Freud used to say that the most costly things in life are disease and stupidity.
I was reminded of this the other day listening to a radio interview with Post Media’s Anthony Furey. He was lamenting the destructiveness of the lockdowns in Ontario – particularly to children – and what the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed to him about the mentality of Ontarians who have long regarded themselves as worldly and cosmopolitan.
“Right now, Ontarians are extremely ignorant people who don’t have a clue what’s going on across North America,” he said. “It pains me to say … but we are a shockingly ignorant province right now and I blame a lot of the news media who are not at all informing us about what’s going on. People in Ontario do not realize we are the backwater in North America. It’s shameful.”
Furey said he’s been hearing regularly from worried physicians – particularly paediatricians – who disagree with current lockdown policies which they say are not only scientifically baseless but harmful to children specifically. And their concerns were confirmed publicly days after the Furey interview in a public petition signed by more than 300 physicians and health professionals stating that school closures are more harmful than the virus itself and calling on Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Stephen Lecce to keep the province’s schools open for the rest of the school year.
The signatories included infectious diseases specialists, paediatricians, ER doctors and other health professionals — mostly from Ontario, but including concerned experts from across Canada: “We have learned that children are not a major source of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in households or in schools, and this has been appreciated globally.”
Yet the harms associated with school closures and other lockdown measures have proven very serious. For example, the Kids Help Phone went from 1.9 million calls in 2019 to 4 million in 2020 as suicide attempts among youth tripled, hospital admissions for substance abuse doubled and eating disorders increased to unprecedented levels.
Yet their plea appears to have had no real impact. Two days after the petition was released. Ford and his crew announced a third, province-wide lockdown lasting another month. Providing further proof of Furey’s view that – unlike most of North America which is opening up with considerable success and no accompanying rise in cases – Ontario in particular remains out of step with the science and with common sense.
As to government claims that the latest lockdown is to prevent ICU’s from being overrun, who remembers Premier Ford’s campaign laments about “hallway medicine “ and all the overburdened ICUs in Ontario long before the advent of COVID-19. What’s changed?
The Broader Picture
Furey, however, was providing only part of the picture of a nation failing spectacularly, it seems, in every area of this pandemic as life returns to a semblance of normal in other parts of the world. But not in Canada where most citizens remain passively compliant and where your masked neighbours, who waved a year ago, now avert eye contact and walk meters around you to effect a ‘safe’ space.
Nor – as the tech giants continue to manipulate which ‘experts’ the general public is allowed to hear – has any Canadian expert or politician in a Covid policy-making role been heard to question the suppression of cheap and readily available therapeutics such as Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, which have saved millions of lives in India? These are therapeutics that, if used early enough in an infection, have proven highly effective everywhere they’ve been allowed to be used. Yet the thousands of physicians trying to get this message out, based on their own experience together with a long history of successful with these meds, have found themselves silenced by the high tech giants and by media using false allegations of danger. Costing an untold number of deaths and suggesting that, at least in North America, the push has always been for vaccines, vaccines and more vaccines. There’s also been an ‘emergency’ push to get them to market, even before FDA approval which, by definition, would have ensured greater protection from harmful side effects, both short and long term.
And is anyone asking why the petitions of tens of thousands of physicians across the western world – the Great Barrington Declaration and the one mentioned above are just two – questioning the soundness and even the legitimacy of current pandemic protocols are being ignored?
Speaking of manipulation, it’s also likely that most North Americans are unaware that the whole idea of locking down in response to a respiratory virus had never been so much as suggested in all of history until China’s Communist Party bosses started pushing it and its program of economic ruin and crippling social isolation – with no scientific justification – on the rest of the world in early 2020.
We are all aware, however, of the vast destruction that followed.
Opening Up Elsewhere
Meanwhile, in the UK, pubs and shops are set to reopen with the March 28 announcement that London reported no COVID deaths. So footie matches will be allowed with partial crowds for the first time since Sept 14. Which, apparently, is what happens when 57% of the adult population has been vaccinated.
And on Easter Monday, when the Texas Rangers host the Toronto Blue Jays at their home opener in Arlington, Texas, the new ballpark will be 100% open with 40,000 seats available. This while Canadian NHL teams play each other only in empty arenas as the Blue Jays, now based in Buffalo, NY, remain out of the country. For the foreseeable future.
And for the forseeable future, it appears the that the federal Liberal government will continue to bungle its vaccine rollout so badly that it’s only managed to obtain enough to inoculate about 14% of the population as public health experts proclaim a third wave is already underway, triggering yet another lockdown and severely curtailing all Easter religious services which, particularly for Catholics unable to get a ticket to their local parish church, means participating in televised services only.
Similarly, the previously relaxed BC government has just banned all indoor-dining, the Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort is closed for the season and provincial residents are advised not to travel outside their own health districts. And there will be no indoor Easter services at BC churches.
South of the Border
Meanwhile, south of the border, the US is gradually opening up – except for such Blue (read: Democrat-led) states as Michigan, Massachusetts, California and the New York tri-state area which, having enforced the worst draconian lockdowns on the planet, have recorded the highest death rates as well.
Conversely, the US government is administering an average three million jabs a day while in Canada only about a third as many are receiving the vaccine on a per capita basis. There are also a dozen states where every adult American will have access to a first vaccine shot by the end of May while in Canada the youngest anyone in most provinces can get the shot is 58. And as of March 29, Canada was 64th in the world in per capita vaccinations, having fallen from 61st five days after Cyprus, Kuwait and Slovenia passed us.
(Editors’ note: See our and other’s caveats about the vaccine, which does not seem to be the purported panacea people think it is, which Ms. Adamick indicates in what follows. We have taken the stance that people should be fully informed and free in whether or not to be vaccinated).
Bottom line: at the current pace, over 70% of Americans should be fully vaccinated (two doses) by August 1 while here it will take until Thanksgiving for 80% of Canadians to get their first shot. This while ‘variant’ cases creep up in both countries. Yet in the US there’s been a less than 4% rise since March 2 while Canadian cases have risen over 50%.
What’s going on?
Vaccines, Vaccines, Vaccines
Superficially, at least, it appears the difference is the vaccine, and the Americans are far closer to returning to normal than Canadians, with the Brits closer still.
And as Toronto Sun columnist Lorne Gunter pointed out recently, as Canada drifts further into the backwater, the news gets ever worse: “Of the 3.3 million vials the Liberals claim to have coming (Holy Week), 1.5 million are from AstraZeneca, which the government’s own national vaccine panel is now recommending not be administered to under 55s for safety considerations.” No reason is provided but the European reports leaking out about vaccine-related deaths and injuries may be having an impact. As of March 24, Eudra Vigilance — the European database tracking suspected drug reactions of deaths and injuries following the experimental COVID-19 vaccines — was reporting 3,964 dead and 162,610 injuries, ranging from fatal infections and including blood, lymphatic, vascular, metabolic and muscle-skeletal disorders, pregnancy complications and paralysis.
Almost as troubling have been the latest reports from epidemiologists in places such as Washington State where over 100 fully vaccinated people have tested positive for the virus.
None of which, so far as I know, has been reported in Canadian mainstream media. But these worrying reports may account for two other recent phenomena — Canadians booking vaccine appointments and failing to attend. Plus, according to LifeSiteNews, more than one third of health care workers (36%) are declining the shots for several reasons — doubt about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines which they believe were developed too quickly for guaranteed safety. And too little is known about possible short and long-term effects.
In other words, as we move further into the second year of this pandemic, the world in general and Canada in particular remain in an ongoing mess due in part to the incompetence of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats and elected politicians who, so far, have suffered no personal penalty for their draconian measures while their fellow countrymen lose their jobs, small businesses, and other sources of income while government workers and union members continue to be paid for work which their now jobless counterparts might regard as ‘inessential’.
Throwing life as we’ve know it completely out of whack.
A Reopening Plan. NOW!
Some of the above was confirmed by Pierre Poilievre, Conservative Shadow critic, in the House of Commons March 31where he painted a disturbing picture of Canada which has taken a serious downturn. This is due largely, he says, to the total incompetence of the Trudeau government: “While the rest of the world is safely opening, we are talking about another shutdown here in Canada. We need a reopening plan. Now.”
Poilievre said that Canada ranks 11 out of 15 on the misery index, according to the McDonald Laurier Institute. He said that calls to one suicide prevention line alone have risen 200% over the past year, according to CBC. He said drug overdoses have spiked in Alberta and Ontario, up 50% during lockdowns.
“This is what has happened right across this country — a country which is failing on every front,” he told the Commons. “This is not just a massive $100 billion dollar economic crisis, though it definitely is that. This is not just about a $400 billion dollar deficit, by far the biggest in Canadian history. This is about people’s human and very real suffering that has led to higher mortality rates in countless other areas, including in the lives of deeply suffering seniors who’ve been kept away from family for over a year and some of whom have had to die alone, separated from loved ones.”
The cause? Government incompetence and the resolute failure to reopen the nation’s economy while simultaneously protecting lives, he said. Poilievre also compared Canada’s poor performance to smaller countries such as Israel, Taiwan and Singapore which, despite their size and formidable challenges, have far outperformed Canada in their much lower fatality rates and in their highly efficient vaccine roll-outs.
What a contrast to this country’s earlier history and record of stellar performance, Poilievre reminded Canadians.
Once the Best Place to Live
There was a time when Canada had an advanced economy; when we were among the best places in the world to do business and deliver the necessities of human life. But sadly, those days are slipping away, he said:
“And I fear that we are accepting, slowly, as the frog heating in the water, the loserdom this government is bringing us. Highest deficit as a share of GDP in the G20, worst vaccination rates in the G7, highest unemployment rate in the G7. These have been the results for Canada. And there’s been almost a quiet acceptance that Canada could be behind the rest of the world. A country that used to be the best! By the United Nations, we used to be the best place on the planet earth in which to live. You don’t hear people talking like that anymore. Yet Canada’s a country blessed with more resources and advantages than perhaps any other country in the world. It’s time for us to hold ourselves and our government to a higher standard so that we can live up to the expectations that we as Canadians had for so long. And pass onto the next generation a country that is second to none.”
Sadly, the days Poilievre was recalling are now just a memory as Ontario announces yet another lockdown. All but guaranteeing that Ontario will continue to be regarded by the rest of North America as the “backwater” Furey described. And with a deteriorating future that may include massive bankruptcy and ruin, triggered in part by the mishandling of this pandemic while simultaneously supporting the Liberal government’s commitment to the man-made Climate Change agenda — aka the De-Growth Movement — used to shut down Canada’s once prosperous energy economy and justify a ruinous carbon tax.
Indeed, the evidence for Canada’s current malaise is ubiquitous. As school closures remove all the usual stability in children’s critical learning years, advertisers run photos of pretty five-year-olds wearing pink masks and fawning over Easter baskets filled with pastel eggs and bunnies.
And what’s our response to this sort of blatant propaganda shaping the minds of citizens who know enough to be frightened into submission but not enough to question what’s happening? Let me guess: “Ahhhh, isn’t that cute!”
Still, the propaganda appears to be working. According to a recent Leger poll, when asked when all lockdowns should be lifted, nearly 20 percent of Canadians agreed it should not be lifted until a full six months after every Canadian has been vaccinated.
Does that make sense? In any way?
Stupidity and Wicked Hearts
After chronicling the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in the early 1960s, Hannah Arendt famously coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe how remarkably ordinary were the perpetrators of Hitler’s holocaust. As a coda, she also used to say: “Stupidity comes from a wicked heart!”
Which is a dictum more profound than it appears. Arendt was referring to a soul so steeped in sin it had become morally blind and incapable of virtue or wisdom. And a wicked heart – be it of an individual or of a nation – is what results from poisoning the heart of a culture with lies, legalized immorality and its consequent spiritual and physical degeneracy. Today, and for decades really, atheism, pantheism, paganism, abortion, euthanasia, pornography, recreational drug use and generalized decadence have been accepted in Canadian culture as so-called freedoms. The predictable result? The rejection of reality and a mentality so passive and so stupid, it loses its will to live, succumbing to an empty existentialism.
Why? Because this heart rejects God. The God of Gods, the True God of True God … while also imagining that it controls Nature, which is created by God, not Man – which is the primary self-deception so evident today, particularly in the regressive environmental movement.
Yet when faced with a pandemic, how helpless is this mentality? And what an unviable chaos it makes of life and all the bounty the Lord God provides.
Is a Return to Health Possible?
With a mere 25 percent of Catholics allowed into their churches for Holy Mass on Easter Sunday (and that may decrease), how can any society return to a fulsome spiritual and moral health?
Yet regardless of the era in which he lives, this is what happens every time man sets himself up as god. Be it god of a village, a nation, a corporatocracy or a New World Order. Notice too, as in the current crisis, how none of these bureaucrats, politicians and so-called experts lose their jobs or even a paycheque while emitting orders that cause real harm: massive job losses, crippling depression, even suicide, family hardship and the pointless loss of small family businesses which may have toiled for decades providing a service their governments suddenly and implacably, deem ‘non-essential’.
Having banished True God, Man sets himself up as judge and jury in every situation. Even in today’s pandemic where a year of mismanagement by countless agenda-driven experts has exposed a collective lack of true knowledge and general incompetence. And yet the invariably destructive advice rolls on – from lockdowns and triple mask-wearing to the hasty roll-out of several vaccines – all wrapped in the assurances of experts who promise to shepherd entire continents safely through to the other side of this pandemic.
Well, good luck with that!
Is Scripture not full of similar catastrophes where human populations were being flattened by disease, war and multiple sufferings? And the only way out was to turn to the Lord God Himself? “If I send pestilence upon my people; and my people upon whom my name is called, being converted, shall make supplication to me, and seek out my face, and do penance for their most wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and forgive their sins and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7, 13-14.
Despite the pride and arrogance that blinds so many of God’s creatures to the His Truth and His Love, His will will be done, one way or another: “Yea, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: you are of more value than many sparrows. Luke 12:7.
This is exactly the Lord God we should be praying to. Morning, noon and night. And to Whom we should be bringing all our needs and concerns – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Whose Son was born of the Virgin Mary, died for our sins, was resurrected from the dead and ascended into Heaven from where He will come to judge the living and the dead.
Yet in today’s Post-Christian, Post-Truth, Post-Reality world where media withholds crucial truth while dispensing lies and distortion, it appears unlikely that Canadians as a nation – where so many are now unschooled in the tenets of Christianity – are going to fall on their knees and turn their eyes, hearts and souls to God.
In the meantime – until we’re all vaccinated – everything is to be sacrificed to stopping the spread of an infection from which 97% of the infected recover.
So the question remains: what’s the mandate? 10% infection, 0%?
What else can I say? Except that Freud was right!