COVID-19
COVID-19 inquiry in UK asks whether ‘terrible consequences’ could have been avoided
LONDON (AP) — A mammoth three-year public inquiry into the U.K. government’s handling of the response to COVID-19 opened Tuesday by asking whether suffering and death could have been avoided with better planning.
Lawyer Hugo Keith, who is counsel to the inquiry, said the coronavirus pandemic had brought “death and illness on an unprecedented scale” in modern Britain. He said that COVID-19 has been recorded as a cause of death for 226,977 people in the U.K.
“The key issue is whether that impact was inevitable,” Keith said. “Were those terrible consequences inexorable, or were they avoidable or capable of mitigation?”
A group of people who lost relatives to COVID-19 held pictures of their loved one outside the inquiry venue, an anonymous London office building. The first day of public hearings began with a 17-minute video in which people described the devastating impact of the pandemic on them and their loved ones.
Britain’s pandemic death toll is one of the highest in Europe, and the decisions of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government have been endlessly debated. Johnson agreed in late 2021 to hold an inquiry after pressure from bereaved families.
The inquiry, led by retired judge Heather Hallett, is due to hold hearings until 2026. It is due to investigate the U.K.’s preparedness for a pandemic, how the government responded and what lessons can be learned for the future.
Senior scientists and officials including Johnson are expected to appear as witnesses. Hallett, who has the power to summon evidence and question witnesses under oath, is currently in a legal battle with the government over her request to see an unedited trove of notebooks, diaries and WhatsApp messages between Johnson and other officials.
U.K. public inquiries are often thorough, but rarely quick. An inquiry into the 2003 Iraq war and its aftermath began in 2009 and issued its 2.6-million word report in 2016.
Hallett says she will release findings after each section rather than waiting until hearings conclude.
Keith said the first section would look at whether British planning relied too heavily on the mistaken assumption a future pandemic would resemble influenza.
He said that at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the government had said that “the United Kingdom was well prepared to respond in a way that offered substantial protection to the public.”
“Even at this stage, before hearing the evidence, it is apparent that we might not have been very well prepared at all,” he said.
Keith also said planning for Britain’s exit from the European Union after voters backed Brexit in a 2016 referendum distracted resources from work to prepare for potential pandemics.
“That departure required an enormous amount of planning and preparation, particularly to address what were likely to be the severe consequences of a no-deal exit on food and medicine supplies, travel and transport, business borders and so on,” he said.
“It is clear that such planning, from 2018 onwards, crowded out and prevented some or perhaps a majority of the improvements that central government itself understood were required to be made to resilience planning and preparedness.”
COVID-19
Elon Musk-backed doctor critical of COVID response vows appeal after court sides with medical board
From LifeSiteNews
One of Gill’s “controversial” posts read, “If you have not yet figured out that we don’t need a vaccine, you are not paying attention. ”
A Canadian physician who challenged her medical regulator after it placed “cautions” against her for speaking out against draconian COVID mandates on social media has lost a court battle, but with the help of her Elon Musk-backed legal team she has vowed to appeal the ruling.
The case concerns Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill, an Ontario pediatrician who has been embroiled in a legal battle with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) for her anti-COVID views posted on X (formerly Twitter) in 2020. As reported by LifeSiteNews, her case received the support of billionaire Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, who pledged in March to back her financially.
One of Gill’s “controversial” posts read, “If you have not yet figured out that we don’t need a vaccine, you are not paying attention. #FactsNotFear.”
The Divisional Court decision against Gill dated May 7, 2024, concluded, “When the College chose to draw the line at those tweets which it found contained misinformation, it did so in a way which reasonably balanced Dr. Gill’s free speech rights with her professional responsibilities.”
“In other words, its response was proportionate,” noted the ruling.
Gill’s lawyer, Lisa Bildy with Libertas Law, stated in a press release sent to LifeSiteNews that the “Court declined to quash the ‘cautions’ orders, finding that the ‘screening committee’ of the CPSO was sufficiently alert to the Charter infringement of Dr. Gill’s speech, such that its decisions were within the range of reasonable outcomes.”
“Dr. Gill had argued, in two factums,” noted Bildy, which can be found here and here , and filed in the companion court applications, that “her statements were not ‘verifiably false.’”
Bildy expressed that Gill had provided the College with “ample evidence in 2020 to support her position against lockdowns,” but was sanctioned “because they went against the College’s guidance that doctors should not express opinions contradicting government or its public health edicts.”
Gill’s court challenge against the CPSO began last month, with Bildy writing at the time that the College’s “decisions were neither reasonable nor justified and they failed to engage with the central issues for which Dr. Gill was being cautioned.”
She argued that Gill had a “reasonable scientific basis” for her posts, noting that the previous decision made against Gill targeted her for opposing the mainstream COVID narrative.
“The decision starts with the premise that doctors have to comply,” said Bildy, warning that censoring doctors would have a “chilling effect” on free speech.
Bildy noted that in its ruling, the court “disagreed” with Gill’s challenge, “stating that this invited a reweighing of the evidence.”
The court also ordered that Gill pay the CPSO $6,000 in legal costs.
Gill is a specialist practicing in the Greater Toronto area, and has extensive experience and training in “pediatrics, and allergy and clinical immunology, including scientific research in microbiology, virology and vaccinology.”
Last September, disciplinary proceedings against her were withdrawn by the CPSO. However, last year, Gill was ordered to pay $1 million in legal costs after her libel suit was struck down.
The CPSO began disciplinary investigations against Gill in August 2020.
Gill to appeal recent court ruling with support from Musk’s X
The court’s ruling asserted that the CPSO panel members consisted of “three physicians with highly relevant expertise that they were able to bring to bear when assessing the scientific and medical information before them, expertise that this court does not have.”
Bildy noted that in fact, the CPSO panel consisted of “three surgeons and a general member of the public who had deferred to the ‘expertise’ of government’s public health arm.”
The court ruling also dismissed Gill’s arguments that publishing the “cautions on her public register and disseminating a notice about the cautions to hospitals and regulators across the continent was punitive and had a chilling effect on one side of a debate.”
“The Court opted to align with other Divisional Court decisions in stating that the cautions were not a finding of professional misconduct but were merely a remedial measure. This is despite the fact that cautions have, only in recent years, become a public rebuke rather than a private ‘correction’ of a professional by their peers. This significant change has not yet been grappled with by the Ontario Court of Appeal,” noted Bildy.
Bildy said that Gill intends to “seek leave to appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal with the support of X Corp., since her posts were made on the X platform which supports free expression and dialogue, even on contentious issues and particularly on matters of scientific and medical importance.”
Gill noted on X Tuesday that her “notice of motion for leave to appeal will be filed” next week “to begin process.”
She also thanked Musk and X for supporting her legal cause.
Gill had said that she had “suddenly” found herself going “against the narrative,” and was then “seen as a black sheep and as someone who should be shunned.”
Many Canadian doctors who spoke out against COVID mandates and the experimental mRNA injections have been censured by their medical boards.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s X announced that it will fund the legal battle for another Canadian doctor critical of COVID lockdowns, Dr. Matthew Strauss, an Ontario critical care physician and professor, against his former employer Queen’s University after it forced him to resign.
In an interview with LifeSiteNews at its annual general meeting in July 2023 near Toronto, canceled doctors Mary O’Connor, Mark Trozzi, Chris Shoemaker, and Byram Bridle were asked to state their messages to the medical community regarding how they have had to fight censure because they have opinions contrary to the COVID mainstream narrative.
COVID-19
Healthcare workers obtain partial win against Bonnie Henry in BC Supreme Court
News release from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is pleased to announce that the British Columbia Supreme Court has remitted back to the provincial health officer the issue of whether remote working and administrative health care workers must take the Covid vaccine as a condition of being able to work in a health care system that the BC government claims is grossly understaffed.
While the Justice Centre is disappointed that the court upheld the Covid vaccine mandate on BC healthcare workers, this decision is viewed as a substantial win for those remote-working and administrative healthcare workers who lost their jobs due to an unfair Covid vaccine mandate and other Health Orders put in place by BC provincial health officer Bonnie Henry, starting in November 2021. The court’s decision was released on Friday, May 10, 2024, by Justice Simon Coval in Vancouver.
The Justice Centre provided for lawyers to represent the healthcare workers, who filed their Petition to the Court on March 16, 2022. Oral arguments were presented November 20 to December 1, 2023, and December 18 to December 21, 2023. The petitioners argued that the orders violated their Charter rights, section 2(a) freedom of conscience and religion, section 7 right to life, liberty and security of the person, and section 15 equality rights.
The case is formally known as Tatlock, Koop, et al. v. BC and Dr. Bonnie Henry. More background is available at this link.
Charlene Le Beau, co-counsel for the petitioners, says, “This case was a Judicial Review, which means the court had to determine whether Dr. Bonnie Henry acted reasonably in making the Covid vaccine a condition of employment. We are disappointed with the court finding that Dr. Henry acted reasonably, but pleased with the court also finding that the application of the Orders to remote-working and administrative workers went too far. As a result, the court remitted the issue back to Dr. Henry so that, in light of the reasons for judgment, she can consider whether to accept requests for exemption to the vaccine for those groups of workers. This is a positive result for BC nurses, doctors and other health care workers.”
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