Truckers’ Protest – Deflected and False


 

This morning I turned on the TV and watched the highlights of the Leafs’ victory over the Anaheim Ducks. I had watched the game last night, of course. One has to swallow a little chagrin over the fact that they once again severely out-shot their opponents but gave up a 3-1 lead and had to win in the shoot-out, but still, they won and watching the replays put me in a good mood.

And then I turned to the CBC News Network and watched coverage of the trucker’s convoy heading to Ottawa to protest the change in regulations governing truckers crossing the US border into Canada, and in a few minutes my good mood was gone.

It’s not that I object to the trucker’s protesting these new rules. They have a right to object. A Globe and Mail article says “Our current government is implementing rules and mandates that are destroying the foundation of our business, industries and livelihoods,” the GoFundMe fundraiser set up for the convoy reads. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has also argued that the federal government has not produced statistics showing that truck drivers are a major source of COVID-19 infections in Canada.”

Those statements highlight a real basis for dispute over the government actions and peaceful protests over a policy dispute are, and ought to continue to be, acceptable methods of dealing with government over-reach in Canada.

A sign held by one protestor read “It’s time to start using science and facts over fear. End Mask requirements. End All Lockdowns”. Once again, there’s a valid debate here about what public policy ought to be. On the one hand governments are trying to suppress the spread of Covid 19 to prevent it from completely overwhelming the medical system. Some would argue that it’s too late – the medical system has already been overwhelmed. Thousands of medical procedures for non-Covid issues have been delayed, with potentially fatal effects and medical workers are exhausted. Advocates for vaccine mandates, for lockdown rules, for masking requirements claim that restrictions are necessary and often not enough.

On the other hand, people are sick and fed up with all this Covid stuff. They point to the loss of education opportunities for children and demand that schools be re-opened. They believe that the Omicron variant is having much less severe effects and suggest that we should just let it run its course. They suggest that mental health impacts of lockdowns need to be factored into the decision-making process. And they point out that the restrictions are imposing severe hardships on both employers and employees.

The whole situation has been made more difficult by the fluid nature of information about the pandemic. The science of the virus keeps changing as the virus keeps changing. There are debates about when and why we should test, about what is the right mix and timing of vaccinations, and about how we balance economics with physical health and mental health and education. And on top of the fact that there is a constantly shifting scientific basis for what we do, there’s also a mountain of silly disinformation out there to confuse the picture.

I don’t have a lot of patience for anti-vaccination people. The history of health care since the development of smallpox vaccine in 1798 has been rich with successes of vaccines. Antitoxins and vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus, anthrax, cholera, plague, typhoid, tuberculosis, and more have helped raise life expectancy from the 30’s to the 70’s over the last two centuries.

The person who tells you that they object to Covid vaccine but have no objections to childhood vaccines against mumps and measles is just being illogical. Covid vaccines are effective. That is demonstrated daily in many ways, but especially by the fact that the vast majority of Covid patients in ICU are unvaccinated. So saying that you believe in vaccines, but not this particular one just flies in the face of scientific risk reduction.

Then there are those who are opposed to vaccination of any kind, either because of religious grounds, or because they are simply contrarians. Neither statement – “God tells me not to” nor “no-body can tell me what to do” – is a very solid repudiation of the science and history of vaccines.

Those who oppose Covid vaccine mandates argue that a vaccine mandate is an encroachment on their individual freedom, and the government has no right to do that. I personally think that’s debatable. While I respect individual rights, I also believe that your individual freedom to risk your own health does not confer on you any right to risk my health by associating with me without constraint. So, my belief is that you can choose to be unvaccinated if you wish, but you need to man up and accept the consequences of that decision. If that means a different set of rules for you, well that’s your call.

So, back to the truckers…. If there’s room for debate, why was I so irritated, then, by the trucker’s protest convoy? It’s because the truckers’ protest has become something that is no longer about any of the valid debatable points about public health policy and particularly about the imposition of quarantine on truckers returning from the USA.  

Either as quotes from people interviewed for their views on the trucker protest or displayed on the signs that appeared through some news stories on the topic, these statements surfaced:

“If we give up our freedom, we never get it back.”

“We’re tired of having our freedoms trampled on.”

“Some one has to stand up for Canada and the Truckers are doing it.”

“Thank you from Us and Many Generations to Come.”

South of the border, that giant of intellectual luminaries, Donald Trump Jr is fanning the flames, saying that he would “support these truckers fighting for freedom, fighting as patriots in their own country.” Piss off, little Donnie – you guys have managed to totally screw up your own country. We don’t need your opinions on how we do things in ours. But sadly, signs held up in protest saying things like “We’re going to take our country back” echo the divisive polarizing nonsense spouted by the MAGA faction in the US. I saw a guy in a CBC news clip who talked about wanting “to see our own January 6th event”. I’m afraid he sounds like a schoolyard sycophant wanting to jump onto the bully’s bandwagon.

The Secretary of the Maverick party, which supports Alberta separation from Canada, has raised almost $5M to support the trucker’s rally. I regard this as an example of the power of social media tapping into people’s frustrations for all the wrong reasons. If you look on the GoFundMe page for the trucker’s convoy, you can find these comments and many, many more:

  • Thank you for standing up for the rights and freedoms of all Canadians. There aren’t many people that are willing to stand up for what is right due to the iron fist of the tyrants that run the country and the comrades who enforce their illegal and unethical edicts. God bless!
  • I can’t possibly express how much appreciation and gratitude I feel towards this group that’s fighting for all of our freedom, and that includes the freedom of those that haven’t found the strength to stand up for themselves yet! You give me hope for the future of my children and my grandchildren!
  • There’s no pandemic. COVID19 is a plan. Stands for Certificate of Vaccination ID and 19 represents the 1st and 9th letters, AI = Artificial Intelligence, which is the means of which they plan to control the remaining people on earth after most are taken out by the experimental drugs. This is a nothing more than an attempted world takeover by communist satanic pedophiles. When governments go rogue, it’s our DUTY to STAND AGAINST TYRANNY! DO NOT COMPLY!!
  • Thank you for fighting for our Freedom, our DEMOCRACY. We are with you! Do not let any violence happen.

What those comments show is that people aren’t donating money to support truckers in their argument with the government. They’re responding to stupid populist rhetoric employed by Canada’s version of right-wing extremism.

Give your head a shake people! This isn’t some existential fight for freedom and liberty and democracy and motherhood and apple pie. It’s just a little protest against a government policy. If you’re lucky, you’ll effect some change. If you’re ineffective, well, you’ll still be out of jail and allowed to vote against the government in the next election. By allowing your mission to be hijacked, you’re weakening all your arguments.

This exaggerated, shrill, silly hyperbole about freedom and democracy is embarrassing when compared with actual threats to freedom and democracy around the world.

  • Almost 300 journalists are imprisoned worldwide. China, Belarus, Turkey, Myanmar, Egypt and Eritrea account for about 70% of those imprisonments
  • Taliban in Afghanistan are re-imposing a vicious suppression of women.
  • The President of Kazakhstan recently called in Russian soldiers to assist in suppressing dissent resulting in more than 225 fatalities.
  • Chinese oppression of Uighurs has drawn opposition from many of the “free democracies” in the world.
  • An Economist magazine headline reads “India’s government is ignoring, and sometimes even encouraging, hatred of minorities” (primarily their Moslem minority).
  • The Amnesty International webpage has an article entitled “Myanmar: World must act now to prevent another year of intolerable ‘death and misery”

So truckers, go ahead and protest. Talk about the lack of science in the decisions taken by the government. Highlight the negative impact that the new rules impose on your business. Get some political mileage out of the fact that the government waited two years to impose these rules when it’s clear that if the rule makes sense now it would have made sense two years ago. Question the lack of consultation that prefaced the imposition of new rules. But all that stuff about fighting for freedom? Stuff it up your tail-pipe.


11 responses to “Truckers’ Protest – Deflected and False”

  1. Well said, Dennis. I agree on every point (even re the Leafs). We do have to be wary of incremental erosion of people’s freedoms (as outlined and protected in our Charter), but “your freedom ends where mine begins.” Living in society means finding a balance between individual freedom and the communal good. The balance point is different in different societies (e.g. China v. US). Finally, there is more than one variety of tyranny, and they don’t necessarily involve the state.

    • Thanks for the comment Ed. I agree that “your freedom ends where mine begins”. Good capture of the essential argument in the vaccine mandate debate. I really hate the way the being forced to follow a rule is being portrayed as a loss of freedom. Nobody today believes that being subject to a fine for failure to wear a seat-belt is a terrible infringement of their basic freedoms.

  2. While you make a couple of valid points, I would suggest that you do more homework on your Covid stats. The last report that I saw gave the stats on hospitalization was the the vaxed outnumbered the unvaxed considerably-this was for Ontario only.
    Do you really think that the so called vaccine really works?
    If it worked as well as the ones you mentioned then one shot should be all that is necessary! I did get the first two but I will refuse to go any further and I feel it should be a personal choice as the seasonal flu shot is and not mandatory.
    I also think masks are useless and have not worn one from day one. I have read many studies on the masks and while they do offer minimal protection they do very little to control the spread as proven by the amount of increase in cases..

    • A quick scan online shows a CTV article on January 12th 2022 that said “Most Patients in Toronto ICU unvaccinated”. A CBC news article on the 15th referring to a hospital in Sarnia said “In this Ontario hospital, it’s mostly the unvaccinated who are overwhelming the ICU”. Those are news reports and not scrupulously reviewed and I accept there is room to doubt any single such article. But there are numerous such articles on the internet, and I believe the overall message is compelling – vaccinations lower the risk of hospitalization and especially ICU admissions. But there is more information, over and above news reports. The WebMD website reports “Jan. 14, 2022 — Nearly all teenagers admitted to intensive care units because of COVID-19 were unvaccinated, according to a new study published in TheNew England Journal of Medicine.” The NEJM is a peer reviewed scientific journaling it’s findings should be treated as a solid scientific observation. Finally, the Ontario health website shows that today there are 444 Covid cases in Ontario ICU’s. Of those cases, 204 are unvaccinated, 19 are partially vaccinated and 221 are fully vaccinated. So that data supports your contention that the “majority” are not unvaccinated. But here’s the rub. Ontario is 83% at least partially vaccinated. That means that five of six are vaccinated. So 1/6th of the population is accounting for 46% of the ICU cases and 5/6th of the population accounts for 54%. So yes, the vaccine is demonstrated by these data to be lowering the risk of ICU admission by a factor of 4. You’re at least four times more likely to wind up in ICU if you don’t get vaccinated.
      Your comment on the ineffectiveness of masks is logically and scientifically unsupported. The only way you could logically reach your conclusion would be if you had a controlled experiment in which one population was always wearing masks in a controlled environment and another population was not. There is no such controlled experiment, although one could look at China, where very significant enforcement of masking and social distancing has resulted in very minimal Covid spread compared to Canada. You could conclude that the totality of rigorous public health rules has been good for them. (I’m not interested in a discussion of China’s human rights record just now, but as an example refuting your mask argument, it’s not bad.)

      • One more thing re the vaccinated vs unvaccinated ICU data. I believe the vaccinated number .does not distinguish between 2 shot and 2 shot+booster individuals. It”d be interesting to see at breadown as I expect the ICU numbers would be heavily weighted with those with 2 shots only – pretty relevent to the discussion in my view.

        • Thanks for the comment Peter. You’re right. The Ontario data I’m looking at distinguishes between “fully vaccinated” and “partially vaccinated”, but fully includes two dose and three dose patients. It may not be long before we define fully vaccinated as three dose. I saw this commentary in a CTV news article, which was urging the adoption of a three dose certificate. “Ontario’s science table has pointed to evidence that two doses of an mRNA vaccine have about 35 per cent effectiveness against Omicron infection 14 weeks after receiving a second dose, while three doses can offer 75 per cent protection in the first month.
          When it comes to preventing not just infection, but severe illness and death, that booster dose can be 90 per cent effective or more, said infectious diseases physician Dr. Andrew Morris.”

  3. stWell said, Dennis. One of the worst aspects of this is the involvement of the Conservative Party of Canada which has jumped on board the bandwagon (or a truck) to get some free political mileage out of this “protest”. Their gallant leader, Mr Errant O’Toole, said a few days ago that he wouldn’t be meeting with the tuckers; it’s not his job to support protests against the Government. Now, after several other far-right members of his caucus have come out hard in support of the truckers (and fellow-travelers), O’Toole is all in favour, practically asking for a truck of his own so he can drive into Ottawa with this misguided protest. He is raising the spectre of food shortages in grocery stores; ours was fully stocked this morning! It must be the 90% (or whatever) of truckers who are vaccinated who are continuing to deliver the goods! Mr O’Toole conveniently forgets that the USA is also requiring truckers to be vaccinated so a change in Canada’s policy wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.
    The whole rolling protest is a political charade staged to protest the Liberal government and to buttress the Conservative Party. I’m quite certain that the Conservatives will end up with egg on their face from this little stunt.

    • Thanks for the comment Terry. Yes, Mr O’Toole continues to disappoint, doesn’t he? It’s hard to agree with him when you never know where he stands.

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