They Are Still Defending Lockdowns
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | February 13, 2022
Fifteen years ago, writers schooled in computer science began to imagine various totalitarian schemes for pandemic control. Experienced public health officials in 2006 warned that this would lead to disaster. Donald Henderson, for example, went through
Still, a decade and a half later, governments all over the world tried lockdowns anyway. And sure enough, since April of 2020, scholars have observed that these lockdown policies haven’t worked. The politicians preached, the cops enforced, citizens shamed each other, and businesses and schools did their best to comply with all the strictures. But the virus kept going with seeming disregard for all these antics.
Neither oceans of sanitizer, nor towers of plexiglass, nor covered mouths and noses, nor crowd avoidance, nor the seeming magic of six feet of distance, nor even mandated injections, caused the virus to go away or otherwise be suppressed.
The evidence is in. Restrictions are not associated with any particular set of virus mitigation goals. Forty studies have shown no connection between the policy (egregious violations of human liberty) and the intended outcomes (diminishing the overall disease impact of the pathogen).
You can forget about “causal inference” here because there is an absence of correlation of policy and outcomes at all. You can do a deeper dive and find 400 studies showing that the impositions on basic freedoms did not achieve the intended result but instead produced terrible public-health outcomes.
The two years of the hell into which hundreds of governments simultaneously plunged the globe achieved nothing but economic, social, and cultural destruction. Very obviously, this realization is shocking, and suggests a crying need for a reassessment of the power and influence of the people who did this.
This reassessment is happening now, all over the world.
A major frustration for those of us who have denounced lockdowns (which goes by many names and takes many forms) is that these studies have not exactly rocked the headlines. Indeed, they have been buried for the better part of two years.
Among the ignored studies was a December 2020 examination of light and voluntary measures (discouraging large gatherings, isolating the sick, generally being careful) vs. heavy and forced measures. This piece by Bendavid et al. observes some effects on spread from light measures but nothing statistically significant from heavy measures such as stay-at-home (or shelter-in-place) orders.
We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay- at-home orders and business closures. The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmissions may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures.
The most recent meta-analysis from Johns Hopkins University (Jonas Herby of the Center for Political Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark, Lars Jonung of Lund University, and Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins) seems to have achieved some measure of media attention. It focuses in particular on the effects of heavy interventions on mortality, finding little to no relationship between policies and severe disease outcomes.
The attention given to this meta-analysis seems to have annoyed the small cabal of academics who still defend lockdowns. A website called HealthFeedBack blasted the methods of the study while citing biased sources and not seriously grappling with the results. This lame effort has been thoroughly smashed by Phil Magness.
Also seeking to reverse the bad press against lockdowns, the Science Media Centre, a project that appears mostly funded by The Wellcome Trust (Britain’s major funding source for epidemiological studies), published a rebuttal of this paper by top lockdown proponents.
Among the comments were those of Oxford’s Seth Flaxman, a major figure in this realm, who is not trained in biological science or medicine but computer science with a specialization in machine learning. And yet it has been his work that has most often been cited in defense of the idea that lockdowns achieved some good.
In opposition to the JHU study, Flaxman writes:
Smoking causes cancer, the earth is round, and ordering people to stay at home (the correct definition of lockdown) decreases disease transmission. None of this is controversial among scientists. A study purporting to prove the opposite is almost certain to be fundamentally flawed.
See how this rhetoric works? If you question his claim, you are not a scientist; you are denying the science!
These sentences are surely penned out of frustration. The first time in modern history or perhaps all of history when nearly all governments undertook “ordering people to stay home” (which amounts to a universal quarantine) to “decrease disease transmission” was in 2020.
To say that this is not controversial is ridiculous, since such policies had never before been attempted on this scale. Such a policy is not at all like an established causal claim (smoking increases cancer risk) nor a mere empirical observation (the earth is round). It is subject to verification.
There are plenty of reasons one might expect disease transmission to be higher in enclosed spaces with sustained close contact, such as homes, versus shops or even well-ventilated concert settings. As Henderson himself said, it could result in putting healthy non-infected people in close settings with infected people, worsening disease spread.
Indeed, by December of 2020, the governor’s office of New York found that “contact tracing data shows 70 percent of new COVID-19 cases originate from households and small gatherings.” It was also true with New York hospitalization: two thirds of them had contracted Covid at home.
“They’re not working; they’re not traveling,” Cuomo said of these recently hospitalized coronavirus patients. “We were thinking that maybe we were going to find a higher percent of essential employees who were getting sick because they were going to work — that these may be nurses, doctors, transit workers. That’s not the case. They were predominantly at home.”
That Flaxman would still claim otherwise after all experience shows that he is not observing reality but inventing dogma from his own intuition. Flaxman might say that he is sure that transmission might have been higher had people not been ordered to stay home, and there might be settings in which that is true, but he is in no position to elevate this claim to the status of “the earth is round.”
In addition, even under ideal conditions, reduction in disease transmission might only be short-term, kicking the can down the road. A glance at the wild infection increases of Winter 2021 suggests that. The orders might result in worse outcomes overall, due to all that such an order implies for people’s lives. Turning people’s homes into their own jails, in other words, has a downside for the quality of life. And surely that must factor into any social welfare analysis of pandemic policies.
Finally, it is not possible to order everyone to stay home, not even for a day or two. The groceries have to get to the store or be delivered to homes and apartments. People have to staff the hospitals. The electrical plants still need staff. Cops still have to be on the beat. There is literally no option available to “shut down” society in real life as versus in computer models.
Stay-at-home orders in real life become a class-protection scheme to keep high-end laptop professionals shielded from the virus while imposing the burden of exposure on people who have no option but to be out and about. In other words, the working classes are effectively forced to bear the burden of herd immunity, while the rich and financially secure stay safe and wait for the pandemic to pass.
For example, early in the pandemic, the messaging of the New York Times was to instruct its readers to stay home and get their groceries delivered. The paper knows its reader base well: it did not suggest any of them actually deliver groceries! As Sunetra Gupta says, “Lockdowns are a luxury of the affluent.”
And what, in the end, is the point of the stay-home orders? For a widespread virus such as this one, everyone will eventually meet the virus anyway. Only once the winter wave of 2021 finally swept the Zoom class did we start to see a shift in media messaging that 1) there is no shame in sickness, and 2) perhaps we need to start relaxing these restrictions.
The dogma that ordering people to stay home – for how long? – always reduces the spread comes not from evidence but from Flaxman-style modeling plus a remarkable capacity to ignore reality.
Lockdown policies are easily marketed to political players who might get a power rush from the exercise. But, in the end, Henderson’s prediction was correct: these interventions turned a manageable pandemic into a catastrophe.
It’s a sure bet, however, that lockdown proponents will be in denial at least for another decade.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown.
University’s top donor withdraws support over ‘ridiculous’ Covid rules
RT | February 11, 2022
The UK’s Durham University has lost its biggest individual donor, multimillionaire Mark Hillery, who pulled his financial support over Covid-19 rules he slammed as “ridiculous.”
A former hedge fund manager and university alumnus, Hillery donated almost £7m to the university’s Collingwood College between 2015 and 2021. He has funded a number of facilities, including a new arts center that bears his name, according to the student newspaper Palatinate, which was the first to reveal Hillery’s decision to withdraw his support.
The alumnus has actively supported the university for more than 20 years, hosting various events, and even sometimes paying for the students’ drinks in a college bar. He expressed deep regret over what he called “a very depressing state of affairs.”
In an interview with Palatinate he revealed that, prior to his decision to “step back,” he several times contacted the university to express his disagreement over the anti-Covid measures. However, this year the university chose to adopt policies which he said were even stricter than the government’s, including a temporary return to online teaching and face-mask mandates.
“Urgency that should have been displayed to fully normalize [the university] to the same status as the rest of society has not been there,” Hillery said.
He complained that the same “pedantic and ineffective policies that place the priorities of the paying students at the bottom of the pile are simply continued and refined,” adding that he would not visit Durham again “while there is a single Covid-related rule imposed on the students.”
Hillery, who is worth a reported £165 million and ranks 743rd on the Sunday Times Rich List 2020, did not rule out that in the future he might resume his support, underlining, however, that “it’s all far too little too late.”
The university expressed gratitude for Hillery’s “support in many initiatives” but said that the health and safety of its students and staff have always been a priority.
“We have been guided at all times by the local trajectory of the pandemic which varied at different times across the UK,” a spokesperson added.
Canadian Truckers and Supporters Staying the Course
By Stephen Lendman | February 13, 2022
Thousands of Canadian truckers and supporters continue protesting against draconian Trudeau regime health and freedom-destroying mandates.
Ongoing since January 29 in Ottawa, they continued overnight Saturday for the 6th day along the Ambassador Bridge linking Windsor, Ontario to Detroit — defying a court order to disperse and state of emergency threats by Ontario premier Doug Ford.
Things are fluid and quick-changing.
After things eased somewhat along the Ambassador Bridge, other protesters arrived on the Canadian side to block free passage.
According to news reports, a face-off with police sent to clear the bridge included no physical confrontations as of Saturday evening.
Disruptions also affect border crossings from Coutts, Alberta to Montana and Surrey, British Columbia to Washington state.
Late Saturday, a Trudeau regime statement said “border crossings cannot, and will not, remain closed, and that all options are on the table.”
Vehicles continue to block the Ambassador Bridge, Toronto Star reporter Jacob Lorinc tweeting:
“Police moving up slowly, but very slowly. Lots of protesters here.”
“(V)ehicles are still blocking lanes that lead to the bridge. (It’s) closed.”
“Not clear when it will reopen.”
“No arrests made as far as I can tell.”
Al Jazeera reported that “(a) crowd exceeding 10,000 people made their way between the trucks towards (Ottawa’s) parliament building.”
On Saturday, “many vehicles” along the road from Montreal to Ottawa displayed “Freedom” signs.
CTV News said “(p)rotests continue across Canada.”
At the Ambassador Bridge, police and protesters remain in “standoff… with more protesters arriving throughout the” day on Saturday.
In Surrey, British Columbia, “multiple commercial trucks… broke through an RCMP barricade on the Pacific Highway while following protesters marching to the border Saturday afternoon.”
The main route to Blaine, Washington remained closed.
No violence, injuries or arrests were reported.
Resolution of what’s going on in Canada nationwide requires the Trudeau regime to rescind flu/covid mandates across the board.
Protests continue because he refuses to end what shouldn’t have been imposed in the first place.
One protester along the Ambassador Bridge expressed the sentiment of all others across Canada, saying:
“We’re sick and tired of mandates.”
Ending them is the only acceptable option.
In New Brunswick, an anti-mandates video by Canadian army major Stephen Chledowski went viral online, saying the following:
“I am calling on my military and cops comrades to now stand up and safeguard your loved ones against this government-forced medical tyranny.”
“For 2 years our elected government officials have been using the strategies of fear, coercion and financial, intimidation and physical altercation against us to attain compliance for specific repeated medical procedures.”
The Trudeau regime and provincial officials are using “bullying tactics of fear, intimidation, coercion and financial and physical violence.”
Like the US Constitution’s First Amendment affirmation of free expression, Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedom mandates it for all the nation’s people.
According to the rule of law in both countries, it cannot legally be denied to anyone.
So-called free expression limits on what Canadian military personnel may say publicly breach the law of the land.
Given how Canada operates extrajudicially on all things flu/covid related, Chledowski could face stiff disciplinary action for the “crime” of truth-telling about health and freedom-destroying mandates.
In December 2020, in full military attire, Officer Cadet Ladislas Kenderesi spoke out publicly against what he called “killer” jabs.
In response, he was charged with what CTV News called “a mutiny-related offense.”
As in the US and throughout the West, democracy in Canada is pure fantasy. It’s for the privileged few alone at the expense of most others.
The rule of law is what ruling regimes say it is, the real thing be damned when interfering with their draconian policies.
Health and freedom-destroying mandates revealed reality about how Canada is ill-governed.
The only option for protesters is staying the course for restoration of what Trudeau regime hardliners abolished in deference to wealth, power and privilege by harming the vast majority of Canadians — on the phony pretext of protecting them.
RIP Freedom of Speech
In lockstep in multiple countries
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | February 12, 2022
As with so many things that are happening at the moment, the attack on free speech is happening in multiple countries at the same time.
Firstly in the UK.
A draft Online Safety Bill was first presented to Parliament in May 2021 but has been strengthened in the last few weeks. Originally the draft Bill focussed on large web companies but the government has recently announced that more changes would be made and new criminal offences added.
One of these new offences would be spreading Covid-19 disinformation under a crime of sending a false communication. This offence would be committed if a person sends a communication they know to be false with the intention to cause non-trivial emotional, psychological or physical harm. The maximum sentence is 51 weeks.
The average person might think it is reasonable to imprison somebody for communicating something they know to be false with the intention to cause harm. However, what is “false” and what is “harm”? The last few years have shown us that these are now very subjective topics. Information that was true in 2019 became false in 2020 and is starting to be true again in 2022. A truth that is communicated to somebody who believes it to be false may cause them emotional or psychological harm. Intention is necessary for the crime to take place but if something is deemed to be false and deemed to cause harm then it could be argued that if the person who communicated the information, knew the information was on the “harmful list” then intention was there.
And who is deciding what information is false? The government? That almost sounds like a punchline to a joke. We’ll just end up with news articles such as the one below – Sponsored by the UK Government (see the text in blue).
The Bill was already censorial enough, making online companies remove content which was deemed to be harmful but not illegal. As we have seen in recent times, corporations’ misinformation policies have been arbitrary enough, which will only worsen with governments deciding what is true and what is false. Now, in a step one-removed from pre-crime, these companies will be made to proactively “prevent people being exposed in the first place”.
The government press release on the strengthening of this bill says that “to proactively tackle the priority offences, firms will need to make sure the features, functionalities and algorithms of their services are designed to prevent their users encountering them and minimise the length of time this content is available. This could be achieved by automated or human content moderation, banning illegal search terms, spotting suspicious users and having effective systems in place to prevent banned users opening new accounts”.
In almost Orwellian double-speak the press release says the Bill “will better protect people’s right to free expression online”. What this means is, it will better protect people’s free expression of government approved material. It continues by saying “it will have to be proven in court that a defendant sent a communication without any reasonable excuse and did so intending to cause serious distress or worse, with exemptions for communication which contributes to a matter of public interest”. So the government says something is a matter of public interest (e.g. vaccines) and suddenly intention doesn’t have to be proven.
Please sign this online petition to remove requirements that specifically target lawful speech from the Bill.
Next to the US.
At almost the same time, the US sent out a bulletin “Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland”.
This states that “the United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors. These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence”.
According to the bulletin, “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions” has “increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment”.
Key factors contributing to the current heightened threat environment include “widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19”.
Furthermore, “as COVID-19 restrictions continue to decrease nationwide, increased access to commercial and government facilities and the rising number of mass gatherings could provide increased opportunities for individuals looking to commit acts of violence to do so, often with little or no warning. Meanwhile, COVID-19 mitigation measures—particularly COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates—have been used by domestic violent extremists to justify violence since 2020 and could continue to inspire these extremists to target government, healthcare, and academic institutions that they associate with those measures”.
So in a step up from the UK’s response, the US is labelling individuals who produce any MDM as terrorists. Obviously, any language that incites violence is unacceptable but to confuse people encouraging unrest with those discussing whether Ivermectin could help save lives is completely unacceptable.
And finally in Canada.
Again, as if in lockstep, Justin Trudeau is trying to revive his controversial Internet legislation bill. Once known as Bill C-10, to fool those unintelligent Covid deniers, it has been changed to Bill C-11.
There are concerns that the legislation could be used to censor social media. The government have denied this but experts hold the opposite view. Who to believe, hmmm? The Toronto Sun reports that Trudeau is using the current national tensions as a smokescreen to let them slip in unpopular pieces of legislation. Never let a good crisis go to waste!
When we remove freedom of speech and censorship of controversial topics becomes common place, we turn into a dangerous society. Not only can authors be imprisoned for airing their views but, just as importantly, debate becomes restricted resulting in truths being hidden and novel and radical ideas supressed.
But if they can’t censor you, maybe they’ll just give you a morality pill so you don’t produce the stuff in the first place!
Pandemic-related school closings likely to have far-reaching effects on child well-being
By Sandra M. Chafouleas – The Conversation – February 9, 2022
A global analysis has found that kids whose schools closed to stop the spread of various waves of the coronavirus lost educational progress and are at increased risk of dropping out of school.
As a result, the study says, they will earn less money from work over their lifetimes than they would have if schools had remained open.
Educational researchers like me know these students will feel the effects of pandemic-related school closures for many years to come. Here are four other ways the closings have affected students’ well-being for the long term:
1. Academic progress
At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, most students were about four to five months behind where they should have been in math and reading, according to a July 2021 report by McKinsey and Co., a global management consulting firm.
When the researchers looked at the data from fall 2021, though, they found students attending majority-white schools are catching up. But students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds — including those attending majority-Black or low-income schools — are falling further behind.
As a result, students attending majority-Black schools are now estimated to be a full year behind those attending majority-white schools.
Differences also can vary by grade level. High schools have been closed more total days than elementary schools. According to a recent news report, 2021 graduation rates dipped across the country, and some education leaders fear future graduating classes may be hit even harder.
Schools have scrambled to provide options such as credit recovery to boost graduation rates, leaving concerns about the quality of learning.
College and university leaders have been preparing for first-year students with less knowledge, weaker study habits and more difficulty concentrating than new college arrivals in past years.
2. Social-emotional development
Even early in the pandemic, school closings were harming students’ social and emotional well-being, according to a review of 36 studies across 11 countries including the U.S. By summer 2021, teachers and administrators in the U.S. said students felt more emotional distress, disengagement, depression, anxiety and loneliness than in previous years.
When schools resumed in fall 2021, large numbers of children in the U.S. had lost a primary caregiver over the previous year to COVID-19. A colleague and I raised concerns about the anxiety and grief those students would likely feel.
In addition, 28% of all parents of children in grades K-12 are “very concerned” or “extremely concerned” about their child’s mental health and social and emotional well-being. That’s down from a high of 35% in spring 2021, but is still 7% higher than before the pandemic.
Parents of Black and Hispanic students are 5% more likely to be worried than parents of white students.
Schools and organizations have focused resources on supporting students’ social, emotional and mental health. The U.S. Department of Education, for example, recommends, based on research, that teachers integrate lessons around compassion and courage into classroom activities, and that schools establish wellness teams to help students.
States have said they plan to address these needs with federal funds meant to help schools respond to the pandemic. In Connecticut, for example, school districts will hire additional mental health support staff, offer social-emotional programs and partner with local agencies to increase access to supports.
3. Behavioral habits
The return to in-person learning has been accompanied by school leaders’ reports of increasing student misbehavior and threats of violence. These increases were more likely to be reported in larger districts and where most students had engaged in remote or hybrid learning — rather than in-person instruction — during the prior school year.
Viral social media “challenges” — like memes on TikTok suggesting students “smack a staff member” or skip school on a particular day — certainly aren’t helping educators provide safe and supportive environments.
Parents’ distress is also affecting their children. Students whose parents are depressed, anxious, lonely and exhausted are more likely to misbehave in school — and that connection grew stronger during lockdown periods when schools were closed.
Meanwhile, news reports show students are missing more school than they were before the pandemic, with more kids out for more than 15 days of a school year.
Given links between chronic absenteeism and increased high school dropout rates, researchers warn this increase in missed school could lead between 1.7 million and 3.3 million students in eighth through 12th grade to not graduate on time.
4. Physical health
Adults have suffered hair loss, sore eyes, irritable bowels and skin flare-ups as a result of the pandemic. One study found that Chinese preschool children whose schools closed during the pandemic were shorter than preschoolers in previous years, though the researchers did not observe noteworthy differences in weight change.
Schools can be a primary place for children to access physical activity and healthy food. Amid school closures, researchers are exploring the effects of losing out on these benefits. During lockdowns in Italy, children with obesity engaged in less physical activity, slept and used screens more and increased their consumption of potato chips and sugary drinks.
In the U.S., 1 in 4 families with school-age children don’t have reliable access to food. Abrupt school closures cut off more than 30 million children from free and reduced-price lunches and breakfasts delivered at school.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school food programs, provided waivers to let schools provide meals in ways that fit their students’ needs. In Connecticut, for example, researchers found that letting families know about wider availability and pickup sites for to-go school meals boosted the number of students who received food during the pandemic.
Time will tell if the costs of school closings will be worth the benefits. These early indicators show that decisions are not as simple as reducing the physical health risks of COVID-19. A full assessment would consider the effects across all aspects of child well-being, including how diverse populations are affected.
Connection, collaboration and positive interaction are fundamental to healthy childhood growth and development. Working together, schools, families and communities can assess and address every child’s needs to reduce the lasting effects of school closings.
Disclosure statement
Sandra M. Chafouleas receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Education, Connecticut State Department of Education, the Neag Foundation, and the Principal Foundation.
Lawmakers take heat for flip-flopping on mask mandates
RT | February 10, 2022
Republican lawmakers have slammed their Democratic opponents for suddenly speaking in favor of lifting mask mandates, especially in schools, saying that the switch is just an attempt to boost their chances in the midterm elections.
Democrat-led New Jersey, New York, California, Oregon, Connecticut, and Delaware announced plans to roll back their mask requirements on Tuesday and Wednesday, with Illinois soon expected to join them.
The issue has been a major bone of contention between the two rival American parties during the pandemic. The Democrats have always defended face coverings as an essential measure to stop the spread of Covid-19, while the Republicans insist that the measure is of little use, especially for students, who face a much lesser risk of serious coronavirus infection due to their young age.
“I’d love to see whatever internal polling went around the Democrat Party last week – it’s certainly no coincidence that Democrat-run states are dropping mandates as fast as they can,” Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., told the Daily Mail about the plans by Democratic governors to lift their mask requirements.
Hern was fully backed by Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., who claimed that “the Democrats continually follow the political science instead of the actual science.”
“We’ve known for months that masking has been detrimental to our children. The science hasn’t changed in the last several months, the only change has been the overwhelming uproar over government mandates,” she said.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz, said it was “no surprise” that the Democrats have now decided to give up on mask mandates. “They had every intention of using Covid mandates to their advantage – especially when it comes to the polls – and have perfected playing politics in our everyday lives.”
However, Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., suggested that the switch will likely be too little, too late. “Democrats forced masks on kids for two years and now they’re hoping that the rest of America will suddenly forget.”
The midterm elections, scheduled to take place in the US in November, are expected to be a tough test for the Democratic Party. Last month, a poll by Gallup revealed that 47% of Americans identified themselves as Republicans, compared to 42% as Democrats. The news figures contradicted the historic trend of Democrats outnumbering GOP supporters in the country.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said earlier this week that the number of cases and hospitalization in the US was still “too high” to think about lifting Covid-19 restrictions, adding that it continued to endorse universal masking in schools.
On Tuesday, CNN’s medical analyst, Dr. Leana Wen, who has always been a strong supporter of mask mandates, urged the CDC to follow the example of the Democratic states and lift the curbs.
“The CDC has already lost a lot of trust and credibility. This is their time to rebuild and remove restrictions as quickly as they were put in,” she argued.
Wen defended her new stance on face coverings by claiming that “circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed.”
She faced a harsh backlash online, with prominent journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was among the critics, insisting that behavior like Wen’s was the reason behind the public loss of trust in what the medical experts have to say.
“As others noted, there is nothing in The Science™ that changed to justify Dem politicians suddenly ending mask mandates. All that changed is the political fear they have. Conflating ‘The Science’ with politics like this is a key reason many lost trust in public health experts.”
Freedom Convoy – Address To Canadians by Tom Marazzo
February 10, 2022
End the mandates now. We will not be tricked into a violent outcome. We are peaceful protestors. Justice Hugh McLean acknowledges that we have a right to be here, to be heard and to protest, that is what we are here for. We are prepared to be arrested. We have our lawyers. We have no fear. We are here for our children.
Officials Weigh Steps to ‘Protect Children,’ as Ottawa Police Cut Off Critical Supplies to Freedom Convoy
By Judith Robinson | The Defender | February 9, 2022
As protests against Canada’s COVID vaccine mandates entered their 12th day, Ottawa police continued to cut off food and fuel supplies for hundreds of truckers.
Police Tuesday told reporters they are “having discussions with the Children’s Aid Society about what steps to take” to protect children living in what they estimated to be about 100 of the 400 trucks parked in the city.
The Freedom Convoy left Canada’s westernmost province, British Columbia, on Jan. 23 and arrived Jan. 29 in Ottawa.
It has inspired protests around the world, including in 27 European countries which are planning their own convoys.
Here’s the latest news on the Freedom Convoy:
- Police said discussions are underway with the Children’s Aid Society for the possible removal of the children from their protesting parents. Ottawa’s Deputy Police Chief Steve Bell cited noise, carbon monoxide fumes, lack of sanitation and noise levels as possible safety hazards. “We’re not at the stage of looking to do any sort of enforcement activity around that,” Bell told CTV News. “We’ll rely on the Children’s Aid Society to give us guidance.”
- In a news release, groups of retired and active-duty police officers from across Canada, along with members of parliament and other advocacy groups, expressed support for the truckers: “The government’s decision to block refueling of the trucks puts fellow Canadians and their families including their young children in danger due to the extreme cold temperatures currently occurring in Ottawa. Regardless of where one stands on this topic, these actions are inhumane and do not align with Canadian principles,” the release stated.
- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bodyguard resigned stating that he could not abide by the government’s dictates which he felt contravened the human rights enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.
- Nick Motichka, a 10-year veteran of the Calgary Police Service, delivered a strong message on Facebook to his fellow regulation enforcement officers: “Police are here to help and protect people” not “to do the politicians’ dirty work… What is happening in Ottawa, with the clear political influence on the police, to physically exert political will on peaceful protesters for nothing more than possible political gain is so very wrong, on so many levels.”
- Alberta Premier Jason Kenny dropped his province’s vaccine passport program at midnight, promising to lift other public health restrictions by March 1, depending on the number of hospital admissions.
- Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced Tuesday he will end his province’s vaccine passport policy by Monday, Feb. 14. Other public health policies, such as masking, will remain in effect until the end of the month.
- Provincial Parliament Member Randy Hillier is organizing another “Blue-collar Convoy” of tractors to join the truckers in Ottawa this weekend, as he did last week. The proposed routes are listed on the Facebook page.
- Freedom Convoy truckers and Canadian doctors sent a message that vaccine mandates must be removed and they pleaded for a meeting with Trudeau.
Beyond Canada’s borders:
- The current blockade by truckers of the bridge from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit is preventing much of the daily “$300 million in car and truck parts, agricultural products, steel and other raw materials” to reach its destinations, according to the Financial Post. “Almost 20% of all Canada-U.S. trade moves across the Ambassador Bridge, and 30% of cross-border freight moved by truck uses that route.”
- According to Politico, convoys are now being organized across the U.S. and “regional protests have been planned in states from Alabama to Wyoming, based on Politico’s review of social media activity.”
- “Anti-mandate protesters in France, inspired by the ‘Freedom Convoy’ in Canada, plan to make their way to Paris, then Brussels, to demand an end to vaccine passports,” according to the Financial Post. “Around 200 protesters gathered in a parking lot in Nice today, waving Canadian flags in solidarity with protesters in Canada. Their convoy is made up of motorcycles and cars, but no trucks.”
Similar protests erupted in the last few days in Australia and New Zealand, the Washington Post reported. The “Convoy to Canberra” involves only a couple of 18-wheelers as few Australian truckers own their own vehicles. Protestors brought camping gear — setting up an occupation which has been compared to “Occupation Wall Street.” According to CNN, a convoy of trucks and camper vans has blocked the streets near New Zealand’s Parliament in Wellington.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
Ontario Attorney General freezes GiveSendGo donation distribution to Freedom Convoy
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | February 10, 2022
The Ontario government is further being accused of suppressing civil liberties and the right to organize a protest after it has announced that it has successfully petitioned a court to freeze access to the millions of dollars donated to the Freedom Convoy through free speech fundraising platform GiveSendGo.
GiveSendGo is the alternative US-based fundraising platform that came to the rescue after GoFundMe pulled the plug on donations to the Freedom Convoy protesters who are campaigning for civil liberties in Ottawa and at multiple border crossings.
A spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford says Ontario’s Attorney General submitted the application to the Superior Court of Justice, requesting that it be illegal to distribute donations made through GiveSendGo’s two crowdfunding campaigns, the “Freedom Convoy 2022” and “Adopt-a-Trucker.”
The full statement is as follows:
“Today, the Attorney General brought an application in the Superior Court of Justice for an order pursuant to section 490.8 of the Criminal Code prohibiting any person from disposing of, or otherwise dealing with, in any manner whatsoever, any and all monetary donations made through the Freedom Convoy 2022 and Adopt-a-Trucker campaign pages on the GiveSendGo online fundraising platform.
“This afternoon, the order was issued. It binds any and all parties with possession or control over these donations.”
Ford’s office said that an order binding “any and all parties with possession or control over these donations” has been granted and issued.
GiveSendGo is now being described as an “offense-related property” as described in 490.8 of the Criminal Code.
Civil liberties protestors have faced an uphill battle, with the Canadian government trying to suppress the protest in several ways.
More than $10 million was originally raised through GoFundMe, a platform that has been accused of bias and selectively enforcing its policies.
Donors have raised over $8.4 million on GiveSendGo at the time of writing.
In a statement, GiveSendGo was not deterred by the order and said, “Know this! Canada has absolutely zero jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo. All funds for every campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”
EU capital bans ‘Freedom Convoy’ protest
Police will keep the Canada-inspired trucker demonstration out of the Belgian capital, its mayor says
RT | February 10, 2022
Brussels Mayor Philippe Close announced on Thursday that a protest convoy of truckers will be barred from entering the city. Inspired by an ongoing demonstration against vaccine mandates in Canada, the truckers are set to reach the Belgian capital early next week.
“We have taken the decision to ban the ‘Freedom Convoy’ which has not been authorized to demonstrate because no request has been sent,” Close wrote on Twitter, noting that he made the decision along with Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden and Brussels region Minister President Rudi Vervoort.
Local and federal police “will divert motorized vehicles coming towards the capital despite the ban,” Close added.
Drawing participants from across the continent, the protest is inspired by a similar demonstration in the Canadian capital of Ottawa. Traffic in parts of Ottawa has been brought to a standstill for nearly two weeks by truckers demanding the immediate lifting of Covid restrictions, including a mandate that requires them to be vaccinated to re-enter the country from the US.
As host to key EU institutions, Brussels is a natural focal point for the European protest. While individual nations in the bloc have begun rolling back their vaccine pass systems at home, vaccination or proof of a negative Covid test is required to cross national borders within the union, and the EU recently proposed extending this system until 2023.
Truckers en route to Brussels have planned some stops along the way, with a major protest set to hit Paris this weekend. Authorities in the French capital issued a similar ban on Thursday, and threatened protesters with stiff fines should they block traffic in the city. Paris police said that a “specific device” would be used by the authorities to prevent the convoy from entering the city.
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