Cracks in the COVID edifice are starting to appear. Small they are and it will take years — if ever — before the medical/government establishment admits to any error whatsoever, in its response to the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.However, Canadians who suspect that the medical evidence was not always as scientifically certain as they were assured at the time, may take some encouragement from a few recent developments.Here’s a quick summary from the last few weeks.First, in BC this week the provincial Supreme Court determined that while Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry had acted properly when she mandated that health workers be vaccinated against COVID, she needn’t have bothered for people who never came into contact with patients. That seemed obvious at the time, but people who said so got nowhere. Today, they enjoy some small vindication.Similarly, the arbitrator in a suit brought against Canada Post by the union representing unvaccinated remote workers has ruled that it was unreasonable to require “exclusively remote” workers who had “no reasonable prospect” of having to go into work at the office to take an mRNA vaccine. It was a win for 37 remote workers, who had been suspended without pay for either refusing vaccination, or for refusing to confirm their vaccination status. Again, it seemed obvious at the time that whatever the merits of accepting a substance that had been hastily redefined as a vaccine by the Centers for Disease Control, if the individual concerned had no contact with others, it really should have been up to them. .One is reminded that while the Freedom Convoy had deep roots, the trigger was a federal requirement that truck drivers — surely among the least collegial professions out there — should nevertheless get vaccinated if they wished to cross the border.It seemed obvious at the time, etc…This genie is out of the bottle, then. Expect more suits brought by groups of workers for whom it will be argued that the requirement for ‘vaccination’ served no medically useful purpose.It should be remembered that three years ago, the certainties guiding health professionals such as Dr. Henry and Canada Post’s human resources department were supported by the governing bodies of provincial medical associations. .Indeed, they still are: an Ontario court has just ruled against Dr. Kulvinder Gill, whose views on Ontario’s COVID response — especially the reality of lockdown harms — were at odds with the ‘official’ narrative of the provincial medical disciplinary body, the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons.Dr. Gill had argued that her free speech rights were infringed, and produced evidence detailing the truth of lockdown harms. Here’s the nub of the ruling against her: “When the College chose to draw the line at those tweets which it found contained misinformation, it did so in a way which reasonably balanced Dr. Gill’s free speech rights with her professional responsibilities.”As for her two factums, the Court declined to review them, saying it lacked the expertise to consider them and would therefore rely upon the experts speaking for the College. In other words, ‘if your college says you’re wrong, you’re the one who must be wrong, so they were right to sanction you.’This effectively put her at the mercy of her accusers to determine her guilt. Backed as she is by Elon Musk, Dr. Gill seeks leave to appeal. I wish her luck.However, for the establishment to proceed indefinitely with that kind of certainty, requires its narratives to survive scrutiny.But they're starting to crumble at the edges.Take, for example, the universal assurance that vaccines were both effective and safe.Effective? Don’t we all just know somebody who got vaccinated and then came down with COVID?Then it was, ‘Well yes, pity about that, but at least you won’t get it so badly.’ So, semi-effective? Somewhat effective? Not fully effective, anyway.But safe, right? They were safe, weren’t they?Maybe not for everybody. Vaccine injury is a real thing and Ottawa initially set aside $75 million to compensate victims. At the end of last month, it topped it up with a further $36 million. Health Canada discloses its own estimate of adverse outcomes from vaccination, here.Furthermore, it does not help public confidence in the unqualified safety of all vaccines to learn that the vaccine manufacturers themselves have in the last few weeks made some surprising admissions.Watchful readers will have noticed that last month a senior Health Canada official confirmed that Pfizer had not fully informed it of the contents of its vaccine, some of which is said to be an “emerging human pathogen” that “induces cancer.” To me, that would have seemed worth mentioning.A week later Astra-Zeneca admitted in court documents that its vaccine had a rare but dangerous side effect and later announced that it was withdrawing its product worldwide.While I would caution readers who may have received either of these products not to panic — if there is harm, it has yet to be determined how much, or if any — it shakes public confidence to learn that these ‘perfectly safe’ substances may be only imperfectly safe and that a government agency was less than fully informed about what it was approving.We may learn more, soon: Calgary lawyer Jeff Rath has filed a class action lawsuit against the Alberta and federal governments on behalf of Albertans harmed by COVID-19 vaccines. As my friend and colleague Jonathan Bradley writes, “This lawsuit is centred around allegations of illegal practices by the named governments when it came to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.”Here’s the thing. At least we can now talk about it.Readers should be aware that had a well-sourced (and courageous) journalist presented as news two years ago what Health Canada and pharmaceutical companies now grudgingly concede, it is unlikely that it would have made it through any mainstream media City Desk.But, had it been published, it would have been hotly denied by health authorities, the federal government and the interested parties.It would have then done the rounds of pink-haired, Generation Z ‘debunkers’ equipped with talking points and endless moral certainty, who would have assured us it was all ‘disinformation.’ (Seriously, if you see something has been ‘debunked,’ be as sceptical of the debunkers as you would of Russian trolls.)And when it came to the attention of Facebook, it would have probably got the hosting publication kicked off for a while, if not forever. Facebook claims that it followed whatever public health guidance was in force where the user lived. (So the rules could also be unevenly applied.)And yet here we are now, with candid — if limited — admissions being made, and courts conceding what so many of us said at the time, that some people given a little power, went overboard with it.Truth will out.My bet is that in the coming months, the official narrative will see more and more scrutiny.Let us remember that in BC, ‘the science’ dictated that churches must be closed but restaurants could remain open. In Alberta the same science, in pursuit of the same COVID bug, necessitated restaurants be closed, but churches might remain open.Same disease, two different conclusions, but both offered with impregnable certainty.I like to assume everybody meant well. But I do believe Canadians were for three years in the hands of people who were more confident of everything, than any of them should have been of anything.So what they said, went — and honest, decent and principled people got bullied.We shall learn much more in the months to come. Meanwhile, the biggest thing we need to take on board is that we must insist to governments they they are not gods. Citizens have agency. They are not cogs in a machine. And they are not the property of the state. Their preferences, their wills, their liberties… all of these are worthy of respect and the state must know its place.
