The founding premise of Democracy Alert is that throughout the 21st century democratic governance has been steadily eroded in subtle termite-like ways, undetected by most people. The result has been growing inequality and a sense of powerlessness. That’s been felt hardest by those who came of age after the year 2000.
Former NL Premier Brian Peckford, the last surviving signatory to Canada's 1982 Constitution, asserts that COVID has pushed this erosion into a blatant assault on the principles embedded in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I agree.
One of the methods used has been the introduction of the Vaccine Passport system, now imposed across the country for travel, for work and for many services. All of these restrictions on the unvaccinated have been done with very little debate in our parliaments on the health, economic and democratic implications of such a move.
The Questionable Health Benefits of Vaccine Passports
A significant number of clinical studies in respected journals have now concluded that the vaccinated carry the same viral load in their nasal passages as the unvaccinated.1 What that obviously means is that the vaccinated can just as easily transmit COVID as the unvaccinated.
Surely governments must be aware of these studies. Yet they continue to want to isolate the unvaccinated, presumably with the goal of forcing these implicitly naughty, selfish, irresponsible people to get the ever-growing number of vaccines we’re all supposed to take to rid ourselves of this quasi pandemic.
The stress load and the loneliness of those who dare to remain unvaccinated are overwhelming in many cases. Hit hardest are those who don’t have the financial security of a pension or a job that can be done from home.
Economic winners and losers in our Vaccine Passport system
Clearly, it is the working class unvaccinated, many of whom work in the service and retail sector or resource development, that are suffering the most with the imposition of the vaccine passport. White collar, middle class jobs that can be done remotely tend to be less affected.
Small businesses have also suffered. A 2022 Statista survey reports that 66% of US small business owners reported that COVID has negatively affected them with more than one in five stating that the effect has been large.
Bank of Canada statistics suggest the same in our country.
Meanwhile the share price of large companies on the stock market has boomed and Oxfam reports that the ten richest billionaires have doubled their fortunes during the pandemic. A new billionaire is apparently created every 26 hours.
This is not okay. There is something radically wrong with a pandemic that enriches the super-rich to this extent. At the very least it makes you wonder who governments have been taking advice from over the last two years – and why.
Is the COVID Passport an assault on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
Former NL Premier Brian Peckford believes so. He argues that the rights to work, travel, receive equal treatment under the law, and freedoms of worship and assembly have been unjustifiably trampled on, given that COVID has only a .01 mortality rate in Canada among those with positive PCR tests.
I would suggest that it goes even deeper than that. According to a December article in the National Post, the Canadian government, through the Public Health Agency of Canada accessed location data from 33 million mobile devices to monitor people’s movement during the lockdown.
Think about it. Do we really want government to know where we go? Have we too casually sacrificed our privacy for the illusion of health safety?
Conspiracy theorists go further and argue that the Vaccine Passport is actually a trial run for a coming digital passport system that will include all our financial transactions. If that sounds far-fetched, you might want to consider that there is already a precedent in place.
In 2021 China’s Central Bank began to issue a new digital currency to its citizens using apps on smart phones. The replacement of cash by this digital currency potentially allows the Chinese government to watch over all transactions made, to tax at will, to require the money be used only for certain products or in certain regions, and to cancel the ability to make all transactions if citizens don’t comply.
As Canadians we should take note. The hot topic in central banks worldwide today is the introduction of a similar digitalized currency accessed through cell phones. Issued by central banks like the Bank of Canada or the Federal Reserve in the US, such a system would not just get rid of private sector competitors like Bitcoin, but ultimately cash itself.
If this happens, we will be giving government the potential to execute vast and long lasting surveillance powers over us. Our easy acceptance of the Vaccine Passport attached to our cell phones has already somewhat normalized that concept for us.
Conclusion
Driven, as we have been over the last two year by our fear of COVID, many people have not questioned what the long-term implications might be of the pandemic measures taken by government. The assumption is that things will get back to normal once we rid ourselves of COVID.
I'd like to be optimistic and believe that this could happen. it’s reassuring to read that some governments, notably the UK, are pulling back from the COVID passports and lockdowns. The scientific evidence against their effectiveness is just too strong to continue.
But even if Canada follows suit, does it mean that the painful chasm that has developed between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated will end? Does it mean that the “anti-vaxxers” will actually be given space in the media to articulate their concerns, not just about the passport system but other parts of the COVID narrative.
Or will we choose to learn nothing from this ordeal?
In the age of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset plans for humanity, now is not the time to be complacent.
Marilyn Reid
......................................................................
1 Studies comparing the nasal viral loads of those with and without COVID vaccines
1. SARS-CoV-2 Omicron VOC Transmission in Danish Households,
2. The Lancet Infectious Diseases
3. The Lancet Preprint13
4. medRxiv preprint by Riemersma et. al.14
5. Eurosurveillance rapid communication,
6. Eurosurveillance rapid communication,
This is not okay. There is something radically wrong with a pandemic that enriches the super-rich to this extent. At the very least it makes you wonder who governments have been taking advice from over the last two years – and why.
Is the COVID Passport an assault on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
Former NL Premier Brian Peckford believes so. He argues that the rights to work, travel, receive equal treatment under the law, and freedoms of worship and assembly have been unjustifiably trampled on, given that COVID has only a .01 mortality rate in Canada among those with positive PCR tests.
I would suggest that it goes even deeper than that. According to a December article in the National Post, the Canadian government, through the Public Health Agency of Canada accessed location data from 33 million mobile devices to monitor people’s movement during the lockdown.
Think about it. Do we really want government to know where we go? Have we too casually sacrificed our privacy for the illusion of health safety?
Conspiracy theorists go further and argue that the Vaccine Passport is actually a trial run for a coming digital passport system that will include all our financial transactions. If that sounds far-fetched, you might want to consider that there is already a precedent in place.
In 2021 China’s Central Bank began to issue a new digital currency to its citizens using apps on smart phones. The replacement of cash by this digital currency potentially allows the Chinese government to watch over all transactions made, to tax at will, to require the money be used only for certain products or in certain regions, and to cancel the ability to make all transactions if citizens don’t comply.
As Canadians we should take note. The hot topic in central banks worldwide today is the introduction of a similar digitalized currency accessed through cell phones. Issued by central banks like the Bank of Canada or the Federal Reserve in the US, such a system would not just get rid of private sector competitors like Bitcoin, but ultimately cash itself.
If this happens, we will be giving government the potential to execute vast and long lasting surveillance powers over us. Our easy acceptance of the Vaccine Passport attached to our cell phones has already somewhat normalized that concept for us.
Conclusion
Driven, as we have been over the last two year by our fear of COVID, many people have not questioned what the long-term implications might be of the pandemic measures taken by government. The assumption is that things will get back to normal once we rid ourselves of COVID.
I'd like to be optimistic and believe that this could happen. it’s reassuring to read that some governments, notably the UK, are pulling back from the COVID passports and lockdowns. The scientific evidence against their effectiveness is just too strong to continue.
But even if Canada follows suit, does it mean that the painful chasm that has developed between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated will end? Does it mean that the “anti-vaxxers” will actually be given space in the media to articulate their concerns, not just about the passport system but other parts of the COVID narrative.
Or will we choose to learn nothing from this ordeal?
In the age of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset plans for humanity, now is not the time to be complacent.
Marilyn Reid
......................................................................
1 Studies comparing the nasal viral loads of those with and without COVID vaccines
1. SARS-CoV-2 Omicron VOC Transmission in Danish Households,
2. The Lancet Infectious Diseases
3. The Lancet Preprint13
4. medRxiv preprint by Riemersma et. al.14
5. Eurosurveillance rapid communication,
6. Eurosurveillance rapid communication,
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