Tax the unvaxxed?

Vincent J. Curtis

17 Jan 22

As southern Ontario deals with accumulating evidence of the global warming hypothesis, an amused mind turns to other matters of cosmic justice.

Punishing the unpopular is always popular – totalitarians do it all the time.  The unpopular always get what they deserve, regardless of the justice of it, because they’re unpopular, right?  Unpopular opinions are why countries like Canada have free speech rights (as popular speech needs no legal protection), but since the coronavirus panic, Charters of Rights have gone by the boards, even in Canadian courtrooms.  Under totalitarians, law is meant to oppress, not protect anyone but the totalitarian.

The latest proposed punishment for the unpopular unvaxxed class is to levy a special tax on them for the alleged extra burden they place upon the provincial health care system.  Ontario has excellent tracking data, and so it is useful to use Ontario as the testbed for the justice of such a punitive measure.

Since the beginning of the pandemic two years ago, Ontario has recorded almost 960,000 cases.  With a population of 14.8 million, that means it will take thirty years to infect everyone alive in Ontario today.  COVID-19 is not the Black Death.  Of those in hospital but not in ICU, 2245 are vaccinated, and 739 are unvaxxed; while in ICU, 213 are fully or partially vaccinated, and 195 are unvaxxed.  Since, 85 percent of Ontarians are fully vaxxed and another 5 are partially vaxxed, these numbers mean that the unvaxxed are over-represented relatively to the vaxxed, though fewer absolutely.  As of Jan 17, 2022, Ontario has 2343 ICU beds in total, of which 1279 are used by non-COVID cases, 569 by COVID cases, and 555 remain available.  Ontario data does not make clear whether a person is hospitalized with COVID or because of COVID.  If you’re in hospital for appendicitis and catch COVID while in hospital, you could be recorded as a ‘COVID hospitalization.’

The vaccination rate also means that 1.5 million Ontarians are unvaxxed and available to be taxed for their alleged overuse of the health care system.  Out of 1.5 million, 0.05 percent are presently in hospital, and 0.013 percent are in ICU.  This is “overuse.”  A special tax is to be levied on people for their alleged overuse of the hospital system – 99.9+ percent of whom didn’t use the hospital at all.  Now that’s justice, isn’t it?

Breaking down the numbers further, the unvaxxed are largely those who, by youth and good health, aren’t going to need hospitalization even if they become infected.

Quebec does not appear to report officially the numbers of vaxxed and unvaxxed in hospital and ICU due to COVID-19.  This means that the Quebec government has drunk deeply of the Anthony Fauci Kool-Aid, and is going strictly on feelings without hard data to back these feelings.  But punishing the unpopular feels right, so regardless of the justice, Quebec Premier François Legault wants to tax the unvaxxed anyway!  It’s a great way to distract attention from the many failures of governments like his, that failed to plan for pandemic waves, that seems to say that vaccines don’t work while pushing booster shots, that won’t admit lockdowns and curfews didn’t work, and neither did mask mandates and vaccine passports, and can’t bring themselves to admit that a recovery from COVID is better than a vaccination.  This speaks to the quality of the medical advice politicians have been following slavishly.

A lot of Quebeckers vacation in Florida.  If Quebeckers figure this out, and compare Quebec’s response to Florida’s, there’ll be political hell to pay.

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