American author Norman Mailer was running to be mayor of New York in the early 1970s or late 1960s. He had a simple campaign slogan—“No More Bullshit.” I am not running for office and Norman Mailer came in last in that campaign but I always liked it. Now I think it is very appropriate.
Anti-vaxxers have had their days in the sun. Now it’s time for them to get back to move on and get real. As Tome Brodbeck of the Winnipeg Free Press said,
“Vaccines are working. The number of COVID-19 deaths in Manitoba has plummeted since the beginning of the vaccine rollout, from a monthly high of 350 in December to 11 deaths in August. The death toll has dropped every month since January, except for a slight increase in May and June during the third wave. New deaths fell nearly two-thirds in July compared with the previous month, and another two-thirds in August (even with the wider circulation of the delta variant and fewer public health restrictions than in the spring). Hospitalizations and ICU admissions are way down and the vast majority of those who require a hospital bed are not immunized. The effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine is nothing short of spectacular.
The challenge now isn’t so much scientific as it is sociological: how to free enough Manitobans from the hypnotic forces of misinformation and indoctrination to boost vaccine rates above 85 per cent. No one really knows how to do that. It seems everyone knows someone in that category — a friend, a relative or a neighbour who has been influenced by (or considers themselves to be) an amateur vaccine scientist who has “done their research on the internet.”
Brodbeck also explained that we need more people to get vaccinated. Ontario’s scientific advisory board has calculated that 85% of the eligible population must be vaccinated before it makes sense to relax restrictions completely. Manitoba is only at 77%. Until that goal is reached, we will have to live with restrictions and the only ones who can change this are the unvaccinated people. They are holding up our return to freedom. It is time for the unvaccinated to get with it.
Brodbeck summed it up very succinctly and very well: “The mandates won’t be lifted until a sizeable portion of the unvaccinated decide they want to rejoin the human race.”
Frankly, it’s well past the time where anti-vaxxers should have admitted defeat. The game is over. We have experience now. More than a million Manitobans have had the vaccine. More than a billion world wide. Very few have had serious side-effects. The scientific evidence is overwhelming that Covid-19 is a serious illness and the vaccines work extraordinarily well.
Dr. Roussin, Manitoba’s Chief Public Health Official says his team has failed to identify one single death due to the vaccine. A very small number have got Covid-19 after being fully vaxxed. The anti-vaxxers say they want their freedom back. So do the rest of us and there is one, and only 1, reason we don’t have it back and that is because too many Manitobans have not been vaccinated. It is their fault that we are not back to normal. As many health care professionals have said, this is now a pandemic of the unvaccinated. But all of us are suffering not just the anti-vaxxers. People with serious medical conditions can’t get help because our hospitals have too many people with Covid-19. They are interfering with our freedom, not the other way around. We have put up with too much bullshit from them. It’s time to stop enabling them. No more bullshit.