{"id":1102,"date":"2022-02-14T14:33:35","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T19:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potlatchga.com\/?p=1102"},"modified":"2022-02-15T09:06:34","modified_gmt":"2022-02-15T14:06:34","slug":"more-from-up-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/potlatchga.com\/?p=1102","title":{"rendered":"More from Up North"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is an interesting opinion piece from this Monday’s Globe and<\/em> Mail<\/em> in Ottawa.\u00a0 It strikes me as a reasonable take on the issue. I would like to hear from those who might find this argument to be a threat to the exercise of personal freedom.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll lift our anti-COVID restrictions when elected governments decide, not street mobs<\/strong><\/p>\n

For all the mistakes our governments have made in dealing with the COVID pandemic, Canada has one of the developed world\u2019s lowest death rates<\/a> from the disease: roughly a third of the United States\u2019, per capita; less than 40 per cent of the United Kingdom\u2019s; half of France\u2019s; two-thirds of Germany\u2019s.<\/p>\n

By the more comprehensive \u201cexcess deaths\u201d<\/a> measure (comparing overall population death rates since the pandemic began to what they were before), Canada\u2019s relative success is even more striking. Among the developed countries, only New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Norway, Denmark and Ireland have done better.<\/p>\n

What accounts for this? Could one of the world\u2019s highest vaccination rates<\/a> have anything to do with it? Might it be in some way related to one of the world\u2019s most stringent<\/a> systems of public-health restrictions? Correlation is not causation, but if the common-sense explanations don\u2019t account for it, what does? Tiresome as these measures have become, they seem to have worked; costly as they may have been, the payoff has been astronomical \u2013 literally tens of thousands of lives saved.<\/p>\n

And not only that. If we are now in a place to lift many of these restrictions it is precisely because they were so successful. As the Omicron wave recedes, and vaccination rates improve, more and more of them are being removed.<\/p>\n

And of those that remain, the least restrictive by far are vaccine mandates. Get your shot, as 90 per cent of Canada\u2019s adult population have done, and you are demonstrably more free, not less.<\/p>\n

People like to say, I\u2019m not against vaccines, I\u2019m just against vaccine mandates. It sounds like a valid distinction, until you examine the premise that underlies it: that vaccines are a purely personal matter, or at any rate that they are so unusually risky or pointlessly invasive that an individual might reasonably refuse them, despite their social benefits.<\/p>\n

None of this applies. We have had vaccine mandates of one kind or another for two centuries. More than 10 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccines have been administered worldwide. The shots are safe, quick, effective, and performed at no charge. They not only protect the individual, but all those he might otherwise have infected. Scratch a mandate opponent, and as often as not you find an anti-vaxxer underneath.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to the current mess in Ottawa.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to end the sedition in Ottawa by enforcing the law and following the money<\/a><\/p>\n

Much effort has been spent exhorting the rest of us to understand the grievances of the protesters, as if the protesters all had the same agenda. They don\u2019t. Some are upset, to be sure, by the federal vaccine mandate on cross-border truckers \u2013 to which they would have to submit regardless, the United States having imposed a similar requirement.<\/p>\n

But many more object to any public-health measure of any kind \u2013 not just vaccine mandates, but vaccines, masks, the lot. And behind them all are the organizers and leaders of the event, including QAnon-style loons<\/a>, white-replacement theorists<\/a>, and former members of the Soldiers of Odin<\/a>, whose declared objective<\/a> is to replace the current elected government with a committee made up of themselves, the Governor-General and the Senate.<\/p>\n

Their objectives are plainly absurd. Their tactics \u2013 taking downtown Ottawa hostage, effectively \u2013 are intolerable. Their followers \u2013 not all of them, maybe not many, but enough \u2013 have been occasionally violent, frequently menacing, almost routinely insulting. There are legitimate questions about how they were financed, and by whom.<\/p>\n

They do not represent truckers, or the working class, or \u201cthe people,\u201d whatever claims they might make. In their actual aims, rather than the broader discontent they have learned to exploit, they represent a small sliver of public opinion \u2013 frightened, angry and vastly uninformed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That such an element exists in Canada is disturbing enough. Much more disturbing has been the willingness of some Conservative MPs, backed by their supporters online, to hitch their wagon to them. At best this is an instance of the fallacy of \u201cmirroring,\u201d that is of assuming other people\u2019s motives are like your own.<\/p>\n

More likely it is tactical: imputing positions to others that are politically convenient to you. Thus: \u201cwhat the protesters are asking for is,\u201d by a remarkable coincidence, what I am asking for. \u201cGive me what I want\u201d is made over as \u201cgive them what they want\u201d or \u201cat least meet with them.\u201d In effect, you have hired them to make your argument for you. They take the hostages, but you get to issue the demands.<\/p>\n

Even if the issue were only vaccine mandates, it would be wrong to give in to such pressure tactics; even if there were no such tactics, it would be wrong to abolish the mandates. But given the protesters\u2019 actual demands and actual tactics, it is unthinkable that they should be given any concessions whatever.<\/p>\n

Keep your Opinions sharp and informed. Get the Opinion newsletter. Sign up today<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

THEGLOBEANDMAIL.COM<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is an interesting opinion piece from this Monday’s Globe and Mail in Ottawa.\u00a0 It strikes me as a reasonable take on the issue. I would like to hear from those who might find this argument to be a threat to the exercise of personal freedom. 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