Update on the Charter Challenge

 

A Voice for the Truckers

 

You can kind of see her point of view, surely...

The Ottawa Convoy

 

A "Canadian Gadsden flag"

As I write, there is a large convoy of trucks converged on Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates. One hopes everything remains peaceful. The visible organizers seem form on this point. In principle, however, I think even peaceful public protests are anti-democratic, and socially irresponsible. Violence could always break out, innocent people are inconvenienced, and by their nature they tend to subvert the democratic process. They are mob rule.

However, this time, I am more disturbed by the Prime Minister’s response. He said the truckers were a “fringe minority” who “did not speak for Canadians,” and their views were “unacceptable.”

If violence breaks out, I’d say he is more responsible for it now than anyone.

It is not proper for the Prime Minister to declare the views of any Canadians seeking to petition their government “unacceptable.” It is beyond the pale, in a free society, to say that you will not listen to or discuss their concerns. It sounds more than a little like “let them eat cake.”

First Amendment of the US Constitution:

Congress shall make no law … abridging … the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The essential demand of the truckers, as revealed on every sign and banner I see online, is to end vaccine mandates. They object to anyone being fired from their job for not being vaccinated.

It is true that some people associated with the convoy have made wilder demands. I saw a petition online directing their petition only to the Senate and Governor-General, implicitly declaring the House of Commons illegitimate. This nonsense is constitutionally impossible, undemocratic, and serves no purpose. But I feel sure that almost none of the actual participants in the convoy and protest feel committed to this idea. To cite it in relation to the larger protest looks to me like a red herring.

In fact, it is so obviously silly I suspect it is a false flag planted by government agents to discredit the protest.

Ending the vaccine mandates is a perfectly reasonable position. It has been clear for at least the past six months that there is no medical justification for them. We have known since then that the vaccinated could also spread the virus, and that herd immunity through vaccination was not an achievable goal. We also know, incidentally, that cloth masks do nothing against omicron. Accordingly, the government cannot appeal to the emergency to make what would otherwise be an infringement on human rights acceptable.

Moreover, it looks as though the emergency itself is over. Britain, Ireland, and Denmark have now ended restrictions. There is a strong medical argument that the best thing to do is for everyone to go out and catch Omicron as soon as possible after their booster shot. Their case should be quite mild, with omicron, they cannot avoid it for long anyway, and this is the only way to achieve long-term immunity. Best to catch it before the effects of the booster wear off. A doctor in Africa recently called omicron “the vaccine we could not make.”

In other words, it would look as though the government is working against the public interest at this point.

Worse, our supply chain is in tatters. My local grocery shelves are alarmingly bare. I overheard the manager explaining to another worried customer that all orders are behind by at least 72 hours, and getting worse. The government aying down mandates forcing truckers off the roads at just this point looks wildly irresponsible.

One wonders why they are doing it. One fears a totalitarian impulse in our “elites.”

It's the Herd's Fault

 

There seems to me to be a certain illogic in the insistent demands, by, for example, Justin Trudeau, that everyone get vaccinated. What is the premise here? 

There is probably a legitimate concern that the unvaccinated, if they all get sick, could overload the ICUs and the health system. Fair point—fifteen days to slow the spread. But aren’t the fifteen days up yet?

Beyond that, if the vaccines work, those who are vaccinated need not care whether the next person is vaccinated. If the vaccines do not work, why get vaccinated? 

If the failure by many to get vaccinated causes a “fourth wave,” those falling sick are presumably those who have chosen not to get vaccinated. Their bodies, their choice.

This is an oversimplification; the common claim currently is that those who have been vaccinated do run some risk of catching COVID, probably in a mild form. Still, we do not take such extreme measures against the flu or the common cold. 

I do not object to vaccine passports. I do not fear they are a wedge to take away our freedoms. Temporary suspensions of basic rights have happened in the past; in war, for example. Our historical experience has been that these do not endure beyond the emergency. In any case, is a vaccine passport really a greater intrusion on one’s rights than a driver’s license?

But do we really need them?

Perhaps the idea is to achieve “herd immunity”: get there, and the virus should die out. Unfortunately, the consensus is apparently growing among top doctors that, with the more virulent strains we now face, herd immunity is no longer possible. If perhaps 70% vaccinated was necessary for the original strain, the Delta variant is perhaps a hundred times more contagious. That puts the herd immunity threshold beyond the realistically possible—and for all we know, a more contagious form is going to appear. Reports are that one has emerged in South Africa that is twice as transmissible as Delta. The very fact that a fourth wave is gathering despite the high levels of vaccination in Canada, the eUK, or Israel tends to demonstrate that “herd immunity” is no longer a viable goal.

My suspicion is that leading politicians are so insistent that everyone get vaccinated because they need a scapegoat for the continuing high number of cases. If they do not focus attention on this scapegoat, people are likely, fairly or unfairly, to start blaming them. I fear they have a tiger by the tail: they cannot leave the restrictions in place forever. Yet they cannot drop all the restrictions and let infection rates rise without people questioning why the restrictions were there in the first place.