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COVID-19

Neil Macdonald asks the most important COVID-19 question of all

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This is posted with permission from the author, Neil MacDonald.  It is originally posted at neilmacdonald.me

So. Who gets the ventilators?

I wish Sophie Gregoire Trudeau good health, and a complete recovery in her quarantine. The same for the lovely Margaret Trudeau, if she comes down with COVID-19. Both women were at the same speaking engagement in London; presumably, that is where Madame Gregoire Trudeau contracted the virus.

If, heaven forfend, either woman develops the sort of severe respiratory difficulties that have killed other COVID-19 patients, I hope they will both have access to peerless medical care, and a ventilator. Actually, I am certain they will.

One is the prime minister’s wife, the other his mother. Privilege has its privileges.

At the same time – and here comes the kicker – I am not at all certain that, if I or any of my aged relatives come down with the disease in the uncertain and increasingly terrifying weeks to come, there will be ventilators for us. And as one American epidemiologist put it recently, the alternative to ventilation for someone with extreme respiratory symptoms is death. As a despairing Italian physician put it on social media from the horrors of his triage centre in Bergamo: “Every ventilator becomes like gold.”

Here is the math: Health Minister Patty Hajdu says between 30 and 70 per cent of Canadians will likely be infected. The mortality rate of COVID-19 is between two and three per cent. Assuming the optimistic end of Hajdu’s estimate, and the optimistic end of the mortality rate, we are still talking about 225,000 people dying, and, as the despairing Italian physician says, the diagnosis is always the same: Bilateral interstitial pneumonia. Meaning those patients’ lungs are so badly compromised the only thing that has a chance of saving them is a ventilator, or mechanical breathing apparatus. It alone can infuse the lungs with enough oxygen to maintain life.

Now: We are told Canada has about 5,000 ventilators. That’s one ventilator for every 45 of those dying patients. Unless Canada somehow acquires a lot more of the machines, and the entire world is now chasing them, there will be rationing. That is what has been happening in Italy. Doctors there have been given the ghastly job of deciding who receives ventilation, and who is sent home to meet their fate.

Now, let’s add something else to the equation: In Canada, the law prevents citizens from paying for core medical care, which a ventilator surely is. In principle, ventilators will be rationed, well, rationally.

But that’s not how the system really works.

In Canada, influence and power get you to the front of the line. Does anyone really believe that cabinet ministers or premiers or captains of industry or very senior government officials sit in waiting rooms, or have a hard time finding a family doctor? Or that those of us with professional or family connections aren’t treated as privileged entities?

So the big question – the crucial, life-or-death question as this virus tears through the population – will very quickly be this: who gets the ventilators?

No doubt, an attempt will be made to lay down a set of objective criteria. They probably already exist. It makes sense to ventilate patients who stand the best chance of surviving. A physician friend in Italy unilaterally decided to send very old people home, along with anyone whose health was already severely compromised by previous morbidities.

But imagine the pressure on a Canadian doctor, or hospital dependent on government funding, when the aged relative of a very powerful politician needs ventilation. Or a very rich person who has donated generously to the hospital. Or the mother or father of a person whose role in the economy is considered so crucial that he or she must not be distracted by familial worries.

Jane Philpott, Justin Trudeau’s first health minister, once declared that not being able to buy your way to the front of the line is a “core Canadian value.” The remark was rather gormless, I thought at the time, given the reality of the system. Doctor friends of mine thought it was hysterical.
But the big test is coming. The public deserves to know precisely how lifesaving care will be allocated. The public has a right to transparent fairness.

My guess: fairness and objective allocation of resources will slam into the wall of privilege. We shall see. We shall also see how intrepid the media is on this subject. So far, it hasn’t been.

From neilmacdonald.me

Neil Macdonald spent 43 years reporting on politics, wars, elections, revolutions, booms, crashes, coups, and the struggles of ordinary human beings in the unforgiving, bewildering rush of history.

He worked as an editor and reporter in three newspapers before moving to CBC News, for which he covered Quebec before moving to Parliament Hill, then abroad as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East and Washington, DC., and finally as the CBC’s opinion columnist.

He has stood in Iraq watching missiles strike, in Bethlehem watching people welcome the new millennium, in Jerusalem watching an intifada erupt, and in Chicago watching Barack Obama accept the American presidency. He followed the Pope through the Holy Land, tracked down Hitler’s last general in Europe, covered the triumphant arrival and subsequent humiliation of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, revealed the plotters who killed Rafiq Hariri in Beirut, and documented the financial horrors unleashed on America’s cities by Wall Street.

He speaks French, having grown up in Quebec, reasonably good English, and sufficient Arabic. He lives in Ottawa.

Learning at home? Here’s a list of links to take you on a “Virtual Field Trip”

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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COVID-19

Canada’s top doctor signed oath to withhold COVID info that could ‘embarrass’ Trudeau’s cabinet: records

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Dozens of Canada’s top health managers and the nation’s top doctor were required to sign a secret oath that prevented them from divulging information relating to the COVID crisis to not “embarrass” the federal government at the time.

Access to Information records show that Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, and “quite a few” other COVID pandemic managers had to sign the pledge, as noted by Blacklock’s Reporter.

An internal staff email sent in 2020 from Alan Thom, vaccine supply manager with the Public Health Agency, showed he complained that so many managers had to take an oath of secrecy “at a certain point the Department of Public Works determined individual non-disclosure agreements were no longer needed for federal employees as we are all covered through our responsibilities as public servants.”

In total, 29 managers signed the oath with the Public Health Agency and Departments of Foreign Affairs, Health, Industry and National Defence.

The oath came right after the federal government, under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, signed a deal to buy mRNA COVID jabs with pharmaceutical companies.

The oath noted, in part, that “Unauthorized disclosure of any confidential information, including but not limited to disclosures or communications to supplier competitors or to the media may result in embarrassment, criticism or claims against Canada and may jeopardize Canada’s supplier relations and procurement processes.”

It continued, stating, “As an employee of the Government of Canada I acknowledge I have read and understood the Values And Ethics Code For The Public Sector,” the pledge stated. “I remain bound by my oath.”

Tam is a strong proponent of the COVID shots. At the peak of the COVID crisis in Canada, the Trudeau government signed about $8 billion in contracts with multiple companies, including, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Medicago, Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer and Sanofi.

The first COVID jab to be approved for use in Canada was Pfizer’s BioNTech mRNA injection, which became available on December 9, 2020. Moderna’s mRNA jab followed a couple of weeks later. Of note is the launch of the jabs came after the Trudeau government gave vaccine makers a shield from liability regarding jab-related injuries.

Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) was launched in December 2020 after the government gave vaccine makers a shield from liability regarding COVID-19 jab-related injuries.

Recently, VISP injury payments are expected to go over budget, according to a Canadian Department of Health memo.

As reported by LifeSiteNews last week, a government-funded inhaled version of the COVID mRNA vaccines developed with abortion-tainted fetal cell lines is now entering Phase 2 clinical trials.

The federal government continues to purchase the COVID shots despite the fact its own data shows that most Canadians are flat-out refusing a COVID booster injection. It also comes as the government has had to increase spending on VISP, as reported by LifeSiteNews last week.

Canadians’ decision to refuse the shots also comes as a Statistic Canada report revealed that deaths from COVID-19 and “unspecified causes” rose after the release of the so-called “safe and effective” jabs.

LifeSiteNews has published an extensive amount of research on the dangers of the experimental COVID mRNA jabs that include heart damage and blood clots.

The mRNA shots have also been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children, and all have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies.

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COVID-19

Study finds nearly half of ‘COVID deaths’ had no link to virus

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MXM logo MxM News

Quick Hit:

A groundbreaking new study has delivered a searing indictment of the global health and media establishment’s COVID death narrative. According to Ian Miller’s analysis on OutKick, a thorough investigation into hospital deaths in Greece reveals that nearly half of the cases officially labeled as “COVID deaths” had nothing to do with the virus. The findings undermine years of data used to justify lockdowns, school closures, and vaccine mandates. Miller argues that the so-called scientific consensus pushed by Dr. Anthony Fauci and the media is collapsing under the weight of real evidence.

Key Details:

  • A Greek study found that 45.3% of registered COVID deaths were not caused by COVID at all.

  • Just 25.1% of deaths were directly caused by the virus, with 29.6% contributing indirectly.

  • Only 54.9% of death certificate-listed COVID deaths matched reality after rigorous review.

Diving Deeper:

For years, COVID death tallies dominated media coverage and shaped public policy. Networks like CNN broadcast running totals, while bureaucrats and politicians used them to enforce sweeping restrictions. But according to OutKick’s Ian Miller, a new peer-reviewed Greek study discredits much of that narrative by proving that the way deaths were defined was deeply flawed—and in many cases, outright misleading.

“In Greece, a more concise and simple definition was used, defining as COVID-19-associated death, any death occurring in a person with positive testing for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of death,” the researchers stated. That definition, however, failed to discern whether the virus actually caused the death.

The study, which covered seven major hospitals in Athens over an eight-month period in 2022, went beyond death certificates. Researchers analyzed medical charts, lab results, imaging data, and conducted interviews with treating physicians. As Miller notes, they did “the work that the ‘expert’ community should have been doing” all along.

The findings were stunning. Just 133 of the 530 recorded deaths (25.1%) were directly due to COVID. Another 157 (29.6%) were cases in which COVID contributed to a chain of events. But a full 240 deaths—45.3%—had no connection to the virus, despite being officially registered as COVID deaths.

What’s worse, Miller reports that death certificate data was wildly unreliable. COVID was listed as the primary or contributing cause in 528 out of 530 cases. After the study’s thorough review, that number dropped to 290. “Just 54.9% of the deaths labeled as primary or contributing COVID, per death certificates, actually met that criteria,” Miller writes.

The data also crushed another major narrative: that the unvaccinated were overwhelmingly the ones dying. Of the 290 deaths partially or fully attributed to COVID, 53.8% were fully vaccinated or boosted. In the group labeled “with” COVID, that figure jumped to 63.3%. “Remember the ‘95% of deaths are among the unvaccinated!!!1!!’ hysteria?” Miller quipped. “There was no statistical significance to vaccination when it came to predicting outcomes.”

And perhaps most damning, 42.5% of COVID-positive patients had contracted the virus inside the hospital—despite mandatory masking and PPE policies. “Because masking does not stop COVID transmission,” Miller points out bluntly.

Miller didn’t mince words in his conclusion: “This study quite frankly obliterates almost every single facet of ‘expert’ and scientific consensus. Masking doesn’t work. A significant portion of COVID deaths were not directly caused by the virus… and death certificate data is not reliable.”

As policymakers and media figures continue to sidestep accountability, this study provides hard proof of what many Americans already suspected: the public was misled. And those who raised questions were dismissed as “deniers” or “conspiracy theorists.” In Miller’s view, this was not just a public health failure, but a failure of integrity and truth. And the consequences, from economic devastation to lost trust in institutions, are still being felt.

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