It is almost ludicrous to see those in charge still pushing vaccination at this late stage in the pandemic.
Our best guess is that half or more of the North American population has already survived Omicron. The Omicron-recovered have a stronger immune protection than any existing vaccine can hope to provide: more current, more robust, and more durable.
The remainder of the population is likely to become Omicron infected over the next two weeks. Even Theresa Tam and Bonnie Henry have admitted as much. Anyone who gets vaccinated or boosted this week is almost certainly going to become Omicron-infected before their vaccination or booster can offer any protective effect - assuming they haven't already had asymptomatic Omicron.
All human behaviour has purpose. If it makes utterly no scientific sense to be still pushing vaccines, what can that purpose be?
The first purpose is that those in charge are still trying to craft a narrative that vaccines have somehow brought this pandemic to an end. When challenged with the obvious truth that Omicron is a vaccine-escape variant that is infecting the fully vaccinated at as high or higher a rate than the unvaccinated, vaccine proponents have two full-back positions.
The first is to claim that you're less likely to get sick or die from Omicron if you've been fully-vaccinated. (Say this with enough authority and most people will believe you. Never mind that the data may not support that assertion.)
The second fall-back position is that Omicron is only racing through the North American population because so many people failed to get their booster shots. It's not that the vaccines failed, Omicron raced through the population like a knife through butter because all you slackers and reprobates didn't get vaccinated ENOUGH.
As a politician, you don't need to fool all of the people all of the time. You just need to fool enough of the people enough of the time. Justin Trudeau is counting on it.
Clearly, when we look at the polling data, a large chunk of the Canadian population still blames the unvaccinated for the spread of Omicron. Their minds were made up on that score long ago. They really hate it if you try to confuse them with the facts.
It is essential for Justin Trudeau to continue to make scapegoats of the unvaccinated. He'll continue to demonize them as racist, misogynistic, and homophobic Trump-lovers. Otherwise people might notice how completely ineffective vaccines have been in preventing the spread of Omicron.
It is also essential for Trudeau to continue to pretend that vaccines are somehow responsible for the COVID pandemic finally drawing to a close.
I'm reminded of a time many years ago, back when I still lived in Toronto. It was early December, and I had gone to watch the Santa Claus parade. A young child raced out in front of the parade. For a minute or two that young boy pretended to be leading the parade, until his embarrassed father hauled him away.
That's exactly what Justin Trudeau is going to do. He will stand in front of the parade, and pretend he is leading it. Only if he succeeds in that legerdemain can he continue as Canada's Prime Minister.
I think most Canadians are smarter than that. I could be wrong. We'll see.
I sincerely hope that's why Justin is doing what he's doing, because the alternative is much darker.
One of the long-standing principals of random controlled drug trials has been that you keep your experimental and control groups blinded long after the trial has officially ended. Doing so enables you to recognize any delayed or long-term side effects of whatever medication is being tested.
Pfizer didn't do that. They unblinded their vaccine trial a mere 90 days after the trial started. Vaccinations were then offered to the control group, supposedly because the Pfizer vaccine was so damn effective it would have been immoral not to do so.
Getting rid of the control group was damned convenient for Pfizer. If any worrying long-term side-effects appeared in the experimental group who had received Pfizer's mRNA vaccine, there was now no unvaccinated control group to check whether those who had not been vaccinated were suffering from the same afflictions.
Perhaps those in authority now want to do the same thing again, but on a much grander scale.
If you have remained unvaccinated these past two years, you're the only remaining control group. Perhaps that's why those in charge are so hot to bully you into getting vaccinated at a time when getting vaccinated will have no effect whatsoever on ending the Omicron wave.
They don't need to convince everyone to get vaccinated. They just need to bully enough of the vaccine-hesitant into getting vaccinated that the remaining unvaccinated control group is too small to be statistically significant. (Even small enough to CLAIM statistical insignificance is probably good enough. All that is necessary, is to be able to sow confusion and doubt!)
Maybe those in charge already know that the vaccines have nasty long-term side effects. Maybe they are just covering their asses in case that turns out to be true. In any case, their does seem to be a concerted effort to eliminate the unvaccinated as a control group.
It's time we made the counter-argument.
Here are three ways in which it would serve the public health needs of Canada if the ten percent of the population that has not yet been vaccinated remains unvaccinated.
First, if there are long-term effects of the mRNA vaccines on fertility, cancer incidence, cardiac health, or neurological issues, it would be useful to know that.
Not to hold the vaccine makers accountable - they have already negotiated a get-out-of-jail-free card to insure they cannot be held financially responsible for any harms their vaccines may have caused. Simply because it's easier to treat any malady when you know its cause.
Second, it will be important to understand how vaccination impacts the development of natural immunity following infection with Omicron. Is the natural immunity that follows Omicron infection stronger in the unvaccinated than the unvaccinated, or weaker? I've seen scientific arguments to suggest that either outcome is possible. Only by measuring can we know which is true.
Third, there is some precedence for vaccines to create harmful ADE: Antibody Dependent Enhancement. An early vaccine for Dengue fever had to be removed from the market because infection with a different variant of dengue fever than the one the vaccine was designed to prevent resulted in Hemorrhagic Dengue Fever, which was every bit as nasty as the name suggests. Again, if vaccination creates a dangerously hyperactive immune response to Omicron 4 or Omicron 5, knowing the source of the problem will help in designing treatments.
The unvaccinated are an important and endangered control group. In this final stage of the pandemic, they are more likely to provide a long-term health benefits to the vaccinated by remaining unvaccinated than by getting vaccinated.
I remain firmly committed to being a member of the US control group. I really hope I'm wrong about the scope of long-term damage and death from the vax, but sadly I think everything is now pointing to that result. Excess mortality in this and coming years could be off the chart.
Yep, it's been apparent for many months that at least one objective was to get rid of the control group, or at least minimize its size enough to make a statistical analysis difficult.
I'm not sure how Pharma's immunity from liability provisions work in Canada, but here in the USA, they've void if there's fraud. Now ask yourself why Pfizer wanted 55-75 years to release their documents...