Now, it’s Ontario's turn

Vincent J. Curtis

16 Dec 21

Last summer, the Spectator devoted lots of space to the narrative that Alberta was deservedly getting a fourth wave of COVID.  The stupid cowboys weren’t obeying the advice of the medical experts of Ottawa.  Albertans weren’t getting vaccinated, and they threw off all those good social restrictions like mask mandates and limitations on size of group assembly.

Alberta’s fourth wave actually began in the first week of August and peaked on 1 October.  The usual group of bemoaning doctors were paraded out in the media for political effect. They claimed foolish politics was responsible for pushing Alberta healthcare to the verge of collapse.  The pinch point turned out to be ICU cases, which peaked at 278.  Out of a province of 5 million people, 278 brought to “the verge of collapse.”

Alberta actually lagged Ontario by about two weeks in terms of vaccination rates, and that was due to Ottawa supplying Alberta slower with vaccines than Ontario.  (Yes, official Ottawa does have a hate on for Jason Kenny and Alberta in general.)  Nevertheless, Alberta’s fourth wave was the worst in terms of hospitalizations and ICU cases, and second worst (after the second wave) in terms of deaths.  Remarkably, it was supported by a quarter to a fifth of the population that supported the second and third waves, as by the time the fourth wave peaked, over 80 percent of Albertans were vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Ontario suffered little over the same period, and that was self-righteously put down to smart Ontario’s high vaccination rate, compliance with health orders, and vaccine passports.  I put it down to the virus being highly prevalent in Alberta and not so prevalent in Ontario.  Now, that’s changing.  The case rates in Ontario are rising rapidly as Alberta’s continue to drop.

Vested interests in Ontario are already making excuses for the coming failure.  The vaccines need a booster!  The omicron OMG! variant is highly contagious and the vaccines lack effectiveness against it.  The passport system wasn’t sufficiently respected.  Restrictions need to be re-imposed.  All this blaming is to distract attention from the fact that the official experts have never gotten it right and are still wrong.  They pretended that they knew how to control this pandemic, and that pretence is wearing thin.  The fact is, the pandemic has moved back to Ontario and there’s nothing to do except to ride it out.  The advice of the experts is as much a waste of time now as it was back in March, 2020, the fifteen days to flatten the curve.

The conditioning to obedience will soon make people feel foolish.  All those who righteously condemned the unvaccinated for perpetuating the pandemic will soon find that they are deemed unvaccinated - because the goalposts got moved, again.  All this is to protect the professional reputations of those who arrogantly pretended to know what to do, and were wrong.

The whole approach of centralized control was the wrong response.  It precluded the genius of the 99 percent who didn’t run the system from applying itself to the problem.  Instead of thousands of ideas, we got one.  And that one had to be protected against failure because otherwise the justification for centralized control would collapse.

It seems plain today that until a substantial proportion of the population have developed natural immunity the pandemic will continue.  Vaccination might mitigate the effects of an infection, but that’s a damned expensive way of treating COVID when therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies are available and need only be administered to those who need it.  Central control went crazy demanding people get vaccinated to ward off a fourth wave, but when it comes it turns out the protection of the vaccines has waned to the point that “boosters” are needed.  How efficient is that compared to treating just the sick who need it with therapeutics?

Our experts neglected therapeutics for some reason, and only now is the public becoming aware of them, like monoclonal antibodies.  Previously, therapeutics were condemned because President Trump promoted them.  The pandemic response was conditioned by the priority that Trump had to be beaten at the polls.

Back in Canada, now its Ontario’s turn to host the locusts.  It’s going to be bitter after all that prideful condemnation of those Alberta cowboys.  But there is hope.

The severity of a pandemic wave is measured by the pressure it applies to the healthcare system.  The hospitalization rate of the fourth wave is about 2 to 3 percent of cases.  If Ontario doubles or triples its ICU capacity, hires enough nurses, and adopts therapeutics like monoclonal antibodies it will be able to ride out the wave without too much whining from health professionals, who didn’t sign on for this much work.

The pandemic response has always been about centralized control and for the exercise of sheer, undemocratic power by those who never dreamed of having this much before.  Ontarians can do themselves a favor by resisting control measures and demanding more performance out of the healthcare system instead.

Only by the development of natural immunity will this pandemic be put behind us.  Meanwhile, remember all the social division created to enforce centralized control.  Meanwhile, remember all the social division created to enforce the decisions of centralized control.

Treating just those who need it with therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies is far more efficient and less costly than vaccinating 12 million people – all of whom need to be vaccinated again because the first two doses wore off.

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