Ontario Science Table: Good Riddance

Thankfully, they’re gone

Vincent J. Curtis

4 Sept 22

RE: Group would have kept isolation rules.  CP story by Liam Casey.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 3 Sept 22.

Keep your friends close and you enemies closer.  That’s a good rule in politics, and Doug Ford was politically smart to hire all this potential critics to serve on the so-call “Science” table.  It was no such thing, of course, for trial and error was all they ever proffered.

By keeping potential critics advising the Ontario government’s response to COVID, Ford kept them from sniping at him through the press.  It wasn’t easy for them to run to the media behind Ford’s back, since it as their advice he was following.  They couldn’t ruin Ford’s public standing.

If Ford ignored them, they would have gone to the press to say that Ford was personally responsible for all the COVID deaths and the collapse of the health care system because he wasn’t following their advice.  They would become famous and popular for their sniping at Ford.  We can now see how bad their advice was.

The proper course from the get-go was to treat the COVID pandemic like the flu pandemics of 1969 and 1976.  Take care of the vulnerable, but let the young and healthy who were unthreatened by COVID go about their normal lives, saving the economy and school kids from extreme disruption.  Lockdowns were demonstrated not to work, mask mandates didn’t work, and the vaccines proved next to worthless.

Being dismissed, the sniping in the press begins.  Luckily they’ve mostly blown their credibility.

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Think of it.  Ford was afraid of being blamed for every COVID death in Ontario because he didn’t follow the expert advice of Dr. So-and-so.  (Whom the media found highly credentialed and qualified on account of his willingness to say bad things about Ford.)  So Ford took their advice even if it was against his better judgement.  Hence, lockdowns, masking, vaxxing, etc. long after cutting edge science proved these worthless.  Dr. Ideology prevailed.  Only now that people are tired of restrictions and are prepared to live with COVID is Ford (and Dr. Moore) ready to cut the “science” table loose.