Canada’s largest city saw what appeared to be its largest protest against municipal and provincial lockdown restrictions yet. On a day where temperatures were above the seasonal average, a crowd that seemed to be in the thousands gathered on the lawns of Ontario’s legislature, Queen’s Park, just as they had nearly a year earlier.
Protesters started to fill the area shortly before noon, with police taking a mostly hands-off approach to the crowd, unlike previous weeks.
It has been over a year now since COVID-19 began to wreak havoc on our society.
Remember, we were originally told to stay home for 14 days to “flatten the curve.”
The curve described the number of critical care patients in our hospital system, which we were told was at risk of being overrun because of COVID-19. Our under-funded government-managed system simply couldn’t handle the predicted worst case scenario influx, and so, we all stayed inside for the “greater good.”
Well, those two weeks have turned into 52 weeks and counting and, in that time, we’ve witnessed a remarkable transformation of our society.
As a general rule, the next time an official, a politician, or an expert lectures us on the “science,” make sure that he is not projecting his own unscientific biases onto others.
Throughout the Trump years and in particular during the 2020 COVID pandemic crisis, the nation was lectured by the Left “to follow the data,” as the Democrats proclaimed themselves the “party of science.” As sober and judicious children of the enlightenment, they alone offered the necessary disinterested correctives to Trump’s supposed bluster and exaggeration—and to his anti-scientific deplorable following often dismissed by Biden as dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals.
The Liberal government’s failure to procure enough COVID-19 vaccines is hurting the economy, which is why many provinces have opted to delay the second dose in order to get as many people partially vaccinated as possible in short order. But a new study out of the United Kingdom suggests this strategy could be putting lives at risk.
Pfizer and Moderna recommend that their two doses be given around 21 days apart, but Health Canada and the National Advisory Council on Immunization have agreed to stretch it out to 105 days, solely because of Ottawa’s procurement bungling.
Now that the 2020 figures have been properly tallied, there’s still no convincing evidence that strict lockdowns reduced the death toll from Covid-19. But one effect is clear: more deaths from other causes, especially among the young and middle-aged, minorities, and the less affluent.
Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that the six-foot social distancing mandate that was employed across much of the United States and the world to deal with the CCP virus pandemic “wasn’t based on clear science.”
“This six-foot distancing requirement has probably been the single costliest mitigation tactic that we’ve employed in response to COVID … and it really wasn’t based on clear science. … We should have re-adjudicated this much earlier,” he said in an interview with CNBC.
"This six-foot distancing requirement has probably been the single costliest mitigation tactic that we've employed in response to COVID," says @scottgottliebmd. pic.twitter.com/M5tmgj3kTY
— CNBC's Closing Bell (@CNBCClosingBell) March 19, 2021
It has been over a year now since COVID-19 began to wreak havoc on our society.
Remember, we were originally told to stay home for 14 days to “flatten the curve.”
TORONTO — At least a hundred underground barbershops have opened since storefront salons were ordered closed under a public health order, salon owners say, questioning whether continuing to keep their businesses closed is any safer for the public than the unregulated operations that appear to be replacing them.
Not at all surprised. I drove out of the city to get a cut on Saturday because my regular barber has been forced to close.
Ontario is reporting 1,699 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 31,100 tests completed. Locally, there are 500 new cases in Toronto, 318 in Peel 155 in York Region and 114 in Hamilton.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 1,553,040 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) March 22, 2021
AstraZeneca vaccine trials in U.S. confirm shot is safe, highly effective
AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine provided strong protection against sickness and eliminated hospitalizations and deaths from the disease across all age groups in a late-stage study in the United States, the company announced Monday.
AstraZeneca said its experts did not identify any safety concerns related to the vaccine, including finding no increased risk of rare blood clots identified in Europe.
…
But… European trust in AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine plummets after blood clot reports
Confidence in the safety of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine has taken a big hit in Spain, Germany, France and Italy as reports of rare blood clots have been linked to it and many countries briefly stopped using it, poll data showed on Monday.
The polling firm YouGov said it had already found in late February that Europeans were more hesitant about the AstraZeneca vaccine than about those from Pfizer Inc /BioNTech and Moderna Inc, and that the clot concerns had further damaged public perceptions of the AstraZeneca shot’s safety.
Locked Down: Canada’s Failed COVID-19 Response features Dr. Shawn Whatley (Senior Fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute), John Carpay (President, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms), Anthony Furey (Editor and Columnist, Toronto Sun) and Candice Malcolm (Founder, True North.)
More than 600 Amazon workers at one warehouse alone have contracted COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. But the online retail giant has registered fewer than five cases at the provincial workers’ compensation board, the Star has learned.
Last week, Peel Public Health ordered the company to close all shifts after concerns that cases within its Brampton Heritage Road facility were “increasing significantly,” even as community cases dropped.
But despite hundreds of workers testing positive, the company has registered almost no claims at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board as of this past week.
Ontario employers are required to report COVID cases to the WSIB, which then decides if they are work-related. If the workplace contributed “significantly” to a worker contracting the virus, they would be eligible for financial support or health-care benefits.
A couple of weeks ago, Cardinal Thomas Collins — the influential Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto — called on the Ontario government to revise its capacity rules for places of worship.
“This makes no sense,” Cardinal Collins wrote, in reference to the rules governing Toronto and Peel Region that capped attendance at 10 persons regardless of the size of the facility. He pointed out how the 10-person limit applies to his own St. Michael’s Cathedral despite the fact the grand facility can hold 1,500 persons, and yet nearby liquor stores are much smaller but can welcome more than 10 customers.
Lockdowns are a limited means of defense. They can slow but not eliminate covid spread. That’s great if you need to shore up old age homes. Used as a bludgeon they do far more harm than good. The economic and mental health devastation will far outweigh any benefit.
A bar in Finland hiring hundreds of customers as employees, allowing them to eat and drink at the bar as staff, has not yet been found in violation of lockdown rules.
For months now, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has blamed everyone for Canada’s trickle of COVID-19 vaccines but himself.
Trudeau and his ministers have gone so far as to blame former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney — who was prime minister from 1984 to 1993 — for the privatization, or “the selling off“, of Connaught Laboratories. What he fails to mention is that Connaught Labs didn’t go anywhere. It’s now part of Sanofi Pasteur, the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines. The Connaught Campus in Toronto accounts for one-fifth of the company’s global vaccine sales.
At least 33 people have been arrested for ‘breaching Covid regulations’ amid scuffles with riot police after thousands marched through central London in defiance of national lockdown and restrictions.
Bottles still being throw at the police by protesters, police in riot gear in Hyde Park clashing with protesters from the unite freedom london March ….. pic.twitter.com/SUCp3QC0v2
— Paul Brown 🇬🇧 Browns fan🏈 London News 🎥Vlogger (@PaulBrown_UK) March 20, 2021
