Bruce Dowbiggin
If Vaxx, Masks and Lockdowns Resume Will Sports Go Along?
Quietly, stealthily, the same people who brought you Lockdowns & Vaccines from 2020 till early this year are back for more as summer ends and fall arrives. They’re whipping up the familiar stark warnings of viral death and depredation that subdued civilization and caused millions of deaths unrelated to the virus itself..
Just this week Rutgers university said it will admit no undergrads without mandatory vaccination. The CPC pep squad at the WHO is said to fear the spread of BA.2.86. “Yes, wearing masks during travel is advised, especially in crowded and enclosed settings, to minimize the spread of respiratory viruses,” advises some suit from the American Association for Respiratory Care.
Hospitals are again mandating mask wearing. Ludicrous, when even the American CDC has admitted the abject failure of the needles and masks to “stop the spread”. More of the same is set to roll out as media hustles stories of new viral strains that will consume our lives again (and restore their absolute power). There’s been no apology for the outright lies about 15 days to flatten the curve, PCR tests that showed 70 percent false positives, the hotel lockdowns, suspension of civil rights, anti-vaxx hysteria.
Just a brazen shrug of the shoulders and the determination to try again this winter to keep certain people in line. Key to intimidating the population into abandoning civil rights and freedoms were the pro sports leagues whose “bubbles” and enforced lockdowns cowed the public. They served as an example of abject compliance. Would they submit again?
As the curtain finally began to lift last May we counted the costs. “These are the first NHL playoffs since 2019 not completely blighted by the miseries of Covid-19 protocols. For the past two postseason sessions, the NHL— like its sister leagues— has been obsessed with the test-and-trace strategy recommended by the WHO, CDC, Health Canada and other regulatory bodies. (And by people like Jeffery Epstein’s pal Bill Gates.)
This resulted in “bubble cities”, draconian quarantine practices and the dreaded testing regimen imposed by PCR testing. By testing healthy young athletes at elevated cycles this produced a flood of minute samples of a virus that were, pace Bill Gates, a “kind of flu” that few could pass on to the general public.
The insane panic surrounding this process was exacerbated by the scribblers of the media who, currying favour with liberal authorities, rejected any alternatives. As a result, healthy players were locked up in hotels with nothing better to do than play games before empty arenas and then scuttle back to the hotel like mice retreating to their burrows. Or remain bunkered at home.
Even by 2021, when, test-and-trace was shown to be useless stopping a pandemic, the NHL and the rest of sports continued to play whack-a-mole with anyone who had a speck of the virus. Players were quarantined, teams played with depleted lineups, fans were not allowed to see games live.
None of which did anything to curb the death rate among those who were, as Gates allows, most vulnerable. So athletes, children and healthy adults were treated like a scurvy crew. To distract people, media ginned up stories about the exceptions to this pattern to keep their pals in the fear business happy.
Adding to the misery was the new autocracy of vaccines. First one shot, then two, then boosters, then more boosters. All pushed by government advertising that branded objectors as some form of vermin (see Justin Trudeau’s libel of the truckers convoy as he hid). The Maoist conformity this produced was backed up with travel bans and ostracization.
Anyone daring to present contrary evidence—or mention healthy athletes dying post-vaccine— was instantly made a non-person by the Theresa Tam health bureaucracy who’d taken their marching orders from the Chinese. Social media cancelled critics like Alex Berenson, the Barrington Declaration, Ivor Cummins and Dr. Robert Malone for injecting some doubt about the forced lockdowns and mandatory vaccine regime.
For much of 2020 and early 2021, when someone tried to point out that Sweden had taken a different course at far less social disruption they were labelled as killers and subversives by the Hollywood elite.
Eventually the absurd testing mechanisms and arbitrary suspensions to the “Covid List” grew too absurd for some. As we wrote last December, Detroit Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman finally said, enough is enough:
“At the end of the day, I think — and now I’m getting political — but at the end of the day our players are testing positive with very little symptoms, if any symptoms at all. I don’t see it as a threat to their health at this point. I think you might take it a step further and question why are we even testing, for guys that have no symptoms.”
This skepticism extended past hockey to, “…the NFL where games are being delayed because hundreds of players and staff— many of them asymptomatic— have tested positive using the NFL’s mandatory PCR testing. Tampa Bay Bucs coach Bruce Arians told reporters, “If you’re asymptomatic, you should be allowed to play.”
Slowly, the leagues pulled back, even as radicals in healthcare and media still shrieked about the deaths that stadiums and arenas full of maskless people would produce. The leagues made the call that the virus and its variants were epidemic and— as the data showed— highly unlikely to affect a demographic like trained athletes.
Yes, people in risk groups would still get sick. Some would die. But test-and-trace was ineffectual in halting any of it. So were masks on airplanes. As a result, the public’s unwavering trust in the white lab coats and the politicians who slavishly followed them was shaken. What if all the sacrifices meant nothing? What if, as Gates now allows, the official diagnosis of the Covid-19 panic was a massive over-reaction? Treating every demographic the same was madness?
What if vaccines sold as a panacea by governments across much of the Western world, were also a fraud imposed on citizens? After much effort to hide the truth for 75 years, Pfizer was forced to show that it knew their vaccine— one Trudeau is using to impose three-year travel bans on dissenters— only had about 12 percent efficacy in the short term. This when the CDC, Tam, Fauci, and all the Twitter doctors swore it was 95 percent effective. And that pregnant mothers were at risk of miscarriage, despite protestations from officials.
Likewise, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been withdrawn; the FDA cited Johnson & Johnson’s #COVID-19 vaccine due to risk of blood clots. Data from the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) shows vaccine injuries occurring regularly not only from Pfizer Vaccines, but from all the “benign” mMRV-2 vaccines sold by governments in advertising and directives.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. In the coming years we will learn— despite the strenuous efforts of the guilty— that elected officials and drug manufacturers hid far worse outcomes about their prescriptions. That they suppressed alternative treatments. They’ll reluctantly do this because all vaccine users signed off on their products as experimental. They can’t be sued— government saw to that.
Leaving only elected officials like Trudeau, whose government still labels its draconian measures as “life saving”. By then he’ll be in a cozy sinecure created for him by the World Economic Fund. Good luck extraditing him. And society will swear not to do this again. Till the Climate Hustle cranks up again”.
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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, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Oh, the weather outside was frightful. But the football was so delightful. Week 15 of the NFL season was a cryogenic success of snow and sub-zero temperatures. Here were the temperatures at game time this weekend.
Chicago: -11 degrees C.
Cincinnati: -12 degrees F.
Kansas City: -8 degrees C.
New England: -2 C (with an 87 percent chance of snow).
Philadelphia: -2 degrees C.
New York -1 degree C.
Pittsburgh: -7 degrees C.
For fans of NFL football none of this seemed out of character with late-season football. There are legendary games played in arctic conditions. The windchill for the 1967 Dallas/ Green Bay NFC championship was -25 C.
Chargers at Bengals: Jan. 10, 1982 (-24 C, feels like -39 C).
Seahawks at Vikings in NFC wild-card matchup Jan 10, 2016. -21 C with wind chill -25C
Dolphins at Chiefs: Jan. 13, 2024 (-4 degrees, feels like -27 degrees)
As recently as last week’s Bills win over the Bengals games are often played with drifts of snow on the field and the mercury bottoming out. While Canada’s Grey Cup game is played at the end of November it’s still had some brutal weather history of its own.
The point of this meteorology meandering is that, according to our good King Charles III and many other doomsday cultists the concept of snow and cold was supposed to be a figment of the past by now. For almost half a century Michael Mann and the climate prophets of IPCC have been predicting the end of snow and the onset of warmist floods and burning forests. They gambled trillions of the public’s dollars on the certainty that the public would buy computer modelling and data-distortion predicting doom.
For decades it has worked. The careers of people like critic Mark Steyn have been ruined, heretics declared and fortunes dissipated by the trust-fund fanatics who bankroll wackadoodles like Stephen Guilbeault, the convicted felon who Trudeau made Minister of the Environment. No matter how absurd or devious the source, it was a gospel that the fiery inferno was coming next Tuesday. But the weather has remained stubbornly resistant to Elizabeth May’s catechism of climate.
Yet, some dedicated climate advocates and their followers are finally changing their tune in the face of their own observation of lying liars like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg. The share of Americans who say climate scientists understand very well whether climate change is occurring decreased from 37 percent in 2021 to 32 percent this year. A similar October study from the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute found that “belief in human-driven climate change declined overall” since 2017.
Reports the uber-liberal L.A. Times: “The unraveling of climate catastrophism got another jolt recently with the formal retraction of a high-profile 2024 study published in the journal Nature. That study — which had predicted a calamitous 62% decline in global economic output by 2100 if carbon emissions were not sufficiently reduced — was widely cited by transnational bodies and progressive political activists alike as justification for the pursuit of aggressive decarbonization.
But the authors withdrew the paper after peer reviewers discovered that flawed data had skewed the result. Without that data, the projected decline in output collapses to around 23%. Oops.”
Even stalwart media apologists for climate hysteria like the Times are starting to have doubts. Under the headline “The left’s climate panic is finally calming down” they describes “Erstwhile ardent climate-change evangelist Bill Gates published a remarkable blog post addressing climate leaders at the then-upcoming COP30 summit. Gates unloaded a blistering critique of what he called ‘the doomsday view of climate change,’ which he said is simply “wrong.”
Trump-besotted American Democrats seeking to soften their Woke image before the 2026 midterms are likewise carving out more moderate positions on climate “that could well deprive Republicans of a winning political issue with which to batter out-of-touch, climate-change-besotted Democrats. But for the sake of good governance, sound public policy and the prosperity of the median American citizen, it would be the best thing to happen in a decade.”
Sadly Canada under Mark Carney remains a staunch climate warrior. The removal of Guilbeault as federal Environmental Minister may have seemed a step toward sanity, but there is no hint that the billions of dollars from hidden money spigots will be closed down any time soon. The B.C. government’s acquiescence to the climate propaganda of Indigenous bands shows no sign of abating. Indeed, it is just ramping up in the land claims that threaten to make home ownership a thing of the past.
PM Mark Carney is a dedicated temperature fabulist going back to his days as governor of the Bank of England. His first fights in Canada were over taxing carbon and hobbling her energy industry. As we wrote in this November 2024 column, the certainty in which the Canadian Left revels is actually dividing, not uniting citizens.
So perhaps if enough citizens spend an afternoon shivering in the stands of a wintertime football game we might achieve a small piece of sanity and learn that that , while climate is always changing, it’s not worth the price we’ve paid this century.
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 2025 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 . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books.
Inquiring minds want to know: Why did FIFA (Federation of International Fraud Artists) award American president Donald Trump a new “Peace Prize” at the Washington D.C. draw for the June/ July tournament? The usual suspects are paralyzed with rage. Everyone else is laughing at the kabuki theatre stunt.
The short answer is that if you were FIFA and you were receiving a reported billion or more dollars from the U.S. and the Canadian/ Mexican cities hosting the 48-team tournament you’d give the host more than a bottle of wine and flowers as a thank-you. Thus the ugly statue and the Boy Scout medal. The obsequious awarding of the prize and match medal were proportionate to the greed of FIFA in extorting the cash.
(America’s fainting goat media immediately complained about unearned awards for little virtue, forgetting as usual that the Nobel folks gave Barack Obama a Peace Prize after nine months in the White House for simply being a black man.)
Trump getting a peace award from FIFA, the most corrupt sports body in the sports world, is mint, however. You can’t write this stuff. (They should give it to him on a speed boat heading across the Caribbean.) The Donald then playfully suggested that Americans leave the name football to the soccer folks because, you know… feet and a ball. More outrage from NFL fans.
So what was the gift for the two Canadian cities hosting games who have also coughed up plenty? Toronto says its estimated budget is $380 million for six games/ B.C. tax payers are obliged to cough up an estimated $580 million for Vancouver’s five games). For cities with, how shall we say, bigger fish to fry.
Sadly all they got was a little farce in which a delighted PM Mark Carney was allowed to Canada as the first ball to start the picking, evidently unaware that all the balls he had to select from also said Canada. Carney’s joy was tempered when he saw Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum draw a ball that said “Mexico” while Trump— in on the fix— got one entitled “United States”.
In a final attempt to curry favour with the fleeced nations FIFA boss Gianni Infantino gathered the world leaders for a painful onstage selfie, marking the first time Trump and Sheinbaum had ever met in the (orangey) flesh. Call it National Lampoon’s Soccer Vacation.
Having exhausted itself with the peace prize falderol FIFA evidently forgot to put any more thought into the rest of the 55-minute run-up to the draw. While soccer/ footie fans around the world ground their teeth in impatience the organizers presented a combination Eurovision/ People’s choice Awards ordeal of failed cues, untranslated interviews (the Spanish translator showed up about 30 minutes late) and pregnant pauses.
Host Heidi Klum’s stunning gold dress nearly made up for her wooden repartee with comedian Kevin Hart (“not sure why I’m here”) and co-host Rio Ferdinand, former star English defender who, alas, never won the WC. But that was all an appetizer for the real low point, the introduction of global brand stars to pick the draw. NFL legend Tom Brady, NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal and NHL… er, player Wayne Gretzky.
Their task, hectored by the hosts, was to draw a ball, unscrew the thing, withdraw a nation’s name and so on. While there may have been some tension in the audience there was no appreciation of that on the screen as more clunking dialogue and curious pronunciations (Ferdinand kept referring to Group “Haitch”) landed dead on the floor.
The nadir of the ceremony—indeed of his career— was Gretzky’s contribution. Brady and O’Neal had managed to survive their task of unscrewing the ball and pronouncing a name, but Gretzky was brought low by the stage business of the balls and the nations he was forced to announce.
The clearly flustered Gretz (he insisted he’d practiced all morning) wrestled manfully with the balls. Finally the producers went with a long shot of him fumbling in the dark. Then he topped that. Gretzy apparently thinks there are countries called “North Mack-a-donia” and “Cur-ack-ow.” Other stabs at geography were almost as tortured.
Bitter Canadians could put up with him sucking up to Trump (he was mentioned as being in the crowd at the DC Xmas tree lighting) but failing geography is unforgivable. The week that started with Gretzky in a photo golfing at POTUS’s Jupiter, Florida, golf course was ending with him pummelled for his abuse of nations with different-sounding names. The Wayne Gretzky Center For Kids Who Want To Talk Good.
The moral: Never send a centre to do a netminder’s job. Makes you understand why Bobby Orr has laid low since his Trump endorsement came out.
With that bracing date with immortality disposed of the draw proceeded. We had been pounded for an hour about how great the tournament was, and finally footy fans got what they wanted. As a host Canada got a bye into the field. Their reward is playing the tenacious Swiss and, gulp, probably Italy, which is forced to qualify after playing with their food for too long. (Insert your Stanley Tucci joke.)
If not Italy then one of Wales, Bosnia and Herzegovina or Northern Ireland. Oh, right Qatar is in there too as fodder. Been nice knowing you, Canada. The Americans somehow drew a creme puff quartet of Australia, Paraguay and Slovakia, Kosovo, Turkey or Romania. Money can’t buy you love, but it can get you a warm hug from FIFA.
In the end it’ll be one of Brazil, Argentina, Germany or France for the final in the NJ Meadowlands on July 19. Maybe they’ll have a spelling bee at halftime. Or maybe they’ll bring back Trump for the final game to give him another peace prize. Just don’t ask Gretzky to announce Lothar Matthaus, Bruno Guimaräes or Gabriel Magalhäes.
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 . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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