Unprecedented Distrust and Suspicion is the Real New Normal Since the Covid Pandemic

How government intervention exacerbated an already fractured social fabric and cemented distrust of our most important institutions.

Of all the damage endured from our pandemic response - from the destruction of businesses and livelihoods, to the disruption of our kids’ learning, to the physical and mental harms inflicted on society by draconian lockdown measures - possibly the most damaging thing that has come to pass is the legitimization of distrust and division in our already fractured and polarized society by the very government officials that were supposed to safeguard our country’s unity.

Barely a day goes by when I don’t see an online comment or overhear a casual conversation denouncing the deniers and conspiracy theorists in our midst who continue to persist in their intolerable ignorance regarding The Science™ and the wisdom of government proclamation. Nevermind that most of the “conspiracies” that were condemned during this period have been largely vindicated as truth, or at the very least as plausible and legitimate theories. It seems that there are many in society who are still unwilling to acknowledge this legitimacy and continue to revel in this mocking and besmirching that was one of the hallmarks of our pandemic experience.

A case in point was this meme I saw the other day that was posted by a personal acquaintance of mine, someone whom I’ve known since high school and who has consistently been on the other side of pretty much every opinion I hold regarding our pandemic response. He’s a well-educated individual and his general attitude in regard to those who questioned our government’s response is represented admirably by this meme.

I realize I should really just scroll on by when I see stuff like this, but dammit, I guess I just haven’t yet reached that level of maturity. Anyway, I posted the following as a response:

Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Like, how did those idiot conspiracy theorists know so early on that the virus came from a Chinese lab, homemade cloth masks and the six-foot rule were crap, lockdowns and school closings were useless, kids didn't need the vaccines, and getting everyone vaccinated still wouldn't stop people from spreading it? And all this without a PhD in sight.
It's a crazy world, man. So hard to understand...

Like clockwork, and within minutes someone else responded to my comment with this zinger:

Ken, I think you've just proved the point.

I almost injured myself with the guffaws that ensued. I’m not sure what level of education this other commenter is in possession of, but I still could hardly believe that anyone could be this ignorant of basic developments. I felt compelled to put together a montage for this person’s benefit, but first I also felt I needed to ask her precisely which point it was that she felt I was proving and if perchance it was any of these:

It took me about two minutes to find these headlines and I’m sure I could’ve even found a couple from the CBC if I’d have spent two minutes more (people like this don’t often accept news from any source other than CBC) but I just didn’t feel like taking the time.

Don’t think for even a moment that the extreme irony of this moment was lost on me. Go back and read that meme again with the knowledge of just how uninformed and willfully blind the people who say stuff like this are.

You know what else is a “cheat code for ignorant people”? Believing the first thing that is trumpeted from halls of authority and dutifully repeated by every major news outlet in the country without even asking a single question about it. It seems it was pretty easy for people like this to simply “write off as bullshit” every opinion that ran counter to the early established narrative that we were supposed to believe. So yeah, there are many things about this meme that are true. It obviously is much easier to write off contrary opinions as bullshit rather than “do the work” and find out if there’s any merit to them. It takes “effort and dedication”. In the case of what seemed like the vocal majority, those guys didn’t have to “convince themselves” that we were all lying, they let the government and the media do that for them and then took the credit because it “satisfied their ego”. I’m still waiting for even one of them to “admit that [they] just aren’t all that intelligent and [they] don’t understand.”

The hubris and paternalistic overtones from this crowd are mind-numbing.

It’s not only general distrust among the general populace that we now face, but thanks to disingenuous government messaging (aka misinformation and propaganda), shoddy and biased reporting from our legacy media outlets, and questionable information from Public Health, those institutions have never been as devoid of public trust as they currently are. We have no one to thank for this but our own government, who to this day insists that trampling Canadians’ civil rights was perfectly acceptable and necessary.

Speaking of trampling Canadians’ civil rights, one very welcome development was the Federal Court’s recent decision that the invocation of the Emergencies Act to disperse an Ottawa street party was completely uncalled for, and was in fact unconstitutional as well. This gives me hope for similar rulings regarding the covid-era rights abuses.

What we as Canadians are now left to contend with is an even more fractured social fabric where distrust and suspicion is the new normal. Not only did Public Health policy and irresponsible reporting undermine public trust in these essential institutions, it also turned citizens against one another, literally encouraging people to rat out their neighbors for breaking “social distancing” rules.

Consider this classic piece of advice from Mayor Alex Bottausci, of Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Quebec:

If it's just some people walking through the park, that's perfectly fine with us. But if people are congregating and they're having fun and they're having a party, well, that's a little bit of a different story.

Indeed. Wouldn’t want people actually having fun and getting away with it. Remember - none of these rules had any basis in actual science, and all were rejected out of hand (in Canada and most other nations) after the SARS pandemic of 2003 for the exact reasons I’ve opined here. The Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan for the Health Sector released is 2006 states very plainly that restricting public gatherings is “not recommended for broad implementation.”

So really, the biggest reason we were doing any of these things was optics.

These actions should never be forgotten and the instigators need to be held to account. The reparations will take much more than just a new government, but that will be a good start.

What Canadians need now more than anything else (yes, even more than saving the world from Climate Change™) is a push to emphasize our unity and our commonalities, rather than our differences, the latter of which has been the priority of the Trudeau government for the last eight years. This needs to come from our elected officials and we need to make sure that these abuses never happen again here.

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