by Peter W. Dunn, PhD

Since the beginning of the “pandemic”, I’ve been writing my responses on Facebook and on my blog. I’ve concluded that it isn’t really a pandemic but a “pandemic”. I have examined this “pandemic” from the outset, and I realized from the data coming from the Diamond Princes, that this so-called “pandemic” wasn’t going to be as dangerous as people were claiming. The Diamond Princess still to this day, had a higher positive test rate than any country in the world, per capita. It arguably represented a worst case scenario and should have guided public policy. Diamond Princess had population of 3711 people; 13 deaths; 712 cases.  None of the ship’s crew of younger healthy people died. Only 13 passengers died. What the Diamond Princess meant was that about 80% of people who would be exposed to the virus would have natural immunity and didn’t even test positive, and only 3.5 people of 1000 died, and these were all elderly tourists. COVID 19 did not impress me. There was never any need to lockdown Ontario. All that was needed, was that we protect the most vulnerable people in our population and Doug Ford failed to do this, as most of the deaths in Ontario in 2020 took place in long term care facilities. Later we learned that those people didn’t die of COVID 19 but rather of neglect and dehydration. But no revision of our COVID 19 death stats has ever taken place.

          Thus, the “pandemic” is much ado about nothing. Take the example of the Concord Food Centre “outbreak” that York Region Public Health announced this week, but 21 of 23 cases among employees had already been completely resolved. So we are talking about 2 cases that were still on going. Yentas in our neighborhood are crying out that Concord Food should have been shut down. But what for? The “outbreak” is almost over, and not a single customer has been found to have gotten ill as a result. So on social media, hundreds of self-appointed health inspectors are trying to destroy Concord Food because they saw a young person not wear a mask properly or some other violation. But had they ever thought what it would cost our community to shut down yet another business, and employer of young people? People don’t see the unintended consequences. I can think of a few things would have happened if York health had closed Concord: (1) hundreds of thousands of dollars of food would go to waste; (2) Other stores in our area would have to pick up the slack and that would increase wait times to get in. And standing outside is also arguably unhealthy for some people. But my grandfather died due to being left in the cold for over an hour when he was 90.

My Facebook Predictions regarding Lockdown
          I also made other predictions on Facebook:

• The better that lockdowns work, the longer they must last. That prediction has come true, because our health authorities’ dire predictions of death have been averted, and our leaders claim that we can thank the lockdowns (post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy). What was 15 days to flatten the curve has become two years to flatten everything.
• The longer lockdowns last the probability that they would kill more people than COVID 19 would approach 100%. This too is true, because while COVID 19 kills primarily the elderly who have lived out their lives, suicides and overdose and domestic murders kill people are leading killers of young people. Do we need to talk about years of life lost?
  
  “Economics Professor Douglas W. Allen, from Simon Fraser University in Canada looked at the effect of loss of employment, loss of education, increased mental health problems, increased domestic violence risk and lost opportunities for healthcare… After comparing regions with and without lockdowns around the world, and after counting the negative effects of lockdown on public health, the economist has calculated that for every year of life lockdowns has saved, it has caused the loss of 282 years of life.”
  
• Inflation: There has been a 26% increase in real estate prices in the GTA as a leading indicator of inflation, as excess liquidity from quantitative easing gets poured into the housing market. Food prices are getting out of hand. People are noticing this. We are entering the kind of inflation that normally is seen in Banana Republics.
• Unemployment: Canada suffered record unemployment as a result of lockdowns.
• Business bankruptcies. Thousands upon thousands of businesses that were shut down during Doug Ford’s lockdowns will never reopen. Hardest hit: probably restaurants and travel agencies.
• Suicides: I saw on Facebook a person working at a psychology clinic here in Thornhill that there are six times as many requests for help from children who are thinking about suicide, and their case load is so heavy that that it takes a year now to get an appointment.
  Or how about this open letter from Canadian pediatricians dated May 20, 2021:
  “We are witnessing a crisis in children’s mental health with a dramatic increase in utilization of acute mental health services. Schools play an essential role in the recovery process. In‐person school provides students with routine and structure, accountability, socialization and recognition of abuse and neglect. For many children, school is where they receive services and supports to meet developmental milestones. In‐person attendance is linked to important long‐term health and well‐ being outcomes and the benefits are particularly apparent in those who are marginalized or have disappeared from the school system.”
• People will be told they have to get vaccinated in order to get their freedom back, and they will beg for it.
  But these vaccines aren’t needed, except perhaps for certain people with weak immune systems, and then the vaccine will be deadly, harmful or ineffectual for those people.
• Doug Ford will lose the next election because he’s stabbed his electoral base in the back. But unlike the other predictions, this will not be a catastrophe, but a relief as Ontario’s self appointed babysitter will be sent back to private life. But what comes after him will also be a disaster if our Freedom Movement doesn’t gain traction.

I felt during those early days of lockdown, that what we needed were mass demonstrations similar to the Raptors parade when our basketball team won the NBA Championship. But alas, we are people who prefer bread and circuses to freedom.

I am here to protest not because I myself have been inconvenienced. That’s true. My rights are daily destroyed by lockdowns and stay at home orders. But I could likely cope for this for years. I am going to fight, not for myself, but for those whose lives have been utterly destroyed.

I’ve since revised Hanlon’s Razor, you know, the saying, “One should never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.” But Doug Ford’s incompetence has been persistent (16 months?) and it has been willful. He had to know that lockdowns would kill people. Maybe he thought that he could save some grannies but he had to know that lockdowns would kill young people and business owners.  So I’ve changed Hanlon’s Razor: Call it Hanlon’s Razor for Covid 19:

“Persistent and willful incompetence is malicious.”

[This is the written form of the speech I delivered at the anti-lockdown protest in Vaughan, Ontario, May 30, 2021]

Please join us every week here at Bathurst and Rutherford to protest for your freedom. Every week until Doug Ford is gone.