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Cheryl: Welcome, listeners, to A Pandemic Podcast. We are recording from the province of New Brunswick, but our focus is going to be on a number of different provinces, and across the country, and various countries. We will be also talking about what we see in our own backyards, as well. My name is Cheryl. You can find me on Twitter, @tincanfire. I am a teacher. I’m also an artist and a parent, and I also live with medical vulnerabilities. I’ve been following the pandemic closely since we first started hearing about it in 2019, and [laughs] as I’ve seen things become heightened in government responses, in 2020 and then 2021. And now, in 2022, we have completely no government responses; I was thinking that it would be the perfect time for a podcast to discuss what we’re seeing and where we go from here. We’re going to be having different folks that we’re going to be talking with. Some of these folks we’ll see often, some of them will be recurring guests. I know that all the listeners are going to be in for a real treat. So, without further ado, Chris, let’s hear some stuff about yourself.
Chris: [laughs] Sure. I’m Chris. You can get me @HallwayOrchard on Twitter. I am an engineer, ne’er- do-well, a grumpy person, and I’ve been following the pandemic very closely since, really, before it landed on Canadian shores. Witnessing this thing is very unique in my lifetime, and when it did get here, the response was something that was also very unique. I think, for a lot of us, it bolstered the idea that, in tragic or chaotic times, we would see a communal response, something that valued the well- being of the population over everything else. I think that is what we saw. I think the pandemic hit every place on the planet so fast and so hard that we were shocked into this position of social welfare, which went counter to what cynics — like myself — often would accuse the state of having in their disregard for public welfare. But, over the course of the pandemic, throughout our country, other countries, we saw that shift from an interest in protecting people to an interest in protecting the status quo. That has been something that has been not unexpected but also very disappointing, in a soul-crushing way, to see that we really don’t have the stamina, as a culture and as a country, to continue that kind of interest in the well-being of the people who live here. Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t large groups of people who are concerned for that stuff, of course. The group that we interact with most frequently, PoPNB, is a group of people who, I think, feel similarly and want to uphold and maintain that continued concern, continued protection, continued interest in making sure that well-being isn’t something that’s just sort of earmarked for those who can pay for it, but for everybody.
Cheryl: Perfect. I’m nodding in agreement. For listeners, PoPNB is Protect Our Province New Brunswick, and there’s a number of different PoP groups throughout the country. There’s a PoP Alberta, PoP Nova Scotia, PoP British Columbia, and a variety of different ones as well. For today, we also have Kay joining us.
Kay: Hi, yes! Perfect! Okay. I was also nodding in agreement while listening to Chris. You are so reliable for bringing things back to the big picture, and I find that really helpful. I’m Kay, and I run the PoPNB Twitter account, which you can find on Twitter at @PoPNB_kindness. Our first thing that we ever did as a group was a little demonstration in front of a couple of the hospitals in New Brunswick on the same weekend that there was a pro-COVID demonstration in Fredericton, basically the Fredericton attempt at a convoy thing. So, we organized a few people that really, really strongly felt like they wanted to show that not everybody’s about that, and they wanted healthcare workers to know that they were appreciated. A little group of us really quickly organized something in Saint John and in Miramichi where we held up some signs and gave encouragement to the people that were working in the hospitals that weekend, which was really appreciated. We had some messages from people saying they get a lot of verbal abuse and threatening, aggressive interaction, then just to see that people out in the public still appreciated them was so meaningful. That was quite significant, to hear that, because it was truly the least we could do. We just stood outside with some signs for the most part. It was such a small gesture, and yet, to see that the people who were risking their health and putting up with some really challenging working conditions, that was a significant gesture to them. It was nice to hear that, but it was also really upsetting, because it’s like, okay, well, we should, as a society, be doing so much more for all of you people that are doing this work. And then, not so long after that, New Brunswick removed all its protections, which was really heart-breaking because, basically, they were trying to see how many people they could put in the hospital, right? They were no longer trying to reduce the number of people who needed medical care. They were trying to see: how bad would it get? How close to normal can we get while also pushing everyone in healthcare to the very edge? It was like the healthcare workers were subsidizing the rest of the industries. Okay, people could do dining in and have no restrictions on events and in-person stuff and parties and all that, but it’s like, okay, at the same time, we are completely overwhelming the hospital system. So, it’s been a really rocky year in New Brunswick, and we’ve kind of just come together as a group through all of the different things that have happened. We’ve got people that work in all kinds of different industries — people who work in retail, people who work in food service, people who work in healthcare, people who work in education — and it’s been really incredible to share the knowledge resources that we have and share experiences. I think that we have all created some really valuable stuff in terms of the resources that we’ve created to help people, guiding them to good sources of information, and also the relationships and the networks that we’ve established and some of the supports and the mutual aid that’s been going on. It sounds kind of sappy, but it’s been a beautiful experience for me. I’ve met some really caring and amazing people. But it’s also been completely shocking, how easy it looks like it’s been for our institutions to create dangerous environments for everybody and not seem to express any regret or remorse for it. It’s been really shocking. It’s been — wow. So, I was thinking today when I was driving, and I was thinking about — this will end up coming up in the future for us — our group right now is reviewing a Right to Information request where we’re seeing that many, many, many people in government have had access to, and have known, a lot of factual, high-quality information about how prevalent Long COVID is and the various ways it presents, the effects that it has on individuals, the effects that that has on our whole province and on our nation, and yet our government in New Brunswick has communicated none of that onwards to the public. Reviewing that information, like we have been over the last 24 hours, I’m like: why are they doing this? They’re going to completely reduce everybody’s trust in government, and why would a government want to do that while, at the same time, concentrating power the way that we’ve seen the Higgs government do in New Brunswick with dismissing the hospital boards and getting rid of the district education councils? The government is simultaneously gathering more power and yet completely eliminating our trust in the government. The only thing that I could come up with that made sense to me while I was thinking about this and doing an errand was: they don’t plan to need our trust in the future. They don’t care. They mustn’t be planning to provide any services or any things that would require the public’s trust the way that Public Health did prior to this, right? Public Health needed us to trust them. That’s how they go so many people wearing masks. That’s how they go so many people vaccinated so quickly the first go around, right, with the primary series. They needed our trust, and if they’re this willing to both concentrate the power and obliterate the public’s trust, they mustn’t care for it at all. There’s gotta be other motivations behind seeking power, because it certainly doesn’t seem to be to help the public. It’s just been extremely heavy to realize that and to try to come to terms with, okay, now how do we go about mobilizing a very jaded and disengaged population? How do we go about motivating them? It’s been revealed that the systems we think we’re participating in are not the systems that we are actually participating in. That is not a good introduction to myself at all — All: [laugh]
Chris: I think it’s probably suitable that we’re saying, “Hi, my name is, and this is how dour I am.” That’s the tone I think we’ve struck for this, and it’s not —
Cheryl: It’s appropriate, isn’t it?
Kay: Exactly, yes. I’m also a parent, and like the both of you, I also had had an interest in this stuff before it really became what it is currently in New Brunswick. I’ve been paying pretty close attention — I think there were fewer than 700 reported cases in the world when I was really like, “Okay, this is something that I need to pay attention to.” The physician that had blown the whistle in China, he was still alive. I remember him passing away while I was starting to pay attention to all of this.
Cheryl: Same, same.
Kay: Yeah. I think it’s helpful that we’ve all had a really longitudinal interest in this pandemic, and I think we probably have had an interest in other phenomenons and mass movements and that kind of thing in the past, too. Yeah. And I’m a lifelong New Brunswicker, and that’s part of what I think makes all of this really difficult to contend with, feeling like, “Wow: my family is here, my upbringing is here.” Every province is, of course, doing some awful things, but New Brunswick just seems to take it that extra, extra, extra step, and how do I feel as somebody that’s choosing to reside in this province? It brings up a lot of questions and a lot of angst and regret and sadness, too, I think. But that’s enough out of me on that.
Cheryl: No, but I think that’s where there’s so many people feeling the same way. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to bring us all together and create this podcast, because I know that there’s so many people who will be listening to these words and nodding in agreement just like I was when I was listening. There’s so many people who are seeing these same things, be it if they’re living in New Brunswick, or Ontario, or Alberta, or in different countries or different continents. We are seeing this across Western nations, and we are seeing the failing of our public institutions to protect not only our most vulnerable citizens but all citizens. As Kay pointed out, we’re also digging through information, and right now, we’re learning, as PoP New Brunswick that our Public Health institution knew about the effects of Long COVID and seriousness of ongoing symptoms since 2020, and they have not been expressing this to the public. There’s layers and layers of problems, and I think the best thing to do is to talk about it, to shine a light on it, to normalize these conversations. I remember seeing — there was a post talking about the quote-unquote “Spanish Flu” in the 1920s, and how there was so little media that talked about it then. They coined the term “The Great Forgetting.” I think it’s so important that we don’t forget this and we keep talking about it despite what so many organizations and institutions and businesses are actively encouraging us to do.
Chris: I’m a big believer, too, in — and both of you touched on — that concept of putting this stuff forward, the things that are rattling around in our heads every hour of every day, the things that we discuss in our little group chats. To put those things out in a broader way, I think, is important for people. We’ve all had that singular experience where we were thinking these things and then, one day, we stumble across one to a dozen other people who are echoing those same concerns. It’s so grounding to understand that you’re not alone and that other people are seeing it, other people are justifiably concerned about it. Everywhere out there, someone is experiencing the first time feeling a communal grief at what they’re seeing in and around them. We’ve seen that so many times within our group; it’s a nice idea to know that that might be going out and finding some other people on another platform and letting them know that they’re not alone.
Cheryl: See, there’s the hope, right? It’s such a difficult time to navigate, but there’s also the opportunity there, too. And that’s the positive in all this. So, we’ve talked about who we are, some of the things that we’ve done. Something I wanted to cover in this first episode as well is different topics that we’ll be covering in the future. I know we kind of touched upon Right to Information; maybe, Chris, you could expand a little more on that, because I know you’ve been leading the way in that research area.
Chris: Yeah. We have put in quite a few Right to Information requests. We’ve received a lot of responses back, some very damning responses. They were the subject of multiple stories in media; both CBC and Telegraph-Journal covered one as well. Most explosively, I guess, we uncovered that, despite our Chief Medical Officer of Health Jennifer Russell’s claims, during the lead-up to the removal of mandated protections, the decision to remove those mandated protections was based on published science. When it came time to provide copies of that documentation to the Child and Youth Advocate, Kelly Lamrock, she was not in possession of it and went searching for it in her immediate professional circle to try to find evidence to back up her decision. That was quite a bombshell that we uncovered. Another one was when, similarly, we asked for documentation or studies, the kind of thing that led to the criteria for lifting the mandates, we were provided with one document which was a far-right think tank piece done by economists who had ties to Big Oil, who had ties to the Koch brothers in the United States; basically, science-for-hire type of outfit who claimed that the non-pharmaceutical interventions had no effect on COVID death rates. Of course, that’s been disproven time and time again. It’s bunk science. But the idea that, when given the opportunity, the office of Public Health and the Department of Health provided that one example of what they were basing their decisions on — pretty sickening to see. We’ve had several since. Much of the stuff that we have had, we’ve made it public. A lot of provinces in Canada actually make public the responses to Right to Information requests, and they have them on a central website. New Brunswick doesn’t do that, so we’ve actually published ours on our website. Anybody can go and see that; it’s at protectnb.ca. They can check that out, check out what we’ve had. And, as Kay mentioned a little while ago, we are right in the middle, right now, as we speak, of processing a very large response — over 700 pages — regarding discussions of long-term effects of COVID. The real takeaway that we have immediately is that, as early as three months into the pandemic — so, we’re talking June 2020 — there was a great deal of information being circulated within the Department of Health in New Brunswick talking about the very likely long-term impacts of sustaining even a mild COVID infection. And, as we all know — or many of us know — none of that has ever been communicated to the public of New Brunswick.
Cheryl: Yeah. It’s absolutely — [sighs]. It’s good to see the information that’s coming out, because learning things and finding this out is always good, but at the same time, it’s so heavy. Seeing these truths, it’s a lot to process for me and, I think, for a lot of folks working on this, too. Kay, did you want to add a couple words before we wrap up?
Kay: Yeah, no, that was so well explained, Chris. Some of what we’ve found through the Right to Information request and the significance of those findings, it is really a horrible feeling when you review these emails and you see that multiple, many people — dozens of them — in the government are regularly emailing each other, facts are coming up — actually, some good sources of information are being shared. Some horrific sources of misinformation and disinformation are also being shared, and sometimes, they’re shared and you don’t see a single shred of critical appraisal. Nobody writes a reply-all saying, “Oh, thanks for finding that, but by the way, you might want to consider xyz,” right? Sometimes, there’s nothing critical said. Basically, in one of the Right to Information, there was a chain email which they were talking about. It was almost the COVID equivalent of “go and live in the city before the country makes you soft, and go and live in the country before the city makes you hard,” basically that one, when it was talking about, like, “Wash your hands, but don’t — ” anyway. It was so bad. It was a grandma-style, 1990s chain email, and it was being shared as if it was legitimate pandemic information. You see this stuff shared, and you don’t see anybody follow it up with any critique, right? That’s what’s really challenging. Some of my background is as an information professional, and my professional experience and my training and qualification is all around critical appraisal and finding and sharing legitimate sources of health information, which has, of course, been an issue prior to the pandemic. Vaccination is a huge topic that ends up with the public receiving misinformation, disinformation. But there’s all kinds of other topics, as well, where people are either looking to make money — they stand to profit — or this common-sense approach to things, like, “Oh, that makes sense,” but, truly, the evidence doesn’t back it up. Health information and disinformation and myths, it’s something that we’ve all been dealing with for a really long time, but the pandemic made it incredibly relevant to everybody. It’s particularly shocking when you see people in positions of huge responsibility and power, particularly clinical and medical health government positions, and they don’t seem to be able to discern appropriate sources of information. It’s really shocking to me, because that’s my background, and it was just a two-year program. If you are going to responsible for the health of our whole province, your ability to find accurate information and reduce your biases while looking for the best information, it should be as good as mine. Or, if it’s not, you should be reaching out to the appropriate professionals, because New Brunswick has those professionals. There’s no excuse for cherry-picking data when it’s something as serious as the health of our entire population, the future health of our children. That’s not a time when you can go to your biased sources. It’s not like you’re looking for the right answer for some advice about a dating situation or which car you’re going to buy; you’re looking for the information to base your decisions on that affect the health of every single person. Many people in New Brunswick don’t have that agency. That’s the part that really disturbs me, is when you’re dealing with things like residents in long-term care — first of all, they can’t easily do a risk assessment of their situation, and they can’t leave. Same with kids in school, same with patients in a hospital, same with some of our most vulnerable people who have the least resources and the least agency. That’s the stuff that really bothers me. And, as you guys were mentioning some of the stuff that you have found to be difficult to process and difficult to square away with our understanding of the world that we used to have, one of those moments for me was seeing people in the Department of Health advocate against N95s in January 2022. There was a town hall meeting between the Department of Health and the New Brunswick Medical Society, and people within the New Brunswick Medical Society were bringing up questions of, like, “Okay, what about access to respirators? What about access to N95s?” And the response from the Department of Health was, “Well, this is the advice that’s coming from your infection control colleagues, and are you questioning your colleagues? Hm.” It was really not in good faith considering that there are things called surgical respirators which combine the protection afforded by a surgical mask for sprayborne, liquid stuff and the protection that a respirator provides against airborne, aerosolized hazards. You can get the best of both worlds in a surgical respirator, and that wasn’t even brought up. They just kept trying to, basically, promote the safety of the surgical mask over the safety of a respirator which, in January 2022, that’s counter to the evidence that everybody should have access to. That was really shocking and disappointing to see; that was a really low moment for me. I think it’s really hard when we see people in positions of power and responsibility in our institution that are going against the really good evidence that is not that difficult to find. It just doesn’t make sense, because it ends up putting so many of us in danger and raising the hazard levels all around us. That’s not what we want out of our government. It’s been really awful time [laughs] from that perspective. I think that that’s a good place for me to end, personally, for today, on that topic of dishonest sharing of information and withholding of really clear evidence that would protect so many more people. That’s really upsetting to me, and it’s wrong, and it should be upsetting to everybody, is my opinion.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. It really speaks to — and I think we’ve been talking to each other about this for quite some time, that question of why. Given their access to information, given the content of that information, why do they continue to make those decisions? As I wrack my brain over it, I keep coming back to that concept that there’s a reason for this soft denialism and nudging of people toward abandoning their own best interests. That’s probably something we can go over at another time, but it reinforces my cynicism with respect to the powers that be.
Cheryl: Wow [laughs]. What an amazing conversation. I think, for listeners out there, this is just kind of a sneak preview of what you’ll be hearing from A Pandemic Podcast. We’re going to keep talking about this. We’re not going to be hiding anything that’s happening. As you can tell from the guests today, we all care about this: from our backgrounds, from the people that we are. We’ll also be having different people coming on from a variety of different backgrounds; maybe from psychological backgrounds, from medical backgrounds, from a variety of different places, because as we know, no matter what your profession is, everyone is impacted by this that’s happening. So, thank you, thank you so much for listening, and we look forward to future episodes. Thank you! [outro music plays]