Nikiforuk - Let's Just Pretend It's Over

 

Andrew Nikiforuk pierces the curtain of political obfuscation on Covid-19.  His message - it's all horsecrap.

I come on behalf of many of Canada’s public health officials, along with our fearless political leaders. They have asked me to deliver some important news here on your screen in the form of a unicorn cat angel avatar, hiding my identity in order to protect my privacy and safety.

What I have been charged to say is this: We have completely lost the plot on COVID.

The plot, in case you forgot, was to control and reduce transmission of the virus so it wouldn’t kill lots of people, cripple citizens with long COVID, threaten the vulnerable, trash our hospital system and make more dangerous variants.

Please, don’t be alarmed, but it is time to voice the obvious. We have decided to surrender and give up for the public good. Let’s admit it. Everyone is tired and done with COVID. Even Jordan Peterson. Especially Jordan Peterson.

So the COVID nightmare is hereby declared officially over or almost over. We know this is the case because we signed a nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Omicron and company.

...As a consequence, we are now entering an era of Not That Big a Deal. Mr. Omicron was fast and mild for the survivors, and why shouldn’t the next variant be even faster and milder? Haven’t our predictions been accurate? Second thought: ignore that question.

You are probably wondering what’s taken public health officials so long to learn how to relax and to live with a continuously mutating novel virus that destabilizes the immune system, inflames the lungs, infects bone marrow, swells lymph nodes, lowers sperm counts, wreaks havoc with the blood clotting system, damages the heart, and attacks the brain in about one out of 100 people?

...Point is, an optimistic attitude is what’s needed in order for us to govern. Not a bunch of scientific facts in service of urging us to take precautions.

Some of you will remember that a couple of waves ago (I hope I can keep all these waves straight), our trusted officials instructed you to wear a mask, isolate when sick, get tested, avoid crowds and bend that dangerous curve.

Meanwhile our fearless leaders promised that a vaccine, and only a vaccine, would deliver us from the virus.

They repeatedly vowed that one or two doses would deliver us, magically, straight into the waiting arms of herd immunity and normalcy.

...So here’s the new pitch. Don’t worry about getting infected with Omicron. (Yes, it has killed 1,107 Canadians a week as of Jan. 24, but they were mild deaths).

We want you to hurry back to work, crowd those schools, forget about isolating while sick, and not bother with testing because we don’t have the capacity anymore.

Ten days, five days, no days, fun days, as we now say in the office.

...You do know there’s a big difference between pandemic and endemic? So go right ahead and celebrate that we’ve decided that COVID is now endemic. Rejoice!

What’s that? Evidence? There is no evidence supporting this endemic declaration.

...We look at it like this. Malaria is endemic and it killed 600,000 people in 2020. Hepatitis C is endemic and it kills about half a million folks a year. That’s puny compared to COVID which has killed about six million people a year and could even double that. But hey, that’s when COVID was a pandemic, not endemic.

Now evolutionary virologists will accuse our smart policy-makers of invoking the word endemic “as an excuse to do little or nothing.” They’ll also claim that evolution can change a virus as if transforming a house cat into a meat-eating tiger. But that’s exactly the kind of nuance and complexity we can’t tolerate anymore. Besides, who’s to say we won’t end up with a unicorn cat angel? Hope for the best!

These same pesky virologists also make over the top arguments in the usual journals like Nature: “Thinking that endemicity is both mild and inevitable is... dangerous: it sets humanity up for many more years of disease, including unpredictable waves of outbreaks.” Pure fearmongering. Why can’t they look on the bright side of life?

...Oops. Don’t blame us for not studying reams of historical studies predicting a strain of recalcitrant human nature might ruin our vaccine-only approach to getting us out of this jam. Instead, direct your anger at the vaccine hesitant.

...There are a few places on the planet that still cling to ways of thinking we find inconvenient and therefore outdated. If you lived in Japan, for example, you’d see a lot of public health messages telling you to “Avoid the three C’s: Closed spaces. Crowded spaces. Close contact settings.” Boring.

Be thankful you don’t live in Japan, or South Korea or Taiwan for that matter, where they rigorously employ drugs, masks, testing and tracing, ventilation and isolation. As a result, vaccines in those places are collectively more effective in suppressing the virus.

True, but if we were to follow that old-fashioned script in this country it might hurt people’s feelings. And giving people the blues is not good for public health.

And so, we stick by our mantra in Canada: Be kind. Be calm. Be safe.

Be willing to accept that your leaders have lost the plot.