Around the middle of the last century Marx — Groucho, not Karl — declined to join the Friars Club in Hollywood. His classic line: I refuse to join a club that accepts people like me as members. Two recent appointments to the Order of Canada, Theresa Tam and Bonnie Henry, extend the appropriateness of Marx’s remark to the Order of Canada.Let us start at the top, with the motto of the Order: Desiderantes Meliorem Patriam, 'They desire a better fatherland (or country.)' It originally appeared in St. Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews, Ch. 11:16..As a whole, Chapter 11 contains Paul’s profound discussion of faith as the substance of things hoped for and proof of things not seen (11:1.) Political scientists have long understood that this formal definition applied equally to the content of Marx’s faith as to Christian faith....The question, therefore, may be asked: what is the vision of a better country that Tam and Henry shared, such that the selection committee of the Order decided they were worthy recipients? Fortunately, both persons, owing to their prominence as medical officers of health of Canada and of British Columbia during the COVID-19 event, have left us plenty of remarks from which their vision of a “better country” could be constructed. See if their visions accord with yours.The main feature of their improved country is that it is ruled by experts — such as themselves — and not by unworthy and elected politicians without the proper knowledge to “keep us safe.” For these two, and numerous others in the healthcare bureaucracy, including the denizens of university medical schools, this was self-evident, never in need of justification, and so never to be questioned..In our book, Canada’s COVID, Marco Navarro-Génie and I did raise a few questions that suggest that power rather than science drove the words and deeds of Tam and Henry — not that power and science are ever fully distinct. That’s why we borrowed the term “power-knowledge” from Michel Foucault to describe what these and other health bureaucrats did during the pandemic moral panic that constitutes the political significance of COVID.We’ll start with Tam.From early 2020 she acted as a mouthpiece for China, as did her pal who ran the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. On January 7, 2020, just as the Wuhan source of the infection and the interpersonal means of its spread were becoming public, she said: “There has been no evidence to date that this illness, whatever it’s caused by, is spread easily from person to person; no health care workers caring for patients have become ill; a positive sign.”These remarks echoed the public statements of Tedros at the World Health Organization and those of the People's Republic of China. In reality, however, by the second week of December 2019, person-to-person transmission was considered by Chinese doctors (not part of the PRC apparatus) to be the likely vector of disease transmission. One of the Chinese docs, Li Wenliang, publicized this information. Next day the Wuhan Public Security Bureau arrested him.By early January the New York Times was regularly reporting on person-to-person transmission in Wuhan. The Wuhan City Health Commission denied it and Tam repeated their lies. Why?.At a January 29, 2020, press conference Tam equated criticism of the PRC — or even mention of the name of the country of origin of COVID — with racism. When asked for details and instances of racism, she could provide no examples. This is hardly surprising since many of the critics of the Chinese authorities were members of Chinese-Canadian communities in Vancouver and Toronto. Moreover, she was utterly oblivious of the fact that comments about racism had nothing to do with her alleged epidemiological expertise. She was following PRC political strategy: criticism of China is racist.She told members of the public on March 30 not to mask up because healthcare workers had first call on masks and because it provided a false sense of security. A week later, April 7, she changed her mind: “wearing a non-medical mask, even if you have no symptoms, [is] an additional measure you can take to protect others around you in situations where physical distancing is difficult.” And also, because “asymptomatic transmission,” which was “rare and very unlikely,” might be prevented. Tam never discussed what or who asymptomatic carriers might be, no doubt for the commonsensical reason that it would point to obvious ambiguities in the variable robustness of individual immune systems. Experts do not tolerate ambiguity, though reality does..Worse, there was extensive experimental evidence going back over a decade that most masks were useless, about as helpful as a chain-link fence in keeping mosquitoes out of the back yard, as one medical scientist said. The problem with such conflicting scientific findings, as Tam and her colleagues well knew, is that it gets people thinking, which detracts from obedience.Sometimes Tam’s changing views on masking were comical. If couples were to indulge in sexual activity, they should do so masked. If kissing your partner through a couple of layers of cloth and paper doesn’t sound all that romantic, Tam had a solution: you should think about sexual enjoyment as a solitary activity. This was quite irresponsible: she said nothing about the dangers of going blind..Now consider Bonnie Henty’s vision. A few months into the event she wrote a book with her sister, Lynn, who performed the role of cheerleader, about her experience of the first four months. The first sentence evoked the importance of fear, a theme that continued till the end of the book. Politically speaking, fear is helpful in securing obedience since the fearful typically look to the government to provide protection. Henry eventually saw herself as protectress-in-chief.Initially, Henry’s remarks were sensible and moderate though. Despite showing great confidence in the Chinese data and the false Chinese narrative, in April she cautioned against mass testing as a way of monitoring the spread of the disease owing to “up to 30%” of false negative results. As late as the fall of 2020 she was sensible enough not to mandate public masking for school children heading back to the classroom.But other events were changing Henry’s profile. As the spring and summer of 2020 wore on, she increasingly became the face of the B.C. government’s response to COVID and the source of advice on how to “stay safe” and so keep fear at bay. Her popularity and the pusillanimity of B.C. politicians led to mission creep for her department. She came to enjoy the intoxicating elixir of power. As Henry said, “I had a mandate and the legal authority to speak directly to the public about issues related to health.”Her remarks did not reflect on the limitations of the law but on how her expertise gave her the direct authority to proclaim health measures at will. She rejoiced in her status as one who could take “decisive action.” This translated into “broad population measures,” which is to say a comprehensive (and damaging) lockdown of schools, businesses, and churches. She even wanted to stop British Columbians from travelling and complained that the authority to close the border was a federal responsibility. “I knew these measures were only the beginning…. I knew in my heart we were on the necessary path.” How did she know all this stuff? She never said. She just did..At the core of her so-called mandate was what she called “messaging.” With the right message, she said, “we could channel … frustration and anger” into “productive action.” To this end she recruited a “fabulous team” to nudge and shape public perceptions in line with her “mantra,” chanted at every well-orchestrated press conference: “be kind, be calm, be safe.”The implicit message: trust us. A second, later, mantra illuminated the first: “It’s not forever, but it is for now.” That’s all it has to be. Trust us for now, today; trust us for now, tomorrow; trust us now and forever, amen. No wonder a survey conducted by the B.C. division of the Canadian Mental Health Association showed most persons in that province “were concerned that COVID-19 would never end.”.These two and many others in their positions presided over the first global quarantine of healthy individuals in human history. That was their view of a “better country.” Is it yours? Is that a club you would like to join?If normal Canadians rather than the deep state appointees to the selection committee of the Order of Canada were consulted, who might be considered suitable recipients of a genuine honour? Who, that is, truly strove to make a better country in response to the moral panic induced by the government response to COVID-19 event?For my money, I’d nominate Tamara Lich and Chris Barber of the truckers’ convoy, not the two bureaucrats who got the nod.
Around the middle of the last century Marx — Groucho, not Karl — declined to join the Friars Club in Hollywood. His classic line: I refuse to join a club that accepts people like me as members. Two recent appointments to the Order of Canada, Theresa Tam and Bonnie Henry, extend the appropriateness of Marx’s remark to the Order of Canada.Let us start at the top, with the motto of the Order: Desiderantes Meliorem Patriam, 'They desire a better fatherland (or country.)' It originally appeared in St. Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews, Ch. 11:16..As a whole, Chapter 11 contains Paul’s profound discussion of faith as the substance of things hoped for and proof of things not seen (11:1.) Political scientists have long understood that this formal definition applied equally to the content of Marx’s faith as to Christian faith....The question, therefore, may be asked: what is the vision of a better country that Tam and Henry shared, such that the selection committee of the Order decided they were worthy recipients? Fortunately, both persons, owing to their prominence as medical officers of health of Canada and of British Columbia during the COVID-19 event, have left us plenty of remarks from which their vision of a “better country” could be constructed. See if their visions accord with yours.The main feature of their improved country is that it is ruled by experts — such as themselves — and not by unworthy and elected politicians without the proper knowledge to “keep us safe.” For these two, and numerous others in the healthcare bureaucracy, including the denizens of university medical schools, this was self-evident, never in need of justification, and so never to be questioned..In our book, Canada’s COVID, Marco Navarro-Génie and I did raise a few questions that suggest that power rather than science drove the words and deeds of Tam and Henry — not that power and science are ever fully distinct. That’s why we borrowed the term “power-knowledge” from Michel Foucault to describe what these and other health bureaucrats did during the pandemic moral panic that constitutes the political significance of COVID.We’ll start with Tam.From early 2020 she acted as a mouthpiece for China, as did her pal who ran the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. On January 7, 2020, just as the Wuhan source of the infection and the interpersonal means of its spread were becoming public, she said: “There has been no evidence to date that this illness, whatever it’s caused by, is spread easily from person to person; no health care workers caring for patients have become ill; a positive sign.”These remarks echoed the public statements of Tedros at the World Health Organization and those of the People's Republic of China. In reality, however, by the second week of December 2019, person-to-person transmission was considered by Chinese doctors (not part of the PRC apparatus) to be the likely vector of disease transmission. One of the Chinese docs, Li Wenliang, publicized this information. Next day the Wuhan Public Security Bureau arrested him.By early January the New York Times was regularly reporting on person-to-person transmission in Wuhan. The Wuhan City Health Commission denied it and Tam repeated their lies. Why?.At a January 29, 2020, press conference Tam equated criticism of the PRC — or even mention of the name of the country of origin of COVID — with racism. When asked for details and instances of racism, she could provide no examples. This is hardly surprising since many of the critics of the Chinese authorities were members of Chinese-Canadian communities in Vancouver and Toronto. Moreover, she was utterly oblivious of the fact that comments about racism had nothing to do with her alleged epidemiological expertise. She was following PRC political strategy: criticism of China is racist.She told members of the public on March 30 not to mask up because healthcare workers had first call on masks and because it provided a false sense of security. A week later, April 7, she changed her mind: “wearing a non-medical mask, even if you have no symptoms, [is] an additional measure you can take to protect others around you in situations where physical distancing is difficult.” And also, because “asymptomatic transmission,” which was “rare and very unlikely,” might be prevented. Tam never discussed what or who asymptomatic carriers might be, no doubt for the commonsensical reason that it would point to obvious ambiguities in the variable robustness of individual immune systems. Experts do not tolerate ambiguity, though reality does..Worse, there was extensive experimental evidence going back over a decade that most masks were useless, about as helpful as a chain-link fence in keeping mosquitoes out of the back yard, as one medical scientist said. The problem with such conflicting scientific findings, as Tam and her colleagues well knew, is that it gets people thinking, which detracts from obedience.Sometimes Tam’s changing views on masking were comical. If couples were to indulge in sexual activity, they should do so masked. If kissing your partner through a couple of layers of cloth and paper doesn’t sound all that romantic, Tam had a solution: you should think about sexual enjoyment as a solitary activity. This was quite irresponsible: she said nothing about the dangers of going blind..Now consider Bonnie Henty’s vision. A few months into the event she wrote a book with her sister, Lynn, who performed the role of cheerleader, about her experience of the first four months. The first sentence evoked the importance of fear, a theme that continued till the end of the book. Politically speaking, fear is helpful in securing obedience since the fearful typically look to the government to provide protection. Henry eventually saw herself as protectress-in-chief.Initially, Henry’s remarks were sensible and moderate though. Despite showing great confidence in the Chinese data and the false Chinese narrative, in April she cautioned against mass testing as a way of monitoring the spread of the disease owing to “up to 30%” of false negative results. As late as the fall of 2020 she was sensible enough not to mandate public masking for school children heading back to the classroom.But other events were changing Henry’s profile. As the spring and summer of 2020 wore on, she increasingly became the face of the B.C. government’s response to COVID and the source of advice on how to “stay safe” and so keep fear at bay. Her popularity and the pusillanimity of B.C. politicians led to mission creep for her department. She came to enjoy the intoxicating elixir of power. As Henry said, “I had a mandate and the legal authority to speak directly to the public about issues related to health.”Her remarks did not reflect on the limitations of the law but on how her expertise gave her the direct authority to proclaim health measures at will. She rejoiced in her status as one who could take “decisive action.” This translated into “broad population measures,” which is to say a comprehensive (and damaging) lockdown of schools, businesses, and churches. She even wanted to stop British Columbians from travelling and complained that the authority to close the border was a federal responsibility. “I knew these measures were only the beginning…. I knew in my heart we were on the necessary path.” How did she know all this stuff? She never said. She just did..At the core of her so-called mandate was what she called “messaging.” With the right message, she said, “we could channel … frustration and anger” into “productive action.” To this end she recruited a “fabulous team” to nudge and shape public perceptions in line with her “mantra,” chanted at every well-orchestrated press conference: “be kind, be calm, be safe.”The implicit message: trust us. A second, later, mantra illuminated the first: “It’s not forever, but it is for now.” That’s all it has to be. Trust us for now, today; trust us for now, tomorrow; trust us now and forever, amen. No wonder a survey conducted by the B.C. division of the Canadian Mental Health Association showed most persons in that province “were concerned that COVID-19 would never end.”.These two and many others in their positions presided over the first global quarantine of healthy individuals in human history. That was their view of a “better country.” Is it yours? Is that a club you would like to join?If normal Canadians rather than the deep state appointees to the selection committee of the Order of Canada were consulted, who might be considered suitable recipients of a genuine honour? Who, that is, truly strove to make a better country in response to the moral panic induced by the government response to COVID-19 event?For my money, I’d nominate Tamara Lich and Chris Barber of the truckers’ convoy, not the two bureaucrats who got the nod.
