HANNAFORD: The Brits are looking for the COVID truth, so should Canada

Great Britain is holding an independent inquiry to “examine the UK’s response to and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and learn lessons for the future.”It is an idea whose time has come.Unfortunately, it has yet to come to Canada.That is a pity. Much as we all want to move on from COVID-19, we owe it to ourselves to know what just happened here in the old dominion.Let’s not forget that for more than two years we had a miserable time. There were too many people speaking with too much certainty about the disease, often saying quite different things but all claiming heaven’s own authority and telling other people they should follow the science.Behind them stood politicians wanting to be seen to be doing the right thing — and some wanting to build a reputation as no-nonsense enforcers and behind them were police forces to harass, fine and even jail people.And if you were a doctor, you might well find your own medical opinion challenged by your college of physicians, which may or may not be — well, following the same science as the people in the province next door?Remember this? How something happened to the COVID bug when it crossed the BC/Alberta border? In BC, everybody was following the science so they kept the restaurants open but closed the churches. Meanwhile Alberta’s churches were mostly open but you couldn’t possibly go to a restaurant, it was far too dangerous. Some bug. Some science.Similar anomalies cropped up across the country: Quebec had savage overnight curfews and briefly limited supermarket shopping to people with VAX certificates. Alberta and Saskatchewan did neither. Same disease, same science.Thing is, when the public health experts didn’t speak with one voice, you could hardly blame people for being sceptical — even resentful — about any restrictions that were imposed. Children were at virtually zero risk from COVID — that was never disputed — but the schools closed anyway. People whose work didn’t bring them into contact with others often still had to get vaxxed to keep their jobs. And so on.And then we would find we were being intentionally led by the nose.Thus, for those of us who had encounters with people who were hostile if you came within 10 feet of them in a supermarket lineup, it was something of an “Uh-huh moment,” when Dr. Antony Fauci finally admitted to a congressional committee that the six-foot social distancing rule he recommended, was unsupported by clinical trials. Meanwhile, in Canada Dr. Theresa Tam was at various times both a doubter and an enthusiast about the efficacy of masks. As was Fauci himself. How do they do that?I was reminded of all this last week when my friend and colleague Jen Hodgson reported that Dr. Joss Reimer, recently elected to be this year’s president of the Canadian Medical Association, downplays the whole idea of vaccine injury. Ok, but the federal government is paying out millions of dollars to — victims of vaccine injury. Dr. Reimer had created a presentation where she attempted to reason “people who believe in vaccine injury have just seen too many pictures of vax-injured patients, not real people.”She may be right of course.However if she is right, she is at variance with the Public Health Agency of Canada. This is a federal agency and aims (I believe) to offer accurate data and to act in good-faith. And what do they say? Well, since June 1st 2021, its Vaccine Injury Support Program has paid out more than $11 million to people injured by vaccines. So if I were a doctor and a member of the CMA, I’d be wondering what to say to the patient in front of me, who wanted my help with their very plausible vaccine injury claim. The CMA isn't the provincial college of physicians, but do I want to be offside with any of them?In other words, experts continue to disagree.One does not have to believe that the US Centers for Disease Control, our own Health Canada and every provincial chief medical officer were sinister, stupid and malicious. Some of them made you wonder, some times, yes. And the neat CDC reclassification of an insufficiently tested substance that was not a vaccine, as a vaccine, was not a confidence builder, either. And there was Fauci who was this, then that.But the big single fact here is that they couldn’t agree on the facts, but officialdom nevertheless found the confidence to bully people and trample freedoms, all the while cloaking itself with omniscience and power.That alone is sufficient to justify an impartial national inquiry. We may discover some people, like those fired for refusing the non-vaccine, may deserve compensation.All of us deserve the truth. Bring it on.

HANNAFORD: The Brits are looking for the COVID truth, so should Canada

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