Coercion is not choice.
It is unfortunate we have to continue to have this discussion and with the prime minister, no less.
During a recent question and answer session with students at the University of Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that nobody was ever forced to be vaccinated and implied it is his role as prime minister to keep Canadians safe.
It was, perhaps, an impossible job. Make one man the face of public health amid an unprecedented pandemic, in a country as fractious as the United States, and there were bound to be disappointments and frustrations, and they were bound to get personal.
Still, in December, when Elon Musk joked on Twitter that his “pronouns” were “Prosecute/Fauci,” it felt like the cresting of a turning tide against the man who had played essentially that role for the first three years of the pandemic. At least 30 state legislatures have passed laws limiting public-health powers in pandemics. This January, the month after Anthony Fauci retired as the four-decade head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, barely half of Americans said they trusted the country’s public-health institutions to manage a future pandemic. The Wall Street Journal named that as his legacy — sowing distrust about public health and vaccines. Earlier in the pandemic, the leftist magazine The Drift mocked Fauci as “Doctor Do-Little,” and Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, proposed that Fauci had “blood on his hands.” Upon the announcement of Fauci’s retirement, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, also a Republican, celebrated: “Grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac.”
Something went wrong?
‘SAFE and effective’ is a slogan indelibly imprinted on our brains. It was applied, of course, to the novel mRNA vaccines, released globally in early 2021 to protect us against Covid-19. We were told they were ‘experimental’ but encouraged to take them; ‘coerced’ may be a better word.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his COVID-19 vaccination policy helped Canada get through the pandemic and criticized related “misinformation and disinformation,” but he also said some people experienced side effects from the shots.
“The challenge that we have now is that increasingly, misinformation and disinformation [are] carrying people to believe things that are untrue. Vaccinations [are] a perfect example of it,” Trudeau said on April 24 while having an armchair discussion with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the University of Ottawa.
Trudeau today says he did not force anyone to get vaccinated and adds he knows that some people deeply disagree with him.
"We have to figure out how to continue to protect those people."https://t.co/a0Sdu5P7S3 pic.twitter.com/bEZ1x1YTlO
— Noé Chartier (@NChartierET) April 24, 2023
Let’s travel back to simpler times, 2019 and earlier. In the years before COVID (BC), beliefs about respiratory viruses were not intertwined with people’s core identities. Preventions and treatments could be studied scientifically without people lining up ahead of time to either believe or disbelieve the evidence according to whether it aligned with their political allegiances. Grant-giving agencies were willing to finance high-quality research because they wanted to know the truth about whether or not, or the extent to which, a given intervention could promote health and ultimately save lives.
Labs working to create or enhance dangerous viruses and bugs risk killing 1.6 million people each year, scientists have warned, as they called for a public review of experiments.
Virologists and biosafety experts from around the world gathered in Geneva this week to discuss how to prevent lab accidents sparking a pandemic that could lead to the deaths of millions.
MY beautiful 36-year-old daughter Holly took one Pfizer shot in May 2021. It seems by the evidence emerging that doses given in May 2021 were lethal.
As a mother, I tried to protect my children and stop my children taking these lethal injections, I certainly wasn’t going to take any, but the fear created by the government won and all four of my children took them. Three had adverse reactions, one didn’t so I believe he had a placebo. I feel like a failure and useless as a mum. Fighting a lost cause. My husband labelled me as mad.
Those raising evidence-based concerns about the adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines are often labeled purveyors of misinformation, and derided as anti-scientific conspiracy theorists and paranoid kooks. Or worse. Bill Kristol tweeted in late 2021 that, “there is blood on the hands in 2021 of the unvaccinated and especially their enablers and encouragers who know better.” However, there are a number of prominent scientists, doctors, and independent researchers who are wary of both COVID infection and the vaccines. Many of these figures are worried about one particular piece of the SARS-CoV-2 virus: the spike protein, which allows the virus to enter your cells, and which was chosen to be the featured element used in the Moderna, Pfizer, J&J, and AstraZeneca vaccines. The available evidence shows that COVID, especially in light of new forms of treatment, is not as acutely deadly as once feared, and while mortality attributable to the COVID vaccines has not been definitively characterized, it is likely relatively rare. But some scientists are concerned by the potential effects of repeated exposure to the spike protein, and therefore the advisability of further boosters that contain it, given that we are going to be frequently reexposed to the circulating virus. Those voicing these concerns, however, have been subjected to censorship, ostracization, and damaging attacks on their reputations.
Canada’s spy network warned Western governments to brace themselves for radical and sometimes violent attacks as the pandemic began.
Such warnings were outlined in documents prepared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and stamped “TOP SECRET,” “Confidential” and “SECRET/ CANADIAN EYES ONLY.”
Heavily redacted copies of the reports from mid-2020 were obtained by the Toronto Star under the Access to Information Act.
Claims that Covid leaked from a lab were once roundly dismissed as Trumped-up charges – the ravings of a US president who seemed maliciously hellbent on blaming China for the pandemic.
Now after 18 months of extensive research and analysis, a US Senate Committee has published its full 304 page report into the matter – and it makes for compelling reading.
Two Ontario doctors accused of spreading COVID misinformation, including one who provided groundless vaccine exemptions to 168 people, attesting that the shots would expose them to “unacceptable medical risk,” have agreed to give up their licences to practise, and to never seek one again.
Very harsh penalties.
In one week last December, five members of Guan Yao’s family in Beijing died, including his father, his father-in-law and his grandmother. In an interview with a journalist, Guan, who lives in California, appeared powerless and dejected. Yet – for reasons that anyone from China understands – he chose his words carefully. Avoiding directly mentioning the Chinese government, he referred only to an ambiguous “them”. “It is difficult to understand,” Guan said, “why they abruptly lifted all restrictions.”
The 300-page report into Covid origins finds leak was likely ‘unintentional resulting from failures of biosafety containment’
The pandemic was probably the result of a “research-related incident” at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, a lengthy US Senate report concluded.
It said the theory that Covid-19 jumped from animals to humans in a market no longer deserved the “presumption of accuracy”.
The 300-page report, released to Axios, was the full version of a 35-page summary published in October by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
THE Stoics of ancient times believed that in many cases it was possible to control pain by thought alone. To achieve this, they stoically, as it were, accepted painful or unpleasant sensations, viewing them with studied indifference. As such, the pain often went away of its own accord, although to be fair they did use a painkiller known as theriac, which contained opium.
… There is no comparison between the horrors of the Holodomor and the postmodern pandemic we have lived through. But there is a comparison to be made in the ignominious role played, or not played, by the media.
After the release of his emails under Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, Dr Anthony Fauci and his friends must vie for first place as the greatest conspirators of the Covid era. He is equally in the running to be the greatest source of disinformation on just about every aspect of the pandemic, ably assisted by ‘experts’ and public health authorities around the world.
