John Carpay – The Interim

The lockdowns have now become a permanent violation of our Charter Rights and Freedom to move, travel, assemble, associate, and worship. Governments are showing no intentions of removing restrictions, even as COVID-19 deaths slow to a trickle, and are now proven to be a small fraction of the dire predictions made by politicians in March.

Masks have become mandatory for children to attend school, for people to fly on airplanes, and (in many cities) even to shop for essentials or attend church. People cannot enjoy being part of a choir, or even sing in their own house of worship. Many restaurants and other businesses will go bankrupt due to social distancing requirements which force them to operate at partial capacity. Bankrupt businesses and unemployed workers no longer pay taxes, which will severely reduce funding for the salaries of doctors, nurses, teachers, policemen, social workers and firefighters. Many charities have been crippled financially, no longer able to help the most needy and vulnerable among us. Citizens can no longer gather freely for social, political, religious, recreational, or cultural purposes (unless it’s to protest racism, in which case the supposedly “life-saving” lockdown measures don’t seem to apply).

Originally imposed to “flatten the curve” and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients (who did not arrive in large numbers), lockdown measures now remain in place because of unfounded fear.

If we Canadians want to regain our freedom and reclaim our human dignity, we must free ourselves from false information that sustains Charter-violating lockdown measures, some examples of which are debunked below.

“COVID-19 is an unusually deadly killer,” is the most powerful falsehood, driving the entire agenda. However, the World Health Organization informs us that “an influenza pandemic is a rare but recurrent event.” The 1918-20 Spanish flu killed an estimated 20-50 million people worldwide, when the world population was just under two billion. The 1957 “Asian flu” killed two million, when the world population was 2.9 billion. The 1968 “Hong Kong flu” killed one million, when the world population was 3.6 billion. COVID-19 may or may not end up claiming as many lives as the Hong Kong flu, but the world population is now 7.8 billion, and 58 million people die each year.

In other words, the Spanish flu killed between 0.01 and 0.025 per cent of the global population; the 1957 pandemic killed 0.0007 per cent; the 1968 pandemic killed 0.0003 per cent; COVID-19 has killed 0.0001 per cent, or 1 per cent of 1 per cent. When viewed properly in historical context, the COVID-19 death toll is much closer to that of an annual flu than to any pandemic in the past century.

Further, we know that COVID-19 deaths are over-reported, based on what public health officials in many jurisdictions have publicly stated: anyone who dies with the virus in their body is deemed to have died of the virus.

“COVID-19 threatens everyone,” is another powerful falsehood. Data published by governments around the world show that COVID-19 threatens elderly people who are already very sick. A few minutes spent on any government website will quickly point to the fact that COVID-19 poses virtually no threat to children, youth, or healthy adults under 60.

“It’s not about you; it’s about protecting grandma” is an emotionally powerful slogan that drives support for lockdowns. We can protect grandma with better standards and practices in nursing homes, without needing to place millions of healthy Canadians under house arrest, closing schools and houses of worship, destroying livelihoods, and driving people into unemployment, depression, anxiety, alcoholism, family violence, despair and suicide.

“The lockdowns have saved many lives,” is neither true nor false, but speculation. There is no convincing evidence to support it. Looking at countries around the world, and individual U.S. states, we see locked-down jurisdictions with high COVID-19 death rates, and locked-down jurisdictions with lower death rates. We also see states that rejected lockdowns, some with higher death rates and others with lower ones. Locking up healthy people for months on end is a large-scale political experiment, never tried before in human history. Let’s not confuse speculation with fact.

“The lockdowns are just an inconvenience.” The cardiac patients who died because their heart surgery was cancelled did not merely suffer inconvenience; the same goes for Canadians whose cancer went undiagnosed. For many Canadians, their business is not just their livelihood, but also their life’s savings. When lockdown measures kill or cripple a business, it means not only unemployment for owners, managers and workers, but also the wiping out of decades of hard work.

Will the truth set us free? That’s up to Canadians. Let’s spread the truth.