Jason Zackowski Oral History, 2020/07/27

Jason Zackowski describes what science education has been like during a global pandemic both in schools and on the internet. He discusses the transition to online learning in schools as he is head of the science department and a teacher at a high school in Red Deer, Alberta. He also shares his concerns for the planned return to school. Jason runs a science podcast as well as a popular twitter account for his dog "Bunsen Berner" which he uses to share scientific facts, research, and methods in a fun way. As such he discusses the "blowback" by members of the public on social media to scientists when it shares information regarding the virus and pandemic.

07/27/2020

Hope Gresser

Jason Zackowski

University of Western Ontario

English Animals

English Education--K12

English Government Federal

English Online Learning

English Pandemic Skeptics

English Social Media (including Memes)

English Emotion

chemistry teacher

high school

Twitter

Wuhan

spread

Hutterite

fatigue

school

education

K-12

high school

teacher

science

social media

response to skeptics

frustration

K-12

Canada

Pandemic Pets

08/06/2020

11/18/2020

07/03/2021

05/21/2022

11/12/2022

07/27/2020

Hope Gresser

Jason Zackowski

Red Deer

Alberta

Canada

Audio

English

00:27:45

Jason Zackowski describes what science education has been like during a global pandemic both in schools and on the internet. He discusses the transition to online learning in schools as he is head of the science department and a teacher at a high school in Red Deer, Alberta. He also shares his concerns for the planned return to school. Jason runs a science podcast as well as a popular twitter account for his dog "Bunsen Berner" which he uses to share scientific facts, research, and methods in a fun way. As such he discusses the "blowback" by members of the public on social media to scientists when it shares information regarding the virus and pandemic.

Hope Gresser 00:02
So, this is Hope Gresser. I am in Ottawa, Ontario. Today's date is the 27th of July 2020. And it is 2:30, Eastern Time. And I'll just get you to say your name and where you're from, and I guess the time where you are since they're two different timezone.

Jason Zackowski 00:33
My name is Jason Zackowski. And I am in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, and it is mountain time. So we are 12:30pm.

Hope Gresser 00:44
Great. So if you just wouldn't mind kind of giving a brief overview of who you are.

Jason Zackowski 00:53
Oh, like, who I, who I am?

Hope Gresser 00:56
Who you are what you do.

Jason Zackowski 00:58
Okay, so my day job, I am a high school chemistry teacher. I'm currently the science department head for our high school. So I teach at a large high school called Lindsay Thurber compo- Composite High School. Mostly I teach chemistry and the Inter-Baccalaureate chemistry, and I teach some general science. The other things I do, I have a podcast called The Science Podcast, and more importantly, than all of those things, because I have two dogs. One of them is definitely internet famous. His name is Bunsen. And he has a bernese mountain dog. So he has Bunsen Burner. And he has a social media juggernaut account on Twitter that consumes my life. So I have a wife and two kids. And we live in rural Alberta, and I commute to work. And that's probably Oh, and I am a big nerd. And I do cosplay.

Hope Gresser 01:58
Right, great. So first question, because the way we do this is it goes kind of chronologically, but if there's, at any point, you think of something that you want to say jump in.

Jason Zackowski 02:10
Okay.

Hope Gresser 02:11
So what do you recall about the start of all of this? Do you remember when you first heard about the virus? And what did you think about it? In the like, initially.

Jason Zackowski 02:21
So there's a whole bunch of irony that that has happened. In my science class, we were actually looking at the numbers in Wuhan, China every day, and plotting the growth of the virus in Wuhan. Because we were looking at how bacteria grow. And it's an exponential growth curve.

Hope Gresser 02:41
Right.

Jason Zackowski 02:41
And they were experiencing exponential growth. And then it spread from Wuhan to Europe. And when it got to Italy, that's when more data, you know, more reliable data will say, quote, unquote, reliable data started to come out. Because things out of China, everybody was a little skeptical of-

Hope Gresser 03:01
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 03:02
With their government and the way that they operate with information. And that's when it got to Italy. And then we saw the deaths. In Italy, that's when it started to get scary for kids. And I was kind of regretting that we were also at that point plotting-

Hope Gresser 03:18
Mm.

Jason Zackowski 03:19
The growth of the virus around the world. And kids were like, is it going to come here? And I'm like, probably not. And then- Literally about a week later, there were cases in Vancouver and Toronto, and then about a week after that, hockey shut down and then we were shut down two days later. So it was like very, very quickly after I told the kids that don't don't cuz I was I always approached it from don't panic,

Hope Gresser 03:25
Hm. right

Jason Zackowski 03:47
It's spreading don't panic, right? We're safe here. And then we weren't safe, or we the idea was we weren't safe and we were being shut down. Like that-

Hope Gresser 03:55
Right.

Jason Zackowski 03:55
Happened within that happens extremely rapidly. I think NHL shutdown. Wednesday. It was a Wednesday, I think I don't remember the date, the actual date, but it was a Wednesday. And then I taught we taught Thursday, Friday and Friday was a gong show. Because we were as department head when you're meeting like what's going to happen. Everything is shutting down. I had kids we were going to the marine biology center and Banfield on Friday, like we were flying to Vancouver with this group of kids.

Hope Gresser 04:23
Oh, wow.

Jason Zackowski 04:24
And that was up in the air. If it was gonna get canceled. It was canceled. So I remember it was very chaotic. And then the government announced school was shut down that-

Hope Gresser 04:32
So-

Jason Zackowski 04:32
Weekend on Sunday.

Hope Gresser 04:33
Okay, yeah, I was gonna say so is it before or after? Yeah. So then so did you. Was it just kind of you didn't get to go back into the classrooms for anything or was there a little bit of more leave room or was it just?

Jason Zackowski 04:45
No, we were allowed. So there to make a long story short, we were all of the teachers at our high school like we are all professional. We were ready- To teach kids Monday. We were we were two Totally ready to go Monday. Everybody worked their butts off on that Sunday once the announcement came off to be ready on Monday to teach kids online. And then the division was like, whoa, hold the hold on, because not everybody was ready.

Hope Gresser 04:57
Mhm. Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 05:16
So they gave everybody a week. So we had kids were home for a week without learning. And then the following week, we started. And it was a massive learning curve. I remember for a lot of people in the department like it was a, it was like an emotional struggle. We had parents with young kids who lost care for kids. We had teachers who didn't use technology having to learn. Yeah, so it was, we were allowed to come into the school. The school was not shut down to us. So I being a leader of the department, I went into the school every day. And we just socially distanced ourselves like we would see each other at lunch, and wave, right. But you were in your classroom by yourself.

Hope Gresser 05:57
Right.

Jason Zackowski 06:00
Mhm.

Hope Gresser 06:01
Then how did how, how did the kids handle that transition? So (inaudible)?

Jason Zackowski 06:06
They were I taught mostly academic kids. So like, because the the Inter- Baccalaureate programs really academic, but-

Hope Gresser 06:12
Yes.

Jason Zackowski 06:12
I did have a science 20 general science class. So the kids were of course worried, like, how are they going to learn? What are we going to do? What are they, what the academic kids were like, because homework was due that Monday, and it's right. Kids are freaking out trying to hand stuff in taking pictures of it and trying to send it-

Hope Gresser 06:30
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 06:30
To me by email. The less academic kids were like, who week off right, so they were like, super happy. Just like any I was happy when I was a kid when there was a snow day. I don't know. If you had snow days out in Ontario. Yeah.

Hope Gresser 06:30
Oh yes, yeah yeah. I'm in Ottowa, I'm in Ottawa-

Jason Zackowski 06:35
Yeah, yeah.

Hope Gresser 06:35
So we still get snow.

Jason Zackowski 06:40
You get snow. So I'm just trying to think like there's places in Canada don't get snow like Alberta.

Hope Gresser 06:49
No, yeah.

Jason Zackowski 06:50
Yeah. What'd you do, or do you do like Vancouver and it's like, you know, a little skiff and everything shuts down.

Hope Gresser 06:56
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 06:56
Yeah, but yeah, the kids were happy. And then, once we got into the groove of it, there was a huge buy in to start with, but there's some kids that just never came back. And those are the kids

Hope Gresser 07:07
Mm.

Jason Zackowski 07:07
We were all very concerned about that one school shut down. They didn't engage. They didn't do anything. They didn't sign in. Nothing. They just were they just ghosted the school.

Hope Gresser 07:17
Mm.

Jason Zackowski 07:17
So we're very concerned about those kids come September, which is like a month from now.

Hope Gresser 07:22
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 07:24
Mhm.

Hope Gresser 07:24
So what did a typical day look like before? What does it look like? Now? We've had a couple of different iterations now that there's been like, stages and things like that going-

Jason Zackowski 07:36
Yeah.

Hope Gresser 07:36
Around. So I don't know what did it look like at different points during the pandemic for you?

Jason Zackowski 07:40
Okay, so my busiest day would be my, my youngest son, he's in grade nine. He wa- he's, he's very good at band.

Hope Gresser 07:49
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 07:49
So he would have early morning band started at seven in the morning. So I would get them to the school seven, either I would work out or I would work on getting prepped for the day. And I would have a very busy day, like I would teach all morning, have lunch, teach all afternoon, as department head, I got a prep. So I had one block of time. And I would use that time to work on department goals talk- troubleshoot issues, other teachers in the department have helped them with resources. That was my day. And then when COVID happened, basically, I didn't have to get to school as early because Adam wasn't- my youngest son wasn't allowed to come in at all.

Hope Gresser 08:30
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 08:30
Band was cancelled. There was no need for me to be in my classroom super early. So maybe I got into school a little bit later. And then I taught online. So the morning was prep. And then in the afternoon, we had our our Google Meets and kids could log into Google and then meet with us. So that was the afternoon every day. It became a blur after about two months.

Hope Gresser 09:01
Yes, for everyone.

Jason Zackowski 09:03
Yes.

Hope Gresser 09:04
So what are because it's different for every-

Jason Zackowski 09:07
Its okay.

Hope Gresser 09:07
Jurisdiction and stuff like that. What are you guys doing as far as going back? Since you said September is a month away.

Jason Zackowski 09:14
Yeah, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna move locations.

Hope Gresser 09:17
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 09:18
Right no- Can you can give me two minutes, in a quiet spot.

Hope Gresser 09:21
All right. Yeah. Not a problem. So just because it's different in every jurisdiction, what are you guys planning on doing in September? What's the plan in terms of going back to school?

Jason Zackowski 09:31
We have no idea.

Hope Gresser 09:33
Okay, cool.

Jason Zackowski 09:34
Zero idea very much a lot of stress, frustration and panic. The government just announced that schools. schools will be open kids will be back. And like my chem classes have between 32 and 38 kids in them. COVID spreads is easily in a 17 year old as it does in a 40 year old. So we're like what? And the government made that decision? Well, social He distancing themselves. So that was the big irony. Right? Like there's they made this decision and they're, you know, they're two or four meters apart from each other. And yeah, so we are, I am very, very frustrated. Like they're basically like, yeah, have the kids wash their hands. Good luck. Okay. So.

Hope Gresser 09:54
Mhm. And have you heard? Sorry go ahead. Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 10:24
I, That's all we know, we know that kids are going to be back in September. There is, it is impossible for us to socially distance our kids. In high school, we are very-

Hope Gresser 10:27
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 10:27
Very, very, very frustrated. I mean, I am not. And I feel like I'm a healthy guy. But there, there have been people who have been 40 that have died from COVID. There's 50 year old 60 year old people at the school, right? Who knows what these kids have at home.

Hope Gresser 10:50
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 10:50
And they're living with grandparents. So I don't know, I think I am concerned about this decision, especially when other provinces and countries have had kids go back to school and done a better job of keeping everybody safe.

Hope Gresser 11:05
And-

Jason Zackowski 11:05
So, that's more of a political statement. I don't fully but that's my opinion. Yeah.

Hope Gresser 11:11
And what have, have you heard from other teachers or students about what their feelings on that are?

Jason Zackowski 11:18
Well, the kids want to go back to school, the academic kids want to go back to school, online learning

Hope Gresser 11:23
Right.

Jason Zackowski 11:23
Wasn't great for anybody. Like, you know? I'm not saying I don't want to teach kids face to face. I'm just saying that you cram 36 kids in a classroom with me, we're all breathing on each other. If one kid has COVID in that room, we're all gonna get it like there's you. I mean, it's no different than like there was a Hutterite funeral-

Hope Gresser 11:24
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 11:45
In Alberta, right? I don't know if you heard that in the news. There was like 1,200 Hutterites, went to this big funeral in Southern Alberta was a tragedy, three kids drowned. So the families came. And then now we have huge outbreaks in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba from this funeral. Like that was just, and that's just one funeral where everybody was joining, joined together like, imagine a school with 1800 kids, no difference. You're just breathing on each other like-

Hope Gresser 12:12
Mhm. Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 12:12
It's going to spread, right?

Hope Gresser 12:14
They're now using those Hutterite communities as studies.

Jason Zackowski 12:19
Yeah.

Hope Gresser 12:19
As case studies to see how it spreads within closed communities since.

Jason Zackowski 12:24
Yeah. So, that's the irony is what's a school? A school is basically-

Hope Gresser 12:28
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 12:28
A Hutterite community.

Hope Gresser 12:29
Yeah, yeah. So are you spending more or less time inside the house or at home right now than you were before?

Jason Zackowski 12:48
We are very fortunate. So we are very privileged. We live in the country. So our lives changed virtually nothing from COVID. I can spend as much time outside as I want as I did before, because we live on a farm.

Hope Gresser 13:04
Right.

Jason Zackowski 13:05
So I don't have to worry about anything with that. So I can take the dogs we have for a walk exactly the same way as I did before. I mean, when we shut down there's still snow so I was constantly for skiing and snowshoeing. Nothing changed for us. So we were very, very privileged and fortunate. As opposed to like a family that might be in an apartment, right?

Hope Gresser 13:26
Yeah. Yeah. And since you mentioned the dogs, so that was how I knew to get in contact with you is that I had followed you, your dogs on Twitter.

Jason Zackowski 13:37
Yeah.

Hope Gresser 13:37
So you use that platform to discuss science quite a bit and you-

Jason Zackowski 13:43
Yep.

Hope Gresser 13:43
Have encountered some naysayers. Would you be willing to talk a little bit about that? And-

Jason Zackowski 13:44
Yeah, Bunsen's account is so big now that any scientific posts that he does, but he gets blowback because there's you know, there's a fringe people that are conspiracy theories, theorists on everything. The big the big one was masks-

Hope Gresser 14:04
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 14:04
Wearing the wearing of masks and, and originally, there wasn't a lot of evidence that wearing any kind of masks would help.

Hope Gresser 14:12
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 14:12
And then because it's a new virus, as new research came out, science changes its opinion based on data. And now you should wear a cloth mask that does help. And there's been like enormous blowback from cloth masks, there's been some blowback that COVID is no different than a cold. So and, and those people on and I, Bunsen's a dog account, like-

Hope Gresser 14:39
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 14:39
50% of the posts are adorable, uplifting, cute posts, and 50% of them are science and you're gonna have you have people wasting their day to try and argue with a dog like that's, it's, it's just bizarre, right? But I think because Bunsen that count is a dog account. I get less of that than a human would, for sure.

Hope Gresser 14:57
Mm.

Jason Zackowski 14:58
So yeah, we do Get some blowback and occasionally I try and have positive discourse. But if it's a conspiracy theory, there's nothing you can do about that. Like they have, they've made up their mind. I can't. If you think Bill Gates is in charge of New World Order and wanting to inject microchips into people with a vaccine, there's really nothing a dog account can do to change your opinion. On that.

Hope Gresser 15:24
Yeah. Yeah. So have you then when you said like, that you think you get less of it, have you? Because I'm assuming you are involved in the community online a little bit. Have you been seeing that happen with other people and what have-

Jason Zackowski 15:39
Oh yeah.

Hope Gresser 15:39
Been their reaction? And?

Jason Zackowski 15:40
Yeah, so it's kind of a hierarchy. If you're, and it's it's terrible. If you're a woman, scientist, you get way more of that virt- like way more of that, like, what's the word I'm trying to say? Like, caustic, gross, blowback.

Hope Gresser 16:00
Right.

Jason Zackowski 16:00
And if you're a person of color, who's a woman who's a scientist, it's even more.

Hope Gresser 16:04
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 16:05
So Bunsen being a dog is he's like, its own category, right? And they're like any female epidemiologists, you just have to go through their comments on anything they post. And it's way worse than what Bunsen guests- Bunsen gets when he posts. And it's just the misogyny that's out there. And that that because Twitter is you can have an anonymous account, you know, you can say horrible stuff and hide behind an egg as your picture on Twitter. And I'm sure they just get tired of it. And they just they don't even bother with those people. They just block block block block block on because that's what we do too and-

Hope Gresser 16:43
Right.

Jason Zackowski 16:43
Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's something that's, and maybe that's, I, I don't know, on my podcast, I do try my best to promote people of color and who are female to get there. You know, they're passionate, they're in science.

Hope Gresser 16:59
Right. Great. I'll jump back to you now.

Jason Zackowski 17:02
Mhmm.

Hope Gresser 17:03
Um, so how does this compare to any kind of epidemics, pandemics, health crises that you have lived through in the past? And, yeah, how do you think why do you think this one has been so different if it has been or is it similar in any way?

Jason Zackowski 17:21
Well, I remember, swine flu was a concern, like my, we had kids that were out who got swine flu like a while ago, but it was not there. Like it wasn't as deadly as COVID, like COVID, that we won't know exactly the mortality of COVID. But early data has it anywhere from .5 to 1%. So that's like, way worse than the flu. And way worse than swine flu, like swine flu was like maybe 1.5 times as deadly as normal flu. So kids got that. And they were out. And it was so little of a problem for us that we would joke about it. The kids got swine flu, and maybe we would have like those thermometers, and with the infrared thermometers, and we would like check kids temperatures on the way in the class and kick kids out if they were too high, kind of like zombies.

Hope Gresser 18:11
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 18:12
So it was there's something we weren't, we didn't really take serious, whereas this is so serious. Like, you just had to look at what happened in Italy. Right, Italy was we were seeing 1000s of people die every day. Right.

Hope Gresser 18:26
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 18:26
And Italy's like a small country. So it was made it very real, that this was very serious. And then everything shut down so fast. So this is like nothing I've lived through at all. The, the, the, the most thing I can think about is my parents telling us of polio. Because my grandma, my grandmother contracted polio and lost the ability to walk. And they would always she would have stories about during the time before the Jenner vaccine for polio. It was the same thing like you weddings were canceled. You couldn't Yeah, there people were terrified of getting polio. And there was no vaccine for it. And I want to say polio wasn't even as contagious as COVID.

Hope Gresser 18:44
Right. Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 19:09
I'd have to check the stats on that. I'm not sure if that's right.

Hope Gresser 19:12
I seem to recall that as well. But I also am not a scientist. So how is your, what's the mood with your family and friends? And how are they responding to this?

Jason Zackowski 19:25
Um, I think initially, because my wife's a teacher, too. We were stressed about how to roll out online learning.

Hope Gresser 19:33
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 19:34
And then once we got the hang of it, because we're both pretty tech savvy, it went pretty good. The stress level for us is rising, because we're wondering how we're going to, and the kids are going to be safe when we go back to school.

Hope Gresser 19:47
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 19:47
Like my wife teaches middle school, and I teach high school, middle school kids in high school kids spread COVID as easily as adults do.

Hope Gresser 19:54
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 19:54
They just do. They are not as as at risk so that stress levels rising and there was definitely, with all of our teacher colleagues there was like, I don't even know if I should call it depression because it wasn't depression, but we were all like, kind of like not run down I'm trying to think of like, our energy level was so low because when you're when you teach kids, your energy has to be matched them right? You, you, you're the best if you think about the best teachers you've had, they're passionate, and they're energetic and engaging. And that that is lost with online learning. So everybody, by the end of it, we're just like, oh, this is just we're just, this is the worst. Everybody's safe. But were everybody was really, I guess, disengaged with their job.

Hope Gresser 20:25
Mhm. Mmm.

Jason Zackowski 20:48
Still doing the best they could. But yeah.

Hope Gresser 20:51
Fatigue, is that the word you're looking for?

Jason Zackowski 20:52
Yeah, maybe fatigue. It's like everyday blurred into the next like-

Hope Gresser 20:56
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 20:56
oh, it's it's like Wednesday, or I thought it was Monday, like days had no meaning. Yeah.

Hope Gresser 21:05
And your kids, how are they? How did they cope with the online learning and how are they doing?

Jason Zackowski 21:09
Well my oldest son, he's graduated, and he works in Save On as a in the meat department. So he kept his job. And at the start, he was really stressed out about how they would keep him safe. But he's far enough away from the public.

Hope Gresser 21:23
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 21:23
That he, he felt his job was kind of safe. And then my youngest son was little, for the first couple months, he was like, lost because he's big in to band that was cancelled. He's in marching band that was canceled. Everything's online. And he's quite smart. So his online learning was done in about two hours every morning. So he's had a lot of downtime.

Hope Gresser 21:45
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 21:46
He's looking, he's looking forward to getting back with his friends. But of course, that's the big issue, right? All the kids want to hang out with friends in big groups. COVID isn't gone.

Hope Gresser 21:58
What are the restrictions on that, like in Alberta right now? In terms of groups and gathering and stuff like that?

Jason Zackowski 22:04
It's any kind of gathering is discouraged. Really, I think you can I have to check the exact levels. I think you can gather in groups of 20 or less, but even that you're really not supposed to.

Hope Gresser 22:17
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 22:17
Like they're like limited as much as possible or just don't.

Hope Gresser 22:21
Right.

Jason Zackowski 22:22
But you hear every day about people having weddings, of hundreds of people and you're like you're why? You know, like, I get I get it, you've maybe you've planned your wedding. And it's time to have it and but it's d- it's dangerous.

Hope Gresser 22:40
So, if you were to be making an exhibit, or writing a history book, or a memoir or something about like that, about the pandemic, what would you want people to know?

Jason Zackowski 22:58
I'm not sure I, I would be curious what the historians recorded about the Spanish Flu because that was like the last epidemic that took the world hostage, basically.

Hope Gresser 23:11
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 23:11
Was there the same level of it's not like it's a lot of people, but there's a certain percentage of people that think more about themselves than others?

Hope Gresser 23:24
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 23:24
Like if you if you're going to lose your job, I totally get that I didn't lose my job. So I don't know what it's like for the people that lost their job and had to go on Served from the government and wanting to get back to work, like I feel for those people. But it's like, the people that are like, you know, I'm gonna do what I want to do. I'm going to have a gathering my weddings gonna go on, I'm not going to wear a mask, like screw all you guys. I'm looking out for me. I'm more important. I'm wondering if that happened during the Spanish Flu too if that's just human nature, that there's this inherent selfishn- selfish- selfishness, in a certain percentage of people that no matter what anybody says, they're just going to do what they want to do.

Hope Gresser 23:24
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 23:26
And the consequences be damned.

Hope Gresser 23:35
Choosing for the record.

Jason Zackowski 23:47
Yeah.

Hope Gresser 23:49
For the record, Served is just because Americans might be listening to this.

Jason Zackowski 23:57
Oh yeah.

Hope Gresser 23:57
Or somebody else served is Canadian emergency response benefit.

Jason Zackowski 24:19
Yeah.

Hope Gresser 24:19
And then, yes, as a historian, I can tell you, they did. There were anti mask meetings and organizations. And then they also got the Spanish flu. So this is this is not unprecedented in the least in that regard.

Jason Zackowski 24:36
So it's just inherent

Hope Gresser 24:37
in humans that there's a certain percentage of us that are just assholes? Like-

Jason Zackowski 24:41
just a bunch of selfish jerks.

Hope Gresser 24:41
Yeah. Yeah. And then it was put into Canadian law that you had to wear a mask or you would be arrested, so. Well, we may get there. We may get there. We're not there yet.

Jason Zackowski 24:51
No.

Hope Gresser 24:51
Do you guys have a mask mandate? Now that I think about it.

Jason Zackowski 24:53
No, not Red Deer. Calgary. Mayor Naheed Nenshi in Calgary, he just put one in than all public places, you need to be wearing a mask. I don't know if that includes school like the the government Alberta has been super coy-

Hope Gresser 25:07
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 25:08
About masks in school. Like I get not putting masks on a kindergartener kid because they're going to eat it or, or spling it. But high school kids can wear masks like they can, like you can you can tell a grade 10 kid to wear a mask and make it like you either wear the mask or you don't get to come to school. Like, you can do that.

Hope Gresser 25:29
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 25:29
So I'm not sure why I'm not sure. Like, that's a big puzzle for me right now. So, yeah, well, that's good to know that there was just as many idiots back in the Spanish Flu times as there is right now.

Hope Gresser 25:42
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 25:43
So I think they just didn't have Twitter or Facebook or social-

Hope Gresser 25:48
No.

Jason Zackowski 25:48
Media to spread their idiocy around as quickly.

Hope Gresser 25:51
They had leaflets, which is great, because then we saved the leaflets, but (inaudible).

Jason Zackowski 25:55
Oh. Yeah.

Hope Gresser 25:59
Yeah. So is there anything else that you would like to be on the record? Anything else you'd like anyone to know?

Jason Zackowski 26:06
I think like because I'm a scientist and I teach science. I wonder if this needs to be a huge part of the neck like teaching kids that that the authority of science will change its mind based on data. That seems to be the biggest problem right now-

Hope Gresser 26:26
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 26:27
Is people are like, Well, scientists said in January, blah blah blah blah blah, and now- They're saying, blah, blah, blah. And it's just because I don't know if those people took an advanced science class that-

Hope Gresser 26:32
Yeah. Right.

Jason Zackowski 26:39
explained that science moves based on data.

Hope Gresser 26:43
Mhm.

Jason Zackowski 26:43
And it's not a conspiracy. It's not because, you know, there's a new world order out there lurking behind the weed charity or whatever the new conspiracy theory there is. But yeah, that's that's what I think people need to know from a scientific perspective is that there has been maybe not as much in Canada, but you can see it in the United States. A colossal failure of science education. Because which country is doing the worst right now? It's the United States. And I'm, I'm in the amount of disregarding for public health is just, it's just bamboozling me.

Hope Gresser 27:26
All right. Wow.

Jason Zackowski 27:27
Yeah, sorry. That's-

Hope Gresser 27:28
No.

Jason Zackowski 27:29
Well, who cares? I don't know if anybody's gonna listen, if you're listening to this in here in the future. Don't be a jerk. There's-

Hope Gresser 27:34
Yeah.

Jason Zackowski 27:34
My PSA.

Hope Gresser 27:37
All right. Well, I think we're done then if we didn't have we don't have anything else.

Jason Zackowski 27:43
Nope. I'm good.

Hope Gresser 27:44
All right.