I rarely read your column, and yours of Saturday March 19th confirms at least one reason.
While the piece starts with a good premise, “Let’s Call a Truce in COVID Civil War”, you go out of your way to stir your own personal cauldron of political bias and resentment.
You just can’t let up on your unnecessary political attacks on Prime Minister Trudeau.
With all the division around COVID, much of it caused by the unknown disease, scientific disarray, intentional disinformation and obstinacy, you had to write that PM Trudeau “implemented needlessly punitive measures affecting travel as part of his search for wedge issues”.
You ignore the uncertain context of 2020-2021.
At the time, PM Trudeau’s decisions would have been based upon concerns of public safety and the recommendations of Public Health Canada.
It was clear most people saw travelling on crowded common carriers as a COVID infection risk. Unless you have access to your own jet, travel in close quarters is uncomfortable at the best of times.
Last year, development/availability of timely and accurate testing for the virus was another issue of uncertain times.
Many areas of the country, like the North and the Atlantic Provinces needed protection for vulnerable populations due to limited health care options.
Polling showed the majority of the public as reluctant to travel, wanting as much protection as possible: quarantines, testing, improved air quality, hygiene, vaccines, etc. The vaccine mandate for travel was very popular in many countries.
In the Fall of 2021, the initial 2-dose vaccination program was proving effective against the early variants of the disease.
One way to encourage vaccination was to provide incentives, such as requiring vaccination for public employment and entry to crowd events. Provincial governments employed these methods to varying degrees.
As you know, most of the restrictions used as a cover for the conspiracy theorists and anti-government protesters in the Freedom 2022 convoy, were implemented by Provincial governments.
The requirement for vaccination prior to travel provided reassurance to the travelling public until the Omicron variant arrived. Even though vaccination has not been able to prevent all Omicron spread, there is evidence the vaccines reduced spread, as well as symptoms and risk of serious illness/death.
I, for one, am grateful I didn’t have to travel on one of my long flights West, sitting next to a confrontational unvaccinated person like the controversy-spewing Pat King. Remember that everyone disembarking from a flight interacts with
others, including family.
As a consequence of our division of powers and jurisdictional issues, Canada’s response to COVID has been uneven, and a number of our provincial governments wanted to try the US models or herd immunity. “Let’er Rip.”
Provinces and territories set their own regulations.
As the US approaches 1 Million COVID deaths, where families were torn apart and many children were orphaned, I am glad our federal government obtained and provided the vaccines, PPE, testing, public education and more to the provinces and the public.
While every death is tragic, our governments prevented the ravages we saw South of the border.
COVID isn’t over yet. Much of the World is still under some form of restriction, and where lapsing, epidemiologists raise concern. They don’t know where the virus is headed.
Your smear them on the Federal government’s policy as “needlessly punitive measures” …“part of a search for a wedge issue” is unnecessary and inflammatory, but not sadly, not unexpected.
Apologize!
Reply from Bill Black:
Thanks Carole.
You are the second person to make that objection. In my view it has some merit.
If I had to write it again I would have had the final paragraph clearly focus on relations with friends, family, neighbours.
Politicians are different. I stand by my criticisms of Trudeau, Kenney, and De Santis. Trudeau’s choices about cross-border travel ( the quarantine hotels fiasco, making people provide PCR tests coming from the US when cases were also raging in Canada , making unvaccinated truckers quarantine I think for 14 days ) were not justified by the epidemiology.
Requiring air passengers to be vaccinated made sense when the vaccinations were effective in preventing transmission. It is much less so for Omicron as time passes since the most recent shot. I nevertheless agree that it should continue for a while. (And I share your distaste for Pat King).
Although I ignore your political comments about our PM, since no one else would have done a better job under the circumstances, I’d like to thank you for the general wisdom of this column today.
I’m triple vaccinated. And followed all the protocols for two years because as the son of a head nurse, an orderly (emergency, geriatric and psychiatric) for three years, a premed student for one year…. I knew the history of the Spanish Flu and did my duty.
The only thing I wish you had mentioned in your article is that those who refuse to follow any of the required protocols had only one option:
Stay the hell home.
Our charter of rights and freedoms does not include the right to knowingly infect others with a potentially lethal virus.
Hah! You are such a Tory apologist! You say in closing that “ we must be willing to acknowledge the validity of another person’s perspective”. Yet “Trudeau has implemented needlessly punitive measures affecting travel as part of his search for wedge issues”. You talk out of both sides of your mouth:( And what did you think of the Premier saying yesterday that he was “sort of out of the province and couldn’t update with Dr. Strang”? I wonder if the previous day’s open letter from the Pediatric Advisory Pandemic Advisory Group in which Dr. Strang got out the message that he recommended only and that the government determined policy, had anything to do with the Premier’s reversal re school masking?
Reply from Bill Black:
You make a good point, although Trudeau was not the only politician that was criticized. My focus was on relations between friends and family but the text did not clearly make that distinction.
I rarely read your column, and yours of Saturday March 19th confirms at least one reason.
While the piece starts with a good premise, “Let’s Call a Truce in COVID Civil War”, you go out of your way to stir your own personal cauldron of political bias and resentment.
You just can’t let up on your unnecessary political attacks on Prime Minister Trudeau.
With all the division around COVID, much of it caused by the unknown disease, scientific disarray, intentional disinformation and obstinacy, you had to write that PM Trudeau “implemented needlessly punitive measures affecting travel as part of his search for wedge issues”.
You ignore the uncertain context of 2020-2021.
At the time, PM Trudeau’s decisions would have been based upon concerns of public safety and the recommendations of Public Health Canada.
It was clear most people saw travelling on crowded common carriers as a COVID infection risk. Unless you have access to your own jet, travel in close quarters is uncomfortable at the best of times.
Last year, development/availability of timely and accurate testing for the virus was another issue of uncertain times.
Many areas of the country, like the North and the Atlantic Provinces needed protection for vulnerable populations due to limited health care options.
Polling showed the majority of the public as reluctant to travel, wanting as much protection as possible: quarantines, testing, improved air quality, hygiene, vaccines, etc. The vaccine mandate for travel was very popular in many countries.
In the Fall of 2021, the initial 2-dose vaccination program was proving effective against the early variants of the disease.
One way to encourage vaccination was to provide incentives, such as requiring vaccination for public employment and entry to crowd events. Provincial governments employed these methods to varying degrees.
As you know, most of the restrictions used as a cover for the conspiracy theorists and anti-government protesters in the Freedom 2022 convoy, were implemented by Provincial governments.
The requirement for vaccination prior to travel provided reassurance to the travelling public until the Omicron variant arrived. Even though vaccination has not been able to prevent all Omicron spread, there is evidence the vaccines reduced spread, as well as symptoms and risk of serious illness/death.
I, for one, am grateful I didn’t have to travel on one of my long flights West, sitting next to a confrontational unvaccinated person like the controversy-spewing Pat King. Remember that everyone disembarking from a flight interacts with
others, including family.
As a consequence of our division of powers and jurisdictional issues, Canada’s response to COVID has been uneven, and a number of our provincial governments wanted to try the US models or herd immunity. “Let’er Rip.”
Provinces and territories set their own regulations.
As the US approaches 1 Million COVID deaths, where families were torn apart and many children were orphaned, I am glad our federal government obtained and provided the vaccines, PPE, testing, public education and more to the provinces and the public.
While every death is tragic, our governments prevented the ravages we saw South of the border.
COVID isn’t over yet. Much of the World is still under some form of restriction, and where lapsing, epidemiologists raise concern. They don’t know where the virus is headed.
Your smear them on the Federal government’s policy as “needlessly punitive measures” …“part of a search for a wedge issue” is unnecessary and inflammatory, but not sadly, not unexpected.
Apologize!
Reply from Bill Black:
Thanks Carole.
You are the second person to make that objection. In my view it has some merit.
If I had to write it again I would have had the final paragraph clearly focus on relations with friends, family, neighbours.
Politicians are different. I stand by my criticisms of Trudeau, Kenney, and De Santis. Trudeau’s choices about cross-border travel ( the quarantine hotels fiasco, making people provide PCR tests coming from the US when cases were also raging in Canada , making unvaccinated truckers quarantine I think for 14 days ) were not justified by the epidemiology.
Requiring air passengers to be vaccinated made sense when the vaccinations were effective in preventing transmission. It is much less so for Omicron as time passes since the most recent shot. I nevertheless agree that it should continue for a while. (And I share your distaste for Pat King).
Carole Gillies | March 23, 2022 |
Although I ignore your political comments about our PM, since no one else would have done a better job under the circumstances, I’d like to thank you for the general wisdom of this column today.
I’m triple vaccinated. And followed all the protocols for two years because as the son of a head nurse, an orderly (emergency, geriatric and psychiatric) for three years, a premed student for one year…. I knew the history of the Spanish Flu and did my duty.
The only thing I wish you had mentioned in your article is that those who refuse to follow any of the required protocols had only one option:
Stay the hell home.
Our charter of rights and freedoms does not include the right to knowingly infect others with a potentially lethal virus.
Philip Thompson | March 20, 2022 |
Hah! You are such a Tory apologist! You say in closing that “ we must be willing to acknowledge the validity of another person’s perspective”. Yet “Trudeau has implemented needlessly punitive measures affecting travel as part of his search for wedge issues”. You talk out of both sides of your mouth:( And what did you think of the Premier saying yesterday that he was “sort of out of the province and couldn’t update with Dr. Strang”? I wonder if the previous day’s open letter from the Pediatric Advisory Pandemic Advisory Group in which Dr. Strang got out the message that he recommended only and that the government determined policy, had anything to do with the Premier’s reversal re school masking?
Reply from Bill Black:
You make a good point, although Trudeau was not the only politician that was criticized. My focus was on relations between friends and family but the text did not clearly make that distinction.
Jeanne | March 19, 2022 |