As I grew into an old man, I learned that my broad and deep education has prepared me well for this time in history. I have studied mathematics, chemistry, physics, philosophy, history, literature, business, securities law, mining law and even “sustainability” and have found much of the current “science” is belief masquerading as science. I long ago concluded that I don’t believe anything that requires me to start with a belief.
Political leaders in the past decade or two have learned they can control the population if they pretend what they propose is based on science, and often use language like “settled science” and “accepted consensus” as a means to ask citizens to abandon their own minds and thought processes and accept the dogma that emanates from Washington and Ottawa, among others.
Science is and always has been a search for understanding. True scientists recognize that for some phenomena there are questions that cannot be answered. Politicians turn this around and pretend they have answers that cannot be questioned. COVID 19 exposed the underbelly of government propaganda for the world to see. We were told that vaccines would prevent infection, and later that vaccines may not prevent infection but will lessen the severity of the symptoms of infection. We were told that masks would prevent the spread of COVID and that lockdowns were necessary to stop the spread.
Today, we know that most of what we were told was not only wrong but also harmful. The words “safe and effective” were popular slogans for policy, but in reality “safe” was a bit optimistic and “effective” a difficult argument to make to the relatives of those who died of COVID despite being vaccinated, revaccinated, boosted, living like hermits and wearing masks, even when walking alone or alone in their vehicles. The literally hundreds of young athletes who have died from sudden cardiac arrest is problematic for the “safe and effective” claim, and it is now clear that while vaccines did lessen the severity of COVID and undoubtedly saved many lives, vaccines were unnecessary for young, healthy people without co-morbidities.
It is interesting to compare the outcomes in various countries and see just how much they differ. In Australia, 43.6% of the population became infected but only 746 people died per million citizens. In Hungary, only 22.8% of the population became infected but 5,076 people died per million citizens. In Vietnam, only 11.6% of the population became infected and deaths per million were only 434. In Peru, only 13.6% of the population suffered infection but deaths per million people were over 6,500. The differences don’t reflect differences in policies, but simply reflect random differences. There is no evidence that the lockdowns, mask mandates or vaccine mandates had any material effect on outcomes. At best, they were “soothers”.
Questions need some research. Why did only 2.4% of Indonesians become infected with only 577 deaths per million? Why did 50% of people living in the Netherlands get infected with 1,336 deaths per million? There is a massive amount of reliable data now available and medical research should be directed at the cost-benefit of policy alternatives in a pandemic.
Canada’s 4.6 million case comprise only 12% of Canadians and the death rate per million Canadians at 1,336 is relatively low. No doubt our Liberal government will claim their “policies worked” but the same policies in the United Kingdom (more or less the same) saw a 36% infection rate and over 3,000 deaths per million. No doubt conversations about pandemic policies between Rishi Sunak and Justin Trudeau are awkward for Sunak, who has to put up with Trudeau’s gloating. The old saying is that failure is an orphan but success has many authors.
We didn’t need COVID to expose the political propaganda disguisded as “science”. In possibly the largest and most effective fraud in recorded history, even greater than the fraud of many organized religions, we have been repeatedly told there is a “climate crisis” as a result of fossil fuel emissions. Dissent is vilified, critics are called “deniers” and lose their university chairs and their research grants cancelled. We are told there is a “consensus” that CO2 causes climate change despite the reality that no such “consensus” exists, that there are literally thousands of physicists and climate scientists who dispute the man-made climate crisis theory including over sixty Nobel laureates and the obvious that only one scientist need be correct - reality is not a vote.
One scientist who is correct is Dieter Schildknecht whose 2021 paper finds accurately that a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels would have a limited impact on global temperatures of about 0.5 degrees C and that the ability of CO2 to interact with outbound long wave infrared radiation (LWIR) was saturated at about 300 ppm by volume of atmospheric CO2 and further increases were irrelevant to any changes in global temperatures. His research falls on deaf ears as Western leaders press on with their “climate change” rhetoric at great expense to the economies they lead while China, India, Russia and Africa keep building harmless but cost-effective coal-fired generating plants and buying up all the oil & gas they can.
The leftist United Nations adopted the climate change scare to rally support for global socialism and to redistribute wealth from industrialized nations to developing countries. They could hardly have dreamed they would be so successful in this scam. Europe’s trillion dollar investment to “fight climate change” has brought the European economy to its knees, impoverished many who can no longer afford home heating or fuel for their vehicles and face the burden of double digit inflation which can be traced directly to their foolish climate policies while India, China and parts of Africa benefit from higher growth rates than the Western democracies led by “climate nutters” like Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak or Justin Trudeau. What is fascinating to this student of history is that the socialists in the U.N. were over and explicit about their goals which have nothing to do with the environment.
The rubber is hitting the road today. Even Germany, the poster boy for the “transition from fossil fuels” to the “low carbon economy” is finding it necessary to not only build new coal fired power generation but also keep open nuclear power plants once scheduled for retirement.
The weakness of our democracy is the electorate’s willingness to accept the nonsense coming out of Washington, Ottawa and Downing Street as gospel and behave as if their leaders would never lie to them. In reality, it is harder to catch Biden, Trudeau or Sunak in a truth than in a lie.
Urge your children to study mathematics, physics and chemistry and think for themselves rather than be indoctrinated in left wing ideology or the toxic critical race theory, gender fluidity, and other “woke” crap coming from the leftists in teacher’s unions who are inflicting enormous harm on the next generation. We need to ensure our children can grow into adults able to think critically and think for themselves.
As a like minded individual who works in the environment ministry of an unnamed western provincial government, you can just imagine the frustration and contempt I have for my colleagues in the public service who are hard core lefties who hold a lemming-like debt of gratitude for the protection that was and continues to be offered by the current sitting federal government and they long for the halcyon days of the past NDP provincial government who are nothing more than plebs for Singh’s perverted national socialist dream.
Please be aware that many public service employees (All levels of government) are socialist nutters who have turned off their intelligence and rationality to tune into rhetorical, fear based propaganda. Get vaccinated!!! Get boosters!!!! Climate crisis!!!!! Free surgery for trans!!!!! Ban IC engines!!!!!! Reparations!!!!!
I am gobsmacked at how everyday life has changed and been eroded just short of chaos over the past 5 years. Visit the downtown of any large urban centre and see how the wonderful leftist ideology has transformed and degraded these already vulnerable elements of society.
It’s sad when people are not able to ask questions and those who exercise free thought are demonized and vilified. In a time of curated news on all platforms- those of weak resolve are indeed lobotomized lemmings who seemingly hold the cards to our collective prosperity.
If you have managed to make it through my short and random opine- I urge you to demand more from your elected officials and keep asking questions and I also encourage you to engage in debate with folks who are spouting rhetoric - not to mock or debase them- but to help them to take off their blinders and wake up! And when the next election comes along- use you democratic right to vote and help bring us back on track.
Mr. Blair- not to grease your wheels- but your words land solid and have true value. Thank you for you conviction and willingness to share your pragmatic, sage advice!
Excellent!
Would add :
⁃ some humility by politicians would have led them to realize that major contributing factors are obesity and age. By addressing those two instead of full-blown lockdowns of the economy, the livelihoods of families could have been saved as well as an acceptable death count .
⁃ In other words , an economic cost benefit of lockdowns should have been done instead of the key measurement being cumulative deaths . The politicians should’ve had on each side of the podium an economist and a medical expert. Let them each offer their opinions to the public. Then decide. Thereby let the citizens know how the choices are being made and why.
⁃ Achieving Zero deaths if the economy has been killed is not a satisfactory solution.
Similarly with climate change. Do a cost / benefit of letting temperatures rise versus spending Trillions $ to reduce CO2, which may or may not have an impact ( I have no idea)