I was meeting with a friend over coffee at a local Starbucks the day the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. It’s been more than 100 days since that happened.
Needless to say, all of our jobs, our families, our homes have been disrupted when the pandemic forced a global economic shutdown.
So, how have we coped so far? How have our values been re-shaped and re-focused?
John Wright is a veteran pollster and a principal at DART Insights and Communications. He’s been taking the Canadian pulse during this pandemic. He joins us from his home office in Toronto.
We spent the first three months of the pandemic saying we need to trust the science and scientists. But we've also seen a good deal of frustration around mixed messages - Lancet withdrawing the hydroxychloriquine research, and the WHO taking its "learning as we go" approach to this novel coronavirus.
Two things have happened. We have a better understanding of how the science community functions. On the other hand, it lays bare the fallibility of science and gives the critics/conspiracy theorists more ammunition.
Transparency is good but it shows errors on full display. So, how or will this change the way the science community conducts itself in the post Covid era? Is this pandemic its Apollo 13 moment?
Dan Riskin is CTV’s Senior Science Correspondent and a professor of Biology at the University of Toronto
Economies are re-opening across Canada and around the world as we emerge from the first wave of the COVID pandemic. Some regions are opening more slowly than others, primarily because of the number of active coronavirus cases still being reported. While this has proven to be a balance between public health and the need to reignite business on main street and Bay Street, the real success is going to depend on individual behaviours.
How will consumers respond? How will you feel about going into a restaurant or a retailer?
Marketing strategist Tony Chapman at Tony Chapman Reactions and host of the podcast CHATTER THAN MATTERS says marketers will have to consumer confidence and consumer comfort if they’re going to succeed in the post COVID era.