The economic upheaval now roiling over the world’s financial markets, rapidly lowering living standards, and even threatening to freeze Europeans this winter, is all directly related to the radical decision most western leaders took in March of 2020., when a new respiratory virus caused them to go mad.
Instead of using the common-sense tactics previous world leaders had adopted in the face of pandemics, such as in 1957 and 1968, these so-called leaders chose to emulate the radical lockdown policies invented in a panic by the Chinese Communist Party for use in Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have originated. The policy – which is now basically destroying China – remains in effect throughout China today.
Why western leaders made this bizarre decision remains entirely unclear. What is becoming increasingly clear, though, is how much damage this policy has caused, and how much long-term damage we can expect in the future. Market turmoil, dangerous inflation, and lowered living standards are only a part of that damage. Children, who had their educations severely disrupted, will never recover those lost years. The rupture of the world’s supply lines has made wars, such as the current Russia-Ukraine war, much more likely. Civil unrest, famine, and increasingly expensive energy are only a few of the results. The lockdowns have compromised our country’s future in many different ways.
But some nations and states largely avoided this lockdown madness. Sweden was the best-known country to do so, but there were others as well that specifically rejected the lockdown model. South Korea, Japan, Tanzania, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and some others specifically rejected the lockdown model. Taiwan, despite its close proximity to, and busy trading relationship with mainland China, kept its schools and businesses open. Belarus famously scoffed at the lockdown model.
Some American states, like Florida, briefly adopted the lockdown model, but abandoned it quickly, when they saw how much damage it was causing.
And how did these places do?
In terms of deaths from the virus they did no better or worse than the countries like Canada that uncritically embraced the Wuhan lockdown model. (In all cases, those closest to death already, such as the unhealthy elderly, and obese, were overwhelmingly those who died). But the countries that rejected the Wuhan lockdown model largely avoided the tremendous damage, economically and socially to their populations, that was caused by the lockdowns.
But not so Canada. For reasons that are not yet clear, Canada jumped with both feet into an almost complete acceptance of the Wuhan lockdown model. Prime Minister Trudeau set the tone early on when he vowed to take radical steps “to keep Canadians safe.” The idea of a leader promising to stop a respiratory virus in its tracks is risible. Think of King Canute commanding the waves of the ocean to stop. The fact that Trudeau, both vaccinated and boosted, caught Covid a number of times proves his folly.
Instead of taking very obvious steps – such as giving the premiers the necessary money to buttress the shaky hospital system, and improving safety in Canada’s entirely mediocre long-term senior care homes – Trudeau opted for the vote-buying policy of sending out massive amounts of money to mainly healthy people who were arbitrarily deemed “non-essential workers.”
The sheer insanity of this decision cannot be overemphasized. Healthy people who were at almost no risk of dying from the virus were sent home to their basements, while the federal treasury was depleted to keep them there. This wasteful spending was taking place at the same time that common-sense steps – such as properly protecting the elderly in care homes, and fixing our weak hospital system, were largely ignored.
The highly political federal government decisions from that point set the tone for the increasingly radical and destructive policies made by every provincial premier after that point. The premiers took the indefensible decision to close schools, and then only to reopen them with radical “safety” measures, that severely hindered children’s educations. Even at the start of the pandemic, it was clear that children were no more at risk from this virus than they were from the usual flu virus that come and go every year. Why the premiers decided to close schools, when countries, such as Sweden and Japan, had already proven that such a step was entirely unnecessary, will be the subject of books for many years to come. Suffice it to say that it was totally unnecessary.
But what the premiers did next was truly indefensible. The lockdowns prevented citizens from living normal lives, and even meant that people could not attend the funerals of family members, or worship in their churches, synagogues or temples. Some grandparents died alone without seeing their children or grandchildren. Some people will never recover from the effects of this massive government overreach.
It is true that some premiers were worse than others. Saskatchewan was probably the least intrusive, while Quebec – which actually had curfews – was probably the most intrusive.
But the Prime Minister, and all of the premiers, acted in such a way that individual rights and liberties were grossly disrespected. Rights we have taken as our birth right were simply thrown under the bus with a simple respiratory virus given as the excuse.
What these leaders did, in essence, was to declare medical martial law. Canadian citizens suddenly had no more rights than did the truly oppressed citizens of China.
Why they chose to trample on individual liberties that have taken over 800 years to construct will probably be a question studied for years to come. But how they did it is not hard to see. They did it by instilling fear. Instead of telling people the truth, namely that unless they were in a high-risk group (elderly with co-morbidities, obese), they need not fear death from getting sick, leaders promoted this false notion that everyone was at equal risk of death from the virus. The mainstream media pumped out this misinformation. When the disastrous vaccine mandates became law, the message became one of hatred of those who chose not to be vaccinated. The false message that the unvaccinated were a threat to the vaccinated and, indeed, the whole society, went into overdrive.
Divisions in society were deliberately created and accentuated by a Liberal Party intent on using those divisions to win an election. The premiers dumbly followed along.
All of this has, in fact, created divisions within the country that might never be healed. Friends are friends no more, families that have been ruptured, employees who have lost their livelihoods.
All of this lockdown madness is hard to fathom. But hardest of all to understand is why so many Canadians were willing – even eager – to sacrifice their rights and freedoms in the name of a simple respiratory virus. And to vilify anyone who disagreed with their Wuhan lockdown and vaccine views.
Could it be similar to Stockholm Syndrome, where a hostage-type mentality sets in? Were so many Canadians so terrified of this virus that they were willing to do anything to save themselves?
I’m sure that books will be written about the strange response that most of the western world – and particularly Canada – adopted in the face of a virus that was not much worse for healthy people than other common flu and cold viruses.
The Emergency Act hearings now taking place in Ottawa are examining one facet of Canada’s strange response to the virus. The truckers and others who objected to the Wuhan lockdown and related mandate policies will have a chance to prove that Ottawa’s extreme policies were misguided. Over time, there will be other opportunities as well to demonstrate that the bizarre decision to mimic Communist China’s Wuhan lockdown was perhaps the single biggest public health mistake ever made.
The important thing is that we make a pledge: Never again.
