i guess what's the practical here we
know you've talked around this but
what's the best thing that we can do to
deal with uh fake science and
information
um that may not have been legitimately
sourced what can we do
be in pained and i i mean you
you do what you can like you can't
always
pick your battles try to understand
where people are coming from because a
lot of it isn't
some of it is not understanding the
science to it some of it is
the ridiculous polarized nature of
things right now like i keep seeing
comments on things about kofi being like
oh i saw a bunch of people out without
masks mostly republicans and i'm like
that
why why how do you know they're mostly
republicans this is
did you did you stop them and say excuse
me can i uh
can i get your uh stances on all the
following subjects here take this survey
please
yeah it's not like they were carrying
around a bag of red hats
uh yeah it's it's
as scientists i guess we do our best to
communicate that like i mean for us
we're
we're not coping researchers but uh you
do your best to
communicate what you are what you've
done correctly
and try to correct the record when it's
wrong yeah i mean i think you're on to
the right idea i think empathy really is
the key there i mean
you know i think part of it as
scientists you know we kind of work
under the basis of
there being truths that there's things
that are you know
experimentally replicated across many
studies and there are things that aren't
but when you're dealing with somebody
who you know needs to know what's the
best thing i could do to be safe
or carrying my life their truth isn't
necessarily
it needs to be more utilitarian and for
that you know an empathetic of
i understand where you're coming from
but i think that's really the way to
deal with it is
not and that nobody likes being told
they're wrong yeah if anyone
comes to an argument with a wall you're
not going to get anywhere
i absolutely agree i was actually just
looking into because this
uh paper that we have pulled up here you
know
pseudoscience and coven 19 we've had
enough already
essentially this addresses some of the
points that we've been
starting to go after how you know much
of the media is putting a political
slant
on which side of the coin
kovid's responsibility or i guess its
extended
uh impact on our society which side
it falls on the political spectrum and
you know i think we're all in agreement
that it doesn't
necessarily fall on one side of the
political spectrum that it's a
amalgamation of everybody or people from
all sides making poor decisions or poor
choices and it's not necessarily poor
choices we have to remember
people have been stuck inside for uh
aside from covid we just finished winter
so that's the better part of six months
people like going outside when the
weather gets nice out
how would how would you guys go about
preventing
miscommunication of this whole coveted
pandemic as being filtered through a
political lens and then we'll go through
some of what this study says
it comes down to a few fundamental key
facts around
illness and um i mean one of the key
facts i think where a lot of people
disagree when it comes if you want to
get into a political side of kobe 19 i
really think like
the biggest question is this idea of
shutting down everything and putting all
these restrictions in place to protect
whereas
you know certain countries have gone for
the idea just keep everything open
and let curved immunity kick in which
you know
that decision seems to have become
heavily political um
because it comes in how much i guess
you're willing to spend on time and
money and welfare before you open things
back up again and i think it's
i'm sure it's frustrating and it's a
tough thing i'm sure it's more like in
you know
philosophy this would be what's called a
wicked problem which you know there are
better solutions to navigate through but
there's no
perfect solution there's no one answer
to this problem there's just answers
that are a little better
and they can fly in all sorts of
different directions under different
circumstances but
it's definitely a wicked problem we're
sort of living
a zombie movie but all zombie movies
have the characters that you empathize
with
and relate to as the ones who are not
infected
and are the heroes
whereas we need to treat it as if we are
all the infected and we need to do
what's best for
everyone as a whole not relevant to this
conversation
but in the context of zombie films could
we all just agree that the worst
character is the one
maybe it may be appropriate in this
context is the one who gets bitten
but feels they're special they're not
gonna get sick
like i got bit five hours ago
and you i went to the locked room with
you guys
yeah i also think so just speaking
exactly on that point
we now know that i guess some studies
have uh suggested that 45 percent
so we can say i guess half of all people
who are infected with covid don't end up
showing symptoms or asymptomatic
carriers of
of covet at least here in canada i think
this has been a
constant throughout the whole world the
criteria that have been
uh needed in order to get tested for
covid right in order to even get the
test
has been you need at least two or three
symptoms right and i guess at least here
in canada
here in the gta or the london area um
throughout ontario they've reduced that
criteria down to you only need now
one criteria so if you have the fever a
cough a runny nose but i actually went
and got tested just a few days ago
because i was having these seasonal
allergies which is what i think they are
now maybe it's another bug
but i'm not i'm not positive for covert
i actually got the negative result back
so i'm very happy about that now next
step is the antibody test now
long story short though if we know that
half the people are
are asymptomatic they're getting
other people sick with covid because
they're out they're not
feeling any symptoms they don't feel bad
at all they don't even feel the effects
of the virus so
a lot of them especially here in canada
i mean all throughout north america i
would imagine the developed world
they're not wearing masks when they're
outside so they're putting others at
risk through this even though
half of those people again are just
asymptomatic carriers
why is it then that let me preface with
i think
anybody who has these symptoms should be
presumed
positive you know unless i guess you
have gone and got an antibody test or a
previously very recent test
but you should really only be testing
the asymptomatic people
because people who have symptoms
obviously know that they could have the
virus even if they haven't been tested
asymptomatic people you should only
that's my view that's my view
uh i don't know how you would
make that work with the number of people
who don't think that they
don't think that this is a problem i i
think you have like
different schools of thought like the
the general idea is that like south
korea handled it really well because
they had widespread testing of everyone
and they were able to
nip it in the bud early on because they
were testing so many people so
anyone who is positive they could like
actually quarantine not
the fact that everyone's saying
quarantine when we're not really
quarantined
um but when you have it's
it's difficult i don't think there's any
once i don't think there's any
it's exactly what dan was saying is a
wicked problem there's no
correct solution for everyone in every
place
and even within places there are
issues they're within and between
subjects issues
yeah i don't know i don't know the
solution
but we're you know really going with the
best that we can
right now we don't really know the best
way to deal with this
yeah it's sort of it's almost like a
microcosm of the scientific process
like you go on the best data that you
have at the time
to guide your decisions at that point
and they might change over time when you
disprove
what you thought true
you
