Quit Doubling Down on Tyranny

Imagine somebody who has sugar diabetes.   One day he starts to feel a little faint.   Either his blood sugar is too high or too low.   He does not have his glucometer handy, but happens to be at a vendor who sells soda pop and candy.   Taking a chance that it is low blood sugar, he buys a cola drink and gulps it down.   The problem does not go away, but rather gets worse.   Instead of deducing that he had misdiagnosed his situation, switching tactics, and taking his insulin shot, he concludes that he needs more sugar and buys a chocolate bar.   The result is the same.  What would you think of this person if he were to continue along this vein, making himself sicker and sicker, by constantly doubling down on an approach that is the opposite of helpful?

 

The hypothetical idiot described in the previous paragraph is behaving exactly the way Brian Pallister, the premier of Manitoba, and Dr. Brent Roussin, the province’s chief public health officer have been acting.

 

Over the past couple of months we, like everywhere else, have seen the number of people testing positive for the Chinese bat flu rise.   This is only to be expected, since we have majorly ramped up the number of tests being given.   It is nothing to be worried about, despise what the Chicken Littles whose opinion passes for news on CBC, Global, CTV and in the pages of the Winnipeg Free Press have to say about it.    RT-PCR tests are as useless as tits on a bull when it comes to diagnosing a live infection of SARS-CoV-2, or any other virus for that matter, and especially so when the cycle threshold has been set as high as it typically is for Covid tests.    The rising number of positive tests is absolutely meaningless, and that number will only continue to rise, as long as more and more tests are given.   Worrying about rising case numbers is a recipe for keeping public health measures aimed at controlling those numbers in place forever.

 

Going into panic mode over the rise in case numbers, and making it your priority to get those numbers down, is foolish to the nth degree.   However, let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that all of that were not the case.   Let us suppose that case numbers were meaningful, and that getting those numbers down was the right policy end to pursue at this time.    What, given these counter-factual suppositions, can we conclude about Pallister and Roussin’s efforts?

 

At the end of September, Dr. Roussin announced that he was moving Winnipeg, the capital city of Manitoba, and the surrounding region into the “orange” level of restrictions for four weeks.   That included a mask mandate on indoor public places, and limitations of social gatherings to ten people or less.   The numbers continued to rise, and about half way through October, more restrictions were added.   Social gatherings, for example, were reduced to a limit of five.   The numbers continued to rise, and, the day before Halloween, Dr. Roussin announced that he was moving Winnipeg into the “red” level of restrictions as of Monday, November 2.   That means, among other things, that restaurant dining rooms must close again along with public gyms and theatres.   On Monday, however, the day when these new restrictions came into effect, Pallister held a press conference where he announced that the province was now considering, upon Dr. Roussin’s recommendation, slapping a curfew down on the city as well. 

 

During this period, Dr. Roussin and Pallister repeatedly bullied, berated, threatened and harassed the public.   It is all Manitobans’ fault, they repeatedly told us.   If we did what we were told and followed all of their stupid orders, cancelled Thanksgiving and Halloween, and spent the last month hiding in our basements, avoiding all contact with other people, then the number of COVID cases would not have kept going up, making them look bad.

 

Here’s a thought.   Maybe, the problem isn’t that Manitobans aren’t following these excessive and tyrannical, anti-social, anti-community, anti-family, anti-friendship, anti-religion, anti-human rules and restrictions.   Maybe, the problem is that the rules don’t work, have never worked, and it is time to start thinking of something new.

 

Maybe it is time to stop treating high blood sugar with candy.

 

At his press conference on Friday, in answer to a question, Dr. Roussin said:

 

The message is that businesses HAVE done a lot, but pandemics are very challenging times. And this is a once in 100-year pandemic. We haven’t been shut down the whole time because we know the implications of doing that, and we’ve been trying to deal with this virus without having to shutter businesses again. But given the case number increases and transmission rates, we have no choice now.  

 

Let us ponder these words for a moment.   We will not dwell long on the fact that this is not a “once in 100-year pandemic”, except in a sense opposite to what Dr. Roussin intended, namely that it is milder than the other pandemics of the last century, and for healthy people under 65 is less dangerous even than the seasonal flu.    Does Dr. Roussin really “know the implications” of shutting down?  

 

If he did, then he would mean something very different by “we have no choice now”.   He would mean that the option of shutting down is off the table and not to be considered.   The implications of shutting down for businesses, especially small, local, businesses, are that many of them will be forced into bankruptcy.   This is what Dr. Roussin undoubtedly had in mind when he said the above.   There are further implications, however, ethical implications.   The first principle of Western medical ethics is supposed to be primum non nocere – first do no harm.   Does Dr. Roussin think that only physical harm in the sense of injury or further sickness is intended by this principle?

 

Nor is driving small and local businesses into insolvency the only harm that has been done by the unprecedented and experimental draconian measures taken this year to stop a virus that is not nearly as novel and threatening as it has been declared to be by the noise machine that Richard Weaver called the Great Stereopticon.   The anti-COVID measures have been the single biggest threat to the civil rights and liberties of Manitobans in my lifetime, and it is hardly a comfort to know that we “are all together in this” in the sense that the same thing has happened in every province of the Dominion of Canada, in every other Commonwealth Realm, and, indeed, throughout the free world, with the noted exception of the Kingdom of Sweden. (1)    How many people have been driven to despair, alcoholism and other addiction, and suicide by being forced into a state of unnatural social isolation?   How many have died this year who otherwise might have been with us for years to come because medical treatment deemed “non-essential” was cancelled or deferred due to COVID?   How many of the sick and elderly who have died in nursing homes, ostensibly due to COVID, have really died out of the cruel loneliness thrust upon them in the name of protecting them?

 

Indeed, with regards to the last item mentioned, perhaps, instead of pointing the finger at Manitobans for falling short of the absurd and inhumane regimen of dos and do-nots he has imposed on them, perhaps Roussin, whom I will no longer honour with the title Doctor for he clearly does not deserve it, ought to be asking himself how the virus got into those nursing homes which he has had locked up tighter than Fort Knox for months.   It certainly was not from people going to bars and restaurants, throwing parties, having friends over for a visit, or going to the church or theatre.

 

There is a vocal segment of the population, who feel the restrictions do not go far enough.   How large that segment is, is difficult to tell.  On Saturday, which was Halloween, a group of activists decorated the premier’s yard with cardboard tombstones and an effigy of him as the Grim Reaper.   Admittedly, the thought of decorating his home had occurred to me as well, although I would have gone with the more traditional toilet paper and eggs.   The point the activists were trying to make, as they explained in many different media venues, was that they felt the government had not done enough to stop COVID and therefore was responsible for all those who have died from it.   Someone named Rebecca Hume was quoted by CTV News as saying they wanted “an immediate province-wide shutdown” and that “We are literally sacrificing Manitobans for the economy and I think it’s really unconscionable to be okay with having people dying when it’s completely avoidable.”   Apparently it is okay with her conscience to sacrifice other people’s freedoms of association, assembly and religion, destroy their savings, livelihoods, and businesses, drive them to drink, drugs, and suicide, and sell their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and so on for centuries to come into slavery to replay a massive public debt, all in order to avoid the deaths of those so old, and so sick, that to describe their deaths as “completely avoidable” is an offense against the English language.

 

Several editorials that appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press and on the local CBC’s website over the weekend have been preaching the same message as these activists, as has the provincial Opposition leader Wab Kinew.   I would say to them that if all of you want to sacrifice all of your rights and freedoms, avoid all contact with other people, and lock yourselves away in your homes forever, go right ahead, if you erroneously think it will do any good.   Just leave everybody else out of it.

(1)   Belarus, which has also behaved sanely with regards to this over-hyped virus, is not considered part of the “free world”, although those who accuse its president, Alexander Lukashenko, of being a dictator, have no ground left on which to stand after their behaviour this year.