Quebec descends deeper and deeper into COVID tyranny
No vaccine? Then no booze and no pot, says Quebec’s government.
You think that sounds like the Babylon Bee? Nope, they’re kidding you not:
From now on, liquor and cannabis stores are only accessible to people who are vaccinated against COVID-19.
Health officials say they hope the order will encourage more people to get vaccinated, but Montreal residents seem to be divided over the decision.
“I understand that the government wants to encourage people to get vaccinated, so it’s great if it works and there are fewer people in hospitals,” said Kilian Belisle, a cinema student.
It’s great if it works, says a young “cinema student” who perhaps has never heard a lesson on the perils of “the ends justify the means.”
The article goes on to say that Quebec has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Eighty-five percent of its residents have received two shots. And yet they’re still having problems with high caseloads in hospitals.
Liberty? What’s that?:
Health Minister Christian Dubé warned that customers will have to display proof of vaccination to enter the government-run Société des Alcools du Québec and Société québécoise du cannabis stores.
“I’m just saying that if you don’t want to get vaccinated, stay home,” he said.
“If unvaccinated people are unhappy about it,” Dubé added, “there’s a very simple solution: getting vaccinated.”
Proof of vaccination is already required in health facilities, theatres, bars, and indoor sport and performance venues.
So unvaccinated people are basically under house arrest, and they can’t even console themselves with liquor and cannabis unless they can get them through mail order or through non-government sources (I don’t know if that’s possible in Canada). The health minister, whom I assume is unelected, warns that more restrictions will be coming. Are internment camps being contemplated?
That’s not all:
Despite some previous restrictions being lifted, others remain in force, with restaurants, bars, and other public places still currently closed, and a curfew in place, running from 10 pm to 5 am each day.
Additionally, the unvaccinated will soon no longer have access to many other non-essential shops and stores of more than 1,500 m2.
A tax imposed on those who refuse the vaccine will also soon be the subject of a bill debated in the National Assembly, as the number of hospital patients could rise from 2,000 to 3,000 by mid-January, overwhelming the hospital system which is currently lacking approximately 20,000 workers.
Note that last sentence. The hospital system will be “overwhelmed,” they predict, which indicates to me that it’s not overwhelmed right now. But it’s that last bit – that the hospitals are “currently lacking approximately 20,000 workers” – that really caught my attention. So are we to understand that if those workers weren’t “lacking,” the hospitals would be able to handle the rise in patients? And why are those workers “lacking”? Could it be because they were fired because they weren’t vaccinated, even if they’ve already had COVID and are immune?
Well, we have articles like this from this past October:
Canada’s health and long-term care industries are bracing for staff shortages and layoffs, as deadlines for vaccine mandates loom across the country, with unions pushing federal and provincial governments to soften hard-line stances.
For hospitals and nursing homes, a shortage of workers would strain the already overburdened workforce dealing with nearly two years of the pandemic.
For Quebec’s draconian restrictions to be logically related to lightening the burden on hospitals (although even logic wouldn’t necessarily justify them, which is a separate issue), it would be instructive to see whether the COVID cases supposedly filling the hospitals are disproportionately people who are unvaccinated. Quebec keeps relatively good statistics on COVID, but there’s the usual difficulty in sorting them out.
Here’s a Twitter thread that attempts to do so, based on Quebec hospital COVID statistics. It seems to indicate an awful lot of elderly vaccinated people hospitalized with COVID in Quebec. But it leaves out some details that would tell us what that actually means. The first is how many people in each age group are vaccinated, and whether the percentage of COVID-hospitalized in Quebec in each age group is greater or less than that number. Same with the unvaccinated. The second detail is why these people were hospitalized. Does one group have more people “with COVID” and another “for COVID”? In other words, if a large percentage of people in the vaccinated group, for example, would be sick and in the hospital anyway, even without COVID (everyone who is admitted to a hospital is tested), and the opposite is true for the unvaccinated, then lack of vaccination could be putting the hospitals over the line into problems of overcrowding.
Lastly, being hospitalized for COVID can mean a couple of days, maybe two, with the patient not all that seriously ill and not in the ICU. Does the overcrowding – or threatened overcrowding – primarily involve the ICU or not? Numbers of ICU beds in a hospital are usually rather small, and they often are close to being full even without COVID, so it wouldn’t take much to strain the number.
Does this statement answer the question?:
“The unvaccinated represent about half of those currently in intensive care,” according to Mr Dubé.
Not really. Are they are intensive care because of COVID, or because of something else? If the former, that would give the statistic far more meaning. But we don’t know, although one would think the hospitals and health care bureaucrats should have access to the information. Perhaps it’s out there, but if so I haven’t seen it.
If authorities are trying to encourage vaccination, why punish people? Wouldn’t it be a strong enough argument to make it crystal clear that if you’re unvaccinated you’re more likely to have a very serious case of COVID itself and/or to die of COVID itself – rather than restricting their liberty, punishing them, and making their lives miserable? It seems quite obvious, though, that the authorities want to punish them instead.
One of the many reasons some people aren’t getting vaccinated is that they don’t trust the government or the health authorities. And why should they? Those entities have squandered their trust. I am vaccinated, and I have read enough statistics that I believe that – on average, all else being equal – people who are vaccinated and catch COVID stand a better chance of having a case without serious complications. But I believe I understand why a lot of people wouldn’t see it that way at this point.
There have been so many problems with government and health care authorities from the start: lying, reversals, errors, and lack of clarity in their statements. This hardly engenders trust. And these punishments – because that’s what they are, punishments designed to induce compliance – are especially troubling.
The situation in Quebec is worrisome indeed, and Austria seems to be leading Europe in its tyrannical mandates, while Australia has certainly been pulling its weight in grotesque and draconian measures aimed at destroying individual liberty and personal choice. Might there perhaps be in progress some sort of international competition as to which region or nation can outdo all others in institutional insanity brought on by CDS (Covid Derangement Syndrome)?
They keep pushing its only unFake Vaxed filling hospitals but that lie isn’t going to stay undiscovered for long.
Wonder what portion of Quebec are going on the wagon?
According to David Freiheit (Viva Frei) who lives in Montreal it has been an open secret that hospital capacity is an issue there every winter because the gov’t run healthcare system is so shoddy.
He also points out (and this is true in the US also) that these hospitals have gotten millions of dollars in gov’t money the last two years and have had plenty of time to expand capacity. Every time someone hears some reporter or gov’t official say ‘hospital are full’ one should ask how many staffed beds do they have compared to last year, the year before, etc. because that is the bigger issue. Why did we give them millions of dollars if they were going to be no more prepared when the next wave comes along?
Also, when they say half of hospitalized are unvaxed that is likely misleading also because if they are unable to confirm someone’s vax status they automatically call them unvaxed and if you have had only one shot you are also called unvaxed and also they give no credit for prior infection either.
Also in Quebec apparently all stores including grocery are closed on Sundays right now because of COVID which of course leads to those same stores being more crowded on Saturdays.
Makes sense.
If I read this correctly, proof of vaccination is required for health facilities. Does that mean doctors, clinics, and hospitals? If so, this is monstrous. Some of the people for whom the COVID shots are inadvisable are already medically fragile.
The politicians and public health aparatchiks are not your friend nor are they really concerned about health of the individual or of the masses. Or it seems that is the case(s).
Dubé is an MPP (Member of Provincial Parliament) for Lévis, the riding across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City.
Quebec has a long history of authoritarian rule. (I’m the son of a French-speaking Montréaler but like most of my family I am part of the Quebec diaspora.) The province’s Covid response is typical of the knee jerk heavy-handedness of Quebec politicians.
The Quebec bar on liquor sales to the lepers –excuse me, the unvx’d– would seem like a huge business opportunity. What is to stop the vaccinated from taking orders and filling them on behalf of those who can’t enter the store?
Sure, there’s probably a ban on resale, but who’s to know? And the parties can characterize it as a gift or a mission of mercy: “Judge, he was in a lot of pain, I was just helping to ease it a little.”
So: the law is unlikely to do much to induce higher vx rates. And it is absolutely certain to drive deep and lasting resentment, as well as contempt for the law and the lawmakers. Well done!
I believe the 10 to 5 curfew has been lifted there now because of science and stuff.
It’s as if these people still believe, in spite of the evidence, that vaccinations will stop the infections. It’s as if no one has heard of the idea that therapeutics might help.
Masks, social distancing, quarantines, and vaxxing may help around the edges, but we need treatment so that people can get on with life and the governments can quit being so overbearing.
The hospitals share a lot of blame for the shortages of beds. I’ve read that profit oriented hospitals (Privately owned and possibly universal healthcare hospitals.) have been cutting beds that weren’t profitable in the last twenty years. We built some temporary emergency hospitals in 2020. Couldn’t we do that again?
We think the Omicron variant will soon be gone, but maybe there’s another one in the pipeline. Old Boy Scout motto: “Be prepared.” We aren’t.
Rand Paul just said until we all start resisting this will go on forever.
From elsewhere:
Why do the protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that didn’t protect the protected in the first place?
This is a little off the precise topic (Quebec; liquor access as a cudgel against the contumacious) but seems germane to the wider topic (Wu Flu; forced vaccination; penalties for refusal; backlash).
Go truckers, I say. Any bets on how they are received on Parliament Hill?
https://chatnewstoday.ca/2022/01/21/trucker-protest-to-ottawa-to-pass-through-medicine-hat/
Fullmoon:
The Quebec health authorities aren’t banning the unvaccinated from all these venues in order to protect the vaccinated from catching COVID from them. At least, that’s not what the health authorities are saying in this article. They are banning them in order to coerce them into getting vaccinated. And the reason the authorities give for wanting them vaccinated is to protect the health care system from being overburdened with their care.
J.J.:
Actually, to be nitpicky about it, they are saying that vaccinations will reduce the severity of infection. That appears to probably be the case. However, it’s not what they originally claimed. Originally they said they would be much more likely to prevent infections than they seem to be these days.
I agree that they have let therapeutics fall by the wayside. Even the therapeutics that seem to have been developed – the pill by Pfizer, or monoclonal antibodies – have not received much of a push at all from the government. That seems at best negligent and at worst almost criminal.
A proportionate reaction is called for… and the incomplete data is entirely intentional. The public must be subdued, so that when future even harsher restrictions are imposed, the public will be sufficiently compliant.
“Scottish data shows that the COVID-19 age-standardized case rate is highest among the two-dose vaccinated and lowest among unvaccinated! It further shows this trend of negative efficacy for the double-vaccinated persisting for hospitalizations and deaths.” https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-the-very-concerning-data-from-scotland
neo @ 5:08: “…And the reason the authorities give for wanting them vaccinated is to protect the health care system from being overburdened with their care.”
Bingo. And what interests me is, when the State controls the essentials of life –here, access to healthcare– it has both incentive and means to force everyone to do whatever it says that will, in its version of reality, make healthcare less of a burden: for the State.
The alignment of incentives here –the flagrant conflicts of interest when the government is entrusted with EVERYTHING– is, well, bloody obvious to me.
It’s why NHS has failed, why Canadian healthcare is failing, why Obamacare is failing. When the customers have nowhere else to go, and have no way to stop funding the system through their taxes, they will damned well do what they’re told. The system is inherently, implicitly, politicized.
All the fine talk of representative democracy and the checks and balances? That dries up pretty fast when your kid is in the ER.
Neo @ 5:14: “…Even the therapeutics that seem to have been developed – the pill by Pfizer, or monoclonal antibodies – have not received much of a push at all from the government.”
My theory to explain this lack of emphasis on treatments is this. Vaccines are a top-down, standardized measure that a centralized power can dictate and oversee. Treatments are empirically-driven: X works for the first patient, Y works for the second (with a new protocol, let’s publish our findings, share the knowledge), etc. They are WAY less “top down” and susceptible to centralized, standardized rules. Messy, in fact. Maybe more expensive. And much harder to summarize in a nice statistic like “jabs delivered last Wednesday.”
So if you are the government panjandrum paying for stuff, which course will you prefer? Never mind the actual protective/curative properties of each.
Owen:
Indeed.
I think that’s a big goal of many of those politicians and bureaucrats who support socialized medicine. It gives them enormous power over other people – “for their own good,” of course.
Yes, Griffin, watch The Barbarian Invasions if you want to see a wonderful, biting view of the Canadian “free” health care system.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338135/
And do the burghers of Quebec really think it’s a good idea to make already angry people go through cold turkey from their drinks and smokes? This won’t end well.
Half of Quebec’s Patients Hospitalized ‘With COVID’ Not Admitted ‘for COVID’
I figgured that this was pertainent with the current discussion.
KRB
KRB @ 5:50: Sure seems relevant to me. Massaging the numbers is a key role in protecting the State from its own incompetence.
Geoffrey Britain:
Case rates are pretty meaningless; they include mild or even symptomless cases.
The hospitalization and death data is not all that meaningful either without knowing the “with COVID” and “from COVID” statistics.
You linked to the Blaze article that cited that paper from Scotland. However, here’s a link to the Scotland report itself (which is long). It comes to very different conclusions about the effectiveness of the vaccine.
A few quotes:
Kae Arby; Owen:
See my comment above to Geoffrey Britain.
Neo: “Even the therapeutics that seem to have been developed – the pill by Pfizer, or monoclonal antibodies – have not received much of a push at all from the government.”
So true. The monoclonal antibodies are $1200-$1500 per transfusion. Normally one is all that’s required. Pricy, but n not nearly as expensive as a day in the ICU. Same with the Pfizer pills. $630 for a course of five days. Even if was poor, I would borrow the money for the treatment.
At this point I’ve been fully vaccinated and boosted but have no confidence that I’m protected. At 88 (soon to be 89), I’m in the danger zone for serious illness. Yeah, I’ve lived a long, full life, I should be ready, maybe eager, to go. Problem is that my life is still quite pleasant. My wife and I still enjoy one another’s company and can do everything we need to take care of ourselves. I still enjoy reading, especially Neo’s blog, and working in my yard. When, and if, Covid eases up, we would still like to do some more traveling outside the U.S. Nope, not ready to go quite yet. And I sure don’t want to be taken down by the Wu Flu. 🙂
If you’ve never read it, El Gato Malo provides a lot of really good analysis on these studies. He writes anonymously but appears to have a background in these things. Try to ignore the lack of caps, they are no indicator of the quality of analysis.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/new-data-on-vaccine-efficacy-from
Hang in there J.J. (and Mrs. J.J.), and don’t stop commenting!
@Owen:
Bingo re State Healthcare Systems becoming the cart which dictates where the horse must go.
In a sufficiently custodial state, there’s never going to be a shortage of Very Good Reasons reasons why one should or should not do this or that and there certainly won’t be a shortage of state employees to tell you.
@JJ:
Rare for me to be in agreement with my feldsparing partner Om, but long may you thrive and prosper. This blog needs some Centenarians!
Looks like most of the comments here are in agreement that you can’t be too cynical about Health Care bureaucracies.
JJ: Let me join om and Zaphod in sending best wishes and hopes for a long and healthy life.
@ Geoffrey > ” and the incomplete data is entirely intentional.”
Which the CDC admitted in their new pivot to only counting Covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as those patients who are primarily sick FROM the virus, rather than counting everyone whose tests indicate they are also infected WITH the virus — which means (as many here pointed out last year) all the numbers and statistics from The Time Before are contaminated.
Now, looking at the Scottish data in detail, the Health Czars are doing the same kind of sleight of hand with their numbers.
I noticed immediately from the tables presented that people with 1 shot did better than those with none; and those with 3, better than those with 2 (who had the worst numbers of all) — and that made no sense, because you can’t have 3 shots unless you’ve already had 2.
Silly me.
I wasn’t cynical enough.
From David Solway, “Giving Up on Canada”:
I have taught several “generations” of students and spoken with innumerable people in all walks of life, not a single one of whom knows anything about the British North America Act of 1867, which established the Canadian Confederation. No less alarming, they are entirely ignorant of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1981 and the Constitution Act of 1982 that entrenched the Charter. Nor do most people recognize how power has devolved from provincial First Ministers and the Federal Parliament to the vast bureaucratic apparatus presided over by the current prime minister. They do not see how democracy has eroded almost beyond any possibility of restoration, how the country is rapidly slipping away from them—and, what is even more distressing, many do not seem to care. . . . Sometimes things that go too far cannot be reversed. It is painful to admit, but Canada has now become a distant memory of itself.
https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/01/22/giving-up-on-canada-n1551813
Aesopfan @ 7:22: I thought I understood the game; how the three cards were moved around on the little folding table. I thought wrong. Your note sheds a lot of light; but I am going to have to ponder it a bit. In the interests of fair play and Real Science, I guess I should ask for those who cooked up this counting system, to offer an innocent explanation for their methodology.
Not sure they’re going to respond.
“If unvaccinated people are unhappy about it,” Dubé added, “there’s a very simple solution: getting vaccinated.”
Let us change that to:
“If
unvaccinated peoplenon-believers are unhappy about it,” Dubé added, “there’s a very simple solution:getting vaccinatedconvert.”My apologies if that sounds too Godwin’s Law; and no disrespect intended. But, many times those in charge don’t learn from history; and we end up with their repeating it.
AesopFan; Owen:
AesopFan, you quote the Blaze article that says:
When you copied that quote, there was no link to “here and here.” I always want to take a look at what’s being referred to, so I went to the Blaze article and clicked on the first “here,” which brought me to this article (non-peer-reviewed, but so be it). Did you look at it? It seems to be saying nothing of the sort.
It is actually saying about what you’d expect, that the vaccine is only somewhat effective in the first week to two weeks after taking it, and becomes more effective after that, in particular after the second shot. There is nothing about increased vulnerability after the shot as compared to no shot at all. Au contraire.
Here’s the quote (in the following, “VE” stands for “vaccine effectiveness,” “LTCF” stands for “long term care facilities,” and “HCW” stands for “health care workers”):
They don’t discuss boosters because the data was gathered prior to the boosters being available.
I’m not even going to bother to click on the second “here” in the Blaze article, because the author seems to either misunderstand the data in the first one, or be purposely misrepresenting it. Checking this stuff out takes a lot of time.
This is a little off-topic, but my awakening on the abuse of the whole COVID thing was August 2020. My son and I went on a cross-country road trip, and lo! and behold, the streets were not full of corpses, businesses were busy, and NOBODY was masked except where required. It was a revelation. If I had remained in lockdown back east, getting my news from MSM and state and local authorities, I probably would have remained a nervous wreck. Best vacation I ever took.
Thanks to all who sent good wishes. That’s why I love this blog. Nice people. Good discussions. Good info from which I learn a lot.
I’ve spent quite a lot of time in Alberta and BC. over the years. Magnificent places. But that article by David Solway sure rings true to what I’ve seen. Petty regulations everywhere – growing like weeds. Even in BC, which used to be a place of rugged individualism and far from Ottawa. We’ve known for years that their healthcare system was not doing the job. So many Canadians who could afford it had to come south for medical care.
The border is now semi-open. Costco and the Outlet stores now have lots of BC license plates in the parking lots. The Loonie is down, but they can still get many things cheaper here than in BC. Sad. Unfortunately, it’s happening here. Just not as bad as Canada…….yet.
Oh, what I’d give to once AGAIN see Dr. Walensky weeping copiously on national—global—TV saying, this time around, “We’ve been LYING to you all along, sniff, sniff, cough, snort, sniff, BUT WE HAD TO”…as shen breaks out into maniacal laughter…her visage slowly—fundamentally—transforming into a huge, Joker-style rictus that her triple-N95 mask is not large enough to disguise…
}}} Looks like most of the comments here are in agreement that you can’t be too cynical about
Health Carebureaucracies.You had too many words. Fixt it fer ya. 😀
De Nada {—– Is This Cultural Appropriation?
Evaluate the following equation to gauge my actual, real-world degree of concern regarding that question.
lim 1/x
x -» ºº
I’ve been reading Leon Werth’s journal entitled “Deposition 1940-1944: A Secret Diary of Life in Vichy France.” Werth and his wife left Paris in 1940 for their home in Saint-Amour, a journey that would take 33 days as they fled the city alongside millions of refugees. He then chronicled life in the small town during the occupation, the insanity of the mail system (they could only send prescription postcards across the border to the occupied zone “am fine, am not fine, need money, etc”), the threats that his teenaged son’s teachers endured as they were told what they could and couldn’t say in classrooms, the taxes, fees and other deprivations foisted upon the food producers, the shortages, the commentary on the leadership….it all sounds remarkably familiar.
The French in the free zone in 1941 sat back and waited to be saved, much to Werth’s disgust. It does appear that we frequently do this – wait for someone else to pay the price to save us from tyranny until we finally realize that there is no one else. Only we can save ourselves.
My faith in the medical establishment has been shaken to the core, perhaps irreparably. I would like to find a parallel system of care – one not beholden to insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies – and check out of the current one. I’m not sure how one can do that and travel. We also have a teenager, so we’ll be taking that into consideration as we approach the college years. Is there a private network of medical professionals operating somewhat like Hillsdale College?
Robin,
Mike K. linked to this remarkable doctor last week:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/01/17/dr-mary-talley-bowden-takes-a-stand-for-texas-patients/#more-225380
That link leads to this:
https://breathemd.org/
Perhaps you can find some information through them…
Another possible source might be Dr. Frank Mercola’s site: mercola.com
Good luck.
Finally…
“New Hampshire Seeks to Make Ivermectin an Alternative COVID Treatment Under Law”—
https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-hampshire-seeks-to-make-ivermectin-an-alternative-covid-treatment-under-law_4228066.html
H/T Hans Mahncke twitter feed.
Hope this will snowball.
@ JJ,
Joining in the well wishes for, and expressions of appreciation toward, JJ.
Keep well and strong, JJ and wife. I imagined you were at least 20 years younger.
( Also thought you were from Australia, for some reason)
Neo writes re. Quebec,
If one stops and reflects for a moment, it becomes apparent that Canada has never been a polity organized around the principles of personal liberty and individual rights, no matter how much of it or many of them Canadians have incidentally enjoyed or taken for granted.
The same applies to New Zealand and to the Nordic countries, and even arguably Australia, as a result of the predicate assumptions of their parliamentary sovereignty systems. “Constitutional Conventions” and their notions of federalism and whatnot aside.
And too, these systems seem to actually reflect the acquiescent and tractable nature of the majority, if perhaps bare, of the populations of those countries.
And for all its talk of a bill of rights, the same can be convincingly argued for Great Britain.
“The health minister, whom I assume is unelected…”
Not sure why you make this assumption. The Quebec National Assembly operates on the parliamentary system, in which elected party members assume all leading government roles from Prime Minister through the various cabinet offices (Ministries or what we would call “Secretaries”). Our Secretaries are indeed unelected, but theirs, like those of the Government of Canada, are elected members of Parliament, appointed to those Ministries by the prime Minister.
Ray Van Dune:
I meant he’d not been elected to the post of Health Minister, not that he’d never won an election in his life. Offhand, I can’t think of a place where a Health Minister – or its equivalent – is elected. Perhaps there is one, but I don’t know of it. So that’s why I made the assumption.
Of course, the proclamations wouldn’t be any wiser even if he’d been elected to the post.
DNW:
America has long been more explicit and more robust than other nations in elevating liberty to a very high and protected place. I wrote about that in a series of posts years ago about defamation laws here and in Europe (see this, for example). But countries in the Anglo-Saxon tradition (Great Britain, Canada, Australia, etc.) have defended liberty somewhat and paid at least lip service to it. To a certain extent, they’ve shown this to be a sham during COVID. Some states in the US have done the same – and Biden et al have been trying, although the courts have blocked them for the most part.
JJ:
Live long and prosper!
Robin:
I know there are so-called “boutique” doctors who have patients pay a fee up-front for their care for a year. I’m going to assume that for regular care they avoid insurance reimbursement that way. My guess is that for bigger tests (MRIs?) or for surgery or something like that, you pay out of pocket and/or they refer you out and insurance reimburses. I’m not sure about it, though.
Where shall those on the left place their faith, once belief in a divine providence is rejected? Upon what basis might they then believe in an afterlife? And if no rational evidence for belief in an afterlife exists for them, then logically this life is all they can be certain of having and thus, any threat however small to their lives is utterly intolerable. All of their eggs are in this basket.
Result: given that their very lives are potentially at stake, any and all means are acceptable.
There is a long tradition in Canada of crossing the US border to obtain priority for health services for cash, although I am not aware of the current legal rules around doing so. I do recall that in the early days of CAT scan or perhaps MRI technology there was an anecdote about how the small city of Bellingham, Washington near the Canadian border had more CAT/MRI machines than all of Canada, and especially more than the zero number of them in the adjacent and relatively affluent Province of British Columbia!
The academy has come full circle (actually, full “house of mirrors”):
“University Places Trigger Warning On George Orwell’s 1984 As Some Students May Find ‘Offensive And Upsetting’”—
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2022/01/23/university-places-trigger-warning-on-george-orwells-1984-as-some-students-may-find-offensive-and-upsetting/
There is a worse infection than COVID, omicron, whatever.
It is the simultaneous death of all Western democracies, the cradles of civilization. It has been incubating for a long time (recall CRT was first proposed at Harvard Law in 1974– these things take time!), and now the infection is overt and all-encompassing. It may be a strange form (a prion? consumed by them all at some grand meeting) of encephalitis, causing this raging destruction of our God-given rights and liberties.
As sheep we have accepted the Diktats of our Fuhrers, with nary a bleep or a bleat. Instead, we elect a Biden.
Thank God for Sinema.
After months and months of pretty peaceful protests all over Europe against authoritarian gov’t COVID restrictions things finally got out of hand today in Brussels. I’m sure the media will be all over this.
https://twitter.com/aginnt/status/1485352223022497801
Robin@6:51AM–
There are loosely-organized concierge practices, but typically only one or two docs in a town are members, usually internists. MDVIP comes to mind.
So if you break your ankle or need coronary bypass surgery, you are out of luck. The necessary costs are just too high. I have not priced an MRI or CT-PET scanner recently, but I can tell you a state of art linear accelerator for cancer treatment costs more than a few million $.
Major multispecialty groups like the Mayo Clinic, now found in MN, FL, AZ and (!) Iowa are particularly tyrannical and suck at the Medicare teat, with 2nd rate care ( no faculty, only care by trainees, like the VA) for the Medicare crowd, though prostitution is not beyond them: there are at least two Arab channels in Rochester, MN.
@ Neo,
Yes I followed the link to the 2006 posting on the French defamation trial.
I also read the comments. Those by Gourmley who said he was Finnish, and insinuated he was a member of an institution dealing with international relations, were interesting; particularly for what they revealed of the commenter’s vituperative, abusive, and contemptuous character. Consider what it would reveal if this person actually did have some social influence through an institutional desk, no matter how marginal.
It is also interesting to note how wrong this Gourmley was on matters relating to the course of Islamicization in Europe: specifically with regard to what is now the defacto rule of Sharia in some districts.
And no, I cannot imagine that someone who used the locutions he did, was really a native Finn, unless he was really really striving to put on a show of being au courant.
Zaphod comes off like Freddy in Pygmalion, compared to the crew you had then.
Behold the power of Behavior Modification! Taken in small steps, nearly anything is achievable.
DNW:
I still was on blogspot then and had only weak powers to ban people. I moved to WordPress in 2007.
When I was still on blogspot there was a person who lived in Canada – at least, who seemed to live in Canada – who started a blog dedicated to trashing me, and who was often posting invective on my blog. Good times, good times!
Cicero,
Biden was not elected. He was installed through the greatest electoral fraud in this nation’s history. A degree of electoral fraud which may yet be exceeded, as the left has big plans for humanity.
And we are indeed witnessing the Suicide of the West.
@DNW:
You sure know how to drive the knife in. I’m trying to be Freddy Krueger.
Cicero: re: prostitution of the Mayo. choke!
I once spent two 14-hour overnights at the Rochester MN Best Buy. The prototype “Samsung Store” was being installed and it was wall-to-wall headquarters folks. Turns out the Korean CEO of Samsung wanted to visit the Mayo. I quickly found myself a good place: I spent the two nights stuffing corrugated cardboard from the new displays into the box crusher.
VA care depends on location. In the Twin Cities, all the teaching colleges rotate students and residents through. If one needs an MRI, one goes downstairs and gets it, right then.
In Phoenix, which caseload is far, far higher, the wait for an MRI is two weeks.
Montreal reporter goes to Florida, calls it another planet. You can tell he is envious but he just can’t cross the line from his totalitarian mindset. Everyone must be locked up if deaths are more than zero,
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/josh-freed-florida-feels-like-another-planet-compared-with-quebec
Does anyone recall a fellow from the US, Chicago to be specific, named Al Capone?
I believe that – on average, all else being equal – people who are vaccinated and catch COVID stand a better chance of having a case without serious complications.
The difference between your calculations and so many others is that you assume the vaccines are basically benign. So, your calculus makes sense. IF the vaccines are not as harmless as claimed, your calculus is missing a yuge factor.
And, of course, as you note, lots of people don’t believe the folks saying “Trust us! They’re perfectly safe!”
whatever on January 24, 2022 at 12:43 am said:
…totalitarian mindset…
It’s a Zero Risk mindset. Progressivism has sold people on the idea that, with the right chemicals and lifestyle, you can live without fear of real sickness or death.
That sort of avoiding of death leads very quickly to a totalitarian solution.
Cinema student.
Bahaha!
I sincerely doubt the statement “Half the people in ICU are unvaccinated Covid patients”. In the US, in total, only 10% of the people in ICU are there for Covid. Seems nonsensical to square that with what they claim in Quebec.
There is a medical practice model called Direct Primary Care. You can search for practices near you. And there are variations in practices as to how much they deal with. There is one in my area that will accept you as a covid patient so you can get treatments before landing in the hospital.
My DPC costs $67 a month. I can go in for a visit, call her, email her, whatever. If I was really sick, she would probably come to my home. There is no insurance involved. The doctor has a small pharmacy which she charges basically at her cost. She has agreements with local labs and radiology centers for them to see her patients and then she passes along the costs, not inflated prices.
There is also a new service of mobile doctors and PAs, for those days you don’t want to wait in the ER or doc in the box place. I think they run the charges through insurance, but it is easier if you are bed-ridden.
I still have insurance, but, I have better physician care at overall less cost. The insurance is for potential hospital or specialty care.
JJ & Mrs.JJ:
Rock on!
GWB:
I assume nothing of the sort.
I have researched the question. People here regularly post links to articles that purport to prove how dangerous the vaccines are. None of them have passed my smell test.
There are certain risks to certain segments of the population – I’m not going to take the time to go into the details here. But even to those populations, the risks are very small.
neo,
I for one do not think the vaccines are dangerous but they may be counterproductive for a lot of healthy people under 60 though.
The one thing that is so sad to me is that even for relatively healthy people over 65 the recovery rate is very high even without the vaccine but the way some people act you would think it is a certain death sentence and with the vax for those at risk groups it probably is even less likely that one would have a severe reaction. At this point the risk is probably less to some at risk groups from COVID now than it was the flu in the Before Times and people never lived in such constant fear.
But this boost every six months thing is not good for the individual or the society.
Griffin:
Right from the start I’ve written about how although the risks are sobering they have not justified the extreme reaction. Perhaps the “2 weeks to slow the curve” part was justified, and maybe a few weeks after that, but not a lot of other things that have happened.
neo,
Somewhere along the line I saw a break down from some country or state of the chance of death if you were in a nursing home/assisted living setting vs. if you lived at a single residence or at least not in congregate care and it was a huge difference. Being in poor health is a bigger risk than age alone.
Lots of evidence mounting that the statistics are fraudulent. The public health authorities are committing scientific fraud — just as the science community has been for years with global warming.
I keep being surprised by the people who rely on published science as if the claims therein somehow represent quality information. How many lies does it take? How many exposes of the fraud and incompetence does it take? How often do people need to be reminded that peer review is NOT a quality measure? It isn’t intended to ensure accuracy and never has been.
Folks, science is broken. Our doctors are being censored and intimidated. Big Brother is here. Why would anyone trust the claims of our public health establishment now?
Neo, you might want to do a post on the hearing yesterday. Big news. Or rather, should be big news.