Vaccinated Canadians feel entitled to ‘greater freedoms’ than non-vaccinated: poll - "Asked whether they would be comfortable going to work with unvaccinated co-workers, people in the poll who had been double vaccinated were split evenly — 40 per cent were comfortable and 41 per cent were uncomfortable... 66 per cent of respondents who had received two doses of vaccine said they would not feel comfortable flying on an airplane with non-vaccinated people. They also said they would feel uncomfortable riding on a bus (60 per cent), going to the gym (57 per cent), going to a movie theatre (57 per cent), or eating in a dining room (54 per cent)."
Basically mandates are political and almost half of vaccinated people didn't believe the vaccines worked
Rupa Subramanya: Liberals slow to realize vaccine mandates are past their best by date - "it’s abundantly clear that the Trudeau government was, principally, referring to vaccines reducing transmission of the virus from person to person... The federal government’s vaccine mandates were implemented before the discovery of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, which has proven to be a game changer. The new variant has proven to be more adept than the original virus or the deadly Delta variant at “evading” immunity acquired through vaccination or natural immunity acquired through infection. Considering that Omicron generally leads to a higher infection rate, given its greater transmissibility, yet also to less severe symptoms than earlier variants, many jurisdictions around the world that had imposed stringent vaccine mandates have rethought them, along with a rethink of the role of mask mandates and of lockdowns. Most Canadian provinces, excluding British Columbia and Newfoundland, have cancelled vaccine mandates for their own employees, as well as for restaurant dining and so forth, and all have cancelled mask mandates for most locations. The government of Canada is a notable exception in the advanced world in thus far having failed to rethink its vaccine mandate for federal employees. For example, Austria suspended a controversial mandate in early March that it had introduced in mid-February but had promised to not start enforcing for a month. That law would have made vaccinations mandatory for everyone, with fines running as high as €3,600 or nearly $5,000. Despite a surge in infections in March, even “COVID-zero” New Zealand announced, effective April 4, the ending of vaccine mandates for teachers, police officers and members of its military, while continuing to require vaccination for workers in the health sector, those caring for the elderly, and for those working in the prison sector. It’s noteworthy that these two countries were at very different rates of full vaccination when they cancelled (or largely cancelled) their mandates: Austria was at about 70 per cent and New Zealand at a very high 95 per cent. Compare this to Canada, which, at the time of the vaccine mandate announcement in the fall of 2021, was already sitting at about 82 per cent of people fully vaccinated. In other words, when Canada imposed its mandates, more of the population was already fully vaccinated than in Austria, when it ditched its mandates. What’s more, Canada, unlike many European countries, never recognized proof of recovery from infection as a legitimate alternative to vaccination. The number of people involved is not trivial. According to a Canadian Blood Services report for March 2022, an estimated 30 per cent of unvaccinated blood donors showed evidence that they had been recently infected by COVID-19, while 18 per cent of vaccinated donors had evidence of recent infection... It’s clear to everyone, apparently except the federal government of Canada, that vaccine mandates based on the original two-dose vaccine regimen were never meant to be permanent... Most obviously, it is well established that vaccine effectiveness wanes over time, and, since most Canadians received their second dose sometime in the summer or fall of 2021, the effectiveness of the two-dose regimen that the government mandated is now very low... Unless the federal government is contemplating mandating the third and subsequent booster doses, putting Canadians on a never-ending carousel of vaccination, it’s clear that the utility of the vaccine mandates based on the original two doses has now run its course. No advanced western country has thus far mandated boosters, and even the Canadian government, which loves mandates, hasn’t talked about it. Many experts believe that fourth and subsequent booster doses are unnecessary for most normal healthy people and shouldn’t be mandated"
Since vaccine mandates are primarily political in giving people someone to blame, this fits
Vaxholes will say this proves that the Canadian mandate now needs to be extended to three shots
Justin Trudeau’s vaccine promise that wasn’t made to be kept - The Globe and Mail - "Justin Trudeau’s Liberals made an election promise to pass a law to protect employers from being sued when they fire unvaccinated workers, and they didn’t do it. Now those lawsuits are piling up. There’s no sign the Liberal government plans to fulfill the promise. Mr. Trudeau didn’t even put it in a mandate letter to any of his ministers. What’s worse is that it’s a promise that Mr. Trudeau was probably never really serious about keeping. Certainly, the Liberals never seemed to know how to do it. There was, after all, a not-insignificant question about whether Ottawa has the authority. Now employers are facing the lawsuits without the promised protections, with workers claiming they are owed cash payouts because non-vaccination is not a valid cause for dismissal. The Globe’s Vanmala Subramaniam reported last week that employment lawyers are being inundated with such cases now that several employers have let unvaccinated workers go... When asked on Sept. 1, the Liberals had a variety of answers. One party aide suggested Ottawa could claim temporary emergency power under the vague constitutional authority to make laws for the “peace, order, and good government” of Canada. Later that day, party spokespersons gave a different, more vague explanation that Ottawa might start with federally regulated companies and also try to speak to provinces. But speaking to provinces can’t provide Ottawa additional constitutional power, and it is debatable whether courts would accept the federal government’s claim of emergency power, too. Certainly the latter flies in the face of Mr. Trudeau’s often-repeated assertion that there is no need for the feds to claim emergency powers to override the provinces’ powers on public-health matters such as lockdowns."
Thread by @Derekcrim on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Just had to show a cop my driving passport on my way to buy alcohol with my age passport. Maybe later I’ll go to Costco with one of my capitalism passports. This morning my partner and I decided to use our money passport to grab breakfast. What’s next? Maybe we will go use our library passport to take out a couple books. Or maybe we will go do some physical activity with our exercise passports. Maybe we will cap off date night with a Netflix movie as we use one of our entertainment passports."
Liberals (deliberately?) missing the point as usual: anyone can get the "driving passport" by being old enough and passing a test, the "age passport" just proves your age - you don't need to do anything to get it (beyond paperwork), Costco and gyms are members-only places and anyway you just need to pay to get the "capitalism passport"/"exercise passport" (ditto for Netflix), the "money passport" doesn't have any identity on it even, anyone can become a member of a public library
Good luck banning certain religions or only allowing people of one religion - religion is a choice after all, just like a covid vaccine. Or even regulating people's bodies (e.g. religious organisations that don't let staff have abortions)
But of course showing your identity passport to vote is shocking, racist and against your civil rights
Provinces could make vaccination mandatory, says federal health minister - "Provinces are likely to introduce mandatory vaccination policies in the coming months to deal with surging COVID-19 caseloads, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said... A spokesperson for Quebec's health minister said Friday, however, that mandatory vaccination is not something the province is looking at yet. In a social media post, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said his government will not make vaccines mandatory. Robert Strang, chief medical officer for Nova Scotia, told CBC Radio's The House in an interview airing Saturday that his province isn't considering mandatory vaccination but it is looking at increasing the number of places in the province that can be accessed only by those who are fully vaccinated... Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe issued a statement saying that while he strongly encourages people to get vaccinated, his province will not be implementing a mandatory vaccine policy. Some European countries, such as Austria and Greece, have moved in that direction already as infection rates hit record highs and vaccination campaigns stall."
From January
The same people who claim vaccines aren't mandatory unless people are physically tied down and injected claim everything they dislike is "coercion" and "structural violence"
John Ivison: Trudeau shows liberal principles have left the Liberal Party - "the Charter recognizes individual autonomy over our bodies and medical decisions. “Allowing the government to levy fines on those who do not agree with the government’s recommended medical treatment is a deeply troubling proposition”... Trudeau acknowledged the legitimacy of personal medical choices by people who are immunocompromised, or by those who for religious or other reasons decide not to get vaccinated. But there is no room for nuance in modern politics and bashing the unvaccinated is popular – a new Maru Public Opinion poll finds 60 per cent of Canadians support some kind of fine for those who have refused the jab. Trudeau has referred to the unvaccinated as “racists” and “misogynists”, even though a Statistics Canada study last April suggested groups most likely to be vaccine resistant are Blacks, Metis, Latinos and Arabs, people often wary of authoritarian governments... The evolution in the prime minister’s thinking is deeply cynical. When his government decided to pay $10 million in compensation to Omar Khadr, Trudeau defended the move. “The measure of a society – a just society – is not whether we stand up for people’s rights when it is easy or popular to do so, but whether we recognize rights when it is difficult, when it is unpopular,” he said. No group is more unpopular right now than the 10 percent of adults who remain unvaccinated, and yet the great defender of minority rights is putting the boots to them... the party was taken over by progressives who don’t have faith in the liberal principles of individual dignity, open markets, limited government and progress brought about by debate and incremental reform. One of the founding ideals of liberalism is civic respect for all, including those with whom we disagree. In this market-place of ideas, bad ideas are defeated by better ones. Instead, the dominant orthodoxy is an agenda that is primarily designed to dismantle racial, sexual and other hierarchies. No deviation from the accepted script is permitted. There has always been an absolutist bent to Trudeau’s leadership – his comment about admiring China’s dictatorship did not just pop into his head."
Scapegoating minorities is good when liberals hate them
High-risk groups in Malaysia must take booster shot to retain Covid-19 vaccination privileges - "Selected high-risk groups will lose full vaccination privileges if they do not take a booster shot by the end of this month, as Malaysia attempts to "blunt" the impact of an ongoing Omicron wave."
When covid apartheid is justified as only denying people "privileges", that opens the way to denying other despised minorities "privileges" too. And when "privileges" you have one day can be suddenly taken away...
Caylan Ford: Like COVID-19, digital passports could be with us forever - The Hub - "Proponents of digital health passports... have offered conflicting, unrealistic, and sometimes incoherent explanations of what the new digital passport regime is meant to achieve. Are vaccine passports supposed to let us “finish the fight” against SARS-CoV-2, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised? Of course not. There is no “finishing the fight” against an endemic virus. Will the passports end transmission of the disease? No. The vaccines are not designed to stop transmission, and the virus can be spread by vaccinated and unvaccinated people alike. Is the point to ensure that hospitals and ICUs are not overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients? That is a legitimate goal, but it’s undermined when vaccine mandates result in the firing or suspensions of thousands of front-line healthcare workers, many of whom already have natural immunity. Maybe the passports are just a psychosomatic measure, meant to help vaccinated people feel safer and less anxious as they go about their lives. Or are they a blunt instrument to drive up vaccination rates in hopes of achieving herd immunity? If so, how high does the rate need to be? 80 percent? 90 percent? 100 percent? What will we do when the vaccine’s efficacy fades, or if new variants emerge with mutated spike proteins that escape vaccine-induced immunity? No one seems to know. Lacking clear or realistic objectives, there is no way to evaluate the success of these new public health measures. And if success or failure cannot be measured, neither can they be declared. This should worry us, because the elected leaders currently enacting vaccine passports have not committed to any limits—either practical or temporal—on these new powers. We should not be overturning our most taken-for-granted social norms without first considering the risks and probable long-term consequences. Because once we go down this road, we may ruefully discover that there is no off-ramp... the assumption that unvaccinated people are a significant public health risk is at best overstated and reflects a misunderstanding of the nature of the virus and the purpose of the vaccines... Even if a country achieves 100 percent vaccination coverage, SARS-CoV-2 will continue to circulate, infect, and sicken people... If we believe that vaccinations work—and that is the obvious assumption behind vaccine mandates—then vaccinated people have little reason to fear incidental exposure to the virus. To suggest otherwise is to imply that the vaccines are ineffective. Children have even less cause for worry, as they face a negligible risk of serious outcomes from the virus. An unvaccinated child is more likely to die of drowning or seasonal influenza than they are to die of COVID-19, and their risk of hospitalization is far lower than that of even fully vaccinated adults. Moreover, if the virus is endemic and ineradicable, then it is preferable that people contract it and begin developing a robust immune response in childhood when their risk of developing serious illness is lowest... Natural immunity confers significantly stronger and broader protection against the virus and its variants than the vaccines alone. The largest study on natural immunity found that it is six to 13 times more effective at preventing (re)infection than the Pfizer vaccine. From either an ethical or an epidemiological perspective, it makes no sense to require people to get vaccinated against an illness for which they have already acquired superior immunity. This is especially true under the circumstance that many developing countries are still struggling to procure enough vaccines for high-risk populations that actually need them. Another justification for vaccine passports mirrors the early pandemic calls to “flatten the curve.” Compared to immunologically naïve people, recently vaccinated people do appear less likely to contract or to transmit COVID-19... the trajectory of viral outbreaks is unpredictable, and this one has proved stubbornly impervious to containment measures. A new study in the European Journal of Epidemiology found that there is no discernible correlation between an area’s vaccination rate and new COVID-19 cases; if anything, higher levels of vaccination were faintly correlated with an increase in new cases. More worryingly, a contingent of immunologists have warned of the possibility that mass vaccination strategies (as opposed to targeted protection for the most at-risk individuals) could actually make the disease more virulent... In a population with extensive vaccine coverage, selective evolutionary pressure will favour variants with mutations to the spike protein (the delta variant is one such example). Rather than contributing to herd immunity, mass vaccination might end up undermining it, leaving us with more transmissible variants, and less robust immune responses... Like so much about this virus, we can’t evaluate these risks with a high degree of confidence, and that is all the more reason to proceed with caution and humility. But instead of admitting uncertainty, our elected leaders have done the opposite, staking their political legitimacy on the promise that vaccine passports and social segregation will end the pandemic. This risks creating a “path dependency” problem: with each step that a government takes along a particular policy path, the political cost of reversing course rises. There are plausible public health reasons for governments and health authorities to want to drive up vaccination rates, particularly among older individuals and those with co-morbidities who are at greatest risk of being hospitalized or dying of COVID-19. But there is no compelling epidemiological justification for segregating vaccinated from unvaccinated people... the failure to produce a QR code on demand is almost certainly a sign of something else: deviant non-conformity. Social comity and openness will suffer in a society filled with digital checkpoints, where neighbours are told to be suspicious of each other’s health status, families shun their unvaccinated members, and where every shop, café, and theatre is required to turn away customers who don’t carry the right digital papers. (As I write this, a woman at the café table next to mine is describing one of her friends as “filthy” for refusing vaccination; her companion agrees that the friendship must end). To the extent that vaccine passports are plainly irrational — for example, by failing to recognize natural immunity — compliance with such a regime is demoralizing. And like so many emergency or war-times measures of times past, we can expect these new mechanisms of surveillance and control to remain with us in the post-pandemic era, repurposed for new ends. If you support the use of digital passports... what if the standards change? What if, one day, your QR code flags you as an undesirable, based on criteria that seem arbitrary, unjust, or entirely mysterious?"
Vaxholes don't believe the vaccines work. Or maybe they just want to force everyone to conform
Ruling that upholds B.C. Hydro's staff vaccine mandate reveals toll COVID-19 has taken on corporation - "B.C. Hydro initially rejected the idea of mandatory vaccination but backtracked last fall after some employees raised concerns about the need for protection from infection by co-workers. Customers and partners also insisted only vaccinated employees enter their premises, including helicopter operators hired to shuttle staff to sites, hospitals, construction sites, long-term care facilities, B.C. Place and Vancouver's airport... B.C. Hydro countered that it had "valid and significant reasons" for introducing the vaccination policy. "Less intrusive measures like rapid antigen tests were not as effective as vaccination""
So much for trusting the science on vaccines.
The irony is that unvaccinated workers who got tested would be safer than vaccinated workers who didn't
Nursing shortage prevents BC's nurse union from supporting vaccine mandate - "Union vice-president Aman Grewal said the loss of a "single nurse" during the fourth wave couldn’t be supported. Grewal said all members are encouraged to get the vaccine, but the mandate comes amid a dire staffing crisis."
SNOBELEN: The ideal of freedom in Canada has taken a near fatal blow | Toronto Sun - "If people can be stripped of their rights, locked in their homes and banned from travel to combat a virus why can’t similar tactics be brought to the battle over planet killing carbon? We may soon look back on the glory days of freedom when government merely taxed home heating fuel to save the planet. You might not have a great deal of empathy for the anti-vaccination crowd, but you’d best stand ready to resist the people who believe their cause is greater than your liberty. And we all better hope our governments at least nod to the notion of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There was a time when Canadians actually enjoyed, in large measure, peace, order and good government. We still have (mostly) peace and (generally) order. But good government? Not so much. Our government can’t buy jets or boats or process public sector paychecks or provide clean water or do contract tracing or inspect seniors’ homes or secure our borders.Our soldiers cry in frustration over bureaucratic fumbling as friends are abandoned in Afghanistan. And two Canadian citizens rot in prison in China as our judicial system grinds away over the deportation of Meng Wanzhou."
Rupa Subramanya: Why is Canada dragging its feet on getting back to normal from COVID? - "On May 2, Switzerland and Greece are set to remove all COVID-related travel restrictions. Visitors will no longer be required to show proof of vaccination, proof of recovery or a recent negative test. The Swiss, who are 70 per cent fully vaccinated — a rate much lower than Canada’s approximate 81 per cent — removed virtually all domestic pandemic restrictions a month ago, and friends and family there tell me that life is back to pre-pandemic times. Most European countries have either removed, or are in the final stages of removing, pandemic restrictions. In the United States, most of President Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandates have been gutted by the courts and lie in tatters. Most U.S. states have rolled back pandemic restrictions wholly or in large measure. Throughout much of Asia, with the notable exception of China, life has largely returned to normal. That leaves Canada, which continues to be an outlier in terms of the severity and longevity of COVID-related rules, restrictions and mandates. Federal mandates as they relate to the civil service, and arriving at the Canadian border, remain in place. This effectively means that almost 3.7 million unvaccinated Canadians remain prisoners in their own country unless they are willing to undergo pre-entry tests upon return, while unvaccinated public servants face a bleak and uncertain future. While several provinces, including Ontario, have lifted most restrictions, Quebec has retained its mask mandate, which is slated to be lifted only in the middle of May. Municipalities such as Ottawa, where most people never saw a rule they didn’t like, were threatening to reimpose mask mandates by looking at wastewater signals, which seem to have miraculously come down without anyone doing anything. However, such alarm bells resulted in some institutions, such as Carleton University and the Ottawa Carleton District School Board, deciding to retain the mask mandate even though the province had lifted its restrictions. At the same time, leading experts continue to sound a pessimistic note. A recent paper co-authored by David Fisman, a former member of the Ontario Science Table and a well-known advocate of vaccine mandates, ran a calibrated mathematical model and concluded that vaccine mandates make sense because they reduce the transmission of the virus under some baseline assumptions. A critical driving assumption of the model is that the vaccinated are significantly less likely than the unvaccinated to transmit the virus. But a host of recent studies cast serious doubt on this assumption. A January study published in the Lancet, a top peer-reviewed medical journal, itself citing previous research, argues that “the impact of vaccination on community transmission of circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 appeared to be not significantly different from the impact among unvaccinated people.” A more recent study, from this past month, in the pre-print stage, so not yet peer-reviewed, finds that, “Omicron-infected patients who had received a third vaccine dose had viral loads similar to patients with two doses or who were unvaccinated.” In other words, the key assumption that drives the results of Fisman’s study appears increasingly contradicted by real world empirical studies. Without this assumption, the model’s results and its conclusion in favour of vaccine mandates totally fall apart. Yet the paper excited the commenting class because it appeared to lend scientific support for continuing vaccine mandates. In sensible places, public policy is informed by data-based analysis, which crunches actual real world numbers and runs counterfactual experiments to come up with policy recommendations... While the gathering evidence undercuts the case for vaccine mandates, what about mask mandates? Recall that Quebec, while lifting its vaccine mandate like Ontario, chose to retain its mask mandate. If there was any benefit, it doesn’t show up in the data: the hospitalization rate per 100,000 of population is 28 in Quebec and only 12 in Ontario. Of course, there are a lot of other differences between the two provinces, but this staggering difference in the hospitalization rate certainly does not provide compelling evidence in favour of Quebec’s more stringent rules having made a difference. The truth is that, unlike most places in the world, many Canadians, both policymakers and the public, seem unwilling to move on from the pandemic and return to life as usual. In a country known for a culture of compliance, there’s been a serious lack of leadership, especially at the level of the federal government, in signalling in no uncertain terms that we are now in the last lap of the pandemic. Instead, ambiguous messaging and keeping federal vaccine mandates in force for the indefinite future only serve to keep the populace in a state of fear and anxiety. Beyond providing a rationale for unending government control by rule and mandate, what other purpose is served? Countries spanning the political spectrum from left to right are now firmly in the endgame, while here in Canada, we’re still fussing about the sixth wave, reading the wastewater signals like tea leaves, and wondering whether life will ever return to normal. Our friends around the world are scratching their heads and asking, what is so special about Canada?"
UK to Change Definition of "Fully Vaccinated" to THREE Injections - "The UK won’t be the only nation to redefine the term. From mid-December, France will require residents to prove they’ve had a third injection if they wish to access restaurants or travel long distances. In Austria, Switzerland, and Croatia, expiration dates have been added to vaccination passports, requiring citizens to top-up at the end of each set period if they wish to continue their subscription to a public social life. Australia has similarly signalled the introduction of additional vaccines, with Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews essentially saying vaccine certificates will be made redundant early next year with the introduction of booster passports. In NSW, Deputy Premier Stuart Ayres suggested maintaining employment could be contingent on residents taking a third injection. “If you want to stay in work, if you want your favour café or your favourite restaurant or your favourite pub to stay open, then you need to go and get your booster shot”"
From 2021
Comment: "Ask yourself why they wait until so many are "fully vaccinated" - they know the public would be less likely to sign up for a lifelong subscription."
Meme - Peter Baird: "The idea that anyone was opposed to body autonomy is ridiculous. Nobody is saying you HAVE to get vaccinated. Just that you shouldn't whine about the consequences if you don't. If that includes being banned from a number of public places losing your job..tough shit, Sherlock. Your body, your choice. Live with the consequences."
"Just like in kim jong un land there is freedom of speech You just shouldn't whine about the consequences of your speech"
Peter Baird: "when you show me all the people being executed and sent to prison for not being vaccinated will stop considering that the dumbest comparison I've heard in months."
I'm sure there're lots of vaxholes who will try to memoryhole all the claims that vaccination was not mandatory because no one was threatened with jail for not doing it
Meme - "No one is forcing you to have sex with me, but if you refuse you don't get to work." - Harvey Weinstein
"NOT FORCING YOU JUST TAKING AWAY EVERYTHING UNTIL YOU CONSENT"
Memea - Elizabeth L. Jones: "Nobody has been forced to get a vaccine. Yes, some people lost jobs because they chose not to get ot vaccine, but no one was ever forced to get a vaccine at gunpoint. You had to have made an appointment on your own to go get one."
Japan: Compelled Sterilization of Transgender People | Human Rights Watch - "Japan’s government should stop forcing transgender people to be surgically sterilized if they want legal recognition of their gender identity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today"
Damn Human Rights Watch! Don't they know that unless you make someone do something at gunpoint, you're not forcing them to do it?
The Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella didn't force the Jews to convert to Christianity in 1492 either. They could just leave the country and leave behind their property
WARMINGTON: Liberal MP apologizes for F-bomb toward woman | Toronto Sun - "A Liberal MP and Olympic kayak gold medallist was up the creek with no paddle or manners — and later apologized after saying “F— you” to a woman calling for the end of vaccine mandates... “are you upset? I haven’t seen my family in 2.5 years. I had to watch my papa (grandfather) get buried on facetime. I cant hug my parents or nana’s because of your Liberal mandates and you had the nerve to swear at me?” The account ended with “I’m no(t) upset … but made a mistake in responding to someone like you. Good luck.” Needless to say, 29-year-old Faith was upset herself. “Honestly, it was flabbergasting to see an MP speak like that, and then just block me because he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer any of the specific questions about data and studies,” said Faith. “I sort of did a double take and thought ‘woah.’ But I was not surprised by his condescending responses and inability to actually provide answers.”... “I felt bad for calling someone a disgrace, but he talks about inclusivity and diversity on his page, all the while belittling and ostracizing a large portion of Canadians, and I found it quite hypocritical.”"
Harry Rakowski: COVID-19 reminded us how much healthy lifestyles matter - "Regardless of past mortality, the important message now is that COVID-19 related mortality is much lower. Over 11.6 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide providing ongoing high levels of protection from death despite waning antibody levels that no longer confer high levels of protection from infection. The Omicron variants are also less dangerous, further reducing mortality rates. Daily U.S. mortality is now about 10 per cent of the peak rate and stable. It is now reasonable to remove vaccination and mask mandates in most circumstances other than health-care centres and high risk congregate facilities. The pandemic has created a wave of post traumatic stress with a persisting unreasonable fear of returning to a more normal life. Just as some politicians pretended the pandemic was simply the flu, others now want to maintain a high level of anxiety for political advantage. Age and frailty were, and still are, key predictors of a worse outcome. Healthy children have had a low rate of disability or death throughout the pandemic. Their vaccination should remain voluntary. The most important lesson is that being unhealthy conveyed the greatest risk for hospitalization and death throughout the pandemic. Tremendous resources have been focused on managing the pandemic without adequately acknowledging that we are simply not healthy enough. Most people have sedentary lifestyles, eat too much unhealthy food, are overweight with limited muscle mass and exercise infrequently. The pandemic’s effects are hopefully continuing to wane. Yet, in the western world we continue to ignore our ongoing, and much higher risks of death due to poor nutrition, inadequate exercise, carcinogens in our food and air and a lack of focus on disease prevention. In poorer countries we accept the ravages of poverty, lack of clean water and the harmful effects of economic and social inequalities. Every year we face millions of preventable deaths from these challenges — far more than from this pandemic. As individuals we may not be able to save the world by ourselves, but by improving our health and resilience we can protect both our present and our future. If we are to learn anything from this pandemic, the time to do so is now."
Vaccine mandates are easy and are useful political instruments. Promoting health is hard and expensive
'Massive majority’ of Liberal caucus wants Trudeau to drop federal COVID mandates, say Liberal MPs - "Several Liberal MPs interviewed for this article said that most caucus members want all federal pandemic restrictions dropped as soon as possible... Three-term Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski (Thunder Bay-Rainy River, Ont.), a medical doctor and a member of the Health Committee, said the vaccine mandate for air travel should be removed."
Trudeau’s political inertia keeping vaccine mandates past their time - The Globe and Mail - "The political inertia inside Mr. Trudeau’s seven-year-old government is so heavy that the Prime Minister and the people around him don’t even seem to feel the nudges of MPs in their own party – the folks in touch with constituents – who are telling them it is time for those mandates to go. One Liberal MP, Joël Lightbound, voted two weeks ago for a Conservative motion calling for all pandemic rules to be dropped. Another, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, said in a tweet that while he didn’t agree with all of that motion, he believes “a two-dose vaccine mandate without accommodation is no longer justified.” Others, such as New Brunswick MP Wayne Long, have publicly called for the travel mandates to be lifted. There are more Liberal MPs who feel that way."
LILLEY: Trudeau acts on his own political science to drop restrictions | Toronto Sun - "Belatedly and only due to increasing political pressure, Justin Trudeau is allowing his government to relax COVID-19 travel and work mandates. It’s not due to “the science,” as his government continues to claim — his government hasn’t been following the advice of Dr. Theresa Tam on these issues for some time. No, Trudeau is doing away with the requirement that Canadians be vaccinated to board a plane or train because of the never-ending delays at airports, specifically Pearson in Toronto. The decision to lift the requirement for federal workers to be fully vaccinated isn’t because they realized it was wrong to fire Mary in accounting who has been working from home for two years, it’s because they need to hire more airport screeners. Just last Friday, Trudeau gave a full-throated defence of continuing with these mandates even though his cabinet had already made the decision to lift them in principle and had begun alerting the industry that the change was coming... He went on to say, yet again, that his government would continue to be guided by the best science. As I’ve been saying for some time now, his government has been following the political science, not any medical science. Every province in the country, of every political stripe, has long ago lifted proof of vaccination requirements for public settings... it was always about using this issue to tell the public that Liberals cared about public health measures and Conservatives did not. It’s the same reason that, until he caught COVID again, Trudeau would wear a mask in the House of Commons when Conservatives were not but he’d have closed-door meetings and dinners with top Democrats in California with no masks. It’s all political... Tam, Canada’s chief medical officer, was asked what advice she had given the government on continuing or ending the measures they are now dropping. Tam said it would be best to check with the respective ministers, that she had given the advice already, but when pressed made it clear — without directly saying so — that she had recommended they end. In fact, according to sources, Tam has recommended lifting the vaccine mandate and changing travel restrictions more than once... Beating on this drum helped him win the election last fall, something he cited on Friday when defending the measures he has now dropped. Trudeau hasn’t wanted to get rid of a valuable political tool. It took the demands of Liberal backbenchers hearing from angry constituents about airport delays. It took the entire travel industry lobbying as one. It took former NHL star Ryan Whitney posting a video to social media about how bad Pearson had become. All of those things and the increasingly embarrassing disaster that was Canada’s busiest airport finally made Trudeau act."
DEE: To save summer travel, transport minister must act now - "From the passport office to airport security. From Customs to the Transport Canada pilot medical clearance office, the hope many Canadians placed in the summer of 2022 has met the reality of bureaucracy and bungling, causing some of the worst airport and airline delays on the planet. It become apparent in early April when massive lines formed at Canada’s largest airports when there should never have been any. But while it was clear to airline and airport leaders, the federal government remained in denial. With calls for action growing from April into May, the response from the federal minister of transport, Omar Alghabra, was to lay the blame on so-called “out-of-practice travellers” for the security queues. When that comment was roundly criticized, the minister shifted his position from “no staff shortage” to grudgingly conceding a “staff shortage,” conveniently forgetting his own earlier comments that the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) retained 90% of its pre-pandemic staffing to process “less than 70%” of the pre-COVID traveller volumes. The fact that CATSA had become so inefficient during the pandemic was lost on him. If that wasn’t enough, international arriving travellers were treated to hours-long confinements aboard aircraft after landing, followed by hours-long lines inside the Customs hall. The Canada Border Services Agency seemed overwhelmed by the government’s pandemic inspections, and airports revealed that processing times for arriving travellers had quadrupled compared to before COVID... Instead of removing the remaining pandemic checks, the government doubled down, clinging to random testing of arriving international travellers and proposing to move them offsite. On security, the solution was to force travellers to arrive at airports three hours or more before their flights, “solving” the minister’s security lines but creating new problems such as overcrowding at boarding gates and overfilled airport bag rooms, neither of which were intended to ever be traveller and luggage warehouses... He must act now to save what’s left of the summer and that means decisive actions like joining most of Europe and the United States in immediately dropping Canada’s remaining pandemic inspections, including the ArriveCan app. At security, he should join other countries like the U.S. and drop the screening of air crews and immediately implement an expedited screening program for pre-vetted, low-risk trusted travellers so that airport check-in can revert to global norms of 45 minutes before domestic flights and 60 minutes before international flights."
People are up in arms as U of T becomes one of first places to require a booster shot - "The justification the university provided is that living in residence means living in close quarters, and that being up-to-date on COVID vaccination "reduces isolation requirements of those who are sick with COVID-19... The province just opened up eligibility for fourth doses/second boosters of the COVID vaccine to all adults earlier this month, though the Chief Medical Officer of Health said that "while we're making this option available, it is important to note that healthy, currently-vaccinated individuals continue to have significant persistent protection against severe disease" and did not recommend it for these groups."
When you increase vaccine hesitancy for pointless virtue signalling
