In the Arthur Conan Doyle short story Silver Blaze, Sherlock Holmes solves a murder case using a negative clue: Because the watchdog didn't bark, he deduces that the murderer was known to the murder victim. We need to use that same reverse logic in understanding what is happening now with Omicron in Canada.
Governments in Canada and the United States have crafted a narrative that vaccines are the one and only salvation to the COVID pandemic. (I say 'salvation' rather than 'solution' because this bureaucratic faith in vaccines is almost religious in fervour.)
They have then put it on the media that publishing anything even remotely negative about vaccines, would be encouraging 'vaccine hesitancy' and giving comfort to those ‘misogynistic and racist’ anti-vaxxers. In response, Canada's media have self-policed to censor any and all information about the limitations of vaccines.
If you wonder why my recent posts have been about data hidden in an obscure British Government technical report, obscure Danish Government reports, and Omicron hospitalization data from India, it's because governments and the media have been working hard to suppress any data which might challenge the narrative that vaccines are our one and only salvation.
I have found it necessary to look outside of Canada for two reasons. First, Canada's Omicron testing and data collection is abysmally slow and inadequate. The Omicron surge will be over before Canadian Government data recognizes the true extent of what's happening. The second reason is that the press outside of Canada does less censoring than Canada's media do. India and Israel both have something much closer to press freedom than we do here in Canada.
A number of weeks ago, I pointed out that buried in the BC's government's COVID data was the fact that the single group most at risk of dying of the Delta Variant were those over age 70 and fully vaccinated. Neither the BC Government, nor the mainstream media in BC was going to draw people's attention to that important information, for the simple reason it might cause people to question the efficacy of vaccines.
Why is that important information? Because the broader community cannot put extra efforts into protecting high risk groups if they don't know who those high-risk groups are.
If the majority of those in hospital with Omicron in England and India are fully vaccinated, that's also important information. For months now, the fully vaccinated have been told ad nauseum that they are protected from serious illness and death. People who believe this will engage in much more risky behaviour than those who realize vaccination reduces but does not eliminate the risk of hospitalization.
If more than 90 percent of Omicron cases in Denmark are among the vaccinated, that's also important information. If you think it's safe to visit your 90-year-old grandmother because both you and she are fully vaccinated, you will behave in ways that put your grandmother at risk. If you realize that vaccination offers little if any protection against infection with Omicron, you will alter your behaviour accordingly.
The reason I've taken to looking at the detail in Government reports is that bureaucrats are reluctant to outright censor information. It's easier for them to bury inconvenient data deep in technical reports than it is to outright delete it. That said, I have come to realize that when governments must have certain key data, but that data isn't in their reports, the missing data has often been left out for a reason.
The Danish Government clearly knows the vaccination status of every Omicron case. I have to suspect the reason they don't tell us the vaccination status of those hospitalized with Omicron is because that information does not support the argument that vaccination will protect you from hospitalization.
I suspect the British Government knows the vaccination status of everyone who has died of Omicron in the UK every bit as much as they know the vaccination status of those who were hospitalized, and have not released that information because it will weaken the argument that vaccination will prevent you from dying of Omicron.
Informed consent until recently was one of the central principles of modern medicine. My wife is scheduled for a hip replacement later this month. Though her surgeon very much believes the surgery would be greatly to her benefit, my wife was nonetheless given explicit and detailed information on everything that could possibly go wrong during and after the surgery, including the mathematical likelihood of each of those bad outcomes.
Informed consent recognizes that it is the patient who must bear any ill-effects of a medical procedure. It is therefore basic respect to give the patient full and accurate information about what those risks are. For a doctor to hide those risks from a patient because the doctor believes having the procedure will be to the patient's benefit, is not just disrespectful, it is medical malpractice.
Those in government and in the media may believe that everyone would be better off vaccinated than unvaccinated, but hiding information about the limitations of vaccines is a very manipulative and disrespectful way of trying to achieve that goal.
After all, it is the person himself/herself that will suffer the greatest consequences of their decision whether or not to get unvaccinated. To do otherwise is arrogance disguised as a benevolent concern.
There's one final conclusion we can draw from countries that having shown some level of competence in tracking the spread of Omicron: We can be reasonably sure the lion's share of new COVID cases in Canada are now Omicron. We know from places like Denmark that Omicron is an equal-opportunity variant: it's just as likely to infect those who are fully vaccinated as those who are unvaccinated. In that context, vaccine mandates no longer make sense. Neither does coercing people to take an outdated and ineffective vaccine.
PS: That’s Canada’s politically-correct Prime Minister in the photo, in one of his less politically-correct moments. He’s the one who is convinced all anti-vaxxers are “misogynistic and racist”. Someone ought to mention to Justin that Blacks are among the most vaccine-hesitant of Canadians, with about 20% less uptake on vaccines than whites.
I just want to be sure I’m understanding you, Justin. Are you saying us that Black Canadians are misogynistic and racist?
Well a true statement would be that Justin is racist towards all people with different opinions. I understand that isn't exactly the definition of racism, so I shall make a term for this. Being a selfish asshole!