What Will it Take to Recover from Our Pandemic Response?

As much as people love to lament about all the misery the pandemic brought us, and how we were all at the mercy of the pandemic, I can rarely listen to that without taking the time to make the point that the vast majority of the misery we all had to endure was not actually from the pandemic, but from our government’s response to it. Very few of us were at the mercy of the pandemic, but we were all at the mercy of our own governments.

Now that most of us have begun to move on from that policy disaster, the refrain I keep hearing is something like, “But they were just following the best available evidence,” or, “They were doing the best they could in the fog of war,” or some other meaningless drivel. The fact of the matter is that there was plenty of information available to everyone (yes, even the government) that suggested that almost every single policy decision that was made in relation to the pandemic was either completely useless, or potentially damaging, or both.

From COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink by Ari R Joffe from February, 2021:

All of this, even though in October 2019 the WHO published that for any future Influenza pandemic: travel-related measures are “unlikely to be successful. . . are likely to have prohibitive economic consequences (page 2)”; “[measures] not recommended in any circumstances: contact tracing, quarantine of exposed individuals, border closure (page 3)”; social distancing measures (closures of workplace, avoiding crowding and closing public areas) “can be highly disruptive, and the cost of these measures must be weighed against their potential impact (page 4)”; and “border closures may be considered only by small island nations in severe pandemics. . . but must be weighed against potentially serious economic consequences (page 4)” (17).

Please take special note of the measures that are not recommended under any circumstances. The reason for the first two (contact tracing and quarantine), according to the WHO (page 13, 14) is “because there is no obvious rationale for it”. That pretty much sums up the majority of the measures that were implemented during that time.

So yes, they definitely knew (or should have known) that most of what they were doing was unhelpful (this is a very kind way of saying it) and yet they went ahead and did it anyway. On top of that, they worked overtime to convince us all that what they were doing was “following the science,” and many of us believed them. Those who didn’t believe them and said so were systematically shut up and reviled.

What our leaders were really doing was what most of us were doing - following the crowd. They were much more concerned about looking bad in comparison to their neighbors than they were about actually protecting their citizens. The pandemic plans were already in place in most countries after previous pandemics, and almost every country just threw them out the window when they saw what their neighbors were up to. And let’s not forget that the first country to implement these draconian non-pharmaceutical interventions was communist China.

Once again, our leaders forgot one of the most basic pieces of advice that any parent could impart to their child: Just because everyone else is doing it, that doesn’t mean that you should be.

Here’s another quote from that Ari Joffe paper regarding NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions):

The NPIs spread to ∼80% of OECD countries within a 2-week period in March 2020 (15). A main predictor of a country implementing NPIs was prior adoptions of a policy among spatially proximate countries, i.e., the number of earlier adopters in the same region (15). Variables not predicting adoption of NPIs included the number of cases or deaths, population >65 years old, or hospital beds per capita in the country (15). It seems we were all “stuck in this emotional elevation of COVID-19 deaths and suffering above everything else that could possibly matter” (16). There was the unquestioned assumption that “there were and are no alternatives to extreme measures implemented on entire populations with little consideration of cost and consequences [externalities] (page 477)” (10). Even now, how a country “performed” is measured by COVID-19 cases and deaths without denominators, without other causes of deaths considered, without considering overall population health trade-offs “that cannot be wished away” (e.g., the future of our children from lack of education and social interaction, and “changes to our wealth-generating capacity that has to pay for future policies”) (9), and without considering how sustainable current policies are [protection is temporary and leaves us susceptible; “there is no exit from the pandemic; there is only an exit from the response to it (page 479)” (10)].

Here’s the simplified version:

Main predictor of a country implementing NPIs:

1. Countries close to it did it first.

Variables not predicting adoption of NPIs:

1. Number of cases or deaths.

2. Population over 65 years of age.

3. Number of hospital beds in the country.

No wonder it was so hard for the average person to make any sense of what was going on. Decisions were not being made based on what was best for the people, but on what made the leaders look good on the world stage. Is it any wonder that most citizens also made decisions based on the exact same criteria? I guess this is what happens when you have a Tiktok influencer for a Prime Minister. This was very likely the worst policy disaster in the history of democracy, and yet we’re still not having a proper discussion about it.

It’s hard to say who did a worse job, but Canada has got to rank near the top. This is from the Statistics Canada website:

According to surveillance data produced by the Public Health Agency of Canada, COVID-19 caused over 15,600 deaths in the country in 2020, for a Crude COVID-19 Death Rate (CCDR) of 0.41 per thousand (Table 1). The average age of Canadians who died of COVID-19 in 2020 is 83.8 years. By comparison, the average age at death in Canada in 2019 was 76.5 years.

Really? We shut down the schools and the economy for this? We made people stay home, forbade them to go to family gatherings, or to see their dying parents in the hospital for this?

Before you start whining about how insensitive I am to old people, I’d just like to remind you that the way we did things didn’t help them much either. In fact, when the Great Barrington Declaration came out specifically advocating for targeted protection of the vulnerable, it was burned like heresy at the Spanish Inquisition.

While most people in Canada were living to the ripe old age of 76.5 years, the vast majority of those dying from Covid were already well into their 80s and 90s. A careless interpretation of the above data may lead one to conclude that contracting Covid-19 could actually help one live longer…

Canada’s pandemic response was nothing short of a trampling of human rights, and for no good reason. And don't forget, it's not just about deaths. This is the reason we need good leaders in charge, rather than just "good doctors". We're going to be dealing with the fallout from shutting down our schools the way we did for decades. Trust in government is at an all-time low - yes, even in the vaccine department, which itself will have future ramifications. The mental state of our youth is also in terrible disarray because of the actions of our government. And it's not just Canada, of course. It's most places.

From The Forgotten Demographic: Assessing the Possible Benefits and Serious Cost of COVID-19 School Closures on Canadian Children by Paige MacPherson and Kenneth P. Green:

A University of Calgary study found that emergency room visits due to suicide attempts by youth (under 18) increased by 22 percent during the pandemic. Alberta Children’s Hospital pediatric emergency physician Dr. Stephen Freedman told media that visits from kids for mental health reasons were extremely low pre-pandemic but dramatically increased as the pandemic wore on (Zapata, 2023). The Center for Suicide Prevention and Research at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (2023) in Ohio also found an overall increase in the youth suicide rate, but for the United States.

Looking at the numbers of Covid deaths over the last few years, one has to wonder if there really was a vaccine at all, or if it was just some cruel joke. The most charitable conclusion one could come to is that the vaccine is almost completely useless. That alone should be enough to make heads roll.

If you’re one those who will look at the above chart and say, “Hey, it obviously did some good - look at the last year!” then you’re part of the reason why there hasn’t been a serious reckoning yet. If it was simply rolled out as a flu shot, where everyone could take it or leave it, and you didn’t really expect it to do a lot anyway, that would be one thing. But it wasn’t that at all.

The following image is from Statista.com and is titled Number of select vaccine-preventable disease cases before and after the introduction of vaccinations in Canada as of 2015. This chart shows what we’ve come to expect from vaccines in general. The Covid vaccine isn’t on this chart of course, because that would likely undermine the whole purpose of this chart.

Here’s that chart again showing how the Covid vaccine impacted the death rate after December, 2020 from worldometers.info. This is the “vaccine” we were mandated to take, for fear of losing our jobs or being excluded from normal life in this country.

Regarding PCR tests and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), the National Citizens Inquiry Final Report stated that:

A pandemic should be characterized by a significant excess of sick and dead people, not unreliable RT-PCR positive cases. The definition was perverted by an unvalidated display of pandemic waves that instilled fear in people and compelled them to submit to never-before-accepted NPIs as a prelude to the vaccination campaign that was sold as a relief to the unsustainable harmful health measures.

So, in other words, the government instigated draconian measures inspired by communist China and by an irrational and manufactured fear, and then sold us the vaccines as a way to solve the problem they had purposely created. Oh yeah, and they also decided that if we didn’t accept their solution, we’d be basically shut out of normal life and maybe even without a means to provide for our families. If that sounds pretty fucked up to you, that’s only because it is. This reason alone should be more than enough for a huge public outcry. People should be demanding answers and accountability for this. Some definitely are, but not nearly enough yet, and so far, the media has done a wonderful job of painting all these “dissenters” as deniers, and far-right lunatics. The people in the Freedom Convoy saw this in early 2022 and though they may have shown their frustration in a way that was incompatible with many viewpoints, it in no way invalidates their message.

In closing, and to finally answer that question in the headline, I’ll leave you with a few words from the Executive Summary of the National Citizens Inquiry report that underscores that message, and which you can read in its entirety here if you really want to. This sentiment also informs most of what I write on this blog, and even if you disagree with what I write, at least I’m able to write it and you’re still able to read it. That’s the point.

The only way out of this conundrum is through our constitutionally protected freedom of speech, wherein widely held beliefs, thoughts, and opinions are respected, and likewise, conversations, debates, and dissenting voices are heard. This should be particularly true in the scientific and medical professions.

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