This is one story that would have even Kafka shaking his head in disbelief: A woman who died because she refused to wear a mask..The details are well known by now, so there is no point in repeating them here. But what is clear is that a medically compromised woman waiting for treatment in an emergency room ended up dead after a struggle with security staff who were physically insisting she wear a face mask..This article is not an attack on those security guards. In fact, one has to have some sympathy for them, given the role they were forced to play — handed instructions to force anyone who refused to wear a mask to do so. The point of this article is to highlight the sheer insanity of a system willing to risk the life of a person for the sake of forcing her to wear a piece of cloth on her face — Canada’s Kafkaesque pandemic regime.. Danielle Stephanie WarrinerDanielle Stephanie Warriner, who died after she'd been restrained by guards in a Toronto hospital. .Let me set the scene: A typical crowded emergency room in any of Canada’s hundreds of beleaguered hospitals — more like war zones than places of treatment. (Canada’s entire medical system operates at a level typical of a much poorer country.) Inside that emergency room can be found people crowded together, hacking and sneezing, while they wait for hours to see a doctor. In many cases people sit one foot away from dangerously sick people. In some cases, people are so ill they lie sprawled on the floor, or vomiting into buckets. Some Canadians have actually died while waiting unconscionably long hours to get treatment..And so what do those in charge of these hellholes do to alleviate the suffering of those forced to wait? Do they make use of a larger waiting area that would at least allow people to keep some distance between themselves and the desperately sick person one foot away from them? Do they call in extra staff to cut down on the obscene waiting times patients must endure? Do they find private places and beds for the sickest of those waiting in that scene from Dante’s Inferno?. Franz KafkaThe Austro-Hungarian author Franz Kafka (1883-1924) based his reputation on writings that described the powerlessness and alienation of ordinary people, who like Stephanie Warriner, often experienced perverse outcomes in the hands of powerful bureaucracies. .They do none of those things. Instead, they give instructions to modestly paid security staff to wrestle masks onto the noncompliant — apparently at any cost..A lawsuit is pending. More details will emerge. The woman who died didn’t deserve this sad and bizarre fate..Perhaps this case might cause the people who built this entire mad lockdown system to reflect on what they've wrought. We now live in a country where people have been criminally prosecuted for allowing their children to play in a playground, go to church, or even attend the funeral of a loved one, because doing so contravened some artificially contrived and anti-science order invented by some faceless bureaucrat..We live in a country where people were not allowed to travel by airplane or train, even if a family member urgently needed them — for the purely political purposes of the ruling nabob..We live in a country where people lost their jobs, had bank accounts seized, and were jailed, simply because they refused to acquiesce in what they knew was pure government overreach..And the unfortunate woman who refused to wear a mask no longer lives in this country at all..Brian Giesbrecht is a retired Manitoba Provincial Court Judge.
This is one story that would have even Kafka shaking his head in disbelief: A woman who died because she refused to wear a mask..The details are well known by now, so there is no point in repeating them here. But what is clear is that a medically compromised woman waiting for treatment in an emergency room ended up dead after a struggle with security staff who were physically insisting she wear a face mask..This article is not an attack on those security guards. In fact, one has to have some sympathy for them, given the role they were forced to play — handed instructions to force anyone who refused to wear a mask to do so. The point of this article is to highlight the sheer insanity of a system willing to risk the life of a person for the sake of forcing her to wear a piece of cloth on her face — Canada’s Kafkaesque pandemic regime.. Danielle Stephanie WarrinerDanielle Stephanie Warriner, who died after she'd been restrained by guards in a Toronto hospital. .Let me set the scene: A typical crowded emergency room in any of Canada’s hundreds of beleaguered hospitals — more like war zones than places of treatment. (Canada’s entire medical system operates at a level typical of a much poorer country.) Inside that emergency room can be found people crowded together, hacking and sneezing, while they wait for hours to see a doctor. In many cases people sit one foot away from dangerously sick people. In some cases, people are so ill they lie sprawled on the floor, or vomiting into buckets. Some Canadians have actually died while waiting unconscionably long hours to get treatment..And so what do those in charge of these hellholes do to alleviate the suffering of those forced to wait? Do they make use of a larger waiting area that would at least allow people to keep some distance between themselves and the desperately sick person one foot away from them? Do they call in extra staff to cut down on the obscene waiting times patients must endure? Do they find private places and beds for the sickest of those waiting in that scene from Dante’s Inferno?. Franz KafkaThe Austro-Hungarian author Franz Kafka (1883-1924) based his reputation on writings that described the powerlessness and alienation of ordinary people, who like Stephanie Warriner, often experienced perverse outcomes in the hands of powerful bureaucracies. .They do none of those things. Instead, they give instructions to modestly paid security staff to wrestle masks onto the noncompliant — apparently at any cost..A lawsuit is pending. More details will emerge. The woman who died didn’t deserve this sad and bizarre fate..Perhaps this case might cause the people who built this entire mad lockdown system to reflect on what they've wrought. We now live in a country where people have been criminally prosecuted for allowing their children to play in a playground, go to church, or even attend the funeral of a loved one, because doing so contravened some artificially contrived and anti-science order invented by some faceless bureaucrat..We live in a country where people were not allowed to travel by airplane or train, even if a family member urgently needed them — for the purely political purposes of the ruling nabob..We live in a country where people lost their jobs, had bank accounts seized, and were jailed, simply because they refused to acquiesce in what they knew was pure government overreach..And the unfortunate woman who refused to wear a mask no longer lives in this country at all..Brian Giesbrecht is a retired Manitoba Provincial Court Judge.
