Home » Quebec descends deeper and deeper into COVID tyranny

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Quebec descends deeper and deeper into COVID tyranny — 76 Comments

  1. 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)?

  2. 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?

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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).

  7. 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.

  8. 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!

  9. 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.

  10. 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?

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. 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

  14. 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.

  15. 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.

  16. 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.

  17. 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.

  18. KRB @ 5:50: Sure seems relevant to me. Massaging the numbers is a key role in protecting the State from its own incompetence.

  19. 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:

    Please note that this section only includes PCR confirmed COVID-19 cases, COVID-19 related acute hospital admissions and confirmed COVID-19 related deaths. Lateral flow device (LFD) cases are not included in this section and therefore will result in an underestimation of recent case rate trends. Work is underway to include these data…

    There is a large risk of misinterpretation of the data presented in this section due to the complexities of vaccination data. A blog post by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), formerly Public Health England (PHE), provides a comprehensive explanation of the biases and potential areas for misinterpretation of such data. They state that a simple comparison of COVID-19 case rates in those who are vaccinated and unvaccinated should not be used to assess how effective a vaccine is in preventing serious health outcomes, because there are a number of differences between the groups other than the vaccine itself, and these biases mean that you cannot use the rates to determine how well the vaccines work…

    In the last week from 08 January to 14 January 2022, in an age-standardised population, the rate of acute COVID-19 related hospital admissions in individuals that received a booster or third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was between 2.3 to 3.9 times lower than in individuals who are unvaccinated or have only received one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

    In the last week from 01 January 2022 to 07 January 2022, in an age-standardised population, the death rate in individuals that received a booster or third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine was between 16.1 to 25.9 times lower than individuals who are unvaccinated or who have only received one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

  20. 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. 🙂

  21. @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.

  22. @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!

  23. Looks like most of the comments here are in agreement that you can’t be too cynical about Health Care bureaucracies.

  24. JJ: Let me join om and Zaphod in sending best wishes and hopes for a long and healthy life.

  25. @ 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.

    Some will look at the chart and conclude that the boosters are amazing. But first it’s important to recognize that even the boosters don’t stop transmission at all even in the short run, and then, based on the latest hospitalization data, appear to wane just like the original shots. Relatedly, you will notice a pattern: the unvaccinated and two-dose cohorts always appear worse and the one-shot and three-shot cohorts always appear better. This is where the most important part of the data set comes into play.

    You see, all cases during the first 21 days after the first shot are counted in the “unvaccinated” cohort, while the first 14 days after one receives the 3rd shot is counted among the two-dose cohort. See the definitions from Appendix 6 of the report.

    We know from numerous studies (see here and here) that people are actually the most vulnerable to COVID during the first few weeks on the upswing of the antibodies, when T cells are likely suppressed. This is why the health departments smartly count them in the unvaccinated pile. Hence, for all these months, all the cases and deaths from those made more vulnerable from the first shot – which is caused by the mass vaccination, not the unvaccinated – are counted against the unvaccinated. Over time, as the shots waned on the back end, the truth became evident. Now they are starting the cycle all over again by making the two-dose group look even worse than they are by dumping all of the cases caused by the initial take-up from the third dose into the cohort of double-vaccinated.

    It’s the ultimate pandemic Ponzi scheme. Just wait another two months and see what the fourth-shot group looks like relative to the triple-dosers, as the immediate vaccination causes an even greater spike in cases. In other words, you have to look in totality where we are headed rather than manipulating a snapshot of time.

    This deep dive into the data from Scotland should serve as a Rosetta stone for the macro observations we have seen from day one. We are seeing the most vaccinated nations and states being hammered with more cases than ever in a way that defies anything we should expect to see from a safe and effective vaccine.

    The range of “dumped” cases is somewhere between 40% and 60% of the “counted” cases in Alberta, per the Blaze, so it may be reasonable to assume the same percentages apply in Scotland and elsewhere.

  26. 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

  27. 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.

  28. “If unvaccinated people are unhappy about it,” Dubé added, “there’s a very simple solution: getting vaccinated.”

    Let us change that to:

    “If unvaccinated people non-believers are unhappy about it,” Dubé added, “there’s a very simple solution: getting vaccinated convert.”

    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.

  29. AesopFan; Owen:

    AesopFan, you quote the Blaze article that says:

    We know from numerous studies (see here and here) that people are actually the most vulnerable to COVID during the first few weeks on the upswing of the antibodies, when T cells are likely suppressed. This is why the health departments smartly count them in the unvaccinated pile. Hence, for all these months, all the cases and deaths from those made more vulnerable from the first shot – which is caused by the mass vaccination, not the unvaccinated – are counted against the unvaccinated.

    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”):

    In HCW, VE was 17% (95% CI; 4-28) in the > 14 days after first dose (before second dose). Furthermore, the VE in LTCF residents at day 0-7 of second dose was 52% (95% CI; 27-69) and 46% (95% CI; 28-59) in HCW. Beyond seven days of second dose, VE increased to 64% (95% CI; 14-84) and 90% (95% CI; 82-95) in the two groups, respectively.

    Conclusion The results were promising regarding the VE both within and beyond seven days of second vaccination with the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine currently used in many countries to help mitigate the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

    Impact of the research So far, observational studies of the real-word effectiveness of the mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 has been limited to the period after the administration of the first dose. This is the first report to date to present vaccine effectiveness (VE) estimates after the second BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine. We estimated a VE of 52% and 46% in LTCF residents and HCW within seven days, which increased to 64% and 90% in the two groups respectively beyond seven days of immunization. These findings supports maintaining a two-dose schedule of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine.

    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.

  30. 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.

  31. 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.

  32. 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…

  33. }}} Looks like most of the comments here are in agreement that you can’t be too cynical about Health Care bureaucracies.

    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

  34. 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?

  35. @ 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)

  36. Neo writes re. Quebec,

    Liberty? What’s that?

    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.

  37. “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.

  38. 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.

  39. 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.

  40. 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.

  41. 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.

  42. 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!

  43. 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.

  44. 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.

  45. @ 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.

  46. Behold the power of Behavior Modification! Taken in small steps, nearly anything is achievable.

  47. 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!

  48. 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.

  49. 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.

  50. 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!”

  51. 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.

  52. 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.

  53. 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.

  54. 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.

  55. 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.

  56. 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.

  57. 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.

  58. 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?

  59. Neo, you might want to do a post on the hearing yesterday. Big news. Or rather, should be big news.

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