Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Bruce Dowbiggin

Covid’s Weighty ICU Problem: Why Do Obese Get A Pass?

Published

8 minute read

“Liberals believe everyone is entitled to an opinion. Just as long as it’s the same opinion.” — Anonymous

As the Covid-19 virus has morphed, so too have methods for fighting it. From masks/ distancing to Flatten The Curve to Get the Jab health officials have employed mass coercion to get the public onside with their attempts to calm the pandemic.

There is considerable doubt that these blunt-edge techniques prevented any significant reduction in the deaths that occurred (or that their PCR inspired “positive test” numbers were not inflated by as much as 70-80 percent). Sweden, which eschewed much of the social engineering while keeping its economy and schools open, took a beating on deaths early but is now registering virtually no deaths a day. It is an open maskless society.

In Canada, the PM now wants vaccine passports for all internal travel— despite the fact that double-vaxxed people still spread the virus. @AB_CovidFacts As reported by AlbertaHS today. 27.5% of all NEW Covid-19 cases discovered were in the FULLY VACCINATED cohort. This is the highest percentage to date in any reporting period. ~25% of all active cases in AB today are FULLY vaccinated.” And now Trudeau is urging the vax on children as well (to flip attention from his Tofino trip)..

It’s clear that this is now a healthcare crisis, not a Covid crisis. As of this writing, there were 42,178 infected Covid patients per the wonky PCR test. Of them, 776 were in serious or critical condition.  Translation: Fewer than 800 viral cases nationwide have ruptured the Canadian Healthcare® system. While beds, resources sit unused, officials panic openly about shortfalls even as they fire unvaxxed healthcare workers.

This frustration is driving increasing panic among the 99.95 percent of the population who won’t die or have a serious illness from the vaccine. Polling shows their estimates of death are exaggerated by a factor of 10.

Thankfully, the virus will finally recede. What will be left are the coercion experiments used to convince a frightened public that flimsy masks save lives or that everyone needs to be vaccinated against a virus that was highly specific in its victims.

What will also remain is authorities’ realization at how easily they reduced liberal democracies to pliant mobs of snitches and spies. From Australia’s draconian Zero Covid lockdown disaster to North America’s vaccination frenzy, peer pressure has won the day.

As we discussed about the NBA this week, job loss— not sickness— is the biggest threat to those who, for reasons of previous immunity, conscience or religious beliefs, have not succumbed to the needle. [Disclosure: This author has had two shots.]

Friends and neighbours we have thought otherwise sane are now seriously demanding that unvaccinated people be sent to the back of the line for healthcare till all the vaccinated people are satisfied. This triage is equal measures of fear, spite and blithering ignorance of the facts of single-payer health.

Take this example: one of the factors established very early in the pandemic was the vulnerability of obese and morbidly obese— especially in the elderly. The AMA reports, “The vast majority—78%—of U.S. patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were overweight or had obesity. The numbers for intensive care, invasive mechanical ventilation and death were nearly the same.”

According to the CDC, 42.4 percent of U.S. adults have obesity. While some are obese for genetic or disease-related reasons, the vast proportion of the obesity is lifestyle induced. The World Obesity Federation has shown that death rates from COVID-19 have been 10 times higher in countries where more than half of the population is overweight.

Yet there is no call from the media and its acolytes to punish the obese for clogging the healthcare system. No demand they be put to the back of the line. Why? Because it doesn’t suit the narrative of right-wing extremism that non-vaxxers do. Too many allies of Woke land— in and out of politics— would be shoved down the line.

University of Oxford researchers found, ”Excess weight is a modifiable risk factor, and investment in the treatment of overweight and obesity and long-term preventive strategies could help reduce the severity of COVID-19 disease.”

Obesity is also a factor in the debate on children taking the needle to prevent cases in schools. “At least 9 out of 10 patients that we’re seeing who are sick enough especially to be in the ICUs throughout the state, obesity plays a part in this,” said paediatric physician Eugene Daugherty, with Novant Health’s Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, N.C. The numbers are growing worse as authorities force children to home school.

(Finland has now joined Sweden, Denmark and Norway in recommending against use of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine in younger age groups, citing risks of rare cardiovascular side effects they said warranted the precautionary steps. )

Yet when was the last time you heard Justin Trudeau or president Joe Biden suggest dropping weight to lessen the burden on healthcare? The last time would be the first time, as they have been mute on lifestyle adaptions to clear the ICUs.

It goes the same for smokers, drinkers, drug abusers and more who— under Canada’s healthcare rulers— receive the same treatment in emergency rooms as do those who live clean. According to the howler monkeys of vaccine enforcement only non-vaxxers should be culled from the herd for flooding ICUs.

Despite not being harrassed, the obese are getting the message to lose weight, says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “I’ve been trying to get you to surgery for five years… And they say, ‘I’m seeing my family and friends die, and I don’t want to be that person. I know I should have done it back when you recommended it in 2015 or 2013 even, but here I am. I’m ready.’”

If only today’s cancel-culture administrators and their media chums were as ready to let the facts speak honestly.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book with his son Evan is called InExact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

Follow Author

More from this author

Bruce Dowbiggin

Ireland Today: The Bittersweet Tradeoff Of Carney Embracing Europe

Published on

Dublin: for those who’ve travelled to Ireland the past 50 years the transition is stunning. Even from ten years ago, when the previous market dip hit the nation, the current iteration is remarkable. For a nation that has historical sites dating from 5000 BC to the present, the claim that these are Ireland’s finest days is plausible.

From Dublin to the rocky outcrops of the Wild Atlantic West, the nation is teeming with people and energy. It’s not even the tourist season yet, but lineups to see Kilmainham Gaol or Blarney Castle or the Titanic Experience are lengthy. In Dublin the streets are positively jammed with locals (many young), tourists and a swath of nationalities from places most Irish can’t locate on a map.

No matter where they’re from they carry the same craic that has made Ireland a joyous place to wile away a day chatting locals. Humour and help are the watchwords. Our Uber drive was a Romanian who’s been in Dublin 35 years, and he chatted our ears off  in his Romanian/ Irish accent en route to the airport. As our Uber driver noted, there’s plenty of work and lots of opportunity.

The old docklands along the Liffey have been ripped up to produce modern office complexes, hotels and arenas that seem more like Geneva than Dublin. Traditional double-deckers still ply the streets, but they share the road with a modern streetcar system. Irish food— so long demeaned as inedible— is now the toast of the gastro world. The NFL plays at the modern Aviva Stadium, and the music scene is flourishing in clubs and stages around this city founded by the Gaels in the 7th century.

The remainder of Ireland is no less impressive. A modern highway network now gets you from Dublin to Galway in two hours and Cork in two-and-a-half hours. Yes, the narrow lane ways and paths that criss-cross the greenery are still quaint. But transportation is not the trial it once was. E-charging stations are omnipresent.

Which leads one to wonder how was the conversion achieved. Ireland is famous for its ability to back losers in politics. From their own nationalists, who ended up at the end of a rope or in front of a firing squad, to the imperial powers— France, Spain, Germany— they hoped would save them from England, Ireland has a bloody past. Its own independent movement launched on Easter weekend in 1916 required a cruel civil war (see Michael Collins) and an equally nasty partition to finally create the Irish Free State.

One benefit of all this self-imposed pain has been Ireland’s withdrawal from most of the 20th century’s carnage. Where a town square in England, Canada or Australia would honour the copious dead from WW I or WW II, in Ireland the town square honours Padraig Pearse, John McBride, James Connolly or Thomas Clarke. With no European wars to prosecute Irish cities were not bombed and their downtowns resemble themselves from centuries ago.

But still you may wonder where has the money come from to spark this turnabout? Well, Ireland stayed with the EU when England voted for Brexit, and the benefits are easy to see. Where there were few or no jobs 25 years ago, the EU has showered Ireland with investment money. It has enabled Ireland to offer lucrative tax deals to multinationals to move to the Emerald Isle. The results are palpable.

The price is less so. And in Ireland one can see a warning for Mark Carney’s Canada. The new PM is a dedicated Europhile. Carney has made no secret of his longing to cut deals with the boys from Brussels. He told Canadians that the traditional relationship with the U.S. was over, and while that was crass electioneering, no one expects him to abandon the values of the EU.

While there will be manna from the EU (should it stay solvent) there will also be a quid pro quo. Canadians who blissfully voted for Carney should realize that means doubling down on the climate extremes of carbon taxes and failed new tech that currently hobble the EU.

As Ireland has learned, in exchange for its money the EU wants you to also accept its gender dysphoria and a brand of immigration politics that sees Ireland today embracing Hamas and the most virulent brand of anti-semitic groups while seeking to silence its former sports hero Conor McGregor when he talks of losing Irish culture to an immigrant wave who neither care nor endorse traditional Irish culture. .

It also means adherence to the censorship regimes of the EU where Germany plans to silence its most popular party, the AFD, for heresies against the new religion of Climate/ Culture. Irish politics is radical, and a Canada that fits itself under the EU influence will find not just a continuation but an extension of the Justin Trudeau disastrous regime. Which will keep Alberta in conflict with the Ottawa mandarins.

So do visit Ireland. The people are wonderful, the land is stunning and the energy is palpable. When you leave bring your memories home with you. But leave Irish/ EU politics behind.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Continue Reading

2025 Federal Election

The Last Of Us: Canada’s Chaos Election

Published on

Show me good loser and I’ll show you a loser— Leo Durocher

There’s an expression that goes, you’re not allowed to die until all the people in your life have disappointed you. That trenchant observation is particularly relevant to those who woke up on April 29 to discover that their neighbours and friends in Canada have opted to give the federal Liberals (under new leader Mark Carney) another four years to continue Canada’s descent into irrelevance.

These are the same Liberals sans Carney who were polling in the low 20s six months earlier. Their cabinet members were quitting in droves. In the finest Wag The Dog tradition, a sure victory for Canada’s Conservatives was then transformed into a humiliating defeat that saw the Tories leader Pierre Poilievre lose the seat he’d represented for 20 years. The debate in the chattering classes now is how much was Poilievre’s fault?

In a minor vindication the Liberals were seemingly denied a majority by three seats (169-144) . How they balance that equation to advance their pet projects on trade, climate, gender, free speech, native rights and Donald Trump was unknowable Which is why the Grits have turned to dumpster diving MPs like Elizabeth May and keffiyeh-clad NDP to achieve a workable majority..

Suffice to say that neophyte Carney, without any support system within the Liberals, is being highly influenced by the Justin Trudeau faculty lounge left behind after the disgraced three-term PM slunk off into the night.

It’s not all beer and skittles. No sooner had the Liberal pixie dust settled than Carney was hit with Bloc leader Yves-Francois  Blanchet announced unequivocally that energy pipelines were still a no-go in electrified Quebec. Alberta premier Danielle Smith lowered the requirement for a separation referendum from 600 K signatures to around 170 K— a very doable mark in pissed-off Alberta.

Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe outlined his demands on Carney if his province is not to join Alberta. And former British PM Tony Blair, who’d worked with Carney in the UK, announced that Carney’s pet project Net Zero was a loser for nations. Finally RBC revealed it was moving beyond diversity toward “inclusion” by removing “unconscious bias” among its upper ranks.

Such is the backwash from April 28. If you listened to the state-supported media on election night you might think that Trump had picked on poor, innocent friend next door Canada. His outrageous 51st state jest did send the Canadian political apparatus into panic. A Liberal party that proclaimed Canada a postmodern state with no real traditions (lowerering flags to half mast for six months to promote their Rez School genocide hustle) suddenly adopted the flag-waving ultra-patriotic visage of expatriate comedian Mike Myers.

Instead the commentariat was spitballing about how to make the House of Commons function more smoothly or if Carney should depart for Europe immediately or in a month to meet his true constituents in the EU commentariat. China? Wassat’? Urban crime? I can’t hear you. Canada as fentanyl capital of the West? Not interested.

Astonishingly, many people who should know better bought it. It was Boomers waking from a long nap to impose their cozy values one final time on the nation they’d created via Trudeau. Comfy ridings like Oakville, Burlington, North Vancouver, Ottawa Centre and Charlottetown mailed it in for another four years. Academic hotbeds like Western (London), Laurier (Kitchener),  Waterloo, UNB (Fredericton),  U Calgary (Confederation) Alberta (Strathcona) and UBC (Vancouver) also kept the radical dream alive.

Meanwhile shrieks of “Panic!” over Trump decimated the Bloc (22 seats) and the NDP (7 seats) with their support transferred to a banker-led party that had been poison to them only six months earlier. You could not have written a more supportive script for a party who had neglected the essentials in traditional Canada while pursuing radical policies to please the globalists of the West.

Speaking of time capsules, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a more retro scene than the one produced by the legacy TV networks. With their emphasis on the horse-race story the tone, the panels, the hosts could have easily been teleported from 1990s. While many were interested in the micro of government finance, most listeners were expecting maybe a word or two on the collapsed state exposed by Trump’s aggressive negotiating.

As we’ve mentioned often before, Canada’s allies are appalled by the takeover of the country by malign actors, drugs traffickers, money launderers, real-estate manipulators and Chinese subterfuge. Trump’s generic reference to the border was a catch-all for the corruption swallowing the election process and the finance of the country.

That avoidance was echoed by pollsters who spent the night talking about how the final figures reflected their findings. Except for those that didn’t— Conservatives vote tally over 41 percent and Liberals well under 200 seats. What was avoided was the cumulative effect of highly inflated Liberal polling during the campaign, the “why-bother?” narrative they sold to voters appalled by the Liberals manipulation of the process to switch leaders and hold a micro-campaign of 36 days.

While Donald Trump has announced he’ll work with Carney on tariffs, it’s still highly likely that this was the final Canadian election fought by the old rules where the have-nots (Atlantic Canada) the haves-but-outraged (Quebec) and the indolent (Ontario) control the math for making government. The money pump (Alberta, Saskatchewan) will seek to attract eastern BC and southern Manitoba to their crew. In the worst case Carney may be the nation’s final PM of ten provinces plus territories.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Continue Reading

Trending

X