Justice Centre report tallies up lockdown costs

 A new report from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms examines the immediate and long-term negative impacts of Canada's Covid lockdowns, including physical, social, and economic harms.

New Report – Five years on: Tracing the costs of lockdowns } Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (news release):

May 8, 2025 - "A new report from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms examines the immediate and long-term negative impacts of Covid lockdowns, including physical, social, and economic harms. It also underscores the lack of transparent, evidence-based analysis by governments to justify these measures....

"One of the most concerning findings is the sharp decline in Canadians’ mental health. In 2019, 67 percent of Canadians rated their mental health as 'very good or excellent.' By 2023, that figure had dropped to just 54 percent. Meanwhile, the number of Canadians reporting 'fair or poor' mental health nearly doubled — from 8 percent to 15 percent. This trend was seen across all age groups, but especially among young adults.

"Indeed, despite facing minimal risk from Covid, young Canadians suffered some of the most serious consequences of lockdown measures. Non-Covid deaths among Canadians under age 45 rose by 22 percent, driven by factors such as disease, addiction, delayed treatment, and suicide. Physical activity among youth dropped significantly during this period, while time spent on screens—such as cell phones, computers, and tablets—increased sharply. Up to 70 percent of children and teens reported experiencing anxiety, depression, or other serious mental health issues.

"A particularly alarming trend was the surge in opioid-related deaths. From 2020 to 2023, annual opioid overdose deaths increased by 108 percent. In 2023 alone, 8,606 Canadians died from opioid toxicity—more than double the pre-lockdown average. British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario recorded the highest rates, with the vast majority of deaths involving fentanyl.

"During Covid, thousands of medical check-ups, diagnoses, and treatments were delayed or cancelled, resulting in a serious and ongoing backlog in Canada’s healthcare system.

"Wait times for medical treatments increased by 43 percent between 2019 and 2024, reaching a median of 30 weeks. MRI wait times rose by 55 percent. For certain cancers, including breast and prostate, surgery delays increased by as much as 34 percent. Since 2018, more than 74,000 Canadians have died while waiting for surgery or diagnostic care—over 15,000 of them in 2023–24 alone. The actual number is likely higher, due to poor provincial tracking and reporting....

"Lockdowns resulted in widespread job losses, particularly among low-wage workers, while the 'laptop class' remained largely unscathed. While many public sector jobs expanded during this time, Canadians in hospitality, retail, and service sectors faced prolonged unemployment. The expansion of public spending and government debt contributed to rising inflation, driving up the cost of food, housing, and other essentials.

"Crime rates also rose during the lockdown years. Homicides peaked in 2022 at 17 percent above trend, with 882 victims across Canada. Cybercrime nearly doubled, rising from 48,000 cases in 2019 to over 93,000 in 2023. Identity theft and fraud increased to 120 percent above trend in 2020, with similar levels in the following years. Particularly troubling was the rise in online child sexual exploitation, which reached 18,650 reported cases in 2023—a 173 percent increase from 2019.

"Benjamin Klassen, Education Coordinator at the Justice Centre, says the findings demand accountability. 

This report calls for governments to take responsibility for the damage done during this period and ensure that future public health policies uphold the Charter rights and freedoms of all Canadians.... 

The Charter requires governments to ‘demonstrably’ justify any freedom-limiting policy. To date, no federal or provincial government in Canada has conducted the kind of comprehensive impact assessment required to justify the lockdowns....

The evidence is clear: the harms of lockdowns outweighed their benefits. Canadians deserve an honest and transparent evaluation of lockdown harms, so that these mistakes are never repeated."

Read more: https://www.jccf.ca/new-report-five-years-on-tracing-the-costs-of-lockdowns-2/

Read study: https://www.jccf.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Five-years-on-Tracing-the-costs-of-lockdowns-1.pdf

Hillier ruling strengthens Charter right of assembly

In this year's case of Hillier v. Ontario, for the first time ever, a Canadian court has invoked the Charter right of peaceful assembly to overturn a law as unconstitutional.   

Hillier at 2021 anti-lockdown protest, Niagara Falls, Ont, Photo: Beth Baisch, Dreamstime

Ontario court ruling in Hillier case a positive sign for Charter freedoms | Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms | John Carpay:

April 10, 2025 - "Since lockdowns were imposed in March 2020, governments across Canada have admitted in numerous court challenges that provincial and federal health orders did violate one or more of the Charter freedoms of conscience, religion, expression, peaceful assembly, association, and mobility. In like manner, governments have admitted that vaccine mandates violated the Charter right to bodily autonomy. Canadian courts have consistently upheld these Charter violations as being reasonable and justified in a free and democratic society — until the Ontario Court of Appeal delivered its judgment in Hillier v. Ontario on April 7.

"Randy Hillier, a former Member of Ontario’s Provincial Parliament, challenged Ontario’s total and absolute ban on all outdoor protests, which the government imposed on citizens in April and May of 2021. While up to 10 people could gather for a wedding or funeral, or for a religious service or ceremony, it was illegal for two people to meet outdoors for a peaceful protest!

"Mr. Hillier faced charges and fines up to $100,000 for organizing peaceful political protests in Kemptville and Cornwall, and for attending protests in Smiths Falls, Belleville, Peterborough, Stratford, Kitchener, and Chatham throughout April and May 2021. His defence to these charges was that Ontario unjustifiably restricted his Charter freedom of peaceful assembly. In court, Ontario presented no evidence that its total ban on outdoor protests, including those in which Mr. Hillier participated, would reduce the spread of Covid.

"Overturning the November 2023 lower court ruling, Court of Appeal Justices Lauwers, Zarnett, and Pomerance ruled unanimously that Ontario’s absolute ban on peaceful assembly in 2021, particularly outdoor political protests, was an unjustified violation of the freedom of peaceful assembly as protected by Section 2(c) of the Charter.... The court declared that it could not countenance 'an outcome in which the state eliminates the free exercise of a fundamental freedom, without giving that elimination any actual thought'.... While stating that 'the pandemic posed significant challenges for Ontario,' the court declared that 'the Constitution does not fade from view in times of crisis.' 

"For the first time in Canadian judicial history, an appellate court has outlined the nature, purpose, and benefits of the Charter section 2(c) freedom of peaceful assembly, declaring it 'elemental' and 'integral to a functioning democracy.' Previously, peaceful assembly has been ignored and subsumed into the other Charter section 2 freedoms.... Peaceful assembly differs from the other fundamental freedoms because 'a demonstration is an act of solidarity, a coming together of similarly minded individuals,' who can 'make visible the extent and depth of support for a position,' the ruling said.

"The freedom of peaceful assembly protects the ability of citizens to get the community to pay attention to their message of protest or dissent, and entice others to become involved in redressing grievances. The court noted that 'outdoor protests are especially effective at amplifying minority voices and expressing political dissent.' Ontario’s total ban on peaceful protests denied citizens of their 'opportunity to influence public policy by this time-honoured method.' Significantly, the court ruled that social media and virtual gatherings ... cannot replace the 'traditional means of participating in public assemblies'..... 

"Governments across Canada have been put on notice that they cannot ban peaceful political gatherings. Freedom-loving Canadians can be encouraged that the Ontario Court of Appeal has elevated a previously 'forgotten freedom' to overturn a Covid-era ban on the exercise of that same Charter freedom. Could protection of Charter freedoms in Canada be making a comeback?"

Read more: https://www.jccf.ca/ontario-court-ruling-in-hillier-case-a-positive-sign-for-charter-freedoms/

The bridge to Freedom is never too far. Hillier Wins-Government loses! |  Randy Hillier | April 7, 2025:

Lockdowns cost Canadian businesses $60 Billion

Statistics Canada reported this month that small and medium-sized businesses lost almost $60 Billion during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Closed businesses in Toronto, November 2020. Nathan Denette/Canadian Press / fair dealing.

Lockdowns Cost Small and Medium-Sized Businesses $60 Billion in Pandemic’s First Year: StatCan | Epoch Times | Isaac Teo:

February 23, 2025 - "In a report published on Feb. 18, Statistics Canada said about 47 percent of all small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — businesses with annual salary expenses of less than $1.5 million — 'experienced a drop in gross profit, totalling a loss of nearly $60 billion' from 2019 to 2020.

“'The pandemic was most challenging for client-facing industries,' says the report, which examines how Ottawa’s Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) program may have influenced SMEs’ survival rates during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and restrictions.

The CEBA program, created on March 27, 2020, paid businesses up to $60,000 in interest-free loans that would qualify for partial loan forgiveness if repaid by a set deadline. 'The businesses that reported the largest declines in gross profit were client-facing ones, such as food service and drinking places, hotels, and offices of dentists and physicians,' said the StatCan report, as first covered by Blacklock’s Reporter.

"In addition, the federal agency said transportation and warehousing, administrative, waste management, and remediation services were also 'among the most severely impacted.... Output contracted sharply in these industries during the initial lockdown, anywhere from about 30% to 60%, and had not recovered to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2023,' the agency added. 'This was due, in part, to successive waves of public health restrictions.

"The provinces and territories started to declare public health emergencies in mid-March 2020.... Tight restrictions countrywide followed, including a month-long lockdown in April 2020. Over the summer that year, restrictions on social mobility began to ease before being tightened again in the fall.... In December 2020, restrictions were 'tightened to levels similar to those from the height of the first wave,' said StatCan in a 2022 report that measured the correlation between COVID restrictions and economic activity.

"The agency’s Feb. 18, 2024, report says retailers, and to a lesser extent builders and manufacturers, similarly saw 'large output declines' of roughly 20 percent to 25 percent during the initial lockdown, though they recovered more quickly when those initial restrictions were eased.... Bankruptcies began to accelerate in mid-2022 and reached a high of over 1,200 by the first quarter of 2024, compared to a low of about 250 in the third quarter of 2021 and about 400 to 450 per quarter throughout 2020, said StatCan’s Feb. 18 report.... 

"The report drew data from sources that includes Export Development Canada, administrator of the CEBA program; the banks and other financial institutions that provided loans to businesses; the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy; and StatCan’s own business register.

"The CEBA program was opened for applications from April 6, 2020, to June 30, 2021. The original deadline for repayment to qualify for partial loan forgiveness was Dec. 31, 2022. The deadline was extended to Dec. 31, 2023, [and] later further extended to Jan. 18, 2024.... Ottawa [lent] out $49.2 billion to 898,271 businesses ... [of which] 6,343 eventually declared bankruptcy by the end of September 2024. StatCan said 18.8 percent of CEBA loans ... currently remain outstanding and are due to be repaid by the end of December 2026."

Read more: https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/lockdowns-cost-small-and-medium-sized-businesses-billions-in-pandemics-first-year-statcan-5814949

Why the push to silence lockdown sceptics?

Since I've been too busy to find something new for the blog today, here's a blast from the past; an article that I wrote in the fall of 2020, but mislaid, on the push to silence lockdown sceptics.

The New Statesman wants lockdown sceptics silenced

by George J. Dance

As the coronavirus continues to rage through Europe, lockdowns are failing to control it in one country after another, including the United Kingdom (UK). In the UK, lockdown lovers may be getting desperate, which explains the newest craze among the left, seeking to have "lockdown sceptics" (or as I would call them, "Covid libertarians") 'deplatformed' or silenced (or at least marginalized). To do that, they have to malign and misrepresent the movement. 

The New Statesman (NS) magazine, a flagship magazine for the British left (similar to the New Republic in the U.S.), has been doing its fair share of maligning and misrepresenting. Last week I dealt with one such NS article, by lockdown cheerleader and Conservative MP Neil O'Brien, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. 

Throughoug the pandemic, NS has been attacking Covid libertarians with the strawman of "Covid denial"; here is a representative sample from a June article: "Most governments now reject Covid-19 denialism. Nonetheless, it has inspired far-right groups, and sparked protests against lockdowns, from Michigan to Melbourne."  The magazine repeated that strawman as late as January 6, when a "writer, broadcaster and activist," Paul Mason, was still  equating "Covid ... denialism and lockdown scepticism". Mason appears to understand neither lockdown scepticism nor the reasoning behind it: 

Their arguments often rest on scientific arguments and viewpoints that have now been discredited, such as that of the physician Karol Sikora, who in June predicted there would be “no second wave”, and modelling published last March claiming that as much as 50 per cent of the UK population had already been infected. 

Well, no. Maybe someone's arguments rest on that, but not Dr. Sikora's: his argument has always been that (as he titled an October Spectator article), "Covid-19 kills – but so does lockdown"  (a non-"denialist" claim that Mason does not address, but merely dismisses as "adopting ignorance in defence of [one's] own material interest" - as lf Sikora's only concern about his cancer patients missing hospital treatment is his lack of fees from same). Nor do those claims have anything to do with my argument, which I may as well give here:  

1. Lockdowns violate human rights; it is a matter of fact that people have been deprived of liberty, property, and even life against their will as a result of them. 
2. Governments, like everyone else, must respect human rights wherever possible. 
3. Governments violated human rights through lockdowns by pleading an emergency: that if they did not violate those rights, "millions of people would die." 
4. Granted that saving the lives of "millions of people" would excuse violating some rights: no governments have ever proved that their lockdowns have saved the lives of millions of people (or, for that matter, of any people). 

I have seen only two arguments for the cheerleaders' claim that lockdowns saved lives. One, ironically, was "modelling published last March" that claimed the UK would suffer 220,000 deaths without a lockdown, but just 20,000 with one. (Three lockdowns later, the death toll for the UK is pushing 100,000.) The other is the fact that Covid cases and deaths declined in the spring, which may have been due to (a) the voluntary social distancing that began everywhere before lockdowns (two weeks before, in the UK's case); and (b) the hypothesis that the virus is seasonal (which implies both that it would decline in the spring anyway, and that there would be a "second wave" in the fall).

Three lockdowns later, the UK is left with 100,000 deaths and counting (higher than any non-lockdown nation in Europe); but Mason is sure those deaths were all the lockdown sceptics' fault. Thanks to them, the first lockdown in March worked "too slowly;" the second one, in November, was "far too late"; and the third, after Christmas, came only after "disastrous delay and dither". No wonder he wants to shut the skeptics up: if their opinions are what is causing all these lockdowns to fail, then they must be silenced before any UK lockdowns can actually start saving all those lives. 

Which leads into Mason's own evidence. According to him: "The statistics are clear: the first lockdown worked, despite its late imposition, because schools and colleges were closed" (and not because a seasonal virus like a flu or a coronavirus declines in the spring). "The second lockdown in November, during which schools and colleges remained open, managed only to stabilise the death rate" (and not because a seasonal virus like a flu or a coronavirus does not decline in November). While the "outcome of the third lockdown depends on compliance, which the lockdown sceptics are helping to undermine." See how that works? Shut up the skeptics, close the schools again, and the lockdown may work by next spring.  

Which brings us to the real objects of Mason's spleen: the "prominent lockdown sceptics such as Toby Young, Allison Pearson, Laurence Fox, Julia Hartley-Brewer and Peter Hitchens: celebrity right-wing opinion formers with no scientific credentials." (Mason's own scientific credentials are "New Statesman contributing writer, author and film-maker.") That Gang of Five are not only wrong, but de facto traitors; they are not merely "denying reality," but "are spreading the equivalent of enemy propaganda in wartime." This alleged treason happens because, like "millions of die-hard conservative-minded people," they "still believe they live in a world of individuals and that society has no right to mandate their behaviour in an extreme crisis."

That last conjunct makes little sense. It is not British "society" mandating its citizens' behavior, but the UK government. "Society" cannot mandate anything, because it is not a person or even a god. Society is the human-constructed part of the environment (of which the 'economy' or the 'market' is an iportant part). Environments do not mandate; organisms adapt to them or die, but that is not because they go around punishing mankind for its "noncompliance." 

To a socialist, though, government is "society" - or, at least the members of it who get to mandate how "society" functions. For the past century socialists have tried to 'plan' and 'manage' their national economies to eliminate poverty and scarcity, blaming every failure on 'traitors' of their own. And the result has been so great (it has never worked, but would have every time except for the 'traitors'), that they are now emboldened to try planning the rest of society: if they plan all the minutiae of everyone's lives, from seeing friends to simple outdoor exercise, they will be able to eliminate disease and death itself just as successfully. (One could call this "pathological socialism.")  

Mason candidly admits is that "we’ve been here before with climate change". Since the failure of communism, socialists have trying to build a new case for a new socialism around the climate change threat arguing, as Mason does, that "Mitigating climate change means ... the state taking control of the market." The lockdown debate, as he says, "is rooted in the same ideological soil. If Covid is real, free-market capitalism of the kind the elite sold to British people for 40 years cannot work." Denying those conclusions - that either climate change or the coronavirus prove the case for socialism - is what, for him, actually makes non-socialists and lockdown skeptics "deniers." Even questioning the ability of the state to perform such miracles (if only capitalism were destroyed and all its defenders silenced) is, for someone like him, equivalent to "denying reality." 

Look where pathological socialism has brought us already. As Mason tells it: "We are paying people not to work" thanks to the economic shutdowns that came with the lockdowns taking away their jobs. "We are lending money to bankrupt companies" thanks to those shutdowns driving companies into bankruptcy. "We are forbidding landlords to evict people" thanks to making it impossible for people and businesses to meet their rents. "We are scrapping the exams that divide children into winners and losers at an early age" by working to create a whole generation with no winners. "We are printing money so that the government can borrow it" because, having taken a chainsaw to so much of their societies, western governments have no other way to pay for all of this.  

To secure all these gains, the traitors must be silenced. "I was glad to see YouTube temporarily pull the plug on TalkRadio. I would be even gladder to see Ofcom review the station’s licence to broadcast and Twitter and Facebook label the claims of columnists as questionable or false where appropriate." 

"But above all," Mason concludes, "I want to see politicians and public figures proactively and strongly refute Covid denialism." Here may be another point of agreement. If by "refute" he means try to intellectually engage with (as opposed to misrepresenting, slandering, deplatforming, or outlawing), I would welcome that as well. Unfortunately, I am losing the hope of ever seeing it happen. Unfortunately, I am afraid that by "refute" he means "silence". He wants his opponents silenced. 

Charges dropped against Ont. lockdown protestor

The Ontario Crown has withdrawn all charges against Randal Linton of Waterloo, Ontario, who was charged after video of him at a 2021 anti-lockdown rally circulated online. 

Crown withdraws charges against Waterloo father following anti-lockdown rally | The Democracy Fund (news release):

August 02, 2024 - "The Crown Attorney's office has officially withdrawn all charges against Randal Linton, a Waterloo resident who attended an anti-lockdown rally in 2021. 

"Mr. Linton had been charged with failure to comply under the Reopening Ontario Act and an additional charge under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act. Upon conviction, Mr. Linton could have been jailed for a maximum of 1 year and fined up to $100,000. 

"As part of the resolution, Mr. Linton agreed to make a $300 donation to the local Food Bank. 

"Mr. Linton attended the rally to protest the government's restrictions on social gatherings, a stance captured on video - which eventually led to the charges being issued by the police.

"Adam Blake-Gallipeau, lawyer with The Democracy Fund (TDF), expressed satisfaction with the outcome. 'Mr. Linton's participation in the rally was a legitimate exercise of his Charter rights to peacefully assemble and express his views. We are pleased that he can now move forward with his life,' said Blake-Gallipeau.

"TDF's advocacy resulted in the withdrawal of the charges through negotiation, highlighting the importance of vigorous defence counsel in protecting individual rights.'I wouldn't have been able to pay a serious fine, and the stress on my family was huge. I'm grateful for the work TDF did,' Mr. Linton commented....  

"About The Democracy Fund: Founded in 2021, The Democracy Fund (TDF) is a Canadian charity dedicated to constitutional rights, advancing education, and relieving poverty. TDF promotes constitutional rights through litigation and public education and supports an access to justice initiative for Canadians whose civil liberties have been infringed by government lockdowns and other public policy responses to the pandemic."

https://www.thedemocracyfund.ca/crown_withdraws_charges_waterloo_father_anti_lockdown_rally

Canada's Supreme Court won't rule on lockdowns

In March, Canada's Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a Manitoba court ruling that public health officials should not be "second guessed" on whether lockdown policies were a justifiable violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

Supreme Court will not hear case about government’s violation of rights and freedoms | Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms:

March 14, 2024 - "The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is disappointed that the Supreme Court of Canada has decided not to hear the appeal of the challenge to Manitoba’s lockdown restrictions. The decision was announced on Thursday, March 14, 2024. The Leave to Appeal application, under the name Gateway Bible Baptist Church et al. v. Manitoba et al., was filed on September 18, 2023. 

"Five Manitoba churches, a pastor and a deacon [had] asked the Supreme Court of Canada to hear their appeal of the lower courts’ dismissal of their constitutional challenge to closures of churches and restrictions on outdoor gatherings during Covid lockdowns in late 2020 and 2021. Included in the application was protester Ross MacKay, who had been ticketed and who was seeking to appeal the lower courts’ dismissal of his constitutional challenge to the outdoor gathering limits.

"Through public health orders, Manitoba had closed churches while permitting businesses to continue to operate. Taxis, in-person university classes, film and tv productions, law offices, and liquor stores were allowed to remain open. The Winnipeg Jets could meet and train indoors with their extended crew, and summer Olympic competitors were allowed to train indoors. Outdoor gatherings were reduced to no more than five people, while at the same time hundreds of people could legally gather indoors at big box stores.

"The initial case was heard in May 2021 before the Manitoba Court of King’s Bench. The province did not produce any evidence that Covid spreads outdoors, or that outdoor gatherings were risky activities. That hearing did produce a significant admission from a government expert witness, Chief Microbiologist and Laboratory Specialist Dr. Jared Bullard, who, under questioning from Justice Centre lawyers, admitted that 56 percent of positive Covid cases were not infectious.... The Manitoba Court of King’s Bench ruled that the government’s public health officials should not be 'second guessed' and that the government need not meet a high threshold of providing persuasive evidence to demonstrably justify that violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms were reasonable. 

"The Manitoba Court of King’s Bench did not order the unsuccessful Applicants to pay court costs, finding there to be significant public interest in having this case adjudicated. In December 2022, the Applicants appealed. The appeal was dismissed by the Manitoba Court of Appeal in June 2023.

"In the Application for Leave to Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, lawyers provided by the Justice Centre argued that the case raised issues of national importance. For instance: 

• How are constitutionally protected activities to be juridically measured against comparable non-constitutionally protected activities? 
• What is the proper approach to the minimal impairment stage of the Oakes analysis with respect to public health orders that fully prohibit Charter-protected activities (e.g. In- person religious worship) while permitting comparable non-Charter-protected activities[?].... 
• Does reliance on the 'precautionary principle' satisfy the state’s onus under Charter section 1 to provide 'cogent and persuasive' evidence to justify Charter-infringing measures?

"The Applicants’ legal team believed the case was critically important, as it could have served as guidance for governments in crafting public health measures on efforts needed to accommodate Charter-protected rights and freedoms. Allison Pejovic, lawyer for the Applicants, stated, 

Our clients are disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear their appeal. It was past time to have a conversation with Canada’s highest court about whether Charter-protected rights such as rights to worship and assemble ought to be prioritized over economic interests, such as ensuring that the Winnipeg Jets could practice indoors and that movie productions could continue. It was also critical to hear from the Court on the importance of respecting the Charter during a declared ’emergency’. Governments urgently needed the Supreme Court of Canada’s guidance as to the degree to which they should accommodate Charter rights during a future pandemic or other emergency proclaimed by government. Leaving that issue undecided at the highest level is a grave injustice for all Canadians."

Read more: https://www.jccf.ca/supreme-court-will-not-hear-case-about-governments-violation-of-rights-and-freedoms/

BBC misrepresented Covid risk, UK inquiry told

Epidemiologist Mark Woolhouse has told that UK Covid Inquiry that the BBC spread "misinformation" about the risk of Covid, which he suspects was done as "a justification for locking down the entire population." 

 

BBC ‘misrepresented’ Covid risk to boost lockdown support, inquiry told | The Telegraph | Simon Johnson: 

January 25, 2024 - "The BBC was allowed to 'misrepresent' the risk posed by Covid to most people to boost public support for lockdown, the UK Covid Inquiry has heard. Prof Mark Woolhouse, an eminent epidemiologist and government adviser, lambasted the corporation for having 'repeatedly reported rare deaths or illnesses among healthy adults as if they were the norm'. He said this created the 'misleading impression' among BBC News viewers at the start of the pandemic that 'we are all at risk'.... 

"In reality, he said it was known at the time that the risk of dying from Covid was 10,000 times higher in the over-75s than the under-15s. But Prof Woolhouse told the inquiry the BBC did not correct its reporting, saying: 'I suspect this misinformation was allowed to stand throughout 2020 because it provided a justification for locking down the entire population.'

"Prof Mark Woolhouse, a member of the Scottish Government COVID-19 Advisory Group, also claimed hundreds of people may have died after being told not to 'bother' the NHS. He told the inquiry people were misled about how the crisis would unfold. And he said orders to stay at home and cease outdoor activity were not needed.

"He said further evidence of this was provided by a briefing dated March 22, 2020, by a sub-group of the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) that focused on the public’s behaviour. This stated that 'a substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group... the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging'.

"Prof Woolhouse said the 'misperception' created by the BBC’s coverage that everyone was at risk was a 'barrier to targeting interventions at the vulnerable minority who truly were at high risk from Covid'. In his written submission to the inquiry about the impact north of the Border, he said: 'I fear that the Scottish Government’s pandemic response was compromised as a result.' He also concluded that lockdown had been 'least effective at protecting the most vulnerable precisely because of their need to have contacts with health care and social care workers - self-isolation was not an option.' The expert added: “This should have been recognised from the outset.”

"Prof Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, was an adviser to the Scottish Government during the pandemic, although his submission said his advice was often not heeded by Nicola Sturgeon. He also sat on the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, which was another sub-group of SAGE.... [He is also the author of a book on the pandemic, The Year the World Went Mad. - gd.] 

"Last year, The Telegraph spoke to current and former BBC journalists who described a 'climate of fear' existing in the corporation during the pandemic, with experienced reporters 'openly mocked' if they questioned the wisdom of lockdowns.... Some complained to senior managers about the BBC’s blinkered stance but were ignored. Others communicated via secretive WhatsApp groups to share their frustrations, like members of a resistance movement.

"Prof Woolhouse said the public was 'not given accurate information' about Covid in the early stages of the pandemic. 'Some media sources - notably the BBC television news - did repeatedly misrepresent the risk posed by Covid,' he said. 'One example is that they gave the impression that hospitals were being overwhelmed during the first wave. Some (mainly in London) were, but overall hospital bed occupancy was at an all-time low during that period. A second example is that they routinely reported deaths of healthy young adults, thereby giving the impression that these were common. In reality, such deaths were extremely rare; the great majority of Covid deaths occurred in the elderly, frail and infirm.' He concluded: 'Possibly, this kind of coverage was an attempt to back up government public health messaging; for example, the hugely misleading claim that "we are all at risk".'

"A BBC spokesperson said: 'We reported on the pandemic in line with the BBC’s rigorous editorial standards – using a range of official and scientific sources. We reported on events in the UK and across the world as they happened - featuring ongoing analysis from a range of medical and scientific experts, as well as a range of voices and opinions, including those sceptical of lockdowns.'" 

Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/25/covid-inquiry-bbc-misrepresented-risk-pandemic/

BBC INFLATED risk to Brits to IMPOSE lockdown measures | GB News | January 26, 2024: 

Care home lockdowns spread Covid, says study

A newly published peer-reviewed paper, relying on standard epidemiological models, indicates that locking down a vulnerable population, (as done with the elderly with in care homes during the Covid pandemic, significantly increases their risk of infection. 

"Rather Die of COVID than Loneliness." Photo by Anne Delaney, Greeley Tribune, 2020. 

Study says COVID confinement to care homes spread sickness | Western Standard | Lee Harding: 

November 5, 2023 - "A new Canadian scientific paper asserts isolating a vulnerable population together, such as the elderly in care homes, has bad results according to standard epidemiology. Governments purported to apply standard epidemiological models to create infectious disease policies during the COVID period by 'protecting' vulnerable elderly individuals by isolating them from the general population in care homes....

"[The] paper published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS One, scientists at CORRELATION demonstrate isolating vulnerable people from the healthier majority of the population actually produces the worst possible outcomes for them, according to these same standard epidemiological models of spread and transmission. The article, entitled Predictions from standard epidemiological models of consequences of segregating and isolating vulnerable people into care facilities, was authored by Joseph Hickey, PhD and Denis G. Rancourt, PhD, of the non-profit CORRELATION Research in the Public Interest based in Ottawa, Canada.

"The paper shows the standard epidemic models, which have existed in the scientific literature for decades prior to the WHO’s COVID-19 pandemic declaration of March 11 2020, unambiguously predict a significant increase in the infectious disease attack rate for the vulnerable population when it is isolated and segregated from the general population. 

[T]he vulnerable population is harmed by isolation from the robust population and benefits from mixing with or dilution within the robust population, in terms of risk of infection during the course of the epidemic or pandemic.... Whereas governments used theoretical epidemic models to justify most public health policies during the COVID era, within a tunnel vision of reducing risk of infection with a particular virus, they appear not to have considered what those same models predict about infection rates under conditions of care home segregation; and they appear to have disregarded the exponential increase of infection fatality rate with age.

"The paper further asserts 'Care home segregation policies may have been responsible for many deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Western countries.' Confining vulnerable people together makes it more likely that if one person contracts a contagious disease, so too will the others stuck together with them.

“'Increasing the share of a vulnerable person’s interactions that are with other vulnerable people, by confining them together in the same facility, increases the likelihood of infection of the vulnerable person during the course of the epidemic or pandemic, because infected vulnerable people remain infectious for a long time, relative to robust people,” the paper explains. 'The only exception to this general rule occurs if the contact frequency for vulnerable individuals is so small that no epidemic would occur in the vulnerable group if it were completely segregated from the robust majority of society....

"CORRELATION is a registered not-for-profit organization conducting independent scientific research on topics of public interest, and is entirely funded by individual public donations."

Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/study-says-covid-confinement-to-care-homes-spread-sickness/49820

Read study: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0293556

Iowa governor tries to rewrite her lockdown record

Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, says that her government "respects the people it serves and fights to protect their rights" which is why she "rejected the mandates and lockdowns of 2020."  Her record indicates otherwise.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds Scrubs Her Lockdown Record | Brownstone Institute | Kathleen Sheridan: 

September 2, 2023 - "It seems that everyone is running from the lockdowns they once supported, and that includes former presidents and governors, and probably mayors too. Apologies would be better so we can at least have an honest accounting rather than an attempt to rewrite the history that everyone knows. 

"Jack Phillips of Epoch Times alerts readers in his article of August 31, 2023, of Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’ recent statement on the subject of lockdowns. The Iowa State Government’s website says the following:

“Since news broke of COVID-19 restrictions being reinstated at some colleges and businesses across the U.S., concerned Iowans have been calling my office asking whether the same could happen here. My answer—not on my watch. In Iowa, government respects the people it serves and fights to protect their rights. I rejected the mandates and lockdowns of 2020, and my position has not changed.” 

"Governor Reynolds 'rejected' the mandates and lockdowns of 2020?... Could it be the Governor has forgotten her 'orders?' On March 17, 2020, Governor Reynolds issued her first “Public Health Disaster Emergency” ... [which] ordered the following:

• Restaurants and bars: Closed to the 'general public'
• Fitness centers/health clubs, spas, aquatic centers: Closed
• Theaters/performance centers: Closed
• Casinos/gaming facilities: Closed
• Churches: Closed
• Social, community, spiritual, religious, recreational, leisure, and sporting gatherings and events of more than 10 people, including but not limited to parades, festivals, conventions, and fundraisers: Prohibited. 
• Senior citizen and adult daycare centers: Closed
• Salons/barber shops: Closed

"A few weeks later on April 6, 2020, she doubled down. In this second proclamation, the Governor extended the timeline and expanded what she now says she 'rejected'....  To add insult, she also formally called on law enforcement to 'assist in the enforcement of these "mitigation efforts".' To wit: 

To encourage further social distancing and mitigation efforts, the proclamation orders additional closures effective at 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday, April 7th until Thursday, April 30th”: (Highlight and underline added)

• Malls 
• Tobacco or vaping stores
• Toy, gaming, music, instrument, movie, or adult entertainment stores
• Social and fraternal clubs, including those at golf courses
• Bingo halls, bowling alleys, pool halls, arcades, and amusement parks
• Museums, libraries, aquariums, and zoos
• Race tracks and speedway.
• Roller or ice skating rinks and skate parks
• Outdoor or indoor playgrounds or children’s play centers
• Campgrounds....

"Should we resist the impulse to accrue to the Governor a little bit of gaslighting in her August 30, 2023 statement? Will she insist that businesses she ordered closed and the behaviors she prohibited – to be enforced by law enforcement – weren’t 'mandated' 'lockdowns?' That they were instead 'mitigation efforts' as spelled out in her 'orders?'...

"At best ... this PR stunt strains credulity. Especially when simple searches can recall those pesky things called facts. On the record.... At worst, why, some might suggest it describes a woman whose actual status rhymes with 'fire'.... 

"In the meantime, some of us who rejected all the unlawful nonsense, who were never fooled by any of these fools, who never cooperated and gave up all – remain unfooled – even when the likes of a Kim Reynolds attempts to rewrite history.' 

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/iowa-governor-kim-reynolds-scrubs-her-lockdown-record/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Gov. Kim Reynolds says it's "not sustainable" for Iowa to stay on lockdown during pandemic | We Are Iowa Local 5 News | "3 years ago":

The World Economic Forum's Great Reset agenda

With the World Economic Forum (WEF) becoming a political issue in Canada, politically-aware Canadians need to take a hard look at the WEF and its agenda for global change, the "Great Reset". No "conspiracy theories," just the facts.

Introducing the ‘Great Reset,’ world leaders’ radical plan to transform the economy | The Hill | Justin Haskins:

June 20, 2020 - "For decades, progressives have attempted to use climate change to justify liberal policy changes. But their latest attempt – a new proposal called the 'Great Reset' – is the most ambitious and radical plan the world has seen in more than a generation. At a virtual meeting earlier in June hosted by the World Economic Forum, some of the planet’s most powerful business leaders, government officials and activists announced a proposal to 'reset' the global economy. Instead of traditional capitalism, the high-profile group said the world should adopt more socialistic policies, such as wealth taxes, additional regulations and massive Green New Deal-like government programs. 

"'Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed,' wrote Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, in an article published on WEF’s website. 'In short, we need a "Great Reset" of capitalism.' Schwab also said that 'all aspects of our societies and economies' must be 'revamped,' 'from education to social contracts and working conditions.' 

"Joining Schwab at the WEF event was Prince [now King] Charles, one of the primary proponents of the Great Reset; Gina Gopinath, the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund; António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations; and CEOs and presidents of major international corporations, such as Microsoft and BP. Activists from groups such as Greenpeace International and a variety of academics also attended the event or have expressed their support.... 

"Although many details about the Great Reset won’t be rolled out until ... 2021, the general principles of the plan are clear: The world needs massive new government programs and far-reaching policies comparable to those offered by American socialists such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in their Green New Deal plan....

"One of the main themes of the June meeting was that the coronavirus pandemic has created an important 'opportunity' for many of the World Economic Forum’s members to enact their radical transformation of capitalism.... 'We have a golden opportunity to seize something good from this crisis — its unprecedented shockwaves may well make people more receptive to big visions of change,' said Prince Charles at the meeting, adding later, 'It is an opportunity we have never had before and may never have again.'

"You might be wondering how these leaders plan to convince the world to completely alter its economy over the long run, since the COVID-19 pandemic most assuredly won’t remain a crisis forever. The answer is that they’ve already identified another 'crisis' that will require expansive government intervention: Climate change. 'The threat of climate change has been more gradual [than COVID-19]—but its devastating reality for many people and their livelihoods around the world, and its ever greater potential to disrupt, surpasses even that of Covid-19,' Prince Charles said.

"Of course, these government officials, activists and influencers can’t impose a systemic change of this size on their own. Which is why they have already started to activate vast networks of left-wing activists from around the world.... According to the World Economic Forum, its 2021 Davos summit will include thousands of members of the Global Shapers Community, youth activists located in 400 cities across the planet. The Global Shapers program was involved in the widespread 'climate strikes' of 2019, and more than 1,300 have already been trained by the Climate Reality Project, the highly influential, well-funded climate activist organization run by former Vice President Al Gore, who serves on the World Economic Forum’s Board of Trustees.

"For those of us who support free markets, the Great Reset is nothing short of terrifying. Our current crony capitalist system has many flaws, to be sure, but granting more power to the government agents who created that crony system and eroding property rights is not the best way forward. America is the world’s most powerful, prosperous nation precisely because of the very market principles the Great Reset supporters loathe.... The present pandemic is a 'golden opportunity' for radical change. And if Al Gore, Prince Charles and the rest of the World Economic Forum can convince enough people that attempting to stop climate change is also worth dramatically pushing humanity toward greater government control, then radical – and catastrophic – change is exactly what we’re going to get."

Read more: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/504499-introducing-the-great-reset-world-leaders-radical-plan-to/

No 'secret agenda' about The Great Reset | Sky News Australia | February 28, 2021: 

Alberta court invalidates Covid public health orders

Alberta court strikes down public health orders that violated Charter freedoms | Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms:

August 1, 2023 -The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is pleased with the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta’s decision to invalidate the public health orders of Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH), in Ingram v. Alberta. The court struck down these lockdown measures because they were effectively issued by Cabinet rather than by the CMOH. Dr. Hinshaw testified at trial that politicians were the final decision-making authority, and that she merely provided advice and recommendations.

"With these health orders having been invalidated, it is expected that Crown prosecutors will need to withdraw charges against Ty Northcott/ Northcott Rodeo Inc., Pastor James Coates of Grace Life Church of Edmonton, Pastor Tim Stephens’ church, Fairview Baptist Church, and others.

"The court’s ruling also confirms that lockdowns did violate Albertans’ fundamental freedoms of conscience, religion, association, and peaceful assembly protected in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In this court action, the Alberta government produced no comprehensive studies, reports or data analyzing lockdown harms. Without any comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, Justice Barbara Romaine nevertheless concluded that lockdowns were justified violations of Charter freedoms because they produced more good than harm.

"Using the slogan 'two weeks to flatten the curve,' the Alberta Government first declared a public health emergency in March of 2020, after which various Charter rights and freedoms were violated during the next two years. When Rebecca Ingram and other applicants filed their court action in December of 2020, the Alberta government had already been restricting Albertans’ rights to associate freely, assemble peacefully, and practice their religious beliefs for almost nine months. This was the first court challenge to lockdown measures in Alberta. In spite of Charter freedoms having already been violated for almost nine months, the court granted the Alberta government’s request to delay presenting its evidence until July of 2022.

"In April 2022, Dr. Deena Hinshaw was cross-examined about what expert information she had at the time that these public health decisions were being determined. Dr. Hinshaw was specifically asked whether she was aware of any evidence of harms to elementary school children from being compelled to wear masks. Under oath, Dr. Hinshaw said no. Yet the court’s ruling in another case, C.M. v. Alberta, has revealed that Dr. Hinshaw did receive information about how children could be harmed by mandatory mask-wearing. A February 7, 2022 memo sent to Premier Jason Kenney, on which Dr. Hinshaw was copied, stated that masks can disrupt learning and interfere with children’s social, emotional, and speech development by impairing verbal and non-verbal communication, emotional signaling and facial recognition. Nevertheless, the Court dismissed an interlocutory application to compel Dr. Deena Hinshaw to re-attend court for further cross-examination.

“Significant injustice has taken place in the past three years under these draconian public health measures. We are hopeful this ruling will mean the withdrawal of charges against Pastor James Coates, Fairview Baptist Church, Ty Northcott, and other courageous citizens who refused to comply with unjust and utterly unscientific measures,” states John Carpay, President of the Justice Centre."

Read more: https://www.jccf.ca/alberta-court-strikes-down-public-health-orders-that-violated-charter-freedoms/

Justice Centre Weekly: On Ingram v. Alberta with President John Carpay | S01E16 | Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms | July 29, 2023: 

Lockdowns were a costly failure, finds IEA book

A meta-analysis published by Britain's Institute of Economic Affairs concludes that Covid-19 lockdowns were "a global policy failure of gigantic proportions." 

Lockdowns were a costly failure, finds new IEA book | Institute for Economic Affairs:

June 5, 2023 - "A new systematic review and meta-analysis published by the Institute of Economic Affairs finds that Covid lockdowns failed to significantly reduce deaths The Herby-Jonung-Hanke meta-analysis found that lockdowns, as reported in studies based on stringency indices in the spring of 2020, reduced mortality by 3.2 per cent when compared to less strict lockdown policies adopted by the likes of Sweden. This means lockdowns prevented 1,700 deaths in England and Wales, 6,000 deaths across Europe, and 4,000 deaths in the United States. 

"Lockdowns prevented relatively few deaths compared to a typical flu season – in England and Wales, 18,500–24,800 flu deaths occur, in Europe 72,000 flu deaths occur, and in the United States 38,000 flu deaths occur in a typical flu season. These results pale in comparison to the Imperial College of London’s modelling exercises (March 2020), which predicted that lockdowns would save over 400,000 lives in the United Kingdom and over 2 million lives in the United States.

"Herby, Jonung, and Hanke conclude that voluntary changes in behaviour, such as social distancing, played a significant role in mitigating the pandemic – but harsher restrictions, like stay-at-home rules and school closures, generated very high costs but produced only negligible health benefits. COVID-19 lockdowns were 'a global policy failure of gigantic proportions,' according to this peer-reviewed new academic study. The draconian policy failed to significantly reduce deaths while imposing substantial social, cultural, and economic costs.

"'This study is the first all-encompassing evaluation of the research on the effectiveness of mandatory restrictions on mortality,' according to one of the study’s co-authors, Dr. Lars Jonung, professor emeritus at the Knut Wicksell Centre for Financial Studies at Sweden’s Lund University. 'It demonstrates that lockdowns were a failed promise. They had negligible health effects but disastrous economic, social and political costs to society. Most likely lockdowns represent the biggest policy mistake in modern times.' 

The comprehensive 220-page book, published today by the London-based think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, began with a systematic review of 19,646 potentially relevant studies. For their meta-analysis, the authors’ screening resulted in the choice of 22 studies that are based on actual, measured mortality data, not on results derived from modelling exercises. A meta-analysis is considered the ‘gold-standard’ for evidence, as it combines comparable, independent studies to determine overall trends. 

"The authors, including Professor Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University, also consider a range of studies that determined the impact of individual lockdown restrictions, including stay-at-home rules ... school closures and travel restrictions. In each case, the restrictions did little to reduce COVID-19 mortality. Shelter-in-place (stay at home) orders in Europe and the United States reduced COVID mortality by between 1.4 and 4.1 per cent; Business closures reduced mortality by 7.5 per cent; Gathering limits likely increased COVID mortality by almost six per cent....

"The study compares the effect of lockdown measures against the effect of ‘doing the least,’ rather than doing nothing at all.... Voluntary measures, like social distancing and the reduction of person-to-person contact, effectively reduced COVID mortality in Sweden, a country that did not impose draconian legal restrictions. This is consistent with evidence early in the pandemic that voluntary action began reducing transmission before lockdowns. The authors also conclude that legal mandates only limited a relatively small set of potential contagious contacts, and could in some cases have backfired by encouraging people to stay indoors in less safe environments.

"If voluntary action, minor legal changes, and proactive information campaigns effectively reduced the transmission of COVID, lockdowns were unwarranted from a public health point of view. This negative conclusion is amplified by the significant economic and social costs associated with lockdowns, which include:

• stunted economic growth;
• large increases in public debt;
• rising inequality;
• damage to children’s education and health;
• reduced health-related quality of life;
• damage to mental health;
• increased crime; and
• threats to democracy and loss of freedom.

"The research concludes that, unless substantial alternative evidence emerges, lockdowns should be ‘rejected out of hand’ to control future pandemics."

Read more: https://iea.org.uk/media/lockdowns-were-a-costly-failure-finds-new-iea-book/

Covid charges dropped against Sloan and Hillier

Charges against former MP Derek Sloan and former Ontario MPP Randy Hillier for attending a banned "No More Lockdowns" 2021 protest in Stratford, Ontario, have been dropped by the Crown. 

Charges dropped against former MP Derek Sloan and MPP Randy Hillier | Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms:

July 12, 2023 - "The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is pleased to announce that charges against Mr. Derek Sloan and Mr. Randy Hillier were dropped on Thursday, June 29, 2023.  Both men allegedly attended a rally against Covid-19 lockdown measures in April 2021.

Randy Hillier, 2018. Photo by Dave Li.

 CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

"On April 8, 2021, the Ontario government declared a state of emergency over increasing cases of Covid-19. The government then implemented its most draconian measures yet by instituting an outdoor gathering ban which effectively made peaceful political protest illegal in Ontario. Mr. Sloan was a former MP, and Mr. Hillier was a sitting MPP at the time. Both believed that these lockdowns were harmful and attended these gatherings to protest the measures.  

"On April 25, 2021, there was a 'No More Lockdowns' protest in Stratford, which the 2 men attended. At the time, the Ontario government’s regulations stated that zero persons were allowed to gather outdoors.... The Ontario government did this despite the fact most experts agree that spread of respiratory viruses at short duration, outdoor events are extremely limited. Mr. Sloan and Mr. Hillier each faced a maximum fine of $100,000 for attending this protest. 

"The prosecutor agreed to drop the charges in exchange for a modest charitable donation or volunteer work.  Mr. Sloan made the charitable donation and Mr. Hillier volunteered at a food bank in Lanark County. 

Derek Sloan, 2020. Photo by Danman 2010.

 CC BY-SA 4,0, Wikimedia Commons.

“'The Ontario government’s lockdowns, which effectively banned any political protesting whatsoever, were a grave threat to our freedom in Canada. Restrictions may be over for now, but there was no indication how long they would last at the time. 2 weeks became 2 months which became almost 2 years of failed COVID policies.', says Mr. Sloan. 'I am proud to have stood against this tyranny with many other brave Canadians. 

"'The Stratford prosecutor made the right choice, and it is now up to other prosecutors in other districts to drop these meaningless charges. One day, history, and the courts, will concur that these lockdowns were unwarranted and a serious and unnecessary interference with Canadian’s basic freedoms,' he continued. 

"Both Mr. Hillier and Mr. Sloan have similar outstanding charges in Ontario. Mr. Hillier has launched a Charter challenge against the lockdowns that banned all outdoor protests, and will argue that they were an unjustifiable infringement of his rights. The hearing is set for July 27-28, 2023."

Read more: https://www.jccf.ca/charges-dropped-against-former-mp-derek-sloan-and-mpp-randy-hillier/ 

Walensky leaves behind a more authoritarian CDC

Rochelle Walensky leaves behind a more powerful and more authoritarian Centers for Disease Control than the one she joined. 

Rochelle Walensky Leaves a CDC That's Far More Powerful Than When She Entered It | Reason - Robby Soave: 

May 5, 2023 - "Rochelle Walensky is resigning from her post as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She has overseen the agency since the beginning of President Joe Biden's term and greatly expanded the CDC's authority.

"Walensky's reign was chiefly characterized by her extreme reluctance to reverse the CDC's support for ongoing pandemic restrictions. When she took the helm in January 2021, the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was just getting underway, and there was good reason to believe that the most vulnerable people would soon enjoy robust protection from severe disease and death. Walensky, however, was not inclined to let the CDC's influence wane. For instance, she repeatedly extended the CDC's eviction moratorium, a policy that made it extremely difficult for landlords to collect rent; the Supreme Court finally struck down the illegal order in August 2021.

"Walensky firmly believed that CDC guidance on COVID-19 policies should reflect the up-to-date scientific consensus — that is, unless the science had arrived at a conclusion that vexed her. Walensky's CDC put incredible faith in junk studies that purported to prove the importance of mask mandates in schools. When the legitimacy of these studies came into question, she declined to reverse course and admit that ritualistically masking schoolchildren was unnecessary.... 

"When challenged on her policies, Walensky would demur and claim that CDC guidance on masks was just that — guidance. She sounded a similar note as COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci, who cloaked his enthusiasm for shutting down all of society under the guise of mere suggestion. The fact of the matter is that government policy makers at the local, state, and federal level routinely outsourced their COVID-19 decision making to Walensky and Fauci. They put their thumbs on the scales of lockdowns and mask mandates, and thus the U.S. continued these policies far longer than did our peer countries. The World Health Organization (WHO), in contrast, never recommended masks for children under 6 at all, and many Nordic countries were unwilling to mask kids up to age 11....

"Walensky wasn't necessarily looking to European peer countries.... She was far more inclined to celebrate the alleged success of China's 'really strict lockdowns,' which involved the country's authoritarian government starving some people via mandatory quarantine detention centers and trapping others inside burning buildings. (China eventually succumbed to the inevitable, gave up on its draconian lockdowns, and implicitly admitted that the 'zero-COVID' policy was a fantasy.)

"Walensky's CDC also pursued the questionable strategy of purging so-called misinformation about COVID-19 from social media. Throughout her time in charge, the CDC became the de facto internet speech police. Emails obtained by Reason show that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, routinely deferred moderation decisions to government health authorities. Meta might have thought it had little choice but to seek the CDC's input, as Biden had publicly declared that the social media platform's failure to suppress allegedly misleading content was 'killing people.' In any case, this is a dangerous precedent.... 

"Walensky's exit from the CDC comes just a few days before the official end of the national COVID-19 pandemic on May 11. Whoever takes over the agency should concentrate on rebalancing its decidedly unhealthy approach to individual liberty."

Read more: https://reason.com/2023/05/05/rochelle-walensky-cdc-guidance-masks-mandates-health/

Inside the CDC’s Changes After Pandemic Missteps |  Bloomberg, January 13, 2023: 

This Bud's for Who? What the Bud Light marketing fiasco says about class divisions in America

Mike Mozart, Bud Light Truck at Stew Leonard's, 2014 (detail). CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

What the Bud Light Fiasco Reveals about the Ruling Class | Brownstone Institute - Jeffrey A. Tucker:

April 13, 2023 - "How did someone believe that making 'trans woman' Dylan Mulvaney the icon of a Bud Light ad campaign, complete with a beer can with Mulvaney’s image on it, would be good for sales?.... Dylan, who had previously been interviewed on trans issues by President Biden himself, was celebrating '365 Days of Girlhood' with a grotesquely misogynistic caricature that would disgust just about the whole market for this beer. Indeed, this person’s cosplay might as well be designed to discredit the entire political agenda of gender dysphoriacs. 

"Sure enough, because we don’t have mandates on what beers you must buy, sales of the beer plummeted. The parent company Anheuser-Busch’s stock lost $5 billion or 4 percent in value since the ad campaign rollout. Sales have fallen 50-70 percent. Now there is worry within the company of a widening boycott to all their brands. A local Missouri distributor of the product canceled an appearance by Budweiser Clydesdale horses due to public anger....

"The person who made the miscalculation is Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, Vice President in charge of marketing for Bud Light. She explained that her intention was to make the beer King of ‘Woke’ Beers. She wanted to shift away from the 'out of touch' frat party image to one of 'inclusivity.' By all accounts, she actually believed this. More likely, she was rationalizing actions that would earn her bragging rights within her social circle. 

"Digging through her personal biography, we find all the predictable signs of tremendous detachment from regular life: elite boarding school (Groton, $65K a year), Harvard, Wharton School, coveted internship at General Foods, and straight to top VP at the biggest beverage company in the world. Somehow through all that, nothing entered her brain apart from elite opinion on how the world should work with theories never actually tested by real-world marketing demands....  

"She is a perfect symbol of a problem that afflicts high-end corporate and government culture: a shocking blindness toward the mainstream of American life, including working classes and other people less privileged. They are invisible to this crowd. And her type is pervasive in corporate America with its huge layers of management developed over 20 years of loose credit and push for token representation at the highest levels. 

"We’ve seen this manifest over three years [as] ruling-class types imposed lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandates on the whole population without regard to the consequences and with full expectation that the food will continue to be delivered to their doorsteps no matter how many days, months, or years they stay at home and stay safe. The working classes, meanwhile, were shoved out in front of the pathogen to make their assigned contribution to herd immunity so that the rich and privileged could preserve their clean state of being, making TikTok videos and issuing edicts from their safe spaces for two or even three years. 

"In the late 19th century, the blindness of class detachment was a problem that so consumed Karl Marx that he became possessed with the desire to overthrow class distinctions between labor and capital.... In every country where his dreams became a reality, however, a protected elite took over and secured themselves from the consequences of their deluded dreams.  The people who in recent decades have drunk so deeply from the well of the Marxian tradition seem to be repeating that experience with complete disinterest in the lower classes, while pushing a deepening chasm that only became worse in the lockdown years in which they have controlled the levers of power. 

"It was startling to watch, and I could hardly believe what was happening. Then one day the incredibly obvious dawned on me. All official opinion in this country and even the whole world – government, media, corporations, technology – emanated from the same upper echelons of the class structure. It was people with elite educations and who had the time to shape public opinion. They are the ones on Twitter, in the newsrooms, fussing with the codes, and enjoying the laptop life of a permanent bureaucrat. 

"Their social circles were the same. They knew no one who cut trees, butchered cows, drove trucks, fixed cars, and met payroll in a small restaurant. The “workers and peasants” are people the elites so otherized that they became nothing more than non-playing characters who make stuff work but are not worthy of their attention or time. 

"The result was a massive transfer of wealth upwards in the social ladder as digital brands, technology, and Peloton thrived, while everyone else faced a barrage of ill health, debt, and inflation. As classes have grown more stratified – and, yes, there is a reason to worry about the gap between the rich and the poor when malleability is restricted – the intellectual producers of policy and opinion have constructed their own bubble to protect themselves from by being soiled by contrary points of view. 

They want the whole world to be their own safe space regardless of the victims. Would lockdowns have happened in any other kind of world? Not likely. And it would not have happened if the overlords did not have the technology to carry on their lives as normal while pretending that no one was really suffering from their scheme. 

"The Bud Light case is especially startling because the advent of commercial society in the high Middle Ages and through the Industrial Revolution was supposed to mitigate against this sort of myopic stratification. And this has always been the most compelling critique of Marx: he was raging against a system that was gradually winnowing away the very demarcations in classes that he decried....  Joseph Schumpeter in 1919 wrote an essay on this topic in his book Imperialism and Social Classes. He highlighted how the commercial ethos dramatically changed the class system. 'The warlord was automatically the leader of his people in virtually every respect,' he wrote. 'The modern industrialist is anything but such a leader'.... 

"But what happens when the corporate elites, working together with government, themselves become the warlords? The foundations of market capitalism begin to erode. The workers become ever more alienated from final consumption of the product they have made possible. 

"It’s been typical of people like me – pro-market libertarians – to ignore the issue of class and its impact on social and political structures. We inherited the view of Frederic Bastiat that the good society is about cooperation between everyone and not class conflict, much less class war. We’ve been suspicious of people who rage against wealth inequality and social stratification. And yet we do not live in such market conditions. The social and economic systems of the West are increasingly bureaucratized, hobbled by credentialism, and regulated, and this has severely impacted class mobility. Indeed, for many of these structures, exclusion of the unwashed is the whole point. 

"And the ruling class themselves have ever more the mindset as described by Thorstein Veblen: only the ignorable do actual work while the truly successful indulge in leisure and conspicuous consumption as much as their means allow. One supposes that this doesn’t hurt anyone…until it does. And this certainly happened in very recent history as the conspicuous consumers harnessed the power of states all over the world to serve their interests exclusively. The result was calamity for rights and liberties won over a thousand years of struggle. 

"The emergent fissures between the classes – and the diffusions of our ruling class into many sectors public and private – suggest an urgency for a new consciousness of the real meaning of the common good, which is inseparable from liberty. The marketing director of Bud Light talked a good line about 'inclusivity' but she plotted to impose everything but that. Her plan was designed for the one percent and to the exclusion of all the people who actually consume the product, to say nothing for the workers who actually make and deliver the product she was charged with promoting.

"That the markets have so brutally punished the brand and company for this profound error points the way to the future. People should have the right to their own choices about the kind of life they want to live and the products and services they want to consume. The dystopia of lockdowns and woke hegemony of public opinion – complete with censorship – have become the policy to overturn if the workers are ever to throw off the chains that bind them. The boycotts of Bud Light are but a beginning."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/what-bud-light-fiasco-reveals-about-ruling-class/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Covid origins debate distracts from main issue

The debate over the origins of COVID19 distracts from the more important debate, over whether pandemics can or should be "used by the political, expert and medical classes as a pretext for taking our #freedom," argues author John Tamny.

Regardless of Virus Origins, Freedom Is the Answer | Brownstone Institute - John Tamny:

 March 10, 2023 - "As seemingly everyone who’s been following the political tragedy that was and is the coronavirus well knows, the Department of Energy now confirms with a low level of confidence that the virus was inadvertently leaked from a lab in China [see video below - gd]. Unsurprisingly, and perhaps understandably, this conclusion has many gloating.... At the same time, this focus on the origins of the virus is a total distraction that politicians, scientists and doctors (including Fauci) have to be loving....

""[T]he virus’s origins really don’t matter. Lest the crowd that has long been properly anti-lockdown forgets, pathogens are as old as mankind is. Since they are, the accenting of where they come from is to completely miss the point. Instead, the always and everywhere expressed view should be that [this] reality should not be used by the political, expert and medical classes as a pretext for taking our freedom. Freedom is precious, and authoritarians can’t have it regardless of a pathogen’s origin or its presumed lethality.

"Indeed, while even the New York Times reported with great consistency in 2020 that the virus in a death sense was most associated with very sick, very old people in nursing homes, the accent on the previous truth by the anti-lockdown crowd similarly missed the point. And it missed the point dangerously. That is so because a focus on statistics or anecdote as a reason for not locking us down is to suggest that if the coronavirus or some future pathogen were truly lethal, politicians would have the right to lock us down.

"No thanks, which is once again why this focus on what the New York Times acknowledged way back when, what the CDC routinely acknowledged about those dying with the virus (remember 'comorbidities'?) since 2020, and what the DoE softly concludes right now is such a mistaken way to fight the battle. It is because it puts such a low price tag on freedom. Almost as bad, it hands the argument to those who have a need to trample on the rights of others. Think about it. As I argued in my 2021 book When Politicians Panicked, the more lethal any virus is the more that political action is wholly superfluous. If a virus is killing indiscriminately who among us seriously needs to be forced to be careful?

"Ok, but what if we don’t know the lethality of a spreading virus? Freedom is the answer once again. It’s precisely when fear is greatest and knowledge is least evident that freedom becomes most crucial. Indeed, free people do more than produce the economic resources that scientists and doctors require to come up with cures for what might be harmful or lethal. Equally important, free people produce information. By making different choices amid a spreading virus, free people teach us what behavior is most associated with sickness, death, or neither. In other words, lockdowns don’t protect us; rather they threaten our health by concealing essential information. 

"Please think about this with what happened in 2020 top of mind. By locking us down, politicians and experts didn’t just wreck businesses, jobs, and living as we knew it up until then; they also blinded us to how to best deal with a spreading virus that they claimed was a huge threat to us. In that case, thank goodness the virus wasn’t remotely lethal for the vast majority of us.

"Still, the lockdowns were tragic. That they correlated with increased depression, alcoholism, job loss, business failure, and reduced classroom learning is a known and horrid quantity. Worse, and as logic would dictate, all this force logically didn’t improve our well-being or save lives. The taking of freedom never does.

"In which case, let’s not compound the errors of the past by focusing on the origin of the virus leak. Once again, viruses are a part of life, thus making origin irrelevant. Much worse, this focus on what’s irrelevant is exactly what the politicians and experts want us to do. If we waste time worrying about the where, we forget what the political and expert class did to us not too long ago.

"In short, the lockdowns were the true tragedy of 2020 and beyond, not something that is old as mankind. Let’s please not change the subject from what really mattered then, and matters now."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/freedom-is-the-answer/

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UK military spied on lockdown sceptics

"A shadowy Army unit secretly spied on British citizens who criticised the Government's Covid lockdown policies," reports the Daily Mail.

Army spied on lockdown critics: Sceptics, including our own Peter Hitchens, long suspected they were under surveillance. Now we've obtained official records that prove they were right all along | Daily Mail - Glen Owen:

January 28, 2023 - "Military operatives in the UK's 'information warfare' brigade were part of a sinister operation that targeted politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the official pandemic response. They compiled dossiers on public figures such as ex-Minister David Davis, who questioned the modelling behind alarming death toll predictions, as well as journalists such as Peter Hitchens and Toby Young. Their dissenting views were then reported back to No 10.

"Documents obtained by the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, and shared exclusively with this newspaper, exposed the work of Government cells such as the Counter Disinformation Unit, based in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and the Rapid Response Unit in the Cabinet Office. But the most secretive is the MoD's 77th Brigade, which deploys 'non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of adversaries'. According to a whistleblower who worked for the brigade during the lockdowns, ...  British citizens' social media accounts were scrutinised – a sinister activity that the Ministry of Defence, in public, repeatedly denied doing.

"Papers show the outfits were tasked with countering 'disinformation' and 'harmful narratives... from purported experts', with civil servants and artificial intelligence deployed to 'scrape' social media for keywords such as 'ventilators' that would have been of interest. The information was then used to orchestrate Government responses to criticisms of policies such as the stay-at-home order, when police were given power to issue fines and break up gatherings. It also allowed Ministers to push social media platforms to remove posts and promote Government-approved lines....

"Mail on Sunday journalist Mr Hitchens was monitored after sharing an article, based on leaked NHS papers, which claimed data used to publicly justify lockdown was incomplete. An internal Rapid Response Unit email said Mr Hitchens wanted to 'further [an] anti-lockdown agenda and influence the Commons vote'. Writing today, Mr Hitchens ... says: 'The most astonishing thing about the great Covid panic was how many attacks the state managed to make on basic freedoms without anyone much even caring, let alone protesting. Now is the time to demand a full and powerful investigation into the dark material Big Brother Watch has bravely uncovered.'

"The whistleblower from 77 Brigade, which uses both regular and reserve troops, said: 'I developed the impression the Government were more interested in protecting the success of their policies than uncovering any potential foreign interference, and I regret that I was a part of it. Frankly, the work I was doing should never have happened.' The source also suggested that the Government was so focused on monitoring critics it may have missed genuine Chinese-led prolockdown campaigns.

"Silkie Carlo, of Big Brother Watch, said: 'This is an alarming case of mission creep, where public money and military power have been misused to monitor academics, journalists, campaigners and MPs who criticised the Government, particularly during the pandemic.... Contrary to their stated aims, these Government truth units are secretive and harmful to our democracy. The Counter Disinformation Unit should be suspended immediately and subject to a full investigation.'"

Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11687675/Army-spied-lockdown-critics-Sceptics-including-Peter-Hitchens-suspected-watched.html