Eating Raw Meat, Still Legal. Walk in the park? Banned.

what do you think is more of a public
health hazard a walk in the park or handling raw meat the great French tradition of steak tartare which is still served in restaurants in France to this day consisting of raw beef served with a raw egg on top of it both major sources of illness major sources of contamination - things that no doctor would ever recommend you eat even once being handled by the staff I mean it's a danger to the people work in the kitchen it's a danger to the customer it's a danger to the public at large it's increasing the disease burden on society okay let me just give you let me just give you one more statistic here every year the number of people killed by foodborne illness four hundred and twenty thousand out of the four hundred and twenty thousand people who die from foodborne illness every year 125,000 of them are under the age of five that that could be a priority that could be a priority for democracies in the Western world that could be a priority for France could be a priority for humanitarian aid to third-world countries okay and it's not what's a priority what's going on right now the police in Paris France are doing the only thing they know how to do they're using the same methods that they use to repress and track people who participate in public demonstrations the ultimate fundamental question we have to ask is not is this particular decision right or wrong the question is who decides did any of you any of you people in my audience that any of you participate in a debate did any of you participate in a vote was there a referendum about whether or not people should be deprived of their right to take a walk in the park this episode reflects very badly on the state of democracy in the Western world whether it be France Italy Spain the United States or Canada one of the peculiar asymmetries between the left wing and the right wing in the year 2020 in the english-speaking world is the attitude toward factual knowledge as such I participated in several online debates in which I was reviled and in one case actually kicked out simply because I insisted on facts and statistics mattering in the debate and this made me allegedly you know right-wing the house I was conservative because I I cared about the numbers you know the word conservative means different things to different people if you live in a country where the Constitution itself is liberal then defending that Constitution and adhering to the principles that Constitution will be perceived as conservative we're living through a very strange period of time in which the government of France has deprived people of the right to take a walk in the park and the police are in quite a draconian fashion stopping arresting and fining people issuing tickets to people to find them if they dare to go for a walk in the park there is footage of the police using drones so these are remotely controlled robotic flying machines miniature helicopters very much resembling a toy helicopter to chase down identify announce to people that they're in violation the law and ultimately then police on foot can find these people and arrest them you shouldn't listen and this is this is on the assumption that there's scientific evidence that walking in the park is a danger to the public regardless of who you are Arlis of whether you are sick or healed now really briefly I used to live in Taiwan and one of the major differences between policy and Taiwan and policy and France was that individual people who actually had coronavirus and also some individual people who returned to Taiwan from Wuhan China with a fever where they didn't know that they had corner virus yet but they did some initial tests they say okay you came back from that part of China you seem to have a fever individual people were robbed of their right to walk in the park right they were ordered to remain confined to their apartments and live within certain you know limitations and in many cases actually those people later were freed when the test results came back showing that they didn't have coronavirus but some people just for a couple of days well the tests were being done character parts that there's a rationale there right there's there's some principle that makes sense but the principle being followed I think irrationally I think without any public democratic debate in France raises a lot of really fundamental pragmatic questions I'm gonna read you something here from a bunch of guys called the World Health Organization every year 600 million people become seriously ill due to foodborne parasites foodborne bacteria food borne diseases and toxins okay foodborne illness as one category most of you watching this video will know the prime suspect here is meat and the prime suspect of course is raw meat handling raw meat whether it's raw beef or raw chicken is very very dangerous yes cooked meat is also bad for your health but there's really no comparison here in Canada every year we have funny stories but people getting seriously ill from eating undercooked bear meat or once in a while some idiot thinks they can eat you know wild game completely raw and uncooked you can get very very sick and you can die and in their kitchens people handle raw meat and they have a young child like a toddler running around you might pick up and hug the child the child needs help you can communicate diseases through touching raw meat and touching other people okay what do you think is more of a public health hazard a walk in the park or handling raw meat which do you think is more deserving of draconian measures to take away your freedom the great French tradition of steak tartare which is still served in restaurants in France to this day consisting of raw beef served with a raw egg on top of it both major sources of illness major sources of contamination to things that no doctor would ever recommend you eat even once being handled by the staff I mean it's a danger to the people work in the kitchen it's a danger to the customer it's a danger to the public at large it's increasing the disease burden on society okay let me just give you let me just give you one more statistic here every year the number of people killed by foodborne illness four hundred and twenty thousand that number was accurate as of 2015 so we'll have slightly increased due to world population growth obviously we're inching towards half a million deaths per year but the statistic here from the ratio four hundred twenty thousand right and of those four hundred twenty thousand disproportionally 125,000 are children and I have a memory of this myself my father once fed me rotten beef he made beef into burgers I was a small child that wasn't vegan or vegetarian yet and I could tell from the taste of it it was off that that strange fizzing quality I tasted you know had a peculiar taste of me thirty Connor and my father just bullied me into eating it my mother was away that day was just the two of us in the kitchen basically and my father basically said look you're gonna shut up and eat this meat it's gonna be good enough for you because he didn't want to cook anything else and he hated himself too and I got seriously seriously ill it really you know I was really stricken whereas my father was barely affected by it at all I think just partly due to size and robustness eating meat that's gone bad or meet this contaminating it will it will have a more devastating effect on a child than it will wanna on a large adult it's my unscientific opinion but whether or not that's my my mere speculation out of the four hundred and twenty thousand people who die from foodborne illness every year 125,000 of them are under the age of five that that could be a priority that could be a priority for democracies in the Western world that could be a priority for France could be a priority for humanitarian aid to third-world countries okay and it's not what's a priority what's going on right now the police in Paris France are doing the only thing they know how to do I recognize that they're trying to help but they're using the same methods that they use to repress and track people who participate in public demonstrations right these are the same drones that are recording the faces of who participates is who participates in an anti-war March or who participated in the yellow vest protests right these the same methods of public repression this is the same police state this is all they know how to do if you ask the cops to solve the problem this is what they don't want to do force you to leave the park force you to go home chase you down give you a ticket okay this whole hilarious episode of how Western democracies responded to coronavirus which was you know at first too little and then too much but too late you know let me tell you something I flew in from Taiwan to Vancouver at the time when the authorities in Canada should have had really serious screening for me and everyone else on that airplane coming over from China to Canada at the Taiwanese side they had all the safety measures in place including taking my temperature and really checking be worldly when we arrived in Canada not a goddamn thing there was no interest there was no process there was no procedure I wasn't even asked one question verbally and nobody took my temperature with any if there was no interest right and then what a few weeks later closed every coffee shop closed every business and I mean France has taken this next step of denying you even the right to take a walk in the park okay ultimately this disease is transmitted the same way as the common cold buying a slice of pizza from a restaurant is a high-risk activity all right someone could have sneezed on that pizza before you bought it you didn't see whether it's someone working in the kitchen or another customer having an open-air salad bar or any customer could sneeze on it before you to do it that's a high risk risk activity okay but the policy response taking away your civil rights and the extension of police powers and so what's going on now it's neither based on scientific guidelines nor on any kind of sound democratic process and you know I'm not a fan of the communist government of China to see who I meet so I'm really not that big a fan of the government in Japan or Taiwan either this episode reflects very badly on the state of democracy in the Western world whether it be France Italy Spain the United States or Canada ultimate question in a democracy is not of whether a given decision is right or wrong I admit it's hard to know the technical details of how a disease spreads and what should be a public health priority you know is raw meat like you know steak tartare really more of a threat than no people walking in the park during an update these questions I admit article the ultimate fundamental question we have to ask is not is this particular decision right or wrong the question is who decides did any of you any of you people in my audience did any of you participate in a debate did any of you participate in a vote was there a referendum about whether or not people should be deprived of their right to take a walk in the park these things become normal through custom and that's why unquestioned belief in cultural customs is so dangerous and that's why I have to urge you to question and challenge customs in your own culture like French people buying and eating raw meat with a raw egg on it and calling it stick tartare or now the evolving culture of the control of public behavior by the government through these repressive means which is justified in terms of public health and safety concerns but not so easily justified in terms of this the science in terms of how this disease spreads how breasts each of us individually or all of us collectively could take responsibility [Music]