The pandemic response has been misguided and contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, says former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford. The sole living First Minister from the constitutional negotiations in 1981-82 believes lockdowns and vaccine passports were unconstitutional, and focused protection and alternative treatments deserved consideration.
Peckford believes in the Great Barrington Declaration , which he paraphrases as “Focus your attention on the vulnerable and let the rest of people go to work.”
More than 49,000 Canadians have endorsed the declaration, as have over 902,000 people worldwide, including 15,000 medical and public health scientists and 45,000 medical practitioners. The three initial signatories in October 2020 included Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University Medical School and witness in the Justice Centre case against Manitoba lockdowns.
The declaration states that “The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk.”
Peckford says this option was unduly rejected.
“We now know that Dr. Fauci and Francis Collins and others in the highest hierarchy of the American government tried to discredit those three world class epidemiologists who were the first to sign their names to the Barrington Declaration saying that there’s a better way of doing this, that you’re going about it all wrong,” Peckford said.
Unfortunately, Canada has had its own versions of coerced group think.
Dr. Charles Hoffe of Lytton B.C. came under fire from the College of Physicians and Surgeons for causing vaccine hesitancy after he reported adverse reactions in some patients after their COVID-19 vaccines. Peckford, who joined Dr. Hoffe at an event in Victoria December 9 on the 75th Anniversary of the Nuremberg doctors’ trial, says Hoffe was within his rights.
“He is one of the most decent…guys that you’d ever meet anywhere in the world. And he was just doing his work. He was just expressing a view which he should be allowed to express in a free and democratic society and not be cajoled and coerced as he is now by the College of Physicians and Surgeons. This is a scandal. This is awful,” Peckford said.
“We’re not in Russia or China – or are we – for the College of Physicians and Surgeons to come down on that man like they did?”
Peckford, who opines on his blog Peckford42, says better alternatives to the Canadian approach are playing out all over the world.
“Everybody knows about Florida. Everybody knows about Sweden. Everybody should know about the state in India of 230 million people where they brought kits for early treatment around to every door.”
Uttar Pradesh sent its residents home kits consisting of Paracetamol tablets, Vitamin C, Multivitamin, Zinc, Vitamin D3, ten 12 mg tablets of ivermectin, and ten 100 mg tablets of Doxycycline. On August 25, it reported only 22 new cases despite a vaccination rate of only 5%. Neighbouring Kerala had 20 per cent vaccination, yet suffered 31,445 new cases that day in a population of only 35 million.
“This is a scandal. This is governments of Canada completely ignoring early treatments, even vitamin D… Dr. Peter McCullough in Texas has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, and all the work that he’s done, that he could reduce hospitalizations by up to 85%,” Peckford says.
McCullough’s protocols have been used by some doctors in Greece, Italy, southern France, South America, India, and East Asia. It includes Vitamins D and C, plus zinc and quercetin, either hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, azithromycin to treat secondary bacterial infections, steroids, and anticoagulants to prevent blood clots. Sometimes monoclonal antibodies from recovered Covid patients and the anti-gout drug colchicine are included.
By contrast, Canadian medical authorities have condemned the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for coronavirus (even though the former was used successfully against SARS-CoV-1 in 2002-2004). In mid-2021, McMaster University ran a trial in Brazil using ivermectin. Ivermectin patients were found 9 per cent less likely to have symptoms progress and 18 per cent less likely to die. However, the trial was so small the findings were declared statistically insignificant.
Peckford believes governments and authorities have selectively presented information to back the decision they have made.
“That data is all available. If they [provincial governments] didn’t know, they ought to know. If they didn’t know they’re incompetent. And if they did know, they’re breaking the law. They had an obligation in [court challenges to lockdowns] to give the judge the best information they had, and they didn’t. They only gave the information they wanted to give them. So that’s a complete and utter abdication of their responsibilities as elected people for the people of British Columbia. And the same way in Manitoba.”
Lee Harding is a Research Associate with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
