certainly panned out the way that we had predicted to all of our screening efforts. We were well ahead of provincial mandates in terms of screening, well ahead of mandates regarding implementation of masks and PPE. But unfortunately, COVID-19 has entered into our Halifax campus. Our Bedford campus at this point time, we have no staff that are positive and no residents that are positive. So we're thankful for that. But all of our efforts in Halifax, we are heartbroken that we've not been able to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in that facility.

MG: We just heard from a care worker who feels like staff in the home that she works in, we're put in a vulnerable position. How do you go about ensuring that your staff feel safe?

JANET SIMM: Well, I think we'll all have our own personal perspectives on how this pandemic has unfolded based on our personal resources. I can certainly only speak to the context of Nova Scotia and more specifically, what's happening in Northwood. We are updating our website every day. We've got our staff resource hub that we're giving information, education, preparing our staff. We've got EAP. Occupational health nurses are supporting staff one on one. We're doing everything we can to support our staff and we have many, many staff that continue to come to work despite their personal fears. Anyone who is ill, we are advising them to stay off even if they are testing negative. But if they do have symptoms, a cold, anything like that, even if it's not COVID-19, they're certainly advised to remain off work for the safety of themselves, their co-workers and, of course, our residents.

MG: Your industry is getting a lot of close attention right now. There have been a lot of critics who are talking about just what we heard, the safety in the environment. How much personal support workers would be paid, how residents are treated. Do you think that the criticism that long term care in Canada has been receiving is unfair or is that accurate?

JANET SIMM: Again, I can only speak to the Northwood context, but we are caring for a very vulnerable population. These are individuals that are in Long-Term Care for a reason. Many of these individuals are very ill, have co-morbidities, and they require specialised care of a long term care facility. And that, of course, means that they are vulnerable to any type of infection. And we've COVID-19 and the challenges it has presented with respect to our ability to detect the infection before it enters our facilities posed a real challenge for us.

MG: But again, I understand that you can only speak about the individual situation, but if you're part of a larger industry and that industry is getting a lot of attention right now, it's under the spotlight. Do you think that that's fair? Do you think that when people say that we're going to have a reckoning coming out of this in terms of how Long-Term Care operates and how we treat our elders, do you think that that is an accurate depiction of the situation that we're in right now?

MG: At Northwood, we take pride in the work that we do and our whole motto is living more and really supporting people to continue to have quality of life despite their physical challenges. So we take great pride in that and we are absolutely devastated that this this infection has gotten ahead of us.

MG: What is your biggest concern now? People have said that care homes like the ones that you run are on the frontlines of this pandemic. So what's your biggest concern?

JANET SIMM: So we've been very focussed on prevention over the last couple of weeks and that is continuing, but we're also moving to treatment and thankfully recovery. We're very pleased to have many individuals who are the first in early April to have been identified as COVIE-19 positive, who are actually recovering. Our biggest challenge is, again, making sure that we can fulfil that prevention and treatment modality. We do have, as I said, heroes continuing to come to work despite their personal fears. But we are challenged with our workforce. And we pride ourselves in making sure that our residents do get quality of care. So we're being very creative in how we continue to deliver on that promise.

MG: And in the context of that and all the conversations, the work of those heroes is really important to highlight as well.

JANET SIMM: Absolutely. Absolutely.

MG: Janet, it's good to talk to you about this and stay safe. Thank you.

JANET SIMM: Thank you so much.

MG: Janet Simm is the CEO of Northwood in Halifax. It's not for profit that runs to nursing homes, assisted living units and home care service. For 14 years Carole Estabrooks has been studying the long term care system in Canada. She's a professor in the faculty of nursing and a Canada research chair at the University of Alberta. Carole, good morning to you.

CAROLE ESTABROOKS: Good morning.

MG: You been hearing about what's going on in those homes from a CEO, but also from a personal support worker. How, from your perspective, are is the system handling the outbreaks of COVID-19 right now?

CAROLE ESTABROOKS: I think the system is doing the best it can. I think the fundamental problem is we have allowed insidiously over time the long term care system to break. And what COVID has done is not cause the situations were seeing in horrific stories in the news, but it's caused this massive shock that's revealed all the fault lines and all the and the absence of any margin to work on it. And all of that, that includes everything from funding to workforce to plant design. Many of these homes were built in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Many of them still resemble institutional settings based on a hospital footprint. We've got various models across the country, a varied ownership models. Provinces manage their systems quite differently. Here in Alberta, we have a single health authority and the way the long term care system is funded here levels those owner models. So we don't see some of the differences you see in some provinces. But but the biggest vulnerability, I think, is that we have a perfect storm that's been brewing for decades. We have a super - you've heard - super, highly vulnerable population of resident. They're older. They're they 80 percent of them have dementia. They have many co existing chronic conditions. They're coming to nursing homes later. So there their medical and physical and social needs are much more complex. On the other side of that, we have equally but differently vulnerable workforce. The paid workforce in nursing homes is 90 percent women that carries their personal support workers, half of them in urban areas and most urban areas don't speak English as the first language. So they're from other countries.

MG: And many of them are having to work multiple jobs to try to make ends meet.

CAROLE ESTABROOKS: Yes, about 30 percent from our data work, more than one job. Now, the majority of the reasons they work more and one job are financial. But this is significant portion who are working other jobs for other reasons, perhaps to work partly in a place where the physical demands are less to try and preserve their back and then physical health. But this group is at the low, you've heard this, they're the lowest paid. They're at the bottom of a pretty rigid decision making hierarchy and they aren't always engaged in decision making. So you put those two things together, increasing over time in a system that's not overfunded. It's stretched very aggressively with population. Both of those populations are essentially voiceless. Older adults with dementia are are very vulnerable in their ability to communicate. Some of them have, many of them have, families that do yeoman's duty. And many of the homes do yeoman's duty. But there are also a significant proportion of older adults in nursing homes that have nobody there all alone.

MG: We're hearing those voices now. And so if there's anything that can come out of this - in the last minute and a half or so, that we have to chat - if there's anything that can come out of this in terms of how we think differently about the structure of Long-Term Care in Canada, what should we prioritise?

CAROLE ESTABROOKS: Well, I think we shouldn't think about system reform. I think we should think about a complete system redesign. We have an opportunity, if there's any silver lining in this pandemic is that it's shown this really stark light on the fracture lines in the system. And we have an opportunity to to redesign it from the bottom up, engaging the people who we should be listening to, the voices of older adults, listening to the voices of frontline workers, using every bit of evidence, informed decision making we can, really looking seriously at how heavily we regulate this system, because regulation and money. They're both- they have a role. And we certainly need to deal with very immediate concerns with respect to resources. If all we do is throw money and regulation, the system is not going to redesign it. And the next pandemic that comes along, we'll do something similar. So we have a window here and the entire Canadian public is aware now of the fragility in the system and the need for really taking a hard second look at it.

MG: Let's hope that opportunity is seized. Carole, good to speak with you. Thank you.

CAROLE ESTABROOKS: Thank you.

MG: Carol Estsbrooks is a professor and Canada research chair at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Also scientific director of the Translating Research in Elder Care program at the U of a CBC News is next. And then they've been cut down and cut off. How valid is U.S. criticism against the World Health organisation? We'll talk about some of the concerns being raised south of the border and here in Canada and about the effect of those concerns being raised now in the midst of a pandemic. That's coming up in about six minutes time. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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W.H.O.

Guests: Ian Birrell, Allison McGeer

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come, we've been taking in these tense times your suggestions for music that might calm our anxious nerves. We will hear one coming up in about 15 minutes time through the family of a Canadian music legend. Who could that be? We'll find out. But first, how the W.H.O. lost its lead sponsor.

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SOUNDCLIP

Today, I'm instructing my administration to halt. Funding of the World Health organisation while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the Coronavirus.

MG: It began as a war of words. This week, though, U.S. President Donald Trump moved on his threat. He has halted funding from the United States to the World Health organisation pending a review. It's a lot of money at play here. $400 million went to the United Nations agency in 2019. The president said that its response to the coronavirus was a failure, that, in his words, quote, "The W.H.O. failed in its basic duty". W.H.O. director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus responded on Wednesday.

SOUNDCLIP

We regret the decision of the president of the United States to order a halt in funding to the World Health Organisation. This is a time for all of us to be united in our common struggle against a common threat. A dangerous enemy. When we're divided, the virus exploits the cracks between us.

MG: Donald Trump is far from the only critic of the W.H.O. and its response to the coronavirus. Ian Birrell has reported on global health issues as a reporter and columnist based in London, England. He's a contributing editor to The Mail on Sunday. He's in London. Ian, hello to you.

IAN BIRRELL: Hi. Good to talk to you.

MG: Is pulling funding from the United States towards the World Health organisation in the midst of a pandemic, the right decision?

IAN BIRRELL: No, it's not. It's a typical Trump decision, infantile, attention seeking, short-sighted and weakening his own and his country's authority. I think it's a very short sighted move. But having said that, I do think some of the points he's made, and it pains me to say this as someone who's no fan of Donald Trump, some of the points he's making are valid.

MG: Why? And you pointed out on Twitter that some of the points he made seem to be drawn directly from a column that you wrote. How would you characterize the W.H.O.'s response to the coronavirus?

IAN BIRRELL: I think it's made a very flawed response to the crisis. It's not the first time we see this. We saw it with the AIDS HIV scandal crisis where its response was so bad that the UN had set up a separate agency. We saw it with Ebola where I myself went to Liberia at the height of that. And yet I was with Medicines Sans Frontiers, who were begging for help from the World Health Organisation. And at one stage, they were even reprimanded by a W.H.O. official for what they were doing. And it took them months because of political infighting to respond to that epidemic. Now, we've seen with this epidemic that effectively you've got someone who's a lackey, a stooge to China, who is pushing the Chinese line and the Chinese narrative the whole time.

MG: Who is that? Who's the stooge for China?

Dr. Tedros, he was elected. He comes from a country where he was part of a very repressive one party state, which was very close to China. He got the job with Chinese support. And one of his first actions was to give Robert Mugabe, appoints him as a goodwill ambassador, which is just absurd when Mugabe had so wrecked his country and his own health system. Life expectancy fell by 26 years at one point. Since then, since this epidemic began, he has totally gone along with the Chinese narrative to such an extent that he has stayed silent on the silence of Dr. Whistleblowers within the country, that he's not questioned that data at all. And a whole host of other areas. When you look at the timing of his own actions, they dovetailed all the time with China. He didn't raise any alarm over the fact that American, Taiwanese and World Health Organisation officials were not allowed into the country at the start of the epidemic. I could go on. There's a long list of actions he's taken where he has frustrated efforts to deal with this epidemic, and it's very early days when it escalated so fast.

MG: Is your concern more with the W.H.O. or is it with China. Because China, the allegations, as you said, are with China, that it initially covered up the outbreak, that perhaps it's covered up the extent of the outbreak, that that whistleblower was disciplined. Ultimately, he was celebrated, but that was after his death. Is your concern about China or is it about the W.H.O.?

IAN BIRRELL: It's about both. I think Chinese actions in the early days, the epidemic were disastrous. We know that they silenced researchers who did the genome sequencing. We know that they silence, not one doctor, at least eight different doctors who were trying to alert people to what was happening. We know that they repressed the data for a while. And so my primary concern would be with China and the way they handled this in the early days. And but then for the World Health organisation to go along with the silencing of doctors, to go along with the suppression of data, to go along with outside investigators being allowed into the country. Then I think this is the negation of its primary job, which is not to play politics, but to protect global public health.

MG: Given the influence and power of China, how should the W.H.O. navigate this relationship without worsening communication in a health emergency like this, that if it were to criticize China, it would be shut out of China. We know that that's what happens often if you are a critic of China you get tossed out of the country. And so if it were to criticize China, would it not have jeopardized the transparency that people need to try and understand what's going on in the midst of a pandemic?

IAN BIRRELL: I understand that line of argument. But of course, that's always the argument used to keep quiet in the face of autocracy and authoritarianism. And I hear this again and again in the I do not have worked work within the aid and development sector. And again and again, you hear, you have to be quiet about, about repression and about torture and brutality, because otherwise you wouldn't be allowed to do things that you want to do. Ultimately, you have to stand up certain values. And in this case, we've seen that this has failed the world and its previously - and let's not forget that when SARS broke out in 2002, a very similar type of epidemic, the head of the World Health Organisation was actually very critical publicly of Chinese for its failure to report the first crack cases quickly. So it's not impossible for that for a leader of one of these organizations to stand strong. They have a job to do, which is to protect public health and not go along with the narrative being pushed by one particular partner who got them the job. To the extent that he's even praised China for its transparency, which is just absurd and delayed call it a public health emergency when he himself took the decision at the W.H.O. body involved to delay this. And when by the time it did it, the epidemic spread to four different continents.

MG: Bill Gates, billionaire, who is also a big supporter and funder of the World Health Organisation, said yesterday on Twitter Halting funding for the World Health organisation during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds. In the midst of a pandemic where public trust is key, is kneecapping an organisation like this helpful now? Should this happen now or should this conversation happen after the pandemic is resolved, when people are able to step back and look at things as they say through the distance of time?

IAN BIRRELL: I think it's fine to have the conversation and the discussion now because the W.H.O. serves to be called to account for its failures and for doing along with the Chinese narrative. But to take the action that Donald Trump has taken that is very short sighted. And I would agree with Mr. Gates that it's wrong to do this at this stage in the pandemic when the situation is so fragile and certainly lives are at stake around the world. However, at the end of all this, we do need to work out how are we going to have a global health body which doesn't play partisan politics and has a primary responsibility to protect the world's health rather than to pander to particular factions within its membership.

MG: How is it supposed to do that if the W.H.O. has to deal with this jigsaw puzzle of politics, but also funding and funding coming from different nations? How is it supposed to exist in a way that it is not swayed by politics?

IAN BIRRELL: That's a good question. But then at the same time, what's the point of having a body if it goes along with things which worse than the public health response? We know that China, by delaying this response and covering it up, particularly for those three critical weeks in January when it was the Lunar New Year and hundreds of millions people on the move and the disease spread so fast. It may have had an effect, according to one study, had they acted three weeks earlier, it could have reduced cases by 95 percent. Now, that would have made a huge difference. We don't know if it would have stopped a pandemic. But as some experts say, it might have stopped it. But the World Health organisation has gone along with its narrative. Therefore, it's failing in its duty, its duty is to the world's public, not to China. And there's no point having a body which keeps failing every time there's a major health emergency. As I say, it's failed in three of the biggest health emergencies that it's dealt with. So what's the point of a body which isn't doing its job.

MG: Just in the last 30 seconds or so. Go back to where we started, which is with the U.S. president. There are a lot of people who say that what he's doing now is a way to distract from his own failings in dealing with the coronavirus, in dismissing it initially and then suddenly panicking. And a lot of lives were lost, people believe in the United States, because of that. Do you worry that his reaction will lead other countries to follow suit with the U.S.?

IAN BIRRELL: I certainly think that's a very valid criticism. His reaction has clearly been utterly appalling from start to finish, and he's been all over the place on it. So I'm not remotely sympathetic to him or his stance on this epidemic.

MG: Will other countries follow suit and pull their funding from the W.H.O. because the United States has?

IAN BIRRELL: I think it looks unlikely. I mean, Britain has a terrible record of always doing whatever America does. And so far they have actually increased their funding to the World Health organisation. Despite I know I've spoken to cabinet members who share concerns over the World Health Organization's actions. But I think it's unlikely that major funders will take a similar stance.

MG: Ian Birrell, good to speak with you. Thank you.

IAN BIRRELL: Thank you.

MG: Ian Burrell is a journalist and contributing editor to The Mail on Sunday. He was in London. Dr. Allison McGeer is an infectious disease specialist and clinical scientist with the Sinai Health System. She's been listening. And Doctor, good morning to you.

DR. ALLISON MCGEER: Morning, Matt.

MG: How would you broadly describe the W.H.O. response to this pandemic?

DR. ALLISON MCGEER: You know, to me, one of the problems with the World Health organisation is that because we see it as in charge during these situations and you can't win during pandemics, okay. You can't do the right thing always. The people in charge of pandemics are never going to come out looking good at the end of it. W.H.O. always wears the failures. And I mean, just listen to W.H.O. being accused of failing. The people in charge of pandemics always fail. So you need to know that and you step back and say, okay, you know, how can we make it better? And the key problem is that we have failed globally to make it better after those outbreaks. Ebola in 2014, there were a series of recommendations about how to make the World Health Organisation more stable, how to make it less political, how to make it be able to respond to crises better. And the countries who funded W.H.O. decided not to do that. That's not W.H.O. is problem. That's our problem globally. And we have an organisation which by its nature is political. The World Health Organisation has no choice about what they're doing.

MG: Well, Ian Birrell's specific criticism is that the leader of the W.H.O., but also the organisation is, in his words, is a lackey for China, that this outbreak began in China and that China initially the accusations are tried to downplay first cover up and downplay the effects of the coronavirus that those who spoke out about it were sidelined and that the W.H.O. had a responsibility to speak out and it didn't. What do you make of that?

DR. ALLISON MCGEER: You know, I think it is not my position to judge. I. I think there were significant issues with how the outbreak was dealt with within China. I don't think the W.H.O. saying anything about that would have altered that. You know, it's not that there weren't issues, not they couldn't have done it better. But I mean, can you imagine what would happen? You know, did the W.H.O. say anything about the U.S. mishandling the situation? No, because if you say something, then you get into tro-- you just provoke a reaction from the Trump administration, which is going to make things worse, not better.

MG: Is that what you mean when you say that the organisation is inherently political, that it has to try and thread that needle no matter where the needle happens in it?

DR. ALLISON MCGEER: It doesn't have a choice. It can't- you know, organizations that are technical, that depend on other things. So MSF can always do the right thing and they do it very well. The World Health Organisation is not in that position. And. So you can't, you know, we could create an organisation that was less political if we chose to globally, but we haven't done that. And so W.H.O. has no choice but to be political. And that comes with a bunch of choices. They don't have the power to tell countries what to do.

MG: I spoke with you yesterday and we talked about the decision by the U.S. president to halt funding for the W.H.O. You said that that was a disgraceful moment. What are you most concerned about?

DR. ALLISON MCGEER: Well, you know, I think the truth is we depend, however flawed the World Health organisation is, and everybody agrees with what we are really dependent on it it for all sorts of things. It's clearly a very valuable organisation. And so, you know, the last thing that anybody wants to do is, is do it more harm. I was thinking this morning that the problem with the World Health organisation is exactly like the problem with influenza vaccine. It could be so much better but at the same time, it's incredibly valuable.

MG: Because people only hear about it in these moments. So you mean very briefly, what else is it involved in? How important is its role in global health?

DR. ALLISON MCGEER: It has a critical role in global health, does all sorts of things. You know, it writes policy for health around the world at all sorts of levels. It's got a huge range of technical committees that write standards for how you assess vaccines, how you should run vaccine programs, how you develop vaccines and test them for efficacy. The list goes on and on and on, does a huge amount of work on what is, you know, when the problems with government budgets as well as individuals, they look really big. But actually, relative to- I think the World Health organisation, core budget is something like the budget for health care in Quebec or something. It's really, globally speaking, a tiny amount of money.

MG: Is there a way - there's a question that I asked Ian - is there a way to have an organisation that does that important work that isn't vulnerable to politics?

DR. ALLISON MCGEER: Oh, I don't think so. Everything that's really important is vulnerable to politics.

MG: So how do you fix it then, if you believe and others believe that it's a flawed organisation, but it's also incredibly important. How do you fix it or can you fix it?

DR. ALLISON MCGEER: Well, I think W.H.O. could be made less political. W.H.O. is really dependent now on the goodwill of every country that works with it and on contributions that are country specific. So it can't work on new projects. It can't do things unless it's had political buy in from all of its members. And that makes it really hard for W.H.O. to do a lot of technical work. So I think there are mechanisms for making its funding more stable and for making the country offices less political organizations. Again, out of my area of expertise, but those a bunch of recommendations that were made after the Ebola outbreak. But, you know, that involves countries being willing to give up some authority and responsibility and countries have been reluctant to do that.

MG: I really appreciate your time, Alison, especially this morning. Thank you. Pleasure to talk to you. Take care of Dr. Allison McGeer is an infectious disease specialist and clinical scientist with the Sinai Health System. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. I know that a lot has changed over the past couple of weeks as Canadians try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. We spoke with Allison McGeer at the very beginning of this. It seems like it was years ago. Is only a handful of weeks ago. She answered some of your questions. And we know that you still have a lot of questions. What have we learned about this virus? What treatments are promising? When will we get back to normal? That seems to be the question everyone is asking. We want to hear your medical and health related questions about COVID-19. Send those questions to thecurrent@cbc.ca. Even better, because it's radio and we want to hear your voice, record a short - I say short - voice memo of your question that we could play on air and e-mail it to us at thecurrent@cbc.ca. We will put your questions to an infectious disease specialist next week here on CBC Radio One. In the midst of all of this, we've also been asking for your music suggestions. Many, many, many of you have written in recommending songs of comfort. Today's request comes from Jill Daum in Vancouver. Some of you will recognise that name. She's an actor. Playwright, as well as the wife of the late great John Mann, John Mann, as you know, was the lead singer of one of this country's greatest bands of all time, Spirit of the West. He died last November of early onset Alzheimer's disease. Jill Daum's song recommendation is in his memory. She writes, John Mann wrote Thank You when he was in the hospital recovering from cancer. He wrote it to thank the nurse's, family and friends who cared for him. It's a tune for these times that comforts me. There is no better time than now to play some music from Spirit in the West. This is John Mann. Thank you.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: Thank You by John Mann]

MG: Thank you, Jill, for that. You want to sing along with a song? Maybe you're singing to that. We're going to have a cross country sing along a little bit later on. The founders of Choir Choir Choir will be here to lead us. The song is With a Little Help from My Friends. We'll post the lyrics up on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC. That's on its way. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current on Radio One.

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'We have a very partial picture': Why one health writer wants more sex-based data on COVID-19

Guests: Julia Smith, Caroline Criado Perez, Helen Lewis

MG: Hello, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. Yesterday on the program, we heard from Jessica Andrews. Her mum is in a care home in Montreal. It was a tough interview. Here's a little bit of what Jessica told us.

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I have a lot of family responsibilities, so I'm already taking care of my father. And I just am, I'm torn. I'm sorry. I'm torn. I can't. I can't be in two places at the same time. Like, I can't take her home with me because they don't have the capacity to care for her. Because I have other responsibilities, professional responsibilities and other personal responsibility.

MG: It was a heartbreaking conversation, and you can hear in Jessica's voice the weight of that responsibility that she feels to her family, to her home, to her work. That burden of care is not uniquely borne by women, but in times of crisis, it falls more to them than to men, sometimes to devastating effect. Andrea Gunraj is with the Canadian Women's Foundation.

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Women are experiencing more caregiving housework, and that's no surprise given the fact that women in Canada do carry more unpaid housework and caregiving responsibilities than men. And that means a lot of things. I mean, there's grown strain on hospitals now and on health services and schools. So there's a lot of closures going on. And plus, there's self isolation and quarantine happening. So all these increased unpaid caregiving needs, of course, impacts women's abilities to be able to work for paid dollars. And that, of course, intensifies economic stress.

MG: Julia Smith is a research associate with the Faculty of Health Sciences at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University and is on the line now. Julia, good morning.

JULIA SMITH: Good morning.

JULIA SMITH: That's disproportionate toll that Andrea talked about there. Is that what you expected to see unfold when this virus first appeared?

MG: Yes, I think we could, we could all expect that. This is women already do, you know, your former presenter already said the majority of the care work. And when a crisis hit, that burden just becomes exacerbated.

MG: We heard that in Jessica Andrews conversation and she talked about the burden that she's carrying with her mum in a Long-Term Care home or father at home. She has professional obligations as well. Tell me a bit more about what you've seen and how illustrative what Jessica was talking about is of the experience of women in Canada right now.

JULIA SMITH: I think we're hearing a lot of that. Women are most often responsible for caring for the elderly. Globally, we know that women do 2.5 times more unpaid care work than men. So that's a huge burden. And right now, children are out of school. Of course, as you know, Jessica was speaking about, we have this crisis in care homes for elderly. And so around the country, the majority of people that are both trying to homeschool their kids, possibly work from home and also care for their elders are going to be women. And that's a huge burden. And past outbreaks in other parts of the world have told us that that burden has a lot of consequences. So it has economic consequences. Sometimes when people can't do their professional work, it also can have a psychological or emotional consequences. So, even though it's totally different context, there's research from West Africa from Ebola outbreak with women that shows and many women continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, from the burden of trying to manage caring for their families during that health crisis.

MG: And that happens years after the outbreak.

JULIA SMITH: Yes, it can have a very long term effect.

MG: You talked about the economic impact of that as well. And again, your research has looked at how this is spread across time. What is the economic aid pact? I guess first in the short term?

JULIA SMITH: So in the short term. For this crisis, you know, there's a lot of people that are unable to work. So the industries that are most impacted in Canada are the service and the tourism industries, and those industries are dominated by women. So a lot of people are unable to work. Other people are having to choose or not choose, you know, being forced not to work because of having to take care of children who are out of school. And most often that choice has to be made about who, you know, who in a family doesn't work and provides kids, that most often it's women. And that comes back to, you know, structural issues about women generally being paid less. And so families having to decide that have the higher income earner continue to work. Well, women may give out their jobs to provide care.

MG: What about in the long term as things start to recover and the economy gets back on its feet? What does that mean for those women who have already, perhaps, as you say, stepped out of the workforce because of whether it was voluntary or whether their jobs disappeared? What does that mean in the long term for them?

JULIA SMITH: Well, it can be very challenging. You know, as many people know that precarious work or had to have career interruptions to get back to work. And so again, though, this is a different context and evidence from West Africa during Ebola showed that men return to pre crises income levels much faster than women did. So it took women a longer period of time after the Ebola crisis to recover financially. And I would expect a similar trend here because of the disruption to those sectors that women are most employed in and the fact that many women have had to give up work.

MG: We've also heard as this pandemic has unfolded, real concerns around the physical danger in all of this, particularly around the issue of social or physical distancing in a home that at its most elemental level just isn't safe for women.

JULIA SMITH: Yes. And, you know, this is you know, it's terrifying and incredibly upsetting that we're hearing reports from around the world as reported domestic violence or interpersonal violence increasing. And I think one thing that, I think, really important to remember is that it's not the crisis. It's not COVID that's causing this rise in domestic violence. You know, it's the fact that people are isolated and this violence is already ongoing. It's that something that people, mostly women, are probably already living with and then it's being exacerbated. And people are stuck at home with family members, with people in relationships with who are not safe. And it's pretty terrifying context.

MG: In that, then, if you're talking about that context, but also about the long term emotional and economic effects, what is it that governments could do to better protect women against the effects of an outbreak like the one we're experiencing now? And that can be in the short term, but it can also be, to your point, in the Long-Term years after this is done.

JULIA SMITH: Right. So, I mean, I think our government has, Canadian government has taken some positive steps in terms of increasing funding for shelters for people that are fleeing violence and crisis lines. And that's good. But it does need to be more preventative measures. So, you know, creative approaches to counselling that take into account the physical distancing required, providing shelter before violence, legal reforms, and also just public campaigns that challenged norms that normalise violence. And when it comes to economic effects, again, like, projects that specifically recognise this need. So I think in Canada we do not often talk about uneven care burden. We often celebrate our country as being one of greater gender equity. I think that's important. And I'm you know, I'm grateful for what is good and equal about living in Canada. But the fact is, the majority women do the majority of care work, and that needs to be recognised. And then it needs to be more support for those women. So programs, maybe, that also specifically provide income support or counselling or other types of support to those people providing care to, for example, the elderly, to children right now. Yes, there's a long list. I could go on and on.

MG: Just finally, is your sense that perhaps that light is going to be shone on it in a way that it hasn't in past, now that so many of us are homeschooling our kids, you hear about this in social media is a dangerous thing to pay too much attention to. But there is, you know, perhaps an appreciation for the work that teachers do that wasn't as high as, is higher now than it was in past, perhaps. That, again, we're seeing the light being shone on the work that's happening in Long-Term Care Homes. That puts a new appreciation on that kind of work. So is there the possibility for change? Do you think?

JULIA SMITH: Oh, for sure. And I think that's really important. I mean, I think what this crisis has shown us is that the people that take care of our children in schools, in daycares, that take care of our elderly are not only providing one of the most important services in our country in terms of caring for the people that we care about the most. But they also are essential to economy money. We can't, our economy cannot function without day-care, without publicly funded schools, without good care for the elderly.

MG: Julia, it's great to talk to you about this. Thank you.

JULIA SMITH: Thank you very much.

MG: Take care. Julia Smith is a research associate with the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. She was in Vancouver. Helen Lewis is a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine and the author of Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights. Helen, good morning to you.

HELEN LEWIS: Good morning.

MG: The headline of one of your most recent stories is Coronavirus is a Disaster for Feminism. Why a disaster for feminism?

HELEN LEWIS: Well, because it, exactly as Julia was saying, it does bring back that kind of breadwinner homemaker divide that has been ebbing away in the developed world over the last 50 to 100 years. And that piece was kind of astonishing to me because I had quite a lot of pushback from it initially, of people saying now isn't the time to talk about this? You know, it is kind of, don't you know, there's a war on. But actually, this is exactly the time to talk about this. And very oddly, we know from quite morbid research that previous pandemics and plagues have been a time when actually societies ended up being remade in quite significant ways. The Black Death of the Middle Ages is credited with ending serfdom, for example, because what happens is there is a reappraisal of what is genuinely important to society. And I think that's what we're kind of seeing with some of this discussion about care. I mean, I feel very strongly that we should think of childcare and elderly care as infrastructure in the same way that we think about roads and trains. They are things that help workers to work. It's another kind of nice little add on. And although we've been keeping schools open, you know, there are lots of couples and single parents who rely on a grandparent or someone in their extended family. And all of that resource has been taken away from them. And what we're seeing really is the huge patchwork that so many people with children have had to build up in order to be able to juggle that with a job. And I think that reappraisal is long overdue.

MG: There are different expectations of men and women. And Julie hinted at that. And just in terms of even how people are paid and what that means in terms of who works or who doesn't work, how does that come to play in all of us?

HELEN LEWIS: Well, for some, women are much more likely to work part time. So if you are looking at, you know, that those decisions have already been made in some respects about who's job has got the flexibility to deal with a kid who's off sick and can't go into nursery. Well, it's you know, it's more often that the mother's job that picks that up. And that makes a lot of sense on the individual couple level that you would protect the income of the highest earner. But it becomes a very difficult thing to manage in a pandemic like this, because across the board, the health workers are majority female. Here in Britain, it's more than seven in 10 workers and cleaners and hospitals, nurses, doctors and the majority of medical students and undergraduates are now female. And all of those people are exactly on the frontline in key worker jobs. And they need that support in order to be able to stay in work. So one of the things that was very obvious here was the way that schools were kept open if one of your parents are a key worker. And there was an initial discussion about whether or not you would need to key worker parents. But they soon realised that what might happen in that case is that higher paying men in straight couples wouldn't want to give up their jobs so that their wife, a nurse, could continue to work. And that's really key because on an individual level, you can absolutely understand that protect the highest earner, but seen across society, it has some really unpleasant and unfortunate impacts.

MG: Is that changing at all? Julia talked about some of it. I mean, she is talking about Canada in some ways and how we look at ourselves here as being an equitable society. Whether that's true or not is another matter. But is it changing in terms of those expectations now?

HELEN LEWIS: I think it has changed an enormous amount in the last 50 years, which is the kind of the one that was a big bang of women getting into the workforce. And I think you find far fewer men who would boast about, you know, I've never changed a diaper. That kind of old style machismo is really now seen as quite old fashioned. So all the chores on equitably distributed at home there is, at least in most marriages, most partnerships, an expectation of equality [unintelligible] out. And when I was talking to the sociologist Ali Russell [unintelligible] my book, she wrote this brilliant book in the 80s called The Second Shift, which is exactly about the second shift of carrying labour. She said that's the big thing that's changed. When she was initially interviewing those couples, it was expected that the wives did everything at home. And now, I don't think many people think of their partnerships like that, no matter what the reality is.

MG: What happens- perhaps coming out of this. We've been talking about how a crisis allows you the opportunity to re-evaluate, to perhaps move history forward. And fast forward in some ways. The things that would have taken a long time to happen can be compressed because you're in extraordinary circumstances. And we saw in the First World War women entering the workforce and taking on roles that were traditionally thought to be male. Is there the opportunity for some sort of larger societal change coming out of this pandemic?

HELEN LEWIS: I think that's true and the first war is a very interesting and slightly alarming example. So in Britain alone, 1.5 million women move into the workforce working prominently in factories and it brings the brand kind of end of domestic service and various other things. And then in the 1920s, unfortunately, get this huge backlash of we're very worried about the birthrate. Shouldn't women be staying at home? You have the rise of things like eugenics, for example. So the effects, you know, the overall trajectory is one of forward progress. So you can't necessarily say this is the destination and there will be no bumps or reversals on the road towards it. But I think some really significant things have happened, particularly in regards to video conferencing, remote working, lots of offices and realise that that's now, you know, something that they can more legitimately let staff do. So I think there's less penalty on people asking about flexible working. I think we're a bit more relaxed about the idea that someone might have to drop off a call because they've got to attend to a screaming toddler. And I think that might be very helpful for women and men who have got small children. But the idea that not only do you have to do your job, but you have to pretend that there's nothing else in your life. And the idea that an employer has a right to expect that you basically are this perfect automaton who doesn't do anything except work and you have no real life to manage around your work. I hope that all of that stuff will be really positive for both men and women in terms of life and work balance.

MG: You said that when you published that piece initially, there was a lot of pushback from people saying now's not the time to talk about it. What does that tell you about, again, if there is that opportunity, the willingness of people to seize on the opportunity.

HELEN LEWIS: Well, it makes me quite angry, really, because the main thing I felt when I was reporting it, talking to researchers like Julia, like Claire here in Britain who'd studied Ebola and Zika and other outbreaks is we had all this information. You know, this was all knowable going in. And I wrote about the fact that domestic violence spiked in Liberia during the Ebola crisis. And we should have been ready for that to happen here and in Canada as well. You know, that's what really kind of annoys me about it, is that the backlash is predicated on the idea that feminism is a sort of ladies lunch club that you should get to when everything else is sorted, when all the big problems are well sorted. Well, in maternal mortality, women dying in childbirth is a big and real problem. Domestic violence is a big and real problem. And actually, fundamentally, the idea that you get home at the end of the day from your pay job and start another unpaid job is a big and real problem. And so the thing that I was most keen to make the point with that piece was that this isn't something that we can tidy away and talk about. This is incredibly important. And actually, you know what? There will be another pandemic in our lifetimes, very probably. So we really need to get this right, because it will make fewer people unhappy and fewer people will die next time if we just do the research now.

MG: And you're optimistic, confident that people will seize on that opportunity?

HELEN LEWIS: I don't think I could carry on being a journalist if I wasn't optimistic. But, you know, the story of I think, you know, I think most people now have partnerships when they have kids that are a lot more equal than they were 50 years ago, 100 years ago. And I think most people are happier with that arrangement. You know, you tend to want the person that you're married to, the person you're in a partnership with to be happy and enjoy their life. So I think that feminism and the fights that we've had about that have increased the sum of human happiness. So, yes, I am optimistic.

MG: Helen, it's great to talk to you. Thank you. Helen Lewis is a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine, we reached her in London, England. There is something else to consider when we talk about how this pandemic will affect men and women differently, and that's what the virus is actually doing to our bodies. Caroline Criado Perez is not a medical doctor who has spent the last many years, though, looking at how our medical system studies the female body and what's at stake when it doesn't do that. She's the author of Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, and she is also in London, England. Caroline, hello to you.

CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ: Hi.

MG: What do we know, at this early stage or whatever stage we're in this pandemic, about how the coronavirus affects women and men differently?

CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ: Well, we know a bit. We know enough to be able to say that more men are dying than women. What we don't know is exactly why that is. And that's for both historical and for contemporary reasons. So historically, the vast majority of data that we have collected in all areas — from economics to travel data to the workplace, but also in medical science — has been on men. And that includes on the male body. And that is because historically we have thought of the male life experience and the male body as a kind of universal template — with anything that is female, including the female body, as some kind of sort of niche, atypical variance on this sort of universal male template. So the men are kind of seen as gender neutral and women are seen as gendered, which kind of ties in a little bit to what was what Helen was saying about how, you know, when women do talk about these kinds of issues, when there is a crisis, there is that sense we don't have time to talk about gender right now. And really, that ties into this whole thing that only women have a gender. And then when we're talking about gender, we're only talking about women, which, of course, isn't the case. But it's all part of that same way of thinking. And this way of thinking has led to this huge data gap in medical science where we just know far less about the female body than the male body. This can end up having very negative consequences for women. So, for example, women are much more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack and are more likely to die following a heart attack simply because we just haven't done the same amount of research. And so doctors are less good at recognizing female symptoms. We know less about how the female heart attack might progress in the female body. And the drugs that we have don't necessarily work as well. Now, in this instance, it seems that's the issue that we have, is that we know so little about how the female immune system works. And again, that is because we have mainly studied the male immune system and seen that as the kind of default immune system. And the female immune system is just the male immune system with some crazy hormones thrown in, which make it far too complicated and muddy to study. And now, of course, that is to our massive detriment, because if we knew more about how the female immune system works, we might know more about why women seem to be fighting this off better. I do remember, in the course of my research, I came across this really fascinating study that looked at — and this is quite unusual because most cell studies are still very, very male dominated, where we study male cells rather than female cells — but this study did look at male and female cells. And even more unusually, actually, sex disaggregated its data and they exposed male and female cells to oestrogen and then expose them to a virus. It was the influenza virus in this case, and the female cells were able to use the oestrogen to fight off the virus. The male cells were not able to do that. And so what you see there is this possibility that there is something going on in the connection between oestrogen and the female cells that could be being used in fighting off viruses. Now, of course, we also have known for a while that's the female immune system is more active. It's why women suffer 80 percent of auto immune diseases is why women tend to have more frequent and severe reactions to vaccines. And it is quite possibly why women are seeming to be less likely to die from COVID-19. However, because we are not collecting systematically sex disaggregated data right from the beginning in all countries around the world, we have a very partial picture full of gaps.

MG: So do you think we would be closer to a vaccine if we had that medical data?

CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ: I'm not saying we'd be closer to a vaccine, but we'd certainly be closer to nailing down why the male death rate seems to be worse than the female death rate. So what we don't have systematically is sex disaggregated data on who is getting tested, who is testing positive and who is dying. And you really need all three of those in order to really understand. For example, are more men dying because they're more likely to get it, or are more men dying because they're more likely to die from it once they've got it. But you need to know when people are being tested, who is being tested, who's getting the test, where they're getting it and who is testing positive in order to be able to answer those questions. And that matters, because it matters how you direct your interventions. And it matters whether it is no more a case of literally the immune system or if you could focus more on, or as well, on more social interventions like, you know, really pushing social distancing and hand-washing, which studies do seem to be suggesting is proving harder to get through to, in particular, younger men.

MG: And again, if people were listening to this and they would say, I'm sorry, but this is not the time to be focussing on this, that we have to focus on trying to figure out how everyone is affected by this, that you can't split it up. There's been pushback on people looking at race aggregated data that now's not the time to look at that or to look at that gender aggregated data, sex aggregated data. what would you say to them?

CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ: Well, I would say that everyone includes women and that includes people of colour. And, you know, one thing that this epidemic is really showing us is that sex does matter. You know, bodies respond differently to viruses, to drugs, to all sorts of things, depending on the sex of the body. And so if you really want to know what's going on, you have to sex disaggregate your data. And, you know, I was shown, I believe by that study that I cited earlier. Literally, look at how cells respond to oestrogen. You have to start that research right from the cell trial stage. And one of the things that is really frustrating at the moment, as we are doing drug research and as we are doing vaccine research, is we still aren't always doing that. You know, there are some vaccine trials giving very clear about, yes, we are going to be including females right from the beginning. And there are others that are still kind of obfuscating and not wanting to commit to that, because there is still this sense that the female body is too complicated. But let's be clear. You know, men might be more likely to die. But A, you know, knowing about the female immune system, if we'd bothered to do that research beforehand, who knows what treatments we might have been able to discover and we might be saving more lives right now. We just won't know because we haven't done that research. But also, women are still dying, you know, and they deserve to have a vaccine and they deserve to have a treatment. And, you know, I can't remember, I'm afraid, if it's Julia or Helen. I think it was Helen pointed out women make up the majority of frontline health care workers on this disease. And, you know, it's not just for doctors and nurses, although there's all very, very high said, you know, women make up in the UK I think it's 89 percent of nurses, 84 percent of carers. And the people who are on the front lines, particularly the ones who are going into the ICU, who the ones who are going into care for patients are going to be exposed to particularly high viral loads. And one of the risk factors we know for this disease is the level of bad case you get is to a certain extent going to be dependent on the level of viral dose that you get. And so we have to be protecting our health network, and that includes doing research that is going to create a drug and a vaccine that works for the bodies of the majority of those who are on the frontlines. So, yes, we need to do research on men, but we also need to do research on women.

MG: And now's the time to actually do that.

CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ: Now is absolutely the time.

MG: Caroline, it's great to talk to you about it. I mean, you've made a persuasive case on this. Thank you.

CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ: Thanks very much.

MG: Caroline Criado Perez is the author of Invisible Women Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. We reached her in London, England. There's more to come on this this weekend on Quirks and Quarks. They're looking at what we are learning from Canada's outbreak on the different impacts of COVID-19 on men and women. And to [unintelligible] point what previous outbreaks of other diseases have taught us in that field. That's coming up this weekend on CBC Radio One. CBC News is next on Radio One. And then virtual strangers isolated together under one roof. Multiple stories from multiple units in the same apartment building. That's coming your way in about six minutes time. I'm Matt Galloway. This is an extended edition of The Current.

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Under one roof: How COVID-19 turned my apartment building of strangers into a community, Alissa Eckhert

Guests: Julia Scott, Alissa Eckhert

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

[Music: Theme]

MG: Still to come. Illustrating the invisible, you'll hear from a medical artist who draws the coronavirus for the Centres for Disease Control. Yes, that is a real job. And we'll hear more about it coming up. But first, we go inside an apartment complex where residents are alone together under one roof.

[Music: Theme]

MG: People in lockdown all over the world are facing confinement differently. In the case of Montreal born journalist Julia Scott. She's using the time to get to know her neighbours. Julia is sheltering in place at her home in the San Francisco Bay Area, where residents are well into their fifth week of a lockdown. She lives in a tall apartment building with more than 100 neighbours in Oakland, California. It's kind of a microcosm in a way. And this is Julia's documentary: One Roof.

SOUNDCLIP

JULIA SCOTT: These are long days. Sometimes I forget to eat. I sit in front of my laptop at my kitchen table, which is also my dining room table and marked time by counting the number of delivery vans in the driveway from Amazon. Everyone in my building is ordering in.

VOICE 1: How are you doing?

VOICE 2: Alright. How are you?

JULIA SCOTT: I live in a condo building with 119 units. It's on a hill, so it towers over the neighbourhood.

[Sound: Knocking]

JULIA SCOTT: I have a confession. I don't know most of my neighbours. I don't even know the names of everyone on my floor.

JULIA SCOTT: Hi.

[Sound: Dog barking]

JESSICA: Hi.

JULIA SCOTT: Hi. I'm Julia.

JESSICA: I'm Jessica.

GINA: Hi I'm Gina.

JULIA SCOTT: COVID-19, has transformed our world. We're all here in our one bedrooms, separated by a concrete wall and under one roof together, in a way, I started wondering, how are we all coping? How is the coronavirus changed our lives so far? And how will it change us as a building, as neighbours?

GINA: Come on in. Make yourself at home.

JULIA SCOTT: Gina Bellici she and her girlfriend, Jessica Holt, invited me to visit them on the sixth floor. We tried to stay as far apart as possible and still talk. Gina works in tech and she has no problem working remotely. Jessica is a freelance theatre director and she told me her prospects have become extremely uncertain, very quickly.

JESSICA: I'm not going to lie. The other night, I sort of threw myself into a little heap and I was in a little bit of a pity pile. Just feeling really sort of my heart is breaking a little bit for all of us artists that aren't able to do what we love and aren't sure when we're going to be able to do it again. And I keep saying, well, no, we're going to get through this. On the other side of this, think there will come a time when we return to normal and then there's a question, my brain that says, but will we? Will we ever be able to return to normal?

JULIA SCOTT: Gina has a sunnier outlook, but admits that she's in silent panic mode most days. Gina and Jessica have been trying to take care of their neighbours. Lately, they've been handing out toilet paper and grocery shopping for an elderly friend on the eighth floor who really should not leave the building. But now they're leaving. Gina's mum lives alone, and Gina is concerned that living in our building gives her and Jessica more potential to come into contact with COVID-19, which means she's worried about spreading it every time she visits home.

GINA: I either need to choose being with her to be able to go get things for her just to keep her in the house, or we need to really commit to this land based cruise ship we live on.

JULIA SCOTT: Land based cruise ship. Hadn't quite thought of it that way, but there is a concern here about sanitation. Our building's maintenance man has gone home and there is no cleaning going on. There's been other changes, too. In a building like mine where space is limited, it's nice to have a conversation with someone you meet by the elevators or in the mailroom. But each of those touch points now could be vectors for infection. Elevator buttons, doorknobs. I've taken to wearing gloves just to go downstairs. When people see me inside an elevator, they're waiting for, they give a tight smile and wait for the next one. Even the mailroom has started to feel a little snug.

[Msuci

JUDY: I wanted to tell you how my life has changed since this virus has taken over the world.

JULIA SCOTT: I'm especially worried about Judy Rosenberg, my neighbour, on the second floor. She's in her 70s and still goes out every day for walks, groceries and to go coffee from a vendor down the street.

JUDY: I don't see any other way around it. There's no one else to do grocery shopping for me.

JULIA SCOTT: That's not true. I would be incredibly happy to do grocery shopping for you. I'm already gonna be doing some grocery shopping for another neighbour in the building this week.

JUDY: Well, I commend you. I thank you very much. I feel for whatever reason, I don't want life as I knew it to totally stop.

JULIA SCOTT: Judy is an improvisational pianist who keeps a concert piano in her living room. She doesn't find herself wanting to play that much these days, though.

JUDY: I have felt depression in my life. I felt all sorts of emotions. But I don't get sad very much. But this, this is a sad- this is a deep sadness. The amount of deaths per day is just staggering to me. I'm in my early 70s and nothing like this has ever happened to my generation. Even 9/11 was horrible, but it was an event and it came and went. But this is of a different character and this has a quality of war about it.

JULIA SCOTT: Are you worried about how you might be sickened by this? Do you think about that?

JUDY: Of course. I certainly feel vulnerable, which is why 90 percent of my time, I'm indoors, away from everyone.

GUILLAUME: My name is Guillaume Chartier. I live on six floor. Full disclosure. I mean, like, you know, I'm Canadian. I have like a certain viewpoint on American news. I think a lot of it is very sensationalized and very emotional. It's not really like that in Canada. And the more American news I watch, the more anxious I feel. So I try to stay away from that.

JULIA SCOTT: Guillaume's husband, Grant Eshoom grant share a tight workspace in the living room.

GUILLAUME: Young We're just kind of trying to stay out of each other's hair during the day so we can do our work properly.

JULIA SCOTT: Guilherme is an animator who recently switched to working from home.

GUILLAUME: From parts of it are kind of nice. You know, like we're we're just saying today like, oh, it's kind of nice to have like a quiet lunch at home. Reminds me of when I was in elementary school.

JULIA SCOTT: Did you and Grant have a moment where you looked at each other and you were like, you know, this is serious?

GUILLAUME: Yes, it's a strange thing, you know, like you go from- at first I was like, oh, whatever. And then like, you know, like everybody gets paranoid. Like, you just like get a little cough or a little like sore throat. And you're like, oh, my God. Like, do I have it?

JULIA SCOTT: Guillaume and Grant have been baking lemon meringue pie and rewatching Star Trek The Next Generation for nostalgia's sake. But they're finding that it holds surprising relevance to our present moment on Earth.

GUILLAUME: Its optimistic outlook, unhuman [unintelligible]. Actually, like there was an episode where they were very thing like a lethal epidemic. And they had to like, you know, take measures then like, you know, weigh the pros and cons and on that. So, like, oh, well, yes. That's what I like about that show, like it brings you to a fantasy world, you know, that's exciting and it brings an escape. But at the same time, it makes you think and observe like concepts and ideas that are still very relevant to other things.

ERNESTO: My oldest brother Turino took me to the movies when I was about four or five in the city of Huacana, Michoacan. He clearly had the task of taking care of his little brother that day. My name's Ernesto Victoria. I'm 71 years old. I was born in Huacama, Michaocan in Mexico and raised in Oakland.

JULIA SCOTT: Ernesto has lived above me for five years. Lately, he's been finding comfort in recording some of his memories of growing up with his seven siblings.

ERNESTO: We went on the bus and I remember a scene about the movie, two sisters, both with long braids. One was a blonde, one was a brunette and they're fighting in a boat on a lake. Little family drama. My older brother Treeno, who does not remember when I told him about it awhile back, but I never forgot that. I get a little scared from time to time, I have to be honest with you.

JULIA SCOTT: Ernesto isn't that much of a worrier. But Pete did get concerned a few weeks ago when he developed a cough.

ERNESTO: I felt really sentimental and emotional. I think it was in the morning when my symptoms, the coughing that is, having to clear my throat was really bothering me. Then maybe there was this thought, you know, as of if I die, you know, I and I want my daughters to see this. Blahblahblah, my sibs. I was just feeling sentimental.

JULIA SCOTT: The doctor assessed internetz those symptoms and ruled out the coronavirus. Ernesto is a Vietnam vet and a lifelong social worker. He still works part time as an academic counsellor, but that work has slowed down. A lot has changed.

ERNESTO: A more action oriented. So sitting down with a good book is difficult for me. I'd much rather be out riding my bike or swimming, walking, hiking, not hanging out with as many people. One thing I noticed, I face time my good friend New York today, and it was so good. To see a face and to talk. It's just the joy of talking with somebody after being sequestered for so long, you know.

JULIA SCOTT: I was happy when Ernesto said he would let me shop for him sometime soon. A lot of nice little things have happened in my building over the past weeks. Someone on the third floor left a message on the bulletin board in the lobby offering to help anyone who needs it. Another neighbour organised the entire seventh floor into a group text so that when someone's leaving for a grocery run, they can take requests and minimise the number of trips from the building.

VOICE 3: That's a good idea.

VOICE 4: That's a good one.

JULIA SCOTT: And after a few people started meeting on the roof to watch the sunset years, it turned into a socially distant Friday happy hour where everyone brings their own drink and stands two meters apart.

[Indistinct chatter]

JULIA SCOTT: One neighbour I never see anymore is Katie Stevenson. She lives on my floor, but the lockdown rules don't apply to her. She's a second year pediatrics resident at a local hospital.

KATIE: Hello.

JULIA SCOTT: Hey, Katie.

KATIE: Tea or anything?

JULIA SCOTT: Yes, actually, tea would be amazing. Thank you. Katie regularly works 12 hour shifts at the hospital. The other day she had a post allergy season cough, so her doctor sent her to have a covered 19 test today. The results came back.

KATIE: It's just not what you do every day. But my came back negative. So it gave me sort of 48 hours off of work, which was nice.

JULIA SCOTT: Your eyes are like bloodshot.

KATIE: It's been a week. It's definitely been a week.

JULIA SCOTT: Katie has been on the pediatrics ward for the past month. She sees children who have been admitted because their parents are afraid they might have COVID-19 as of this interview. None of her young patients have tested positive.

KATIE: You've got the special mask and the face shield. And it's sort of like a gown that goes down to your knees and then gloves.

JULIA SCOTT: And for those little kids, I mean, what is it like for them to see this masked person in a hazmat suit all day?

KATIE: It's scary. They have some stickers that my mum sent for St. Patrick's Day. They're all green. And so I am bringing in stickers and putting them on my suit. And they I'm the celery doctor. I'm the big banana. Welcome to our hospital.

JULIA SCOTT: When she comes home from the hospital. She takes everything off and goes straight into the shower. Her laundry bin is a mound three feet high.

KATIE: See, I'm just building a giant pile of scrubs.

JULIA SCOTT: This is huge pile.

KATIE: A little bit.

JULIA SCOTT: Katie's not just trying to stay clean. She's trying to protect everyone in our building from COVID-19, which she assumes she eventually will get.

KATIE: I think it's very likely. Yes. My mission is just to keep my germs confined to my little space and not let them get out.

JULIA SCOTT: A lot of things scare me that don't freak Katie out. But what does scare Katie is running out of masks at work.

KATIE: I don't know numbers, but I do know just how much we're trying to conserve. And so we're being very conscious from the very beginning of minimise the number of times that people enter the rooms, because every time you enter and leave a room, you need to change your mask. Try to find ways that we can use the same mask- for multiple encounters with the same patient. Like by putting it in a brown paper bag and keeping it just for you. So right now, if you go into a patient's room, you need to ask the charge nurse for a mask. They don't have them just lying around because people would hoard them. At least that's the fear.

JULIA SCOTT: Katie and Judy Rosenberg lived just two doors apart. Now, more than ever, what we do to protect each other makes a stark difference. Maybe, even life and death. Those undercurrents are seeping into Judy's work on the piano.

JUDY: I feel a certain life force when I'm playing. When I sit down to play, either it's for a dance class or for a film, a silent film or anything else that I have to be doing. There's something about that experience that makes me feel more alive in a way. And it is it is a great gift.

JULIA SCOTT: Would you consent to play something for me now?

JUDY: I can play a little something. I just make up things.

JULIA SCOTT: Maybe you can play something inspired by...

JUDY: The events of the day.

JULIA SCOTT: Yes, by Coronavirus.

JUDY: Oh, God. I'll see.

[Sound: Piano]

JULIA SCOTT: I know this virus will continue to escalate in the next few weeks. The news will get scarier, but I've met more neighbours in the last week than I've gotten to know in the past five years. I already feel better knowing I have so many people to talk to, who're facing the same situation, the same questions as I am. We may all be behind our doors for now, but we really are in this together.

MG: We've been listening to One Roof. It was produced by Montreal born journalist Julia Scott in California and the current documentary editor Joan Webber. This is an extended edition of The Current. My name's Matt Galloway. We have put in a long distance call to the host of Q Tom Power. Hello, Tom.

TOM POWER: Matt, how are you?

MG: Well, good thing you have a 1 800 number.

TP: It's a 1 900 1 bill in the taxpayers.

MG: I was going to say it's toll free 1. That's the opposite of that.

TP: Now I'm going to find a way to profit off this.

MG: You are here to talk about art on the radio.

TP: Have you seen this image of the coronavirus? I almost feel like it's a like a wanted ad in a post office or something like that. But, you know, I'm talking about?

MG: The blob.

TP: Yes. The blob with a little red spikes at the end of it kind of looks and looking a bit woolly. Going a little bit grey. You now what I'm talking about?

MG: Yes, yes.

TOM POWER: So that was made by well of course, somebody, a medical illustrator. And it was made specifically by Alissa Eckhert. She's an illustrator at the Centre for Disease Control, also known as the CDC. She had to draw a lot of infectious diseases. It is not easy to make something microscopic, visible and easy to understand. But she has a lot of thoughts on why she chose to make the coronavirus look this way and why we need to see what it looks like. Take a listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

TP: Hi. How are you?

ALISSA ECKHERT: How are you? I'm doing great.

TP: I'm well to thank you so much for being here. Biomedical illustrator for the CDC. Bit of a unique job. How did you end up working at the CDC?

ALISSA ECKHERT: Yes. So. Well, so I got my education. Medical affairs have actual advanced degrees in science, anatomy and art from one of the four schools between the U.S. and Canada. And so the programs include some advanced courses and things along with medical students and their first two years of classes, as well as some artistic classes in both 2D and 3D Dillard's and a medical illustrator. Purpose is actually to translate complex biological and medical information into vegetables so that people can understand things better. And so that's why where we came in to be asked to do something like this, we have knowledge and specialised training and the understanding of these viral structures and how to go about creating something like this. So I started working at CDC straight out of school. I always knew that's where I wanted to work. And that's what I do now.

TP: You, along with your colleague Dan Higgins, designed the image that's used in newscasts online just about everywhere you look. When we're talking about COVID-19 for people who haven't seen the image and since we're on the radio, can you describe what this image of Covered 19 looks like?

ALISSA ECKHERT: Sure. It's sort of like this grey ball that has this bumpy surface to it and it has these red protrusions that represent proteins all around it and give it sort of its signature look of the corona or the crown like halo effect around the surface, what it's named from.

TP: I kind of see it as I don't know if you saw the image of Drake, like the rapper Drake Chandelier. And everyone said it kind of looked like the coronavirus.

ALISSA ECKHERT: No, I haven't seen that.

TP: It is invisible to the naked eye. Talk me through the process of illustrating this virus. Where do you start?

ALISSA ECKHERT: Yes. So when we were told to create this representation of the virus, the first thing we start to do is start to research the structure and what we knew, what we wanted to do, a single beauty shot up close. And so once we determine we'll do our research, then we work back and forth with the subject matter experts, the CDC, to get all the details down that we need. And we knew what we wanted to put into it. We then go to what's called the protein databank, which is a repository for data that the scientists have uploaded for their proteins online. And you can actually download that information and take it into this visualisation software. And that software is like what you see in the movies when they're looking at structures and rotating them in the sturdy space on a computer. And so after that, we then take those parts and then combine compile them into one structure, into our 3D software [unintelligible]. And I sort of like to explain that people like it's our photography studio. It's where we choose our lighting and our camera work and our textures and our colours that we put into the piece. And then we add our final polishing touches with Adobe after effects after. That's our final step.

TP: I guess what I find the most interesting about that is that like the creative liberties that you take here. I mean, you look at this image of the coronavirus odyssey everywhere, these kind of bright reds, these sort of stony greys. There's lots of texture. Tell me about some of the like the liberties, the creative liberties you had to take in order to make something that is impactful to us.

ALISSA ECKHERT: I think there's a lot of things that we had to think about when we were designing this. We first knew that it was going to be used in news media and social media and Web sites and fighting for attention in the fast paced world. So it needed to be bold and striking to people. But we also needed it to be a serious tone in speaking to the public on such an urgent matter. We didn't want it to be something that was too playful. We chose to make it sort of realistic in nature because it seemed appropriate here so that the public could actually understand that this thing is real and living. It's something that you can't see. So we needed to bring it to life and creating it with these lifelike textures that make you feel like you can touch it sort of brings it closer to reality. Think of it as it's sticking something complex and abstract and making it tangible for people the same time that we were doing this. The designers at CDC were also developing branding for the response so that the public could identify information coming from CDC. So we took colours from their colour palette to make sure it went with everything. So everything matched. So I started to play with some of the colours that they had in there, like the greens and blues, but they just really weren't working for me. They kind of fall flat and didn't speak much to me. So then we started playing with all the warmer colours that were involved. And that's when it really jumped out and spoke to us as we work with all the colour, the detail and contrast and lighting to help separate the structures and provide emphasis and really just demonstrate the gravity of the situation.

TP: I guess you're right. You don't want to make it look too bright like a care bear's character either. But you also don't want to make it look like an evil Pokémon either. You know, this this this rise out of the- I mean, it's a balance you had to take. How did you know when you got it right?

ALISSA ECKHERT: It just kind of hit me. I saw it and I tried many versions. And once we finally saw it, really? Oh, Gab, we're on the right track and we had to do a couple more tweaks. And then, yes, this is it. And then we took it on to further up in our chain of command up. CDC got the right clearances and people really were liking it and agreed with us. So then that's when we knew that was there. That was it.

TP: I want to go back to something you said earlier. I'm curious as to why we need this at all. Like, I find it really effective when I open up The New York Times or I go to the CBC News and I see your image of the coronavirus. It feels like seeing a mug shot at the post office or something like that. Like, I wonder why we need to be able to see this thing that, again, we can't see with the naked eye and why it's so effective to us.

ALISSA ECKHERT: Yes, it's a way to give a face to the virus. You know, it gives it a state of being and represents it in a way that people can understand it and know it's a real matter.

TP: So when people look at your illustration, what do you hope it does for them?

ALISSA ECKHERT: Well, I hope it educates them on the matter. This woman I was speaking to is a good example. She would tell me every time that she goes to the grocery store now, she's actually reaching for produce or things off the shelf. She starts picturing the virus in and she literally changes her actions and remembers to wash your hands. And that sort of thing. And that's the example, the best example of the power of an illustration. It actually changed her behaviour and will help make her safer now.

TP: Well, I hope after this you get an opportunity to just maybe design some kinder diseases, maybe some mystery. Yes, maybe some nicer ones, ones that just make your hair grow longer or something like that. I hope, or maybe to draw a picture of a sunset or something like that.

ALISSA ECKHERT: Yes, a puppy. I like to do puppies.

TP: Alissa, thank you so much for your time today.

ALISSA ECKHERT: All right. Thank you.

MG: That's Tom Powers conversation with Alyssa Eckhart, illustrator at the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. Well, coming up on the current, Malcolm Gladwell is next. His. Selling book The Tipping Point looked at how viruses spreads. Nearly 20 years on, we'll revisit those ideas, see if they hold up. Figure out what else he's thinking about. Malcolm Gladwell is next. In about 90 seconds time, I Matt Galloway. You're listening to an extended edition of The Current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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Malcolm Gladwell has no doubt science will lead us out of pandemic, but worries about 'the human part', Choir Choir Choir

Guests: Malcolm Gladwell, Daveed Goldman, Nobu Adilmann

MG: Hi, I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to the current. Here in Canada, we have entered our second month of self-isolation and two questions are on top of mind for many people. How long can this continue and how on earth will we recover from this? We are living through an historic health threat, economic devastation that rivals the Great Depression. And yet my next guest sees some reason for optimism. Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist and author of five bestselling books, including The Tipping Point and most recently, Talking to Strangers. He's the host of podcasts, including Revisionist History, and he is on the line from Hudson, New York. Malcolm, good morning.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What are you thinking about as you live through this moment?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Oh, dear. That's a very large question. All kinds of things. I mean, I'm wondering like everyone else about how long this lasts? What we look like on the other side. But as you say, I heard you in the open and you suggested I was a little more optimistic. I'm optimistic about the science part of it. You know, problems like this divide into two cans. There's the science partners, the human part, science part. I have every confidence that we're going to make substantial strides in treating this particular disease and ultimately making a vaccine. I don't I'm not worried about that. I'm more I'm worried about the other part, which is the part that involves politics and social policy and the ordinary human reaction.

MG: Let's talk about the science piece for a minute. Where where does the positivity come from? What are you reading? What are you listening to that would give you some sense that the strides are being made and that we will get a handle on this?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Well, I become addicted to this podcast called Twitch.tv, which has been around for 20 years. It's called This Week in Virology. And it is the most fantastic. It's all of these sort of Old-School virologists get together once a week and chat about things in virology and invite on their friends who are, you know, people from their world. And they they've known about coronaviruses for years. This goes back to the original SARS epidemic. So if you listen to them, you're getting a kind of unfiltered scientific perspective. And you realize a couple of interesting things. One is that this was a novel virus. And what that means is we really didn't know anything about how to treat it. When people arrive in the hospital, we were flying blind. And the reason I say that's reason for optimism is because that's precisely the kinds of things that medical professionals are trained to do, to figure out something. They see for the first time in the first couple of weeks and months are the learning process. And if you listen to this show and other things I've been listening to, you understand that we are one. We are step by step kind of understanding what this is, how it works. You know, maybe the mortality rate, which is now, what? One percent in a couple of weeks or months could be a lot lower. And as we get smarter about taking about who the most vulnerable people are and how to treat them. So, you know, this is real science unfolding, science unfolding in real time. And that is what- the reason we built this massive, brilliant multi-billion dollar scientific establishment in the West is for moments like this. And they are shining in that momen.

MG: Their shining in a way that's with collaboration as well. It's interesting. We've been talking with people who are working outside of the silos, as they say, working with people and organizations that they would normally be in competition with.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Yes. Oh, I was reading this fascinating thing about a hospital in the New York area where the E.R. and the ICU, which had two different kind of power centres, had radically different ideas about how to treat coronavirus patients, which is a really kind of healthy thing. It's not like there's a kind of monolithic approach to this disease. There are multiple different efforts to understand it. Now, some of which are now contradictory, but I feel like over the next few weeks and months we're going to resolve those contradictions to to all of our benefit.

MG: That's the scientific element which gives you some hope. What about the human element, which is less optimistic?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Well, you know, it's I that I feel actually the parallel here is climate change, where, you know, I don't doubt the ability of scientists to come up with alternatives to fossil fuel. I doubt the ability of governments to and populations to use those technological advances appropriately. What worries me and I always feel like in a crisis. I covered HIV in its earliest days for The Washington Post as my first job cub reporter. And the parallels are really quite striking. What was obvious after dealing with HIV for about two years was that the narratives that you use to explain a crisis during a crisis powerfully shaped the way you respond to it after it's over. And the problem with HIV was that people pretended it was a general population level threat. And it wasn't. It was a disease, a very specific, vulnerable communities that was aided by a bunch of things that had nothing to do with HIV like STDs or drug use or poverty or all kinds of- and we kept on pretending it was this narrow problem. And it wasn't. It was a social problem with a kind of medical component. And when I look around at the way we're responding to this, I see the same mistake that we're pretending that everyone is equally at risk. Or this requires a hundred percent participation of the population because we are all somehow the same. We don't all have the same stake in this. There are some people who are going to ride through this period just fine. And there's some people who are going to be devastated. There are some people for whom the medical risk is marginal and there are some people for whom the medical risk is substantial. Andif we don't do a good job now of making those distinctions, when the time comes to clean up the mess, we're going to make a big mistake. We're going to ignore those who really suffered in this time. I'm not going to pretend, oh, all of us were in this together. So all of us need a kind of equal hand at the end, that's my concern at the moment.

MG: You see this in terms of how data is being collected, or there is resistance in some quarters to collecting gender or race, aggregated data. You also see it in people who will call out governments for not addressing, to your point, big issues around homelessness, underfunding of long term care, the medical system as a whole. Why has there been such resistance? If we know that those are weak links in society and that if you don't deal with them now, as they say, the chickens will come home to roost, why has there been such resistance to addressing those things in past?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: You know, I wish I had an easy answer. I was, before all of this happened for one of my podcast episodesm I was doing it. I went to Jacksonville and I spent a couple of days there talking to the people who deal with homelessness in Jacksonville. And we got into this. I went there for a random reason and it turned into this really fascinating experience. And they were talking about how difficult it was even in the middle of a prolonged economic boom to solve the kind of core problem of homelessness in a town like that.

And they pointed out the point I was talking to. I'm pointed out that 13000 homeless people die in the United States every year, and they have these in December. Every community in America has a think, a Canada, too, as a service for the homeless who die. You can go online, you can look at these services. They're often on YouTube. And there's three people there reading the names of, in a place like Jacksonville will be a couple of these will be like 70 people or so die. And there's four people in the audience. And it just you know, that was going on when we were set in the middle of the most extraordinary period of prosperity in history. Right. The last 10 years have been an unbelievable run. And even in that, at the end of that unbelievable run, we were seemingly blind to this ongoing human crisis in our midst. I mean, checks before is a poor place, right? It's a you know, I just picked that town randomly. So I have I don't know. It is a continuing struggle. I would have thought that one of the benefits of prosperity is that suddenly you had the opportunity to address the needs of the most vulnerable. It seems like the opposite happens, that in times of prosperity, we get distracted or blind to those things. And maybe the opposite is true. Maybe we only wake up to that when we're in the middle of crisis. I don't know. I'm not old enough to remember the depression. Maybe, you know, in the Depression, there was a kind of understanding of who the most vulnerable were. Maybe, maybe this is a shock to the system that we need in terms of that kind of long term reorganization of our priorities.

MG: But you started by saying that you were thinking about, one of the things you're thinking about, was also who we are when we get out of this. So in the last year, we have, what, three, four minutes left? What are what do we end there, which is people have been there's a bit like a cottage industry of people trying to kind of speculate who will be and what will have changed in us when we emerge from this. What do you think, if anything, will be changed by this?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Yes, I think it depends a lot on duration. So that, you know, if this, if the lockdown lasts eight months, I think the kinds of changes we'll see will be dramatically different than if the lockdown is lifted in a month and a half.

MG: Ho so?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I just don't think that, you know, we're in the middle, that it seems like this has been going on forever. But the kinds of of catastrophes that shape societies are ones that take time. You know, the depression is 10 years. The Second World War is five years, six years. You know, tyou have an almost a kind of generation that is comes of age during the crisis. This right now, we're two months in. I think it's premature to talk about massive social changes when the experience has been so brief. But if it's January 1st, 2021 and we're still terrified of this virus, then I would start talking about how society is going to look profoundly different on the other side, I just don't see it yet.

MG: How are you handling this? We've been talking about the music that gets people through something like this. You host, among many other podcasts, a podcast about music, Broken Record. What are what are you listening to these days that is calming the nerves of Malcolm Gladwell?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Well, I did. I, like everyone else is doing Zoom. I did a Zoom interview with Alicia Keys which was so, you know, it was, you know there she is on the computer screen with her house, like all of us with very little do. You can't go anywhere. The best thing you can come up with. Talk to me four and a half. And I you know, I thought maybe you'd be grouchy, or in a bad mood. She was insanely charming. And then I she sang the first song, first real song she wrote, which was 14 called Butterflies, I think. And I didn't think she was going to sing it for me. I said, come on, sing it forme. She said course. And she just on my laptop, you know, burst out into full on Alicia Keys kind of singing this incredibly beautiful song which she wrote as a kid on the battered piano in her mom's apartment in the middle of Manhattan. And it was you know, it was that's my treasured moment from this craziness. It would never have happened without the lockdown.

MG: It's enough to keep one from going stir crazy. Malcolm, it's always great to talk to you.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Thank you. Thank you so much, man.

MG: Malcolm Gladwell. His most recent book is called Talking to Strangers. He has a couple of podcasts, including one that has that interview with Alicia Keys. That podcast is called Broken Record. He also hosts revisionist history. We reached Malcolm Gladwell in Hudson, New York.

[Music]

MG: On a hot night in early June of 2016, some people in Toronto gathered, remember when people could gather together? Sheet music in hand for a drop in singing event. It was an unusually popular one known as Choir. Choir. Choir. What you're hearing is 15 hundred folks backing up the duo behind this event fronted by Rufus Wainwright.

[Singing]

MG: And of course, Leonard Cohen's hallelujah being sung there by Rufus Wainwright and Choir. Choir. Choir. A YouTube video of that night has been viewed more than 10 million times. The creative force behind choir. Choir. Choir is David Goldman and Nobu Edelmann. The two started their weekly singing event at a bar in Toronto in 2011. It has grown exponentially like a virus since then, spreading all around the world. While they can't get people together physically at the moment, David and Nobu are holding virtual choir-antinesessions to help folks sing their way through isolation. And they are with me now. We want to mention before we say hello to them. We're going to do a thing at the end of this conversation where you can sing along. And it would be great if you were to get your phone out and you are ready to record yourself or somebody else record you or you record somebody else singing. It'll make sense when we get to the interview, end of the interview, because we can kind of stitch all of these things together if you sent them to us. In the meantime, Daveed and Nobu. Hello to you both.

NOBU: Hey.

DAVEED: Good morning.

MG: Tell us, Daveed, about the virtual singalongs that you're holding on Saturday. How did these things work?

DAVEED: I mean, they're as simple as our shows, basically. You know, Nobu and I put together lists of songs, you know, based around a theme. And we have people in their homes singing along with us so they can watch us on Facebook or on YouTube. And we're just trying to make people feel some sense of kind of togetherness through singing. We can't hear each other. But, you know, that doesn't mean- it sort of harkening back to an age when people were doing things at the same time, whether it's like watching television at the same time or listening to radio programs back in the day the same time. We kind of feel like that that brought people together around the phonograph or on the radio or on the television. And that's what this kind of feels like. It's sort of a bit retro in that way.

MG: What sort of response have you had?

DAVEED: It's been great. I mean, you know, I mean, I think we're finding our audience still so mean for us. It's just we miss performing so much. It's hard for Nobu and I to be onstage as this thing sort of unfolded as we gotten to March. We were sort of the top of our game in terms of touring and shows and we'd just been going all over the place and had a bunch of plans for this year. So it's been it hard for us. It's it's been for many people. And and this is definitely something that's helped us get through it, because when we're done singing for an hour online, we feel a lot better about our lives.

MG: Where are people connecting with you from? I mean, it's all over the world, isn't it?

DAVEED: Yes. Most of our audience is still from North America. But this is a way for us in some ways to reach people that we never really reach. Pople watch our videos, but they don't really know Nobu and I. And we always feel like Choir Choir Choirs is song driven and audience driven. But there's also the two of us at the helm and we try hard to put a lot of ourselves into the performance and the teaching of the song and just getting people laughing and opening up, which is a big part of it. And I think that this gives people a bit of a window into into who we are as people.

MG: Nobu, what do you miss about being able to go out and perform, as David was saying? I mean, you were in some ways at the height of things when all of this happened?

NOBU: Yes, I'm you know, on a personal level, I miss the feeling like I'm floating most of the time because we are we're constantly in motion flying all over the place to do our shows. And that feeling that we get when we get to we have the best seat in the House. You know, and when the choirs that we put together really pull it together, we have. We're just listening. You know, it's perfect. And I miss the feeling of floating and bringing people together. I miss seeing their faces, whether they're feeling really emotional and openly crying, which happens a lot or shows or they're, you know, there's busting a gut. I miss the connection. And they're mad at us. [Cross talking]

DAVEED: It's all age of emotions.

MG: What happens in that moment? You did an event with with David Byrne and he speaks about this, about the power of people being together and singing together. How do you describe that, Nobu?

NOBU: It's it's vibrational. It is. You feel it. You know, there's so many things that we're always sort of so much in our heads. And I feel like my whole life has been one long exercise to get out of my head and just react honestly in the moment. And I feel like singing together allows that to happen. It brings your guard down. You have got to focus. That's not yourself. You're part of a large group of people trying to make something sound great together. It means that your voice can't be stronger than the person is next to you. It's so participatory in a way. It won't work unless you're willing to play along with others. And I feel like with our quarantines we're separated, but people are still reaching out to each other in ways that you would in social situations in the comments. And then they're posting their videos of them, singing snippets of songs together. So essentially, they're sharing a part of themselves and feeling like they're part of a greater whole, and that's what we need right now. I mean, that's great.

DAVEED: Did we actually do an event with David Byrne? I don't remember that.

MG: Time flies. Tell me a little bit about what happens in those moments where people are processing something really heavy. I think of of when Gord Downie died and you got people together to sing music by the hip. And there was this collective thing that happened. What happens when people, Nobu, are feeling the weight of the thing that's around them and they can get together, how to singing together help people process those emotions?

NOBU: I think that with loss and grief, much like we're feeling right now, or if it's, you know, back in the day when we would throw tributes to musicians who passed away. There's nowhere to place it. There's nowhere to gather because you know these people who've impacted your lives. But just being able to look at somebody else and recognise them as a fan of the same music that you love and just seeing that and sharing your love for somebody who's gone in a public space, that is sometimes enough. It's like a hand on your shoulder. It's like giving you credence. It's giving you a place where you can express your emotions and not be ashamed of it. And I feel like being seen in those moments is really important. And right now, we all benefit from from that.

MG: So, David, you talked about that idea of in times past, perhaps people gathering around the wireless for a collective moment. We want to do this now through the miracle of radio, which ideally can stitch people together coast to coast to coast, are going to play a song and people are going to sing along at home. What is the song that you're gonna play?

DAVEED: We'll be singing a song by a new band. I think they're British. They're called the Beatles.

MG: I've heard of them.

DAVEED: They're gonna be huge. When they can get back on stage again, they're gonna blow people away. I think they're all still alive. The song is called With A Little Help from My Friends. And we just picked it because it's a simple song. And it's just the message is simple and it's sort of the perfect song for this day and age, the age we're in right now.

MG: But this is a song you also sang, people who've seen the video perhaps on the U.S.-mexico border.

DAVEED: That's right. Yeah. Reed We chose it for the exact same reason. It's just it's it's the message is so simple. It's about relying on each other. And and really that's what we need right now is to rely on each other and feel that we're still connected.

NOBU: And for that performance, I was in Tijuana and David was on the other side of the border in in the U.S. And so we were physically distance at the time and we were trying to create, you know, close the gap.

DAVEED: Nobu was at a taco stand on the beach at that Taco Bell. I was eating a gordita Dorito and something authentic.

MG: If people have seen Choire alive and been part of this. Daveed will be on the guitar and then Nobu will be there, kind of conducting and orchestrating things wildly. If people want to sing along at home, what should they do, Daveed? Just stand up or lie down and just- But also go to your Twitter and get all the lyrics. The lyrics are right there, if you don't know them.

MG: @TheCurrentCBC. You can find the lyrics right now.

DAVEED: And we're gonna try something here because I liked your idea that people take videos of themselves singing. Yesh. And then send them to you or tag you with it. And then who knows, maybe we could put together a whole video. And for that very reason what we're gonna do is we're gonna teach, you know, what we do in our lectures shows, we teach harmonies and we pull them together. So for the chorus,.

NOBU: It's a simple 17 part harmony.

DAVEED: . So we're gonna, we're just gonna do a little teaching right now for one part of the song. There's two different parts and then we're going to sing the whole song together and we'll see whether we can't hear each other. So that's something that's hard about this. You know, if there's two people at home together listening to this and you want to sing, we've, you know, the lyric sheet that separated into two different parts.

NOBU: And if you enjoy this, we're doing one on Saturday at 8 p.m.

DAVEED: Right. Saturday night. And the theme and all the songs from Quentin Tarantino's movies.

MG: So for people who are listening, record yourselves on the cameraphone and then we'll get you to e-mail it to us through the Web site. But you guys are ready to go?

DAVEED: We're ready now.

MG: Choir. Choir. Choir Canada. Sing along.

DAVEED: Okay, so let's just do the harmony here.

NOBU: Okay. So we get to the chorus. The lead part.

[Daveed and Nabu singing The Beatles' With a Little Help of my Friends].

DAVEED: Now this is about this is the harmony. That's easy. Those are your two parts. The rest of it is in harmony- the rest of us in unison. But if you're with somebody else, you can swap the lyrics the way that to beat. Now I'm going to swap the lyrics.

MG: Right. Let her go.

DAVEED: All right. Here we go. Let's do this.

[Singing]

MG: That was amazing, and what I hope is that in homes and wherever people are kind of stuck together across the country, people were singing to each other, singing to themselves, singing into the phone along with you. That was great. Thank you, gentlemen.

NOBU: Thanks, Matt.

DAVEED: Thanks for everything that you're doing right now.

MG: Take you in the hole to take care yourselves and hopefully we'll see you out with a lot of other people. Remember when we gathered with other people? Hopefully that will happen sooner rather than later. Thanks again. Thanks. David Goldman. Nobu Adilman from Choir. Choir. Choir. And if you were singing along and you recorded yourself, send us the video you can posted up on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC. You can email it to us thecurrent@cbc.ca through the web site as well, cbc.ca/thecurrent Click on the contact link and through the miracle of some sort of technology will try and stitch it altogether. Maybe there'll be some sort of video that we can put together. Or we'll to share you singing with the rest of the nation. That was fun. Coming up on The Current: the U.S. election is just over six months away. How is the pandemic shaping at that race? We'll find out. I'm Matt Galloway. This is The Current. Stay with us.

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US political panel. Paul Feing

Guests: Linda Feldmann, Paul Feig

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current. Still to come, Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids and the Heat has been hosting these virtual cocktail parties and we're all invited. We'll begin, though, at the White House where a certain someone wants to be invited back as president.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: All I'm saying is this how do you close down the greatest economy in the history of the world when on January 17th you have no cases and no deaths, when on January 21st you have one case and no death. One case. Think of that. Now we're supposed to close down the country. But here's what happened. When on January 30, first I instituted the ban. Joe Biden went crazy. He said, you don't need the ban. He didn't go crazy like this. He didn't even know what the hell the ban was.

MG: So the question people are asking about U.S. President Donald Trump's daily coronavirus press briefings is, are these appearances vital service announcements or platforms for his re-election campaign? Millions are tuning in to watch. The election is just over six months away. Linda Feldmann, Washington bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor, joins us, along with Dan Balz, chief correspondent for The Washington Post. Good morning to you both.

GUESTS: Good morning.

Dan, how surreal is it to cover a presidential election under these circumstances?

DAN BALZ: Well, it's completely surreal, just for all the obvious reasons. You know, everybody's covering everything mostly from their houses, since all of us are in shelter, in place orders, depending on what state we're in. So we've you know, we've never experienced anything like the pandemic and therefore, we've never experienced anything like a presidential campaign in the middle of a pandemic. And so everybody's having to adjust. Frankly, the campaign itself is a little bit in limbo. Things are going on. Activities are taking place. Both the Trump and Biden campaigns are are preparing and beginning to do serious work for the general election. The Trump campaign has been doing that for more than a year and the Biden campaign is now ramping up. But it's you know, it's mostly invisible right now, except for the occasional virtual town hall meetings and the president's daily briefings.

MG: Linda, let's talk about these briefings. You were at the briefing yesterday in the Rose Garden. We've heard we heard a little clip there of what it sounds like people might have dipped in and out. What is the atmosphere like at these briefings?

LINDA FELDMANN: The atmosphere is one of, I would say, anticipation. We know by this time he's been doing these for a few weeks now and by now we know what's to come. It's a combination of news, important information, attacks on the press and just kind of fluff. And so it's watching the cable networks try to figure out how to cover these, it's been interesting because they they know that it's in part for Donald Trump. It's his one shot of the day to be before the American people. It can't go do mega rallies anymore. And so this is when we're not sitting there cheering for him, obviously, but it does feed his need for attention. So there's that's for some of the cable networks. That's the downside. But he is the president and he does make news. He says newsworthy things. Yesterday, he said that he's going to overrule Congress and its ability to declare a recess, which is highly questionable, if not unconstitutional, likely to end up in court if he really does it. That's an important thing that he announced. It has to be covered. So, you know, do you go to the briefing? Do you watch it from home? Do you jump in mid, mid press briefing and fact check, which is what CNN has been doing. It's it's a continuing debate.

MG: He also has been saying that he has total power over decisions to reopen the economy, comments that was brushback immediately by many people in the media, many other governors as well. Why would he say that? Who is he playing to in saying something like that, Linda?

LINDA FELDMANN: He's playing to his base, which I think appreciates his sense of authority. You know, I have to note that he walked that comment back the very next day. He acknowledged that the governors are the ones who call the shots. And in fact, he had just before he had declared total authority, he had been adamant that it's up to the governors to shut down the states and was was touting our federalist system in which the president doesn't have total authority over the states.

MG: And we're now hearing that the governor of North Dakota has just issued guidelines to reopen the state on the 1st of May, apparently.

LINDA FELDMANN: Right. So, you know, we're seeing all kinds of scenarios playing out at the state level. You've got in Michigan, which is a critical battleground state in November. You had Trump's supporters upset about the shutdown, upset about businesses being closed. Kind of crashing the state capitol, or at least the lawn of the state capitol and holding a big protest against the governor, Gretchen Witmer, who it happens to be, is also seen as a potential running mate for Joe Biden. So there's a lot mixed into everything that's going on. The politics is a constant. The looming presidential election is a constant and then mixed into that, a profound public health crisis and profound economic crisis.

MG: Dan Balz, the president was in, before this all broke, was selling his ability to lead the country for another four years on the strength of the economy. That economy has cratered. What is his message going to be now?

DAN BALZ: Well, I think his message will be that he's done everything he could or should have done. We've seen him rewrite the history of his own statements about the pandemic and that essentially he will be looking for others to blame for what has happened. Now, obviously, this is you know, this is an external shock to the system. But prior to this, as you suggested, he had the kind of economy that any incumbent president would dream of having running for re-election. And in most cases. But most presidents would be re-elected under those circumstances. We know that attitudes about Donald Trump are somewhat separate and distinct from people's perceptions of the economy. So he doesn't get necessarily the full benefit, but he has lost the most important asset that he had in the campaign. And I think that one of the things that we have been seeing at the daily briefings is an effort to protect himself, to defend himself against the criticism and to find others who he can say if they had done something, then things would have been better than they are. But, you know, every week we get these terrible reports on unemployment claims, the report on retail sales yesterday. I mean, everything we are looking at is a historic decline. The president keeps saying that when the economy reopens, things will bounce back immediately. But I think that what we're learning right now is that many businesses, even if they would like to reopen, are hesitant about it because they want to make sure their own workers are protected. And they're not confident at this point that all the resources are in place to be able to do that. So the economic downturn is going to last well through this election.

MG: On the other side of this, you have the Democrats. Earlier this week, former President Barack Obama endorsed his former vice president, Joe Biden. Have a listen.

SOUNDCLIP

BARACK OBAMA: The kind of leadership that's guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace, that kind of leadership doesn't just belong in our state capitals. It belongs in the White House. And that's why I'm so proud to endorse Joe Biden for president of the United States.

MG: Dan Balz, what is the pitch for Joe Biden aside from the fact that he's not Donald Trump?

DAN BALZ: Well, I mean, in many ways, that is the most important catch. Joe Biden, so much of this election is going to be surrounded by the question of what do people think of President Trump. That's often the case in in a real election campaign. That's a referendum on the incumbent president. But I think that's even more the case now. We've seen how much attitudes are polarized and locked in, frankly. There are there are not that big a percentage of the voters who already don't have a pretty firm opinion of what they think about Donald Trump and therefore how they're going to vote. I think that the other I mean, the other things that the former vice president has in making his case to be the successor to Donald Trump. One is experience. And he is trying to use the president's handling of the coronavirus situation to draw a distinction with himself and to suggest that a more experienced and and and more capable president would have been able to deal with this more effectively. I think another thing that he has made a case on all along is that he would in it, in essence, settle the country down, calm things down after four years or two or three and a half years of real turmoil. And and the last thing that I would say is that he has always presented himself as this patron of the middle class who would protect the middle class and therefore try to go after some of the white working class voters that the president was able to peel away from the Obama coalition.

LINDA FELDMANN: Linda Feldman, you have the president who has a daily press briefing. So he has access to the television networks and is seen by millions of people who might be watching this. Where has Joe Biden been? There has been accusations that he's in some ways been invisible during the course of the pandemic. Could that hurt him?

LINDA FELDMANN: That's a really good question. So you're right, Joe Biden has been largely invisible. He is literally in his home in Delaware and does regular video appearances from his basement, which is not the best way to run a campaign. But then again, everything about this campaign is is unprecedented. So it's been suggested that in a way, the fact that Joe Biden doesn't have a position of power, he's not president, he's not a governor, he's not a member of the Senate, could actually help him because this is a referendum on Donald Trump. And the Joe Biden that we remember having served in the Senate for over 30 years and having been vice president for eight years is, I think, a bit of a more robust Joe Biden than we have today. He, in his campaign has misspoken, has sometimes not seemed quite as sharp as he used to be. So it may be, ironically, that being trapped in his basement helps him a little bit. The downside is that the Democrats are way behind on fundraising, as is Joe Biden. Donald Trump has been fundraising for re-election since the day he was elected four years ago. The Democrats, the Democratic Party and Biden are about they've got about half the money that the Republicans have. So they really need to to step that up, because he will need to be on television as we get closer to election day. They'll need to buy TV ads and TV spots. And you can't do that without money.

MG: How is this election when it happened, then? We have seen the scenes in Wisconsin last week where people were lining up at these polls in the midst of a pandemic, not much physical distancing going on there. There are questions about what is actually going to happen in November. How is the election going to unfold?

DAN BALZ: I don't think we know yet, Matt. I think that there's a big debate that's already erupted about how do you make sure that people are protected? How do you make sure that everybody who wants to vote can vote and feel protected?

MG: And one of those ways is through mail in ballots, which the president has said would lead to widespread fraud or at the very least, more Democrats registering and perhaps would put the Republican Party at a disadvantage.

DAN BALZ: Well, I mean, he has said that and there's no evidence that mail in ballots lead to significant amount of fraud. There are a number of states that have mail only elections. Colorado's one. Oregon's other these states have not been plagued by fraud since they moved to that system. So that at this point as a red herring. It also should be noted that the president voted absentee in the Florida primary this year. So he's taken advantage of the mail in ballot. I think that the issue is can these states that don't have easy access, whether full mail in which case everybody has sent a ballot or no-fault absentee in which you apply for a ballot, and all you have to do is say, I want to vote absentee. You don't have to give a particular reason. Making that more uniform, there will be a lot of resistance, particularly in some of the red states on that. But one thing is and most of the states that are likely to be the battleground states, the you know, the Michigan and Wisconsin and places like that, they have provisions for mail in or easy absentee. And in fact, that my colleagues who've looked at this more closely than I say that the Trump campaign is already working that system, trying to educate their voters to be able to take advantage of that if they want to show you're going to have kind of a you know, a bifurcated situation.

MG: Linda, just in the last minute or so that we have, the United States, people often say is is more polarized now than it has been in recent memory. You have in the midst of that, a pandemic that is is unlike anything that most of us can can remember. What is this going to do? Do you think it'll bring the country together? Do you think it will further splits the country in an election year?

LINDA FELDMANN: The polarization is so deep that this moment of crisis really hasn't brought the country together, at least politically. I mean, in some in some very basic human ways, it has. There are lots of lots of very heartening stories about people helping each other and not worrying are they Republican or a Democrat? But just the fundamental fact about the American electorate is that it is deeply polarized. And you can witness that in the polling on Donald Trump. I mean, he got a little bit of a bump after the virus became a big story and he started to take it seriously and started to fight it. So he got a little bit that has never, still never crossed 50 percent in job approval. His handling of the of the coronavirus did bump above 50 for a little while, but it's back down to, he's now just back to where he normally is, which is about 44, 45 percent job approval. So we're just taking this divided electorate right into November. You know, it was a 50/50 race before the the pandemic. And now, I mean, anybody who tells you what's going to happen is kidding themselves. We are in very much uncharted territory here to be some six months.

MG: We will talk again, I'm sure, in the meantime. Thank you both this morning. And be well.

LINDA FELDMANN: Sure. Thank you.

MG: To Linda Feldman, Washington bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor. Dan Balz is the chief correspondent for The Washington Post. This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name's Matt Galloway. Tom Power in his- Where are you? In the living room.

TP: I'm in my living room right now, looking at a television set. My cat, a water bottle. Don't worry, Matt. I'm dressed in three piece suit tuxedo.

MG: I find that hard to believe.

TP: Isn't that what you wear when you're on the radio?

MG: Your announcer back in the day, your announcer wore a tuxedo because the belief was that if you looked good, you sounded good.

TP: Oh, yeah, that is- if that had been true. I think I would have been still home doing bussing of tables in St. John's, Newfoundland.

MG: You are talking about dressing up for a reason, not just because we are elegant and well dressed people.

TP: Well, I spoke to Paul Feig. Paul Feig is the guy who's done, you know, films like The Heat and Spy and Bridesmaids, part of Freaks and Geeks. Part of the U.S. version of The Office. And he loves to dress up, too. He owns a lot of suits. So every day for the past three weeks, Paul Feig has been dressing up and hosting a virtual cocktail party.

MG: And anyone can go?

TP: I mean, just about anyone. No, I think anyone can go to these. They happen on Instagram. The dress code is black-tie. And as he told me, it's all for a good cause. Check it out. Here's my conversation with Paul Paul Feig.

SOUNDCLIP

TP: How are you?

PAUL FEIG: I'm good. How are you, my friend?

TP: You know, I'm holding up here in Canada. I'm excited about this cocktail party ideas like can anyone go? Do I have to try and get an invite?

PAUL FEIG: No, no. All are welcome. Literally all are welcome. And you can wear whatever you want. I a lot of bands wear black tie or always a suit. But you can you can come dressed however you are.

TP: I just assume that's what you wore to bed every single night with like an old timers sleeper.

PAUL FEIG: Pretty much, yes. I look like Ebenezer Scrooge when I go into bed.

TP: Tell me a little bit about that. Virtual cocktail parties. Where did you get the idea?

PAUL FEIG: Yes, it was, you know, about three, almost four weeks ago now. I was in North Carolina shooting a TV pilot for that. We're producing that. I'm also directing and then obviously realised we had to pull the plug and get our body to safety. So when I got back to L.A., I remember going like, well, I'm going to be in the house for a long, long time. Like anybody else. I'm not a medical professional, so I don't have a lot I can offer in ways of getting people through the pandemic in that way. But I was like, well, I'm a comedy guy, so maybe I can just trying to be funny and show people how to make cocktails and then try to raise some money for people at the same time. And so that's what we've been doing. And I just I also made the decision that I wanted to do it every single day at the same time, because I like especially in times of, when you're struggling or you're going through a hard time to have something that you just know is always there, whether you even watch it every day or not, just the idea that we're here seven days a week, every day at five o'clock L.A. time to try to cheer you up.

TP: It is funny, hey, I think that more than ever I've had cocktails and drinks with friends over Zoom, over the Internet, far more than I ever did virtually before this. Far more than I probably did a real life before this.

PAUL FEIG: Yes. I mean, you know, it is funny. I've had kind of a love-hate relationship with the Internet for many years. But can you imagine going through this without the Internet, without being able to connect with people that way? It just has changed everything and made it actually, you know, it's still terrible, but it is at least bearable.

TP: Tell me more about the charities that you've been supporting during this time.

PAUL FEIG: Yes. You know, I'm just trying to hit everything really for a from ones that support the medical community like a direct relief stop or to organizations like Feed the Children and No Kid Hungry. But they're also there's a lot of organizations we've been promoting that help out restaurant workers and help out hospitality workers, because my favourite thing in my life, my adult life, has been going to restaurants and going to bars and just having a nice evening and all those people that make your evenings so nice, they're now suffering greatly because they're out of work. And so, you know, just trying to get a lot of business for them and also for local businesses, too. Whatever your favourite places are or were, contact them and find out, you know, if they need money, you know, if you're able to donate. That's great. If you're able to buy gift card. That's great, because almost like buying bonds where you're putting money into. Into the restaurant, into the system. And then you can redeem it. Down the line for food. But for now, you can. That money can help help them pay the employees and keep the place alive.

TP: I mean, what about in your industry, though? I mean, you're you're pretty busy guy. You've got Zoe's extraordinary playlist on TV right now. And when we looked up online, we saw that you have somewhere around like 20 projects in development right now. Can you just give me a snapshot of what Hollywood looks like right now in terms of development, in terms of work?

PAUL FEIG: Well, Hollywood is in a holding pattern like everybody else. Really? You know, all production is definitely shut down everywhere. So there is some projects that we're halfway finished shooting that we're just starting to shoot. They've all shut down. The ones that had finished or in post-production are able to kind of remotely edit, you know, that pilot that I was I was shooting that out with that I had to pull the plug on when this all started. We had shot a couple of days. And so my editor is set up with an editing suite in his house. And so we were editing footage remotely by, you know, he read edit it and send it to me and I'd send them notes back and do it that way. So anything that's happening was happening remotely that way. There's still development going on where people are writing. But even though we're writing, we kind of don't know, like when we're gonna go back and be able to go back into production and get new projects going or finish the ones that we had going. So it's a very uncertain time, just like every other business. We're all on hold.

TP: It's interesting, though, because during this time, I just kind of hit me while you were talking. This is not because I was going to talk to you or anything like that, but I think I just found myself watching a lot of things that you've been involved in. Like I've been watching the office, I've been watching Arrested Development, I've been watching Freaks and Geeks and watching Ghostbusters. I've been watching Bridesmaids. There is something about the very kind of brand of television, an entertainer that you've made that is sort of kind of perfect for a moment like this. And I'm not just blowing sunshine here. Like there is something that's sort of nurturing about it.

PAUL FEIG: Well, I appreciate that. I have to say that it's funny because I'm the comedy guy in art. I'm my life is dedicated to trying to entertain an audience and make them laugh and hopefully make them feel up to it, feel emotions. But, you know, in normal times, we're always sort of the the the ones that are kind of not not looked down upon, but we're not taken seriously. You know, when you go to the Academy Awards are all the award shows. It's never our stuff that really gets the light shined on it. So it's nice now and people go like, oh, now we just now now people understand why we do what we do. We just want to be that comfort food that goes like, hey, we're just trying things like lighten your load for a little bit. So. So it's really nice that is the time when people, I mean, is just nice that our stuff is able to hopefully make people feel a little bit lighter during this really tough time.

TP: Paul, thanks a lot for joining us. I can't wait to check out one of your cocktail parties. I'll try to get dressed up. I'll try to find a collared shirt.

PAUL FEIG: Perfect. Thanks so much, Tom. It's great talking you again.

MG: Tom Powers, conversation with the director, Paul Feig. If you would like to attend one of Paul's virtual cocktail parties, Black Tie Only you can look him up on the Instagram at Paul Feig f e i g. It's time to say goodbye to our listeners in Newfoundland and Labrador for everyone else. This extended edition of The Current continues. Wanted to mentioned, though, some of the programming that usually airs in this timeslot on CBC Radio. For instance, today, on Thursday, that's what day it is. We would normally be hearing from our friend Terry O'Reilly and under the influence. There are brand new episodes that are still available on the CBC listen app. Go to the on demand tab, search for the show title or you can download under the influence as a podcast as well. Here on this extended edition of The Current, we're back in 90 seconds. And you'll hear about a book that brings to life the phrase the truth is stranger than fiction. A Canadian authors latest book is about a coronavirus that infects the world. More on that to come. I'm Matt Galloway. This is the current on CBC Radio One. Stay with us.

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Full Transcript for April 16, 2020

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