Category: Happy’s Personal Rants

This is a grab bag of opinion articles on whatever grabs my fancy from personal issues and observations to whatever quirky thing that piques my interest.

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LYING ASS POLITICIANS

Compulsive liars tell the stories they think want to be heard, while pathological liars “‘continue to lie when they know you know they’re lying,” says Dr. Ekman.Jonathan Woodcock/Getty Images

The Lies Politicians Tell During a Pandemic

A variation of a long running Soviet Union joke on how the State ran the country

***Feb 07 Update – The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is reporting that the Federal Government is delaying their ‘Lock-Up the Travelers‘ program for a few weeks. Hopefully, some of the backlash from secretly abducting travelers like Ethan McDonald, Nikki Mathis, and Steve Duesing, whose stories are being widely publicized, gave the government something to think about moving forward. Canadian governments seem to operate mostly through gauging public opinion, so if they see the public getting into an uproar over a particular Covid policy, maybe we can get them to back down from some of the more egregious ones. Please share these stories while we have the momentum if you feel healthy Canadians should not be arbitrarily locked up until they prove they are not sick.

Western Standard has been good with articles on detainees. Here’s another man, Neil McCullough, who was detained at the same Calgary Westin Airport with Nikki Mathis. He got to spend 11 days cooped up with no representation courtesy of PHAC.***

***Feb 03 Update – Steve Duesing is now free, free that is to go and quarantine at home for another 14 days upon threat of a $1 million dollar fine or three years in jail. This, after two negative Covid-19 tests.***

***Feb 03 Update – Just reported by Joe Warmington for the Toronto Sun, Steve Duesing is still incarcerated in a Toronto hotel. Mr. Duesing reports that there appears to be lots of activity outside of the hotel and Health Canada has indicated they will give an update on Wednesday.

Ethan McDonald is now home with his mother Rebekah in Red Deer. Ms. McDonald created a series of Facebook videos to detail their ordeal and is linked here.***

***Feb 02 Update – Just reported now by Joe Warmington for the Toronto Sun, it appears that on Sunday a number of people were swept up by authorities at Pearson International. One man, Steve Duesing, spoke with the reporter about his ordeal and his fears that many people off his flight are in the same Covid jail.***

This past weekend, Canada joined the ranks of dictatorships such as Iran, China, or North Korea by forcibly kidnapping Canadian citizens at the Calgary Airport and whisking them away to secret quarantine detention centers. You may be forgiven for not being aware of this escalation of Covid enforcement because there has been very little media coverage. CTV News Calgary actually reported on the two people who were taken for forcible quarantine under the headline ‘Concern growing around mandated hotel quarantine restrictions‘. Global News Calgary has only wrote a piece about the hotel association being concerned about irate hotel ‘guests’ (prisoners) being irate with hotel employees. Nothing from CBC yet.

The Western Standard, the National Telegraph, & True North were all quick to report on the separate stories.

Faytene.TV did a long interview with the abducted woman, Nikki Mathis, (since released) so that the full side of her story plus more of the other abductee’s story, Ethan McDonald, could be told. It can be watched here and here. There is also another interview with Nikki and her husband here. Hopefully, enough heat will come to bear that politicians will finally listen and change course on a simply outrageous policy.

Getting back to the premise of the title of this article, let us delve a little deeper into the anatomy of political scandal. There are plenty to choose from during the best of times but during these unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic times, they are becoming close and personal for all Canadians.

Anatomy of a Political Scandal

  • The Incident Occurs

The go-to response by politicians is to outright lie, obfuscate, muddy the waters, or deny the incident occurred. Actual government services such as the police when asked direct questions try to not outright lie as they could actually get into real trouble. They will issue terse, direct, factual statements until the higher ups see which way the wind is blowing before they elaborate further. For more sensitive events, they will refer spokesperson interviews higher up the food chain. They will not volunteer extra information as context.

As an aside, is it wise to employ a pathological liar let alone allow them to be in positions of political leadership? If this type of behaviour isn’t tolerated as a trait in your employees then why do we tolerate it in the people who lead our country?

Premier Jason Kenney, to his credit, actually responded to the abduction of the pastor’s wife with this FaceBook post:

Premier Kenney, or more than likely his PR Twitterer staff, is very clever with this tweet. There was some original confusion as to which health authority was involved, mainly because they refused to identify themselves. But this muddies the waters and gives credence to the reports are just ‘rumours’.

Of course, Kenney is not alone when it comes to following this script. Doug Ford outright lied over his knowledge of his Finance Minister’s Christmas Caribbean vacation. Prime Minister Trudeau and his Cabinet just literally spew talking points when point blank asked specific questions. But we are so used to the lying, the public doesn’t even care anymore (normally). It’s de rigueur.

  • The Incident Grows

This is the stage where the incident grows some legs and starts to gather the ’15 minutes’ of fame. More information becomes available, usually because of media pressure, (sorely lacking in the Covid age as MSM seems to be in lockstep with the government narratives) and the lie starts to fall apart.

Now the politicians try to deflect blame and you get the classic run-around. It’s always someone else’s fault, somebody else is in charge of that, we weren’t aware of the situation, those people acted against my authority, or the classic, ‘We were following orders‘. As for the airport abductions, Kenney has this to say:

Rumours are now reports, it isn’t Alberta agencies to blame but Federal, and really this should be turned back on the people who were taken away. It’s really their faults as they didn’t ‘inform themselves’ properly. I left my comment in the post as it is indicative of the thousands of angry responses directed at the Premier. I am actually surprised that the posts are still available for viewing and commenting.

In dictatorships, they usually try censorship, arrests or executions to try and ‘make the story go away’. In democracies, they can try to let the story naturally run out of steam. This is highly dependant on how much life it receives from MSM. But if the regular news outlets refuse to cover the incident, as alleged by Stockwell Day in the following Tweet, then social media and fringe outlets have to take up the slack.

  • The Incident Containment is Lost

This is where the lie has been totally blown apart and the public pressure becomes the most intense. Governments can fall at this point because the public is so fed up.

As we saw during the holiday season with travelling politicians and bureaucrats, there was white hot anger on the part of the long suffering Canadian Covid locked-down public. No amount of sorrowful apologies can smooth over the mob demanding blood and heads on a pike.

Savvy politicians, like Premier Pallister, know how to navigate the political minefields as he just punted the chair of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority for non-essential travel. Boom, gone, no news cycle, no public uproar because clear decisive action was taken and the head is already mounted on the castle wall.

It will be interesting to see where these airport abductions finally end up at with regards to political and institutional fallout. This is hitting a nerve with Joe & Jane Canadian. They are already tired of never-ending and increasing restrictions to liberties as this ‘pandemic’ grinds along.

Politicians seriously misjudged the anger associated with the news of government officials travelling during the Christmas break. It’s entirely possible they will also miss the point where a critical mass of Canadians will stop putting up with their Covid shenanigans. Historically, it is not wise to push the people of this country too far.

There is one last detail every Canadian should think about for a few seconds. If we know that politicians are pathological liars, demonstrably so time and time again, then what else have they been lying to us about all through this period of crisis?

At some point, people and plain reality makes fools and examples of the liars.

Blair’s LinkedIn Profile

Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.

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SOCIAL MEDIA BABOONS

(ollyy via Shutterstock/Salon)

Social Media Needs a Hard Reset

Do you remember that old chestnut, ‘Opinions are like assholes, everyone on social media is an asshole.‘?

Big Tech just permanently removed one of the biggest assholes off of all their social media platforms recently with a coordinated move to de-platform the President of the United States a few days before the end of his term in office. Not content with those actions, there seems to be a move to permanently erase President Donald Trump’s entire existence such as wiping his cameo in ‘Home Alone 2‘. Former aides and advisors are jumping ship faster than rats for fear of permanent blacklisting. Major corporations such as Forbes have outright declared that anyone who worked in the administration are persona non grata. People in news organizations are even comfortable with floating the idea of ‘re-education camps’ for the children of Trump supporters so they can be reprogramed after four years of his Presidency.

Congratulations all you Donald Trump haters, you are emulating the tactics of one of the worst human monsters in all of history.

Getting back to my opening postulate, there are endless examples of double standard assholery from the ‘other side’ but the main thrust of this essay is not the macro scale of the issue but to explore what kind of mechanisms could be explored in order to reign in the general preponderance of assholery present throughout social media.

The unfettered democratization of the World Wide Web has been both an incredible boon and unmitigated curse for mankind. Billions of voices now have the chance to scream to be heard. The planet has not seen this type of democratization since the concept of universal suffrage was implemented. But, just because we are afforded the chance to access and comment on literally every topic, should we have the right to do so without any limits whatsoever?

General suffrage, or the right for all adults to have the vote, was not a popular idea at first. An American historian, Francis Parkman, wrote a long essay published in 1878 entitled ‘The Failure of Universal Suffrage‘, arguing that the great masses of the population should not be allowed to vote.

An excerpt:

When a man has not sense to comprehend the questions at issue, know a bad candidate from a good one, or see his own true interests? When he cares not a farthing for the general good, and will sell his vote for a dollar? When, by a native instinct, he throws up his cap at the claptrap declamation of some lying knave, and turns with indifference or dislike from the voice of honesty and reason? Then his vote becomes a public pest. Somebody uses him, and profits by him. Probably it is a demagogue, possibly a priest, or possibly both. In any case, it is folly to call him a free agent. His inalienable right may perhaps be valuable to him for the bribe he gets out of it; but it makes him a nuisance and a danger to the state. It causes pulpit, platform, and press, to condone his vices, and debauch the moral sense of the people by discovering objects of sympathy in vagabonds, thieves, and ruffians. It gives power to the communistic attack on property, and makes it difficult to deal with outbreaks of brutal violence against which even humanity itself demands measures of the most stern and exemplary repression.

Francis Parkman – ‘The Failure of Universal Suffrage‘ – The North American Review, Jul. – Aug., 1878, Vol. 127, No. 263 (Jul. – Aug., 1878), pp. 1-20

Could not many of these same arguments brought forth against everyone having the vote not be transferred to everyone not having an equal voice on social media? The platforms have devolved into shouting arenas with vitriol dripping from every tweet, post or TikTok video. You can literally call the sky blue and scores of anonymous trolls will call you out for being a misogynistic, white supremacist, hell-born Nazi. Share or post an article and the horde of Pavlov trained hounds will spew pre-programmed insults or praise with zero critical thought regarding the story or even a rudimentary understanding of it past the click-bait title.

Perhaps there should be a means test built into the algorithms of the various social media platforms. Maybe before a patron is allowed to comment, they must submit a short essay or answer a questionnaire to demonstrate they have actually read the article and then have something constructive to add to the conversation. Before a video is posted, a panel of luminaries could judge the relative merits of putting it out into the public sphere. Just before a Tweet is sent, an editor could review the content and spelling for context and thoughtfulness.

Of course, this is all idiotic fantasy, Pandora’s Box was long ago opened and the social media muses will never be confined again without hardcore, draconian interventions.

But not all is doom and gloom as there are diamonds within the Matrix if you search them out. Below is a partial list of organizations and persons which I find are balanced, logical, and whom otherwise I would never have interacted with outside of the ‘net.

  • ZDoggMD – an excellent source for humour & layman’s medical knowledge
  • Andy Ngô – an underground reporter who is unmasking Antifa’s domestic terrorism
  • MPP Randy Hillier – literally the only Canadian politician who has been consistently trying to make some sense out of Canada’s Covid-19 response
  • MLA Ellis Ross – BC representative trying to lift BC Natives out of poverty through responsible resource development
  • Viewpoint from the North – Comprehensive list of article pertaining to northern BC issues with an emphasis on the Wet’suwet’en people
  • Royal United Services Institute – source for military matters related to the Canadian sphere
  • Daniel Bordman – Canadian current affairs specialist
  • Rex Murphy – An absolute Canadian literary giant
  • Farm Babe – great source for agriculture truth and information
  • Caitlin Johnson – an insightful article writer on Medium
  • Alexander Zubatov – writer on current affairs
  • Tim Dunne – military current affairs writer
  • David Pugliese – military current affairs writer and general pain in the arse
  • Sienna Hunter – sex worker & podcaster of ‘The Escort: Deconstructed‘
  • Joe Rogan – successful podcaster with guests from across the spectrum
  • Outlaw Morgan – if you want down to earth, you can’t get any more real
  • Patrick Moore – former founder of Greenpeace trying to put science back in the movement
  • Ivor Cummins – holds a large repository of material related to Sars-Cov-2
  • Stephen Kamugasa – thoughtful writer originally from the Dark Continent
  • Kady M. – writer who heavily relies on data & logic
  • Milhouse Van Houten – regularly produces detailed Covid-19 data charts for Ontario & Quebec weekly
  • Brittany Hughes – host of Reality Check
  • Humanoid History – an interesting wayback machine
  • Ben Shapiro – regular contributor to Daily Wire
  • Ezra Levant – head of Rebel News, the only alternative media outlet in Canada
  • Tucker Carlson – regular contributor to Fox News
  • RT – Russian State Affilitated Media – it’s good to listen to the other guys
  • Stewart Muir – writer and Executive Director of Resource Works
  • Rebecca Helm – Jellyfish, development & open ocean conservation professor
  • Tom Quiggin – criminal & federal court expert on jihadist terrorism, host of Quiggin Report
  • Joe Warmington – Toronto Sun columnist
  • Human Progress.Org – Documenting the improving state of the world with data

Would it not be a better world if we all tried to add to the conversation in a meaningful, respective manner? (Plus the occasional cat video, they’re so darn cute!)

Blair’s LinkedIn Profile

Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.

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ENOUGH IS ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Chopper4 footage showed smoke from multiple fires rising up in front of the Washington Monument during Washington, D.C.’s third night of protests in response to the death of George Floyd. Video/Photo Credit – NBC4 Washington
Look at all the polite rioters staying within the Capitol Building velvet ropes. Photo Credit – CSPAN2

Who is the Evil Empire/Who are the Rebel Alliance?

“At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn’t.” ― Paul Graham

He who writes the ‘History’ gets to dictate what ‘History’ is remembered. Whoever was the ‘evil villain’ or ‘courageous freedom fighter’ depends on whose side you agreed with and your perspective. Moral Relativism enables a person to perform the mental gymnastics to justify what would normally be abhorrent. It is how the great tragedies of the 20th century were allowed to take place.

The rioting which happened at the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021 during the review of the Electoral College votes to confirm who would be the next President, was wrong. Full stop! Joe Biden came out during the fracas and said some strong words to the nation which in my opinion were entirely appropriate given the situation. I recommend that you read the transcript, his speech writer must have writer’s cramp from putting it together so quickly. At the end, reporters were shouting questions and Mr. Biden testily retorted, ‘Enough is enough is enough!’ There was a real expression of feelings from the man who will be the next President.

But contrast this to the deafening silence or outright support from Mr. Biden, Democrats, The Left et al, while America was burned and pillaged this past year by BLM and Antifa thugs. Scores of people have died in those protests whose paroxysms have been in revenge for the ‘unjust’ killing of this or that ‘pillar of the community’ black man. Let me ask you a simple question. If Ashli Babbitt was black and those were BLM rioters, do you honestly believe that building would not have been burnt to the ground right now? But no, the MSM is in overdrive spin mode painting her as a Far Right, QAnon ‘believer’. The narrative is that it was right for this unarmed, non-threatening woman to have been shot down in cold blood (video clip).

Mark my words, this will spill over into a witch hunt of the USAF in a quest to root out the ‘endemic racism’ of the organization.

That is enough about America and their troubles. This article is about how this type of unrest is inevitably coming to Canada. Canadians tut-tut about our silly cousins to the South but it is the height of ignorance to morally justify that we are any better.

People get angry when they believe they are victims of inequality or injustice. Listen to the anger of some of the rioters being interviewed in the Capitol building. The Left shouted for four straight years that Trump and his supporters were the devil incarnate and should be fought against as if they were all Nazi scum. Imagine a nagging, abusive spouse belittling, disparaging, and denigrating you for years on end. Then when you finally snap and give them a black eye, they shout, ‘See, I was right about you all along!’. The newspaper reports on the spousal battery, the neighbors shake their heads, and the feminists have another misogynistic story to tout.

Morally, is it not at least understandable that all people have a breaking point if they are pushed too far?

But it comes back to the narrative and who controls it whether that is the government, the media, tech giants or whoever shouts the loudest with the most followers on social media.

Here’s a small example of spinning and censoring the narrative: As people were starting to polarize into their ‘For’ & ‘Against’ camps regarding the mess at the Capitol building, I came across a FaceBook post of a minor musical celebrity I know, Alana Levandoski. An old acquaintance of mine had bucked the trend of the general comments imploring Alana to not bring race into the debate. Then I tossed in my two cents.

Screenshot of my now censored comment (Thanks to Jeff for saving it for me)

If you go to Alana’s FaceBook page now, all negative comments have been expunged and I am no longer allowed to air my views. In fact, Alana has doubled down on her intolerance of counter-opinion by posting a piece which basically says if you’re white then you must ‘SHUT UP! Go to your room and reflect on your sins!‘

I absolutely understand Alana’s position, she has a certain type of fan base she needs to pander to and it is how she makes her living. But the danger is people get into their little prejudicial, echo bubbles and all the nuances of grey become opposing camps of black and white.

So as America has become a miasma of hate with insults and fists being hurled back and forth, so too, I fear Canada is in for the same fate. The polarization of which Covid, climate, environment, etc. tribe you belong to is starting to hammer away at Confederation. At the best of times, neighbors would be able to weather some hateful discord. But our country is headed towards economic collapse with our out of control government spending and endless Covid lockdowns.

When push comes to shove and everyone’s backs are against the economic wall, will Canadians be that polite anymore? Do not be so vain to not recognize the dangers of what a mob of desperate people will do let alone a mob of desperate politicians.

And when the mob comes, who will they be, Freedom fighters, Terrorists, Saviours, or Despots? It will all be in the perspective of who ultimately writes the tale and who is allowed to tell it.

Blair’s LinkedIn Profile

Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.

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COVID SNITCHES (or The Year of the Rat)

2020’s Rise of The ‘Karens’

*** Dec 30 Update – Nearly 5500 calls were made to the Covid Enforcement Brown shirts over the Christmas period of Dec 21-27. Most of the $1296 personal fines were related to household gatherings. So, thousands of Manitobans ratted on their neighbors. Nice to know who is watching. ***

*** Dec 22 Update – A nearby Municipality has confirmed that the Province is soliciting through Council for persons or organizations to act as their defacto Covid enforcers ‘Eyes & Ears’. This particular Council declined to cooperate. ***

Canary, fink, informer, narc, rat fink, snitch, tattletale are all synonymous terms associated with people willing to report their fellow citizens to the authorities whether it’s on the school playground or the mean streets. Now our 2020 lexicon has a new term added, the dreaded ‘Karen’.

Notice how all the words for a stool pigeon are derogatory in nature? Tattletales run to the teacher to squeal on the mean kids. Collaborators turned in their fellow citizens in totalitarian regimes such as fascist Germany or Stalinst Russia. Now, busybody Karens drop a dime on their neighbors commiting the sin of Covid infractions.

Karens in the Keystone province have been busy since April when you could first start complaining about your neighbor’s pandemic faux pax. If you are interested in the records of Manitoba’s enforcement fines, they can be accessed at the Cross-Departmental Reports section of this link. Businesses are named and shamed for various Covid related infractions which run at $5000 a pop.

All across Canada, there are increasing instances of snitch induced Covid disputes. A widely published social media video from Calgary recently showing a young man, Ocean Wiesblatt, being arrested by Calgary Police Services. If you watch the numerous full length online videos, the situation devolved to the point where a policewoman lost control of herself and pointed a taser at Mr. Wiesblatt with the threat of discharging the weapon. Eventually, he was taken down, his skates forcibly cut off, and he was arrested.

This entire incident was precipitated by an informer, Twitter handle dlo-artist, who had broadcast the following:

Screenshot from dlo-artist’s deleted Twitter account

This Karen has since deleted many of their social media accounts but the person’s home address is still visible. The address is on the other end of town from the Southwood Community Association Rink. Why were they so bothered by the horrible ‘atrocity’ of an extra five people on the ice? Oh, the humanity, 90 minutes and the Covid SWAT teams aren’t dispatched yet?!?

Scrolling through D Lo 168’s patreon and clothing store accounts, which are still active, it would appear that this erotic artist is fond of drawing partially clad/naked Disney heroines in suggestive sexual positions. I would assume that the Walt Disney Company is entirely comfortable with the racy depictions of their creations and that there are no copyright issues.

Original Art from DLo 168 of Disney’s Frozen characters. An example of the numerous erotic copyrighted images this artist uses. https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/11705961-naughty-princess-frozen-series-2-number-2?store_id=77231

This is the problem with the snitch game, what goes around comes around. Is it really any skin off your nose if this artist is making a living from ripping off Disney? But was it any of their business to call the cops on a gathering of an extra five people playing outdoor hockey?

Perhaps these Karens who are willing to snitch on Covid rule breakers are motivated by a higher cause. But the weight of evidence, especially from the totalitarian societies of the 20th Century, suggests otherwise. Informants were used to great effect in Stalinist Russia. If you felt slighted by your neighbor, desired his job, his house, or his pretty wife, all you had to do was call up the State, make up a story and late that night the SMERSH black sedans would whisk them away. Of course, you would always be nervously looking over your own shoulder in case you inadvertently crossed someone. Gradually, on a larger scale this devolves into a ‘Lord of the Flies’ situation and everyone lives in terror.

Even here in Canada, it has been recognized that police informants are only rarely to be relied upon, especially when some sort of compensation is involved.

By now it must be clear that jailhouse informers are so unreliable that they tend to undermine criminal trials… Their testimony has all too often resulted in a wrongful conviction… How many wrongful convictions must there be before the use of these informers is forbidden or, at least, confined to very rare cases.

The current trend of Canadian provinces setting up dedicated Covid Snitch lines is unsettling. Manitoba has a COVID Tip Line for tattling on your neighbors who might notice you are having guests over for Christmas supper. The Province went out of its way to authorize extra personnel with the ability to hand out tickets. Indeed, the Province went so far as to hire a private security firm to bolster the numbers.

What is worse is it seems that authorities are not just content with ‘Team Manitoba’ doing the right thing and volunteering to tattle. There are rumours that small towns now have PAID Covid snitches. I reached out to the Manitoba government and Crime Stoppers for comment. According to a spokesperson from the Manitoba Communication Services, the Province has not adopted this policy nor condones it. But, according to a Municipality in my area, the Council was approached by the Province to see if there was anyone or organization in town who would act as their Covid infraction ‘Eyes & Ears’. This particular Council declined to cooperate.

I predict this widening network of ratting out of your neighbors and local businesses over having a guest over or not wearing a mask, will not end well.

The young hockey player only mouthed off to those cops but he did not resist arrest other than passively stand on the ice. It was the two women officers who lost control and almost tasered him. How long will it be before someone gets shot and killed over something as stupid as not wearing a mask?

Then on the flip side, have you heard of the phrase ‘Snitches get Stitches’? It’s pretty easy to figure out in a small town who is ratting people out. Small town gossip travels faster than a viral video and the end result could easily end in bloodshed. Is that really the intent of health regulations that are supposed to be ‘protecting’ us?

The Covid-19 pandemic has started to unleash the brutish nastiness we are willing to inflict on our fellow man in the name of the ‘public good’. I suggest reading Christopher Browning’s novel ‘Ordinary Men‘ in order to better understand the concerns raised by people opposing the pandemic health orders and draconic enforcement measures.

Canada is lurching down a dark path and our authorities are employing tactics well known to tyrants. If you ever wondered what were the genesis points of past Canadian atrocities, we are living it now.

Blair’s LinkedIn Profile

Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.

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MANITOBA MORTALITY STATS – 2020

WFPS respond to multiple calls at the Maples Personal Care Home in Winnipeg during a deadly weekend in early November 2020. (Source: CTV News Winnipeg)
WHAT WENT SO TERRIBLY WRONG IN MANITOBA?

This is a candid assessment of the abysmal handling of Manitoba’s Covid-19 response on the part of our elected and appointed officials who were tasked with guiding the province through a ‘pandemic’. Frankly, everyone of them should resign in disgrace and several should be arrested and charged with criminal negligence causing death.

The Manitoba government releases numerous News Bulletins and since Jan 30, nearly 300 specifically on Covid-19. All of the following information has been gleaned from the government’s own media releases.

Here is a list and some of my commentary on the key Manitoba Covid-19 milestones:

  • Mar 10: Province looking for more PPE & masks for patients and caregivers
  • Mar 13: Started ramping up testing & opening clinics, schools to close Mar 23 to Apr 10, events with more than 250 to be cancelled
It would be interesting to see the value of Dynacare’s contract for testing in Manitoba
  • Mar 17: Closure of daycares, casinos, Personal Care Home (PCH) lockdowns, gatherings down to 50, Province had 266 ventilators & Health Sciences Center created a 30 bed Isolation Ward
  • Mar 20: State of Emergency declared (continues to this day), all gatherings limited to 50, Manitobans asked to ‘Flatten the Curve’

The Provincial government copied most of the rest of the World with their response to a virus which was heralded as apocalyptic. In essence, we all maxed out the credit cards, took out a second mortgage, quit our jobs, slammed the door shut, and hid cowering in our basements covering our ears so we couldn’t hear the wolf howling outside.

  • Mar 26: termed a ‘Historic Pandemic’, $4.5M to be spent combating Covid-19 anxiety

“The most important way of reducing the spread of this virus is to stay at home as much as you can,” Roussin said. “We know that this virus is spread, almost exclusively, by symptomatic people and through close, prolonged contact with those individuals.”

  • Mar 27: gatherings dropped to 10, Provincial highway checkpoints set on borders
  • Mar 30: restaurants closed to diners, non-essential businesses to close
  • Mar 31: School cancelled to ‘flatten the curve’, Manitobans told to ‘Stay Home’

For the Apr & May, MB closed. There was zero traffic on the roads, no school, no non-essential businesses open, everyone applied social distancing, all borders were closed, all events started to be cancelled, there was little mask use, in person government related services closed, there was a touch phobia and a run on toilet paper, disinfectant products, and hand sanitizer.

  • Apr 5: Province to borrow $10B, told to stay home for Easter to flatten the curve.
  • Apr 9: OP Safe Apart announced with enhanced fines of $486/person & $2542/business, they have since increased to $1296/person & $5000/business plus $298/person for not wearing a mask in a public place (2nd highest in the country). Snitch line & extra officers set up to enforce, more messaging to ‘Flatten the Curve’
  • Apr 15: Emergency Act to be strengthened & $1B to be spent on Covid-19 efforts
  • Apr 16: Travel to Northern MB cutoff
  • Apr 29: Announced plans for slow reopening starting May 4

Manitoba did quite well at keeping the wolf out. Our numbers were very low and we did not see the type of carnage in our Personal Care Homes (PCHs) that was experienced in Ontario and Quebec. You would think provincial officials would have been taking notes.

  • Manitoba’s current hospital capacity: 2432 Acute Care beds plus 86 ICU with expansion plans for extra 300 AC and 100 ICU emergency spaces

Ok, looks like the Province is ready in case of a Fall resurgence. Maybe all the sacrifice and unprecedented spending to ‘flatten the curve’ bought us some time.

  • Apr 30: PCHs to restrict staff to one home only, all 127 homes have adequate staffing in place

Good idea? Government is great at making up new rules and laws but is infamous for not understanding the practicalities for implementation. There are reasons homecare workers bounce from residence to residence. A good manager would have looked at this and known immediately that this plan would not be sustainable.

  • May 4: 2020/21 deficit could possibly hit $5B, MB had the highest direct debt/capita of all provinces
  • May 22: Gatherings allowed to increase from 25 to 50
  • Jun 4: MB dropped 64,200 jobs in Apr and had a 13,800 rebound in May, unemployment rate was 11.2%
  • Jun 23: started planning for PCH visitations
  • Jun 26: Northern MB opened back up
  • Jun 29: $280M for PCHs for fire suppression capital projects
  • Jun 30: Fiscal update, $2.1B spent on Covid-19 measures and touted as 2nd highest as % of GDP, $5B deficit projected if there’s a 2nd wave. 7000 Surgical procedures delayed and still not caught up
  • Jul 17: cases up-ticked and blamed on Hutterites. (There was a large funeral in AB with thousands of Hutterites attending. Individual Hutterites started to be discriminated against.)

This was the beginning of the government’s ‘Name & Shame’ campaign. Premier Pallister has personally gaslighted numerous individuals and businesses for not being on ‘Team Manitoba’. His melodramatic tirades berate anyone who questions his dictates. He was ‘forced’ to cancel Christmas because we just did not listen!

This has only served to divide the population and has encouraged an army of Karens eager to snitch on their neighbors because they’re not following this or that inane new pandemic rule.

  • Jul 21:  “Thanks to the efforts of all Manitobans, we continue to lead in recovery and have among the lowest COVID-19 test positivity rates in the country,” said Pallister. “That means we can continue our careful, balanced plan to restart our economy, give people back their lives and get Manitobans back to work. Manitoba is one of the safest places in the world to go back to work and get back up on your feet,” said Pallister. “We must maintain our vigilance while growing our way out of this pandemic. I encourage all Manitobans to have their say in our next steps of restarting our economy.”

This did not age well as our rates in the fall were some of the worst in North America.

  • Jul 29: Front line workers to receive $1377

By this point, Manitobans were starting to move around again and businesses were open. People still kept their distance and being outdoors and camping were popular. Even on the beaches, people ‘social distanced’.

  • Aug 11: In the Prairie Mountain Health (PMH) region there was a slight uptick in cases related to Hutterite colonies and some Brandon clusters connected to close contacts. Vehicles for the Brandon testing site stretched for miles.
  • Aug 17: Advice from government was to wash hands, social distance, and the first instance to consider masks if social distancing was not possible. SuperStore and other major retailers were making mask use mandatory as of Aug 24
  • Aug 19: Premier Pallister, after complaints from parents, mandated masks for Grades 4-12 upon return to Sep classes

This was another knee-jerk reaction from the government. They were fine with sending the kids back to school without masks. Then immediately after an outcry from concerned parents, out came the first of the mask dictates.

You know what, I do not care if you want to wear a mask or not, fill your boots. There is some wishy washy evidence about their effectiveness that only surprisingly came out with this virus and none others, ever! But if you believe in them, fine, that’s how placebos work. I do notice that people are not avoiding each other as much anymore.

Masks also gave the government a convenient focus point to show they were serious about dealing with this thing. They could also gaslight the ‘anti-mask’ malcontents and point fingers and the spotlight away from failed government policies.

  • Aug 24: PMH region moved to Condition Orange for minimum 2 weeks (it lasted a month). Mandatory masks and gatherings in & out limited to 10. Cases in PMH starting Aug 6 – Sep 16 were: 18, 10, 2, 20, 11, 3, 4, 12, 25, 3, 9, 20, 2, 13, 17, 5, 24, 45, 35 (this was the day PMH moved to Orange), 10, 8, 9, 18, 31, 12, 13, 7, 8, 6, 1, 4, 3, 6, 0, 1, 2, 4, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 4. Hospitalizations, ICU visits, and deaths in the region barely moved.

My suspicion for the ‘high’ case days is there was mass testing at the Hutterite colonies and no surprise, they found extra infections. Obviously, because the colonies could be closed down easily, there was no wider community spread.

But the panic over case numbers gave the government the excuse to put the entire Southwest corner of the Province into a partial lockdown. Manitoba had been successful at keeping the wolf away but a little yip sent us running back to the basement.

  • Sep 3: travel to Northern MB was closed again and there were more mask recommendations from the Province

Schools reopened around Sep 8, and immediately cases were identified at various schools. They were mostly described as coming from outside of the school with no general outbreaks. But Sep 22, 20 cases were connected with a Winnipeg school. Mask use in Winnipeg was already increasing both in and out.

There are good reasons to get the children back into school. One big one is that there is not enough child care if they were all sent home again. But drive by a school at recess. The kids are swapping germs like they always have and the hundreds of ‘School Exposures’ list backs that up.

The Government lies that children do not spread the virus. Otherwise, why were the 20 schools of the Hanover School Division shut down? Why are the higher grades staying home an extra two weeks after Christmas vacation? But if you apply a risk analysis, society needs to take these extra cases on the chin and live with it.

  • Sep 18: PMH was brought back to yellow but there was a ‘concern’ about the rising case numbers in Winnipeg. PMH was touted as a success story because they ‘followed’ the rules.
Cases, cases, cases….so what? They’re juicy high numbers for public consumption & handy for gaslighting different regions but without context over how serious each case is, again, so what?
  • Sep 28: Winnipeg went to Orange with mandatory masks and gathering sizes of only 10 in or out.

It is glaringly obvious that despite mass mask wearing, social distancing, and hiding in our basements, the wolf had not gone away. The virus was endemic to the Province and all we had accomplished was to have it roar back as viruses typically do after the summer lull.

Starting in Oct, there were warnings that Manitobans should not gather for Thanksgiving (Oct 10). There were numerous case outbreaks all Oct in schools, prisons, and PCHs. Outbreaks in PCHs started to explode starting around Oct 20. Healthcare workers were identified as the carriers into some PCHs. Outbreaks are still continuing in numerous PCHs, schools, and prisons.

This was the point of breakdown in the PCHs and should have been sending wake-up calls to those in charge. PCH staff were burning out and bringing the infection into the residences with devastating results reminiscent of the spring carnage experienced in Ontario and Quebec. Funny how the PPE protocols did not protect the elderly in the scores of homes that have experienced outbreaks.

  • Oct 7: During the Speech from the Throne: “This year has been like no other, yet we have weathered it better than most,” said Pallister. “The resilience of Manitoba’s economy, finances, public services, and most of all, our people, have stood out strong. I am confident that if we keep working together, guided by Manitoba values, we will come out of this pandemic stronger and more prosperous.”

It didn’t take long for Pallister to be caught out in this lie.

  • Oct 9: An emergency $500M infusion of cash sought by government to add to $1.577B already spent on Covid-19
  • Oct 19: Province mandated more business closures, reduced gathering sizes, and liquor establishment curfews in Winnipeg
  • Oct 26: travel to Northern MB shut down again
  • Nov 2: Premier Pallister announced MB was ready for a 2nd wave, there was a focus on more testing. In Winnipeg, if one household resident was symptomatic all residents had to isolate pending a negative test result. Exemptions were made for healthcare & First Responders if they were asymptomatic. Winnipeg went to a hard lockdown.
  • Nov 5: The Premier emphasized that he was bringing the non-compliance hammer down and encouraged Manitobans to snitch on their neighbors. A contract with a private security company, G4S, was being written up so a total of 3300 government personnel could issue Covid-19 tickets. Meanwhile, PCH orders were changed to exempt workers from only working in one home.
  • Nov 12: The entire Province went to condition Red and hard lockdowns
  • Nov 13: A team was being sent to Maples PCH to determine what went wrong. Over 50 of the 200 residents have passed away so far.

The staff at Maples conducted a fo’c’sle sitdown mutiny when they en-mass called in sick and contacted 911 numerous times on the evening of Nov 6. People can only work in impossible conditions for so long before they give up in despair.

Where were the Health inspectors who should have been keeping tabs on a system that was starting to fall apart? PCHs had gone to hard lockdown mid-Oct. When things came to a head at Maples, well over 30 PCHs had declared outbreaks.

In the Navy, you are taught to stay ahead of the Ship instead of surfing behind her in the wake. The Navy also has a Board of Inquiry after every major incident in order to assign blame and to roll heads.

People need to go to jail for what happened in these homes.

The average age of Covid-19 mortality is exactly the same as the average life expectancy! If the media wasn’t blaring about the pandemic, would we even know there was one?
  • Dec 8: Premier Pallister cancels Christmas and New Year’s. He continues to ‘Name & Shame’ non-compliant offenders. He did let up on drive-in religious services after some high profile church incidents.

Frankly, my belief is if Pallister had enough troops, he would place all of MB under house arrest. Thankfully, he only has 3300 ticketing goons and a volunteer army of snitching Karens.

  • Dec 9: $7.7M announced for PCHs to help with staffing and operating expenses

This latest funding announcement, is too little too late. It was identified from day one who the virus was going to be worst towards. But instead of being proactive, the Province has allowed the system to self-monitor itself and they are always playing catch-up.

Ken Waddell has been writing some scathing editorials at the Neepawa Banner over the Government’s handling of Covid-19. In many of them, he has mentioned some proactive steps the health officials could have been touting. One in particular is the steps taken by the local hog plant which has kept the virus out. So here’s a question, how can the meat plants be so successful when healthcare ‘professionals’ are failing so badly?

Here is the answer. Healthcare in Canada sucks and has been that way for decades. PCH service is even worse. Our much vaunted systems are run by incompetent administrators who know how to ‘play the game’ instead of actually knowing how to run things. Our elected officials care more about looking like they are doing something rather than actually doing something.

Increasingly, western governments and their populations have become risk adverse. Government has sought to control more and more of our lives. Then a moderate crisis came along and their go-to response was to SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN! They went all in with a philosophy of making the goal zero cases yielding zero deaths. The population is going along with it, so why change course or admit you were wrong?

If you visualize the 400 or so Covid deaths MB has had from mid-Sept to now, exactly how is this year of the Pandemic any different from the last six??? Source: Statistics Canada – https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020017-eng.htm

To be perfectly blunt, old, sick people die. Also, to be direct, the West is so divorced from reality they cannot handle this simple fact of life. The wolf eventually gets us all. Sadly, most people are so narcissistic they only feign concern for the elderly. The most strident of Karens are concerned only for their own well-being.

The numbers for Manitoba show we are dying from Covid-19 at the SAME EXACT RATE AS NORMAL LIFE EXPECTANCY! We literally have no abnormal death spikes, our hospitals and ICUs are not being overrun or in danger of being overrun. Unless the media told you, you wouldn’t even know we were in a pandemic.

Of course, the virus is dangerous mainly to the old and sick but instead of targeted solutions with acceptable risk/benefit outcomes, we have gone with an untenable zero risk model. This will only result in an endless game of whack-a-mole which we will never win and ruin the Province and thousands of lives. The cure is fast becoming worse than the disease. Maybe a fast roll-out of an effective vaccine will get us off this ride of horrors.

Heaven help us if we ever have to face an actual wolf at the door.

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CANADIAN MORTALITY STATS – 2020

An Analysis of Covid-19 Mortality in Canada

Mathematics is a joy to me. It does not care about your feelings or beliefs. 2 + 2 = 4 and does not change because of your gender, sexual orientation, or skin colour. If it ever does change because of political virtue signaling, then your car will not start and planes will fall out of the sky.

Canada is chest deep into the Covid-19 crisis and we should have some numbers to more confidently project what has happened and what may be in store. Unlike the Imperial College models that were projecting 1% of the country’s population was going to outright die, so far Canada is well short of that at 12,301 deaths (Dec 02) vice the apocalyptic number of 370,000.

If you are a fan of the Road Runner cartoons, there inevitably comes a point where Wile E. Coyote heads right off a cliff. He is okay until he looks down, then the cruel hand of gravity reaches up and down he goes despite all his arm flapping. So in spite of all the arm flapping on the part of politicians, their attendant medical professionals, and cheerleading Karens, what are the observable mortality numbers saying to us?

The caveat in this presentation is did I introduce any personal bias? I am well aware of the phrase, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics“, so I attempted to refrain from not letting the numbers speak for themselves. I did have the bias that I have seen presentations from Ivor Cummins and Genevieve Briand, Johns Hopkins University on the numbers from the States and Europe. I wanted to see what Canadian numbers were doing.

So with the preamble out of the way, let’s dive in.

Statistics Canada. Table 13-10-0392-01 Deaths and age-specific mortality rates, by selected grouped causes

This graph shows:

  • For the last two decades, Canadian mortality has been increasing at a relatively steady rate of +3475 deaths/yr. Some years are worse than others, some better. Our population has been growing and the Boomers are getting older, so this makes sense.
  • The big killers of Canadians are Cancer and Heart Attack & Stroke. Cancer has been increasing at about 920 deaths/yr while Heart Attack & Stroke have decreased 260 deaths/yr. Cancer became the #1 killer after 2007.
Statistics Canada. Table 13-10-0392-01 Deaths and age-specific mortality rates, by selected grouped causes

Diving deeper into mortalities:

  • Accidents, Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease, and Influenza & Pneumonia are next up but orders of magnitude behind the big killers.
  • Strangely, Accidents have been making serious increases over the last 20 years.
  • Flu & Pneumonia kick along at the 6000-8000 range each year.
  • As a side note, suicide rates saw a slight uptick over the decades from 3600 to about 4000/yr. It’ll be interesting to see the numbers after this year with all the clinical depression due to the crisis and government actions.
Statistics Canada. Table 13-10-0785-01 Selected grouped causes of death, by month

Now, let’s add in what 2020 has been doing so far this year:

  • The total mortalities reported across Canada comes to 207,155. Our expected mortality given an average death rate of an extra 3475/yr should be 210,630. When reading the StatCan table, the numbers are not complete so the far yellow line is a guess that 75% of deaths have been tabulated. So by year end, that projection is about 276,000. That’s substantially short of what would be expected but who knows what lag time there is with respect to StatCan receiving correct numbers.
  • The second to last set of bars are the actual reported 2020 numbers to date.
  • Now here’s the weird part, which was also picked up by the Johns Hopkins researcher. Cancer and Heart & Stoke numbers are fairly linear with a slight dip from winter down to summer, then climbing. When looking at the provinces with numbers through to Sep, there are no large upticks that should skew these estimations badly.
  • After taking the first half year numbers and doubling them, you should have a good projection of the year’s totals. My assumption was any numbers past June may have not been finalized. So with Cancer and a growth rate of 920/yr, we would expect 81,072 deaths. Heart Attack & Stroke with a decrease of 260/yr would be 70,850.
  • But the projection of Cancer deaths after six months of stats is only 75,150 which is a shortfall of 5,922 deaths. Heart Attacks & Stroke is projected at 62,510 which is also a shortfall of 8,340 deaths, for a total of 14,262 missing deaths by the end of the year.
  • Did we cure cancer this year and in all the hubbub of Covid-19, someone forgot to report on it? Coincidentally, our Covid-19 deaths are just over 12,000. Weird, eh?
Statistics Canada. Table 13-10-0708-01 Deaths, by month

So, how do Canadians die on a month to month basis?

  • Jan, Dec, Mar, and Feb are the worst months for mortality. Some years there are spikes and some years are calm. Every 3 to 4 years there is a bad spike in Jan. On the opposite years, it looks like Dec gives the spike.
  • In general, Canadians die the most with the biggest swings starting in Jan then it calms down into the summer and gradually picks up through the fall into winter.
  • Feb & Mar 1998 was a bad year that coincided with a bad flu season that year.
  • 2013, 2015, & 2018 saw bad Jan spikes. 2018 started off badly with spikes in Jan, Feb, & Mar. This coincided with a bad 2018 flu season which was termed the worst in five years.
Statistics Canada. Table 13-10-0785-01 Selected grouped causes of death, by month

So, let’s add in the deaths for 2020 and see what we get:

  • Obviously, there were the big jumps in Apr & May attributed to when Covid-19 got really bad, particularly in ON & QC in the Long Term Care (LTC) facilities. But there were already significant upticks in Jan, Feb, & Mar. Something was already going on and usually upticks at this time of year seem to signal something going on with the flu.
  • Jun seemed to flatten and decrease. Jul and Sep really nosed down but again, those numbers might not be finalized yet. But it is a good indication that after a quick rush of deaths, things may have settled and even decreased.
Statistics Canada – https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020017-eng.htm

Here’s a great, little interactive tool on the StatCan website:

  • Obvious Covid-19 spike for 2020. But compare that spike to Jan’s 2018 flu influenced spike, 6745 to 6630. I don’t recall any crazy lockdowns or slaughtering of our economy because of 2018’s mortalities, maybe I just missed it. Then in mid-Jun, death rates are back within five year norms. When did all those mandatory mask rules come in again?
  • 2020 numbers drop off out through Sep but because of incomplete numbers.
Statistics Canada: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020017-eng.htm

The cool thing about this interactive tool is you can check out each province. I’ll let you scroll through the rest but the most striking point is this was not a Canadian pandemic. This was a Quebec pandemic. Ontario only had a bit of a bump in comparison. This would coincide with the bloodbath in their LTC homes.

BC had a peak of deaths mid-Mar and AB has no pattern other than a slight overall increase of 30-40 deaths each month. You wouldn’t even know anything was going on in the rest of the country.

Worldometer, 02 Dec 2020 – https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/canada/

Logarithmic scale is used to show the rate of change. When you go to the interactive chart on the Worldometer site, the Covid-19 deaths were small but grew quickly until the curve ‘flattened’ at the end of May. But the rate of growth was not exponential as everyone feared when governments all hit the panic button. In fact, Mar 18, the curve was already curling over on its own. Considering Canadian Provinces had not instituted Emergency Orders even by that point, you have to ask if all those measures did anything.

Also, since we are in a so-called ‘2nd Wave’, ummmm, where’s the evidence for that? The rate of change in the death rate is almost dead flat but our lockdown measures are stricter than ever and Christmas is going to be cancelled. Sure the media is shouting about the case count each day but if Canadians aren’t falling over dead in the streets it sure seems like a nothing burger.

So, I ask again, what has all the arm flapping here in Canada been about? By the mortality stats, this does not appear to be a particularly bad year compared to even 2018. By the fall numbers and historical norms, we’re past the bad spike and into regular death rates.

Here’s my take away point: politicians, their health experts plus the media have access to this info. Everyone does because it is public and StatCan does an excellent job gathering numbers. But no one hears anything but doom and gloom. This tells me that our overlords are either incompetent or distorting the truth on purpose. One thing for sure, the precedent is set for the next time a little bump in the road shows up. Once governments see how easy it is to rip away your freedoms, they will repeat.

Unfortunately, many Canadians without cushy government jobs or with the ability to work from home are desperately trying to not look down. They know that no amount of arm flapping is going to save them from the big splat.

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Canadian Institutional Incompetence

In All Respects NOT Ready

Most Canadians would hold the belief that their sacred institutions from the Federal Parliament down through their Province and Municipal elected officials would have their backs in time of strife or mayhem. Most Canadians have access to 911 service whose operators quickly determine, “Police, Fire, or Ambulance”. In extremis, when provincial resources fail, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are on call for Aid to the Civil Power operations.

The public should expect that with the billions of tax dollars spent on emergency preparedness with the central coordination run through Public Safety Canada that Canadians should be well taken care of in the event of calamity.

Well, Canada, depending on the scope of the disaster, be prepared to look after yourself.

Here are a few examples to illustrate my point:

A snow covered Argus at the Comox Air Museum – Photo courtesy of Katherine Bickford, http://carlykb.com/gateway/
Comox Snowfall Cancels Christmas Military Flights

If anyone has lived on the West Coast of BC, either in the Lower Mainland or on the Island, they are somewhat acquainted with that weird meteorological phenomenon called snow. It will occasionally show up, usually in multiples of feet, create absolute havoc for a couple of days, then melt with the subsequent rain. The rest of Canada would take the opportunity to make fun of us for a change while they were suffering from the more usual Canadian winter weather.

Up Island at 19 Wing Comox, there is usually a good wallop of the white stuff maybe once a year. The RCAF are not stupid and like any Canadian airport, they have a Snow and Ice Removal (SNIC) plan. But all the planning does not help when a particular weather event happens rarely. Hence, each and every year, it is like people have never seen snow or what to do with it when it shows up.

That is when the holes of the Swiss cheese all line up and an incident happens such as one occasion while I was the Duty Operations officer for 442 Squadron.

The Christmas Military Flight Airbus had flown into Comox and was ready to start the long cross country journey across Canada to Trenton, ON. A large snowfall had occurred overnight and since the airfield did not have a hangar large enough, the aircraft remained parked outside overnight. The actual snow was not so much the issue as was the ability to de-ice the aircraft whose dimensions were too large for the civilian terminal machines to take care of.

Back in the day when the Boeing 707, aka White Knuckle Airlines, flew, the frequency of flights would be two or three times per week. Nowadays, larger military aircraft flying into Comox is rare.

But, hey, no problem, call in the military de-icer. Whoops, the one guy who knew how to run the machine was on Christmas leave out of the Valley. Okay, we pulled out the Operator’s Manual to see how to run the machine. Fine, but whoops again, the barrels of de-icing fluid were half a mile up a snow plugged road that was very low on the SNIC plan priority list. Long story short, the Keystone Kops bumbling caused the cancellation of the flight and the ruination of hundreds of military member’s Christmas plans.

Lesson Learned: This debacle occurred due to a combination of factors involving the rarity of a weather event and the nature of how the RCAF is run. Snow occasionally shows up in Comox but it is only a bother for a few days until the rain washes it away. You can plan for it but institutional memory is short and can be complicated with frequent postings or lack of adequately trained personnel who are not familiar with how to handle semi-complicated situations.

If the wind was steady and freshening from the Southeast, would not a prudent person look towards where the fire might head towards?
Town of Slave Lake Burns Down in 2011

According to news articles and the subsequent 2012 KPMG report, it was a miracle that no one died during the evacuation of the Town of Slave Lake on May 15, 2011.

Words like massive, unprecedented, rapidly-developing were used to describe a wall of fire being pushed into town by 100 km/h winds. The fire, later determined to be arson, cost Albertans about $1 billion in damage and recovery costs.

The arsonist has yet to be identified and no blame was ever laid against any of the people in charge of responding to the inferno. But should have the authorities been better prepared?

The KPMG report made a series of recommendations mostly based on better communication and cooperation amongst the disparate entities in charge of the area’s emergency response. One crucial factor overlooked, except for a single minor mention related to the Provincial Operations Center (Pg 63), was literally no one was paying attention to the weather!

It was a hot, dry spring in fire country. There were numerous wildfires in the area, some to the SW of town and Fire 65 (the one that burnt down the town) was to the SE. Would you not think that a single person in charge would consult a weather forecast to see if any weather phenomenon such as high winds were in the forecast?!?

In the military, literally every briefing started with a Met Report so that everyone, especially the Commanding Officer, could weigh the risks associated with the forecast weather situation. Then as the day goes on, there are regular weather updates especially if a rapidly approaching system is expected to impact operations. Also, when all else fails, you look out the window.

Going back through the meteorological records from the Slave Lake Airport starting at midnight May 13, the wind was from the West at 20 kph, veered North at 0900, dropped to 10 kph and continued to veer to ESE at 1600 picking up again to about 20 kph. The barometric pressure started to steeply decline at this point. For the next three days the wind stayed in the Southeast with the really strong winds occurring on the 15th, the day of the main evacuation.

This type of weather indicates there was a deepening, west to east moving, low pressure system with a steep pressure gradient to the west of town. The weather forecasters would have predicted the high winds but no one was paying attention.

Lesson Learned: Complacency and lack of specific knowledge almost got a lot of people killed. The area was described as ‘fire country’ so no one was particularly concerned about fires in the area. The arson, whether deliberate or accidental, should have been foreseen because of the conditions. But the most egregious lack of foresight was the collective oversight of simply looking up the forecast or even noticing that the wind was steady and freshening from the direction of a rapidly growing fire.

Coast Guard Station Sea Island – Photo courtesy of Duane Currie
Lack of Coordination Between Lower Mainland Emergency Services

The over-riding emergency fear for Vancouver’s Lower Mainland is the inevitable ‘Big Quake’. To that end, the province has attempted to prepare for it.

Thankfully, the 2010 Winter Olympics helped officials as they were able to tap into extra money which was put towards emergency preparedness. A great example is the province’s E-Comm system (finally fully rolled out in 2018) whereupon all the seperate agencies can actually communicate with one another.

During an emergency, the first item to fail is communications. While I was with the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) in Vancouver, our communication link onshore at an incident scene was usually a police member with a cell phone. Useless! It was just easier to look for the flashing lights as the hovercraft sped up the Fraser River.

Unfortunately, Canada usually waits until after a disaster before politicians put money into proper prevention. Again with the CCG, we attempted to set up exercises with the police and fire services but were turned down as there was not money in the budget for the extra overtime.

Lesson Learned: Money for proper emergency preparedness in Canada is usually too little, too late. Of course, you have to balance budgets and be reasonable but there are simple, prudent, relatively low cost measures which are not being considered due to other spending priorities. Canada has a history of being reactive vice forward thinking.

This brings me to the unfolding debacle of Canada’s Covid-19 response. I will focus on one small aspect otherwise this article would be too lengthy.

This fall’s response by Manitoba’s Health Ministry with regards to protecting our most frail and elderly has moved into the territory of criminal neglect. From MB’s 2nd Covid-19 News Bulletin dated Feb 07, they were already advising people with flu-like systems to avoid senior residences. Quickly after that, there were ample examples coming from Italy, Spain, Quebec, etc. of what should have been prepared for. The CAF Report on LTC homes was harrowing reading and should have been a wake-up call to the other provinces.

MB Premier Brian Pallister did not listen.

To their credit, the Manitoba health system kept the Covid-19 virus out of the Long Term Care (LTC) homes during the spring spike which decimated the facilities in ON and QC.

But this fall has been a bloodbath, particularly in homes like the Winnipeg Revera Maples Long Term Care Home. According to the government’s News Bulletins, for the month of November, a full 25% of the 200 bed home’s residents have succumbed from the virus. On Nov 13, the Province announced it was setting up a review of Maples plus other hard hit facilities. No kidding!

What exactly did the Province think was going to happen in these homes whose staff consists of low paid, mostly recent immigrants? I do not blame the staff whatsoever as they have been shouldering ever increasing workloads and health issues with miniscule extra support from government. At Maples, it finally reached a breaking point on Nov 6 when the staff mutinied by en-mass calling in sick for the evening shift.

In the Navy, this would have been called a Messdeck Lock-in where the lower deckers refuse to come out until their demands for better treatment and conditions were met. Work people too hard, for too long without support and they become despondent and rebel.

Ministry inspectors and the Health department should have foreseen these issues but blindly disregarded obvious problems with the LTC homes. Too little, too late and in my opinion government officials and LTC home management need to be charged and jailed for negligence.

Do you feel safe with the fact that all these agencies are supposedly in charge of keeping you safe during a major emergency?

I don’t.

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COVID-19 EXIT STRATEGIES

Does Manitoba have a Plan to end the Health Emergency?

The short answer to my query posed above, is no.

It appears that the Manitoba Government is continuing to knee-jerk react when it comes to dealing with this pesky virus. A little bump in numbers of cases over the last few weeks has the population clamouring for lockdowns, quarantines, and border closures. It appears that despite the miniscule numbers of hospitalizations, ICU beds used, and deaths (seven, one, & thirteen), the goal now seems to be total eradication of the virus with zero cases no matter the severity.

So, despite the massive intrusion of government upon the lives of Manitobans, the incredible hardship being borne by businesses and individuals, and the incredible cost being incurred, the media has decided to act as cheerleaders for the draconian crackdowns. Zero effort is being made to question the Government’s decisions.

To be fair, I would say our leadership is being asked to make unprecedented decisions which may ultimately be the correct course of action. But in the absence of media asking the hard questions and demanding answers, the public is left uninformed and divided with all the opinions and contradictary information flying around.

I would like to point out that a few voices in the media wilderness are piping up and imploring the Government to figure out an exit strategy. Ken Waddell, who runs the Neepawa Banner, put out an excellent editorial today which I encourage you to read. It’s worth noting that Ken owns the paper, so he is not beholden to higher corporate interests and can speak his mind.

So if I were able to hold Premier Pallister’s feet to the fire over his Covid-19 strategy, I would have the following pointed questions for him, his Health Minister, and his Chief Medical Officer:

  • The goal from the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic was stated as ‘Flatten the Curve’ so the hospitals and ICUs were not overwhelmed. Kudos and back pats all around as MB never even came close to taxing our medical system. So why is there still a Health Emergency Order in place? Even with the uptick in numbers there wasn’t a commensurate rapid rise in hospital patients. Under what conditions will you release the Province from the Emergency Order?
  • According to StatsCan, Manitobans die from all causes at a rate of 30/day. BTW, what has the suicide rate been like since this all started? We’ve lost a whopping 13 people from Covid-19 related deaths (I’m guessing there was co-morbidity and old age involved). Is this Government operating under the premise that even one death from this virus is too many?
  • Have the 13 deaths, although regrettable, been worth the estimated 15% of Manitoba’s businesses closed for good and the rest of our damaged economy. Were the 13 deaths worth the extra $10 Billion plus in extra debt the Province has taken on? Were 13 deaths worth the suspension of our rights, freedoms, & liberties which the Government shows no sign of returning? Were a whole 13 deaths worth tossing a million Manitoban’s lives upside down?
  • Now masks seem to be the order of the day. Please show me the medical evidence you’re basing your decision on. If masks are so successful, why weren’t they mandatory back during the lockdowns and quarantines when the State of Emergency was first declared? How much did public pressure play into the decision to start making masks mandatory in schools and in the Prairie Mountain Health Region?
  • As for the Hutterite colonies, I hope you realize you’re putting a big target on their backs by identifying them. But since you have and it’s been stated that they’re the source of many of the new cases in Westman, do you have evidence of widespread community spread of the virus due to Hutterite activity? In addition, on the affected colonies, was there widespread testing or only testing of the symptomatic?
  • What criteria, other than a modest rise in case numbers, did you use to put the PMH region under Orange conditions?
  • The PMH region takes in the whole SW corner of the Province. Please substantiate why citizens of, for example, Swan River are being forced to follow Condition Orange procedures when the actual clusters are located in the Brandon region?
  • What is the exit strategy for dealing with this virus? Seems to me that a strategy of protecting the vulnerable such as the elderly and immune-compromised along with reminding Manitobans to keep up good hygiene habits would allow us to go back to normal. Instead, this Government seems determined to keep Manitobans hostage under Health Emergency Orders until there is never another single case ever.

It will be interesting as to just how far Manitobans can be pushed before more and more of us poke up our heads and cry out ‘SHOW ME THE BODIES’ and then reject the Government’s intrusion on our lives.

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THE GREAT MASK DEBATE

A nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital wears a unique mask as the hospital celebrates the release of a COVID-19 patient after 45 days in their care in Orange, California, May 5, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Blake

To Mask or Not to Mask – Why is this even a question?

***January 12, 2021 Update: Here’s an excellent video detailing the timeline of mask usage. Somehow, within a span of a week or two, the World’s health experts went from decades of evidence of general mask usage to be worse than useless to making them mandatory because of ‘evolving evidence’. Masks are straight placebos, nothing more, nothing less. It makes the public feel ‘safe’ and it makes it appear as if the government is doing something. It’s the same pattern for every useless government measure which the virus has circumvented merely because mankind can only live with a viruses, not defeat them (with the exception of vaccines). Watch the video.***

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare

The latest flashpoint in Canada’s Covid-19 response relates to the mandatory wearing of face masks. Just like the run on toilet paper, hand sanitizer, flour, garden seeds, and other goods whose demand sky-rocketed, now retailers are running out of elastic for ‘do it at home’ self-made masks. The public has been whipped and beaten with 24/7 virus coverage by their governments and the media and they are desperate to find a solution to end this rollercoaster ride.

Let’s start with a question that is probably too obvious: in all the umpteen decades that surgical masks and the like have been around, has the medical community not thoroughly studied their effectiveness under these type of circumstances? Are doctors and our Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) so grossly incompetent that they cannot with a reasonable certainty declare under what conditions we should be utilizing masks, the frequency they should be changed/washed, and their relative effectiveness? Why are masks going to be touted now as the ultimate panacea when they weren’t back during the spring lockdowns?

If you want a good explanation from a doctor on what masks can and cannot do for you I recommend listening to ZDoggMD’s Mask explanation video along with all his other info and concerns with this pandemic.

There should be zero debate as this simple piece of medical tech should long ago have been figured out. But instead, we have people shaming non-mask wearers in person and on social media. We have Anti-Mask groups protesting and promoting Mask Exemption cards online. Large businesses such as banks, Walmart, Superstore, and other chains are declaring on their own that mask use is mandatory on their premises. Oh, if anyone thinks these large businesses are just ‘protecting their employees and patrons’, well give me a break. They are just protecting their bottom line in the event a case gets linked to a store and they have to shut it down.

So here is my problem with the randomness of mandatory mask wearing: if you’re a CMO who has bona fide reasons to order the wearing of face masks, then fine, that is where you have to balance the needs of society with our personnel rights and freedoms under the Charter, (which happens to be the first paragraph). But if you are some random business or ‘Karen’ who tries shaming or ordering me into wearing a mask just because you say so, then you can FUCK right off. Paragraph 7 of the Charter reads: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

In general, that means, I do not get to tell you not to wear a mask and you do not get to tell me to wear one.

The whole reason we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms is to protect our rights and freedoms especially during times of duress when they are most likely to come under pressure. There was a reason the War Measures Act was changed after the 1970 FLQ Crisis. Sweeping powers given to government are never a good thing.

The argument of ‘Well, it’s their business, it’s their rules. Just shop elsewhere.’ comes up as a counter-argument. That does not wash with me. I am old enough to remember the AIDS hysteria. It was a Gay disease and you could catch it from something as simple as a toilet seat. Would it have been proper to make a policy of ‘No Gays Allowed’ in your store? But because the population was scared, homosexuals were persecuted anyways. There are a few Christian bakeries who learned the hard way about turning away certain customers.

In Manitoba, we have already seen how ugly Covid-19 stigmatizing could become. Hutterites are still being persecuted and fear worse to come. Some Winnipeg businesses were demanding ID and/or a negative Covid-19 test to determine if patrons were ‘safe’ to come in. There were reports of several Brandon families being turned away. For now, the negative press has forced these businesses to recant their policies.

Speaking of Brandon, starting on August 24, group sizes of 10 and mandatory mask wearing comes into effect for all indoor/outdoor areas of the Prairie Mountain Health Region. This is ostensibly in response to a slight uptick (there was a ‘jump’ of about 100 cases in the last two weeks) in cases mostly in the Brandon area. The PMH region takes in the entire South West corner of the province and it baffles me as to why citizens up in Swan River should be forced to take the same precautions as people in the ‘hot’ zones. As an aside, when you glean through the government’s numbers for the southern health region and the adjacent city of Winnipeg added together are higher than PMH’s but there is no change in their health policies.

My feeling is that Premier Pallister did not want the blowback of making masks mandatory at this time for Winnipeg. He waffled on mandatory mask use for school children than quickly made them mandatory after a barrage of concern from parents. It will be the same for the rest of the province. Mandatory masks are coming because the public demands them, not because of any concrete, scientific, medical reasoning.

But this is typical for the entire lurching, knee jerk reactions exhibited by our authorities since this whole virus thing started. It was understandable in hindsight that governments got scared and shut everything down. But since then, we have not been stacking the bodies in the streets. Hospitals have never been overwhelmed and we have been learning the true nature of this particular virus. But we have gone massively into debt and there is more and more evidence that the ‘cure’ is worse than the disease.

No government has the balls to declare that they massively screwed the pooch with their response so they keep playing politics and with the aid of the media has kept the population running scared.

As I first opined, there should not be a debate whatsoever about whether we should ‘mask up’ or not. I cannot believe the medical establishment is that inept. All the CMOs have to do is lay out the facts and pass on their best recommendations. Most people are reasonable and if they are treated like adults will follow sound advice. Instead, we have the politicians playing politics with a hot potato and as usual none of them have the fortitude to make a hard decision. As a society, we have become afraid of our own shadows and the sheep are easily panicked.

It is understandable why individuals and businesses want to protect their interests and feel like they must take matters into their own hands. It is after all just a mask. But where does this stop? When do the roadblocks go up with armed police demanding your papers for Covid-19 testing and mandatory vaccinations? When will the citizenry be divided up into ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ zones? When will the masses be forced into more draconian lockdowns?

When you look at the relatively small numbers of sicknesses and deaths in Manitoba and Canada as a whole that are attributed to Covid-19 and compare those with a regular flu season, imagine how far the country would go down the rabbit hole if we had a real crisis.

I spent many years in uniform protecting this country and my actions were governed by the National Defense Act. In the military, especially back during the Cold War, most of your rights and freedoms were stripped. I had the right to vote and that was about it. I did not sacrifice my rights and freedoms for them to be arbitrarily taken away by a bunch of jittery sheep.

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CANADIAN SYSTEMIC RACISM

Photo Courtesy of the Polka Dot Press – Mary Ann Kirkby, author of ‘I Am Hutterite’

We Are People Just Like You

Imagine for a nanosecond that there was even a hint of a shop owner posting a sign saying ‘NO BLACKS ALLOWED’ or ‘NO GAYS ALLOWED’ or ‘NO TRANSGENDERS ALLOWED’ or ‘NO NATIVES ALLOWED’. The shitnado following such an action would be apocalyptic.

The news cycle would be filled with talking heads opining about those racist Canadians. Our apoligizer-in-chief would be on the Canadian networks with tears streaming down his cheeks and lamenting that ‘Canadians need to do better, you’re such nasty cretins.’ It would be a given that there would be worldwide protests and the offending shop, irregardless of whether the sign existed or not, would be burnt to the ground along with a sizeable portion of the surrounding community.

It would go without saying that the perpetrator of the obvious Hate Crime, which multiple police units would be investigating, would be vilified, doxxed, and virtually lynched by a gargantuan horde of Social Justice Warriors, real and keyboard. The creator of such an abomination, plus their family, would be hounded until the mob’s ire turned to fresh meat.

But, but, but, the poor devil would protest, the health board and the news outlets reported there were large groups of Black people attending a Black Lives Matter protest or LGBTQ people participating in a Pride Parade or Natives blockading rail lines. Government sources said that because of the gatherings, there was a resultant spike in Covid-19 cases in my area. I’m just trying to protect my family, staff, and patrons.

Guess where the next ‘peaceful’ protest would occur.

But of course, no one would be idiotic enough to throw more fuel on the BLM, Antifa, LGBTQ, Native protester’s fires even if there was a clear and identifiable link between their activities and a spike in Covid-19 cases.

Then why did our powers to be in government and the MSM deem it necessary to announce that some spikes were occurring on Hutterite colonies in the Prairie provinces?

Manitoba Media Bulletin: COVID-19 Bulletins #133, 135, 136 & 137 specifically state Hutterite colonies were linked to new outbreaks. #133 reads: ‘Today’s cases are a male and female in their 60s, a male and female in their 30s and a female in her 20s. All the cases are on a Hutterite colony in the Interlake-Eastern health region. The investigation is ongoing and any additional information will be provided as needed once investigations are complete to inform people of any public health risks.’

Bulletins #135 & 136 read: ‘The high case counts are reflective of an outbreak of cases in several Hutterite colonies.’

Bulletin #137: ‘Seven of today’s eight cases are on Hutterite colonies.’

Finally in Bulletin #138, the government stopped identifying Hutterites but reading between the lines ‘Today’s case is a male in his 40s from the Interlake-Eastern health region.’ was probably a Hutterite.

Do you think if there were outbreaks on Native Reserves that the Manitoba government would start identifying those and the region they were in? Of course not!

Did no one at the government public relations offices or the health departments do a one, two pause before issuing such specific statements? What public health reasons made it necessary to identify Hutterite colonies? Even without the virus, members of the regular public do not visit a colony without good reason. Finally, after the colony elders complained the PR people came to their senses but there was not even a hint of an apology in subsequent Media Bulletins.

Of course the media latched on to the story, doxxing and putting targets on all the Prairie Hutterites. Eventually, a letter had to be sent to the news networks telling them to desist or face court action.

Did not a single network have an inkling of the damage, scorn, or possible violence they would incite by specifically identifying Hutterite colonies for these minor outbreaks? Of course they did but again there was a rush to publish and after an anemic mea culpa, they stopped running the stories.

In part, a Hutterite letter to the networks, had to state the obvious that ‘We are people just like you.’

If you are unaware of Hutterite persecution, that’s literally their entire history and in large part why they established colonies in North America. To this day, that persecution has not ended and is obviously rampant to this day with government and MSM involvement. Mary-Ann Kirkby, author of I am Hutterite, gives an excellent rendition of what it is like being a Hutterite.

Institutional racism is built into Canadian fabric but it isn’t Blacks, Gays, or Natives who are the targets anymore. If you are white and religious, it is your turn to have the target on your back now.

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