Category Archives: The Sleep of Reason

What Freedom looks like

Epidemics/Pandemics, The Sleep of Reason

 

Things could look a lot worse in Manitoba than they do. As Tom Brodbeck said in the Winnipeg Free Press:

“Almost 80 percent of Manitobans over the age of 12 are now full vaccinated, most people are wearing masks in indoor public places and proof-of-vaccination is required to access many public places.

Without those measures, we would still be huddled in our homes, cut off from friends and family and wondering how this pandemic would ever end. Potentially, case numbers would be soaring and intensive care units would be overflowing–as they are in provinces such as Alberta and Saskatchewan where vaccine mandates and public health measures were rejected for political reasons until recently.”

 

These two provinces have been decimated by the 4th wave. Manitoba, which imposed stricter health restrictions has been faring much better (so far!), though in the 3rd wave Manitoba  needed help from those same 2 provinces (and Ontario) for its intensive care patients. In contrast to these two provinces, since July 2, 2021 Manitoba’s test positivity rate has fallen by more than half to 2.3% from 5.4%. The number of Covid-19 patients in hospital has dropped to 71 from 163. As well according to Brodbeck, Manitoba has the lowest per capita  case of new infections in the country west of Nova Scotia at 58 per 100,000. Yet things are much worse in both Saskatchewan and Alberta. As Brodbeck reported, “By contrast, new infections in Saskatchewan and Alberta (the two provinces with the lowest vaccine uptake in the country) are more than 8 times higher.”

 

People who deny the effectiveness of the vaccines have to get more and more creative every day to justify their intransigence.

 Brodbeck put it this way: “The evidence is indisputable: vaccines not only save lives and reduce severe illness, they are allowing the return to normal living.”

That does not mean the battle is over and we can return to ignoring the pandemic as so many are urging. But it sure does demonstrate that the vaccines can lead  us out of the wilderness if only enough of us agreed to take them. Vaccines are even allowing hospitals to permit some of the surgeries and other medical procedures that have been held up.  This is is why Chris still has her surgery set for September 29, 2121 (tomorrow) and we are hoping things continue this way. Her life has been on precarious hold since January.

Brodbeck summed up the situation in Manitoba this way:

“…the measures have allowed the vast majority of Manitobans to resume living in safe, largely virus-free environments with friends, family and other members of the public.  If that isn’t freedom, I don’t know what is.’

 

I want even more freedom, but I am very grateful for what we have got now. The way to get more freedom is not by protests in front of hospitals, or elsewhere, but by having more people get vaccinated.

Working for Unbelievers

Epidemics/Pandemics, The Sleep of Reason

 

Sometimes we have to feel sorry for doctors. Think about the southern bible belt of Manitoba with compassion for doctors. According to the Winnipeg Free Press,

“Just over 40% of Winkler residents and less than 25% of Stanley residents (which is the rural municipality surrounding Winkler) have received at least one dose of the vaccine. as the region is experiencing the highest per capita infection rate in the province.”

 

Steinbach and its surrounding rural municipality, Hanover, is doing slightly better with vaccine uptake, but well below provincial averages. The rates of infection in Steinbach are also very high.

The paper interviewed a physician, Dr. Eric Lane, living in Winkler who was considering moving out of the community, because he feels under appreciated since so many of his patients are ignoring his sound advice to get vaccinated. Can you blame him? Dr. Lane said, “After attending births, deaths, cancers, and other health needs, most of my colleagues and I feel that our advice is no longer valued.” He’s right it isn’t valued. He said a number of his colleagues are considering moving away. It is easy for physicians do that, because they are needed everywhere. Unlike lawyers. It could be a big loss for the community. Communities need doctors or they can’t thrive. Or even survive.

That’s what happens when people get their medical advice from Dr. Google.

Facts over Fear

Epidemics/Pandemics, Fear, Fellow Feeing, reason, The Sleep of Reason

 

Fear is a powerful emotion and it can be a force for good as well as force for bad. . We all need some fears. Young children learn to fear hot stoves thanks often to their mothers who instil that fear in them. That is a healthy fear. We could be seriously hurt if we did not have that fear. There are many positive fears like that which help us to avoid danger or harm. That is all for the good.

Other fears can be completely disarming. An example I often use is the United States. It is a country dominated by fear. They spend more money on arms and weapons than the next 8 or so countries behind them combined. That is what fear drives them to do. Everyone knows they would be much better spending the money on other things, many of which could actually make some of those fears go away. For example, Americans have a great fear of crime. As a result they spend vast sums on policing or weapons and that does little to drive away the fear. Fear can make us do stupid things.

There is plenty of fear going around these days. Recently, I attended an anti-vaccination rally in Steinbach and the leader of the rally as far as I could determine was a woman called Sheena Friesen. She spoke a lot about fear. She claimed fear of Covid-19 was making us do stupid things.

One person held a sign that read, “Facts over Fear.” I agree entirely with that sentiment, yet I think he and I have a very different conception of what we should fear. It seems he thought we were mistaken in fearing the virus that causes Covid-19. I think our fear of that virus is healthy, but we should not let it get out of control.

The difference is this. I believe that fears are valid and a force for good so long as they are kept under control and are rationally based on evidence of harm which the disease can cause. In other words, some fears are reasonable others are unreasonable. By definition, an unreasonable fear is called paranoia. Such fears are always a force for evil since they are not based on evidence.

American philosopher, Martha C. Nussbaum had important things to say about fear in her fine little book, The Monarchy of Fear. The title itself says a lot, suggesting we should not be controlled by fear. We should never let fear be our boss or king. Here is what she said,

“There’s a lot of fear around in the U.S. today, and this fear is often mingled with anger, blame, and envy. Fear all too often blocks rational deliberation, poisons hope, and impedes constructive cooperation for a better future.”

 

This is precisely right. The real problem with fear is that it can and often does interfere with rational decisions making. For example, I admit that I have an unreasonable fear of heights. It is not a rational fear. If I get to the edge of a tall building or structure I start getting scared even when there is nothing to fear. After all, I am not going to pitch myself off the building. I am not going to fall over the edge. There is nothing to fear, but I can’t stop being scared. I even get scared when I see total strangers getting what I think is uncomfortably close to the edge, when they have no such fears. My fear is unreasonable. Therefore, it is an irrational fear and I should learn to control it and not allow it to control me. That is easier said than done however. Nussbaum says fear can disrupt rational deliberation, leading to unwise choices. I think we can all think of many examples of exactly this.

Beyond making us suffer, irrational fears can lead us to make bad decision for our community and our country. From a public policy perspective we should not allow fears to lead us to faulty decision making. It can be dangerous. For example, Nussbaum said,

“What is today’s fear about? Many Americans themselves powerless, out of control of their own lives. They fear for their own future and that of loved ones. They fear that the American Dream–that hope that your children will flourish and do even better than you have done–has died, and everything has slipped away from them. These feelings have their basis in real problems: among others, income stagnation in the lower middle class, alarming declines in the health and longevity of members of this group, especially men, and the escalating costs of higher education at the very time that a college degree is increasingly required for employment. But real problems are difficult to solve, and their solution takes long, hard study and cooperative work toward an uncertain future. It can consequently seem all too attractive to convert that sense of panic and impotence into blame and the “othering” of outsider groups such as immigrants, racial minorities, and women. “They” have taken our jobs. Or: wealthy elites have stolen our country.”

 

Fear drives us to make unreasonable decisions. For example, if people have an unreasonable fear of government or authority they can refuse to listen to them when they give us good advice such, advising us to take vaccines that mountains of research and by now millions of actual experiences such irresistibly that our vaccine are safe and beneficial.

I think fear of others led Americans to make a disastrous decision in electing Donald Trump as president in 2016. It was a disastrous choice and led to near catastrophic results. Americans irrationally feared others such as Muslims, Mexicans, and elites. The last of those might have been a rational fear. Certainly more rational than the first two.

As Nussbaum said,

“The problems that globalization and automation create for working-class Americans are real, deep, and seemingly intractable. Rather than face those difficulties and uncertainties, people who sense their living standard declining can instead grasp after villains, and fantasy takes shape: if “we” can keep “them” out (build a wall) or keep them in “their place” (in subservient positions), “we” can regain our pride and for men, their masculinity Fear leads, then, to aggressive “othering” strategies rather than to useful analysis.”

 

The most effective means of dealing with such “othering” is to rely on our sense of fellow feeling. Empathy can chill many a pervasive fear. In fact, fellow feeling is the opposite of “us” vs. “them.”

According to Anti-vaxxers like Steinbach’s Sheena Friesen we are overly scared of Covid-19 and as a result we impose irrational restrictions on others like forcing people to wear masks or take vaccines that are dangerous.

In my opinion, fear of Covid-19 so long as it is held in check is an entirely reasonable fear. Millions of people have already died from it. Millions more have got sick, often with permanent damage. Millions more again, have had important medical treatments such as life-saving surgeries dangerously delayed. These are not unreasonable fears. These are completely reasonable fears which lead us to take reasonable precautions such as wearing a mask or getting vaccinated. Hundreds of millions of people have already taken the vaccines with remarkably few serious side effects. Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitoba’s Chief Medical Officer of health recently said he and his team have so far found no deaths in Manitoba that could properly be attributed to taking the vaccine and very few cases of serious illness resulting from the vaccines. At the same time, they have saved thousands of lives in Manitoba.

I think the antivaxxers, not the rest of us, have been dominated by unreasonable fears of the vaccine. They are ruled by unreasonable fears, not those who are taking reasonable precautions at very little cost.

 

The Evidence is in

Epidemics/Pandemics, The Sleep of Reason

 

I am finding Anti-vaxxers and their allied freedom fighters increasingly difficult to understand. The facts are in. We get them every day in the news. This is not speculative science. This is the data we get in the news every day.

The rates of Covid-19 infection, hospitalizations and death from Covid-19 are now overwhelming among the people who have not been vaccinated or have only had their first of 2 vaccinations. As Covid-19 continues to rage through Canada and elsewhere, vaccinations are proving safe and effective against this disease. Yet people continue to resist taking the vaccines. Before this pandemic began, I would never have believed that people would continue to ignore such clear evidence. But they do. I was wrong.

In Manitoba, where I live, the Southern Health District is the hotbed of new Covid-19 cases and surprise surprise is the region with the lowest rates of accepting vaccines in Manitoba. Here is how the Winnipeg Free Press reported it today:

 “People living in the Southern Health Region are being infected with Covid-19 at a rate five-fold Manitoba’s capital city, as small communities continue to grapple with low vaccine uptake and ongoing spread of the novel coronavirus. The latest numbers from the province show Southern Health—home to more than 207,000 residents  across 27,000 square kilometres—notched 10 cases per thousand people a day in the last seven days, compared to 2 per day reported in Winnipeg.”

 

What more evidence does any one need to see that it is a smart idea to take the vaccines?

In the Age of Anger loud Voices Prevail

Epidemics/Pandemics, Rebellion and Resistance, The Sleep of Reason, True Believer

 

Melissa Martin is a very good writer working for the Winnipeg Free Press.  Talking about Covid-19 and the antivaxxers and anti-mandaters, she said she found “Sadness amid the Madness.”  Why was that?

Specifically, she wrote an interesting piece about a man and woman with a child at one of the innumerable Covid-19 protest rallies in Winnipeg, who held a sign that read, “It’s my choice. Live with it. I will.” These people had gone to the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, thinking there was protest rally there. One had been held there a few days earlier and the protesters disrupted health services. Some health workers were afraid to go to work to help others in desperate need. Not just Covid-19 patients either.  Not really the best place for a protest rally. So, organizers, sensing a lack of public support for a rally there, changed the location at the last minute and this man and his wife and young daughter were not aware of it. They were wandering around largely by themselves. Martin said it was sad.  She also said,  “Anti-vax protests point out a tragic societal fracture that seems beyond mending.”

I think she is right because this is no longer a health issue. It has probably never been a health issue. It is a political issue. In fact, it is a theological issue.  People hold anti-vax and anti-mandate views as they hold religious views.  They are held so tightly that no evidence and no reason can change minds anymore. Just like religion.

The family seemed lost and deflated. As Martin said,

“Imagine what led you there. Imagine what vicious rhetoric you’ve consumed that would allow you to see a hospital entrance as an appropriate place to make your stand. Imagine waking up that day ready to protest outside a hospital, only to find your family arriving alone, sign dangling from your hands.”

 

Martin also saw, what I have been seeing—the same type of people appear at anti-vax rallies as showed up at pro-Trump rallies and worse,  at places like the riot on Capitol Hill in Washington on January 6, 2021.  The people at the hospital rally, or the Winkler rally or the Steinbach rally, were not rioters, but they appeared angry. After all, as Pankaj Mishra said, “this is the age of anger.”  People are angry. When they get angry they get mean and nasty. And thoughtfulness flies out the window. Lately, we have seen this in Winkler and Steinbach as I blogged about earlier.

As Martin said,

“It could have been worse. A lot worse. Since the start of the pandemic, one of the animating factors in resistance to public health orders and, now, vaccines has been rage, the same combustible rage that drove far-right protesters to storm the U.S. Capitol in January. It’s driven by many of the same players. It shares the same characteristics.

On Twitter, one woman responded to a video of an Ontarian People’s Party of Canada candidate firing a rifle, and said the candidate should “bring that bad boy to tomorrow’s raid on Toronto General Hospital,” because protesters would “get inside and show the world that COVID is fake.”

They didn’t go into the hospital. Yet while one shouldn’t put too much stock in the hot air a random person spews on Twitter, the naked aggression is alarming, and the threat has precedent. Last year, self-appointed “truth seekers” entered hospitals to “prove” the virus was a hoax; it’s entirely possible it will happen again.”

 

People are so angry that they feel it is legitimate to try to intimidate our over-worked health care workers who have not done anything to impose the mandates on them. They are just ordinary health care workers doing their heroic work to save lives during a pandemic. Anger directed at them is frankly much worse than sad. It is not surprising that some of them revolt. One frustrated hospital worker in a Calgary hospital put up a sign in a window that read, “Go intubate yourself.”

These protesters don’t believe science which they think is a hoax. Yet they believe  government officials are trying to impose health mandates to control us. again I have heard this personally. Others think doctors are hiding real cures like horse de-wormers. Yet as Martin said,

“When the numbers show that hospitals are in crisis and vaccines are both safe and effective, they are dismissed as “manipulated.” Everyone on Facebook anti-vaccine groups knows a guy who knows a guy whose cousin is a nurse and swears ICUs are empty; when ICU nurses speak about what they’ve endured, that information is disregarded.”

 

I know this too as I have been told the same thing. Martin acknowledged that there are reasonable questions about Covid-19. One of my cousins last week told me there is evidence that people who are vaccinated can spread Covid-19 as easily as those who are not vaccinated. If that is true it blows a major hole in the case against mandatory vaccinations. More on that later.  There is room for reasonable discussion. Science is not crystal clear. People are suffering from the restrictions in business and in mental health. But it is very difficult to have reasonable discussions when people harass health care workers. Or shout absurdities.

Martin summed up the problem this way:

“The problem is, none of those concerns can be given a fair hearing, when the loudest voices in opposition are tied up in threatening health-care workers, propagating conspiracy theories and potentially deadly misinformation, and thunderously insisting that the only relevant consideration is “personal choice.”

That’s the thing about a pandemic. It puts light on the error in the main ideological streak underpinning these most aggressive protests: the idea that anyone lives as an island, our choices not affecting others. A pandemic is a virus infecting society as one body; it requires the co-ordinated response of the whole body to fix it.

“It’s my choice,” the man’s sign said. “Live with it.” That’s exactly the problem: we already are. What’s sad is, he cannot see it.”

 

As I have been saying, Goya is right, “the sleep of reason brings forth monsters.” And we have to fight them.

Folly on Stilts

Epidemics/Pandemics, The Sleep of Reason

The English Philosopher talked about “folly on stilts.”  I have forgotten what he was talking about when he used that expression, but he might have been talking about our current  Member of Parliament.

The Member of Parliament for the federal riding in which I live is Ted Falk. Recently, He got into trouble during an interview with our local newspaper the Carillon News when he claimed that according to a Public Health England Study of 130,000 people that, “you were 13 times more likely to die from the Delta variant if you were double vaccinated, then if you were unvaccinated.” Later he said that he came up with this statement when he was doing “his own research” into Covid-19. Doing their own research is of course what the anti-vaxxers keep saying we should all be doing. That sounds good, but it is actually tricky if you have no background in science. In fact, Falk showed exactly why it is a problem. It’s difficult. It is really beyond most mediocre minds, like mine,  without great effort.

It seems to me that Mr. Falk ought to have been alerted to a problem with his research when he encountered such a far-fetched position. 13 times more likely to die? What could be more dubious than that?

In times of emergencies what we all need, particularly from our leaders, is critical intelligence. Thinking. Clear thinking. Not credulity. Our leader proved himself incapable to that.

Tom Denton, an opinion writer for the Winnipeg Free Press said we need common sense. That is not quite right. John Prine warned us that common sense isn’t any sense at all. What we need is the capacity to think critically about the issues of the day. As Denton said,

“It means considering all the available evidence before making decisions—and it means making decisions, not avoiding them. It means seeing the world as it is, not as we pretend or wish it. It means leaving behind ideology on the trash heap of history where it belongs, and making practical plans for the future instead of being held hostage by the mistakes of a troubled past.”

This is especially important for our leaders. In times of crisis we need the best leaders. Sadly, this is not what we have. Not only that, but too many people are discarding their critical thinking and believing what they want to believe. That is why Ted Falk jumped to believe something absurd, because it fit in so well with his ideology, his preconceptions, and what he wanted so much to be true.

The last few weeks in Manitoba have shown us something new—protest rallies near hospitals that have been so exuberant they interrupted access to emergency health care. It is hard to believe it has happened, but it did. As Denton said,

“As I watched the anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-science, anti-evidence protesters blocking access to hospitals, it seemed common sense was clearly on life support. If we want to avoid the QAnon-style lunacies that befuddle American politics and threaten its democracy and stability, we need to follow the evidence, not invent it.”

 

Common sense (or critical thinking as I prefer to call it) can lead us out of the wilderness of unreason in which we now find ourselves. We must use these skills with diligence and not fall into the trap into which Falk fell. Yes, we should not just believe as we are told. We should look at the evidence. But we must be careful. As Denton said,

“There is no situation you can’t research for yourself, thanks to the internet, but you need to look beyond the click-bait and self-appointed experts.”

We have to use our critical thinking skills or we will be throwing ourselves to the barbarian mobs and the monsters of unreason. And if we do that, there will be a price to be paid.

 

It Sucks to be a Conservative

Conservative, Freedom, The Sleep of Reason

 

In Canada and in the United States many people, but nowhere near a majority of the people, are objecting to actions by the government that they see as “over reaching” or imposing duties on them that are not justified in a free and democratic society. Some have gone as far as to call the health restrictions imposed by governments as “authoritarian” or “fascist.” Protesters in Manitoba, particularly in southern Manitoba, a region deeply committed to conservatism, have been making very similar remarks.

As Max Boot reported, in the Washington Post,

“Republicans explode with fury,” noted Fox “News” Channel. Republican governors threatened to file suit to stop what Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp called “this blatantly unlawful overreach.” Fox News accused Biden of being “an authoritarian” and declaring “war on millions of Americans.” Breitbart claims he went “full totalitarian” and the Federalist called it a “fascist move.”

 

Blinded by partisanship and populism, Republicans have lost all perspective. The crux of their argument — to the extent that they have one — is that the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has no right to tell companies with at least 100 employees that workers must either get tested weekly for COVID-19 or present proof of vaccination.

This is the same OSHA that has issued myriad regulations over the years governing such aspects of workplace safety as the placement of step bolts. (“The employer must ensure . . . step bolts are uniformly spaced at a vertical distance of not less than 12 inches (30 cm) and not more than 18 inches (46 cm) apart.”) I have no idea how many workers have been injured by misplaced step bolts — frankly, I’m not even sure what step bolts are — but I am guessing it is not many. I do know, however, how many Americans have been killed by COVID- 19: 655,000 and counting. If OSHA can protect against the menace of step bolts, I’m pretty sure it can protect against the deadliest pandemic in a century.

 

While I generally agree with these important points, I believe the last paragraph goes too far. This is not a perfect analogy. Placing bolts a certain distance apart does not impose a heavier burden on the citizen. Inserting a needle into an arm and injecting a substance that the individual believes will be harmful to him or her against his or her will, is a much more intrusive violation of the rights of the citizen and will require a higher burden of proof on the state to justify. Yet, I think it can be justified.

We know that conservatives in Canada and the US generally object to governments telling businesses what to do. At least they object when their political opponents impose their will. When their own party does it the objections are much less vociferous. For example in the United States, some governments such as the state of Florida have mandated (I use that word deliberately) that businesses are not permitted to demand vaccine passports from their customers. So far, at least 6 state governments led by Republicans, have passed laws prohibiting private businesses from doing exactly that. In Canada, and the United States, governments have in the past required students to demonstrate to school officials that they have taken a host of vaccinations for diseases such as polio, hepatitis, measles, mumps and rubella. They did that of course because those measures helped to prevent serious illnesses and these requirements were imposed without fuss or muss, because the issue of vaccinations at the time were not controversial. Nearly everyone saw the wisdom of such measures. The reason of course, is that vaccines were not political issues as they have become recently. President Trump played down the significance of the pandemic and told people it would just magically go away and they had nothing to fear. As Boot said, “His cult followers therefore felt compelled to echo his Panglossian outlook by falsely claiming that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu or promoting quack remedies such as hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin as miracle cures.”

As a result of identity politics, where people refused to take the vaccine or do take the vaccine, not on the basis of science, or analysis, or data, but on the basis of which political group they identify. As a result, in the US Boot reported that

“According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 86 per cent of Democrats have gotten vaccinated but only 54 per cent of Republicans. That, in turn, translates into rising numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the red states. Over the past couple of weeks, the United States has been losing an average of 1,579 people a day to COVID-19. More than a third of those deaths (570 a day) are in just two red states: Florida and Texas.”

 

For similar reasons, Florida led by Republicans, where more than 3 times as many people per capita have been dying from Covid-19 than California which is led by Democrats. The rate of death in Florida is 10 times higher than New York which is led by Democrats. In fact, recently, where the US was suffering 1,579 deaths per day from Covid-19 and more than 1/3rd of them were in just two conservative led states, namely Texas and Florida. It sucks to be a conservative in the US!

As Boot said,

“Republican governors don’t seem to mind killing their constituents in the name of a twisted theory of “medical freedom,” but that doesn’t mean the president of the United States is helpless to protect the life and wellbeing of its citizens. In fact, as Washington Post contributing columnist Leana S. Wen argues, Biden still has not gone far enough — for example, he still needs to mandate proof of vaccination for airline and train passengers.

 But at least Biden has given up the hope that he could reason with COVID-deniers and anti-vaxxers. The Republican reaction to his sensible mandate shows that much of the right is beyond the reach of reason. It is now time to use federal power to protect the most basic of civil rights: the right to life.”

 

Although not every one will agree, I must say that I do agree.

 

Distrust of Medical authorities

Death of Truth, Decline of the west, Epidemics/Pandemics, The Sleep of Reason

 

As the Washington Post reporters said, “a public health crisis made worse by many people’s distrust of medical authorities while they rely on often-faulty information from some of the country’s most influential people, which is amplified through social media.” The classic example has been ivermectin medication approved for animals like cows and horses, but not humans. Many of the anti-vaxxers now take that instead of vaccines that have been extensively scientifically tested in large, randomized clinical trials, and given to more than 170 million people in the United States and billions of  people worldwide. Is it an exaggeration to say the world has gone mad?

 Of course, it is not surprising that the media shilling the horse deworming medication were mainly conservatives, particularly conservative radio talk show hosts. As I have been saying, this pandemic of disinformation has been driven significantly by conservatives and evangelical Christians. As Hawaii Lt.-Gov Josh Green, who is a Democrat and an emergency room doctor said, “When people get fixated on inappropriate recommendations, then they unfortunately don’t get vaccinated,” said Hawaii Lt.-Gov. Josh Green, a Democrat and an emergency room doctor who blames conservative media for fanning unfounded hopes about ivermectin. “They don’t do the things that will actually help.”

 Now hospital ICUs in some hospitals are being overwhelmed by patients who took the horse medication, rather than patients who have Covid-19. As the Post reported,

 George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, spoke with more certainty: “This is a drug that does not work,” he said, comparing those pushing ivermectin as a coronavirus treatment to “19th century snake-oil salesmen.”

Of course, as always, this madness is being driven by Conservatives and Evangelical Christians that distrust government. As the Post said,

“Ivermectin has gained particular traction in conservative circles alongside accusations that the government and the drug industry are stifling discussion about the medication… For some already distrustful of the government’s coronavirus response, state and federal health agencies’ latest alerts matter little.”

 

One of the physicians who refused to prescribe it to humans because it had not been approved for that purpose felt the sting of the Conservative and Christian wrath: “people started accusing him of denying study participants a lifesaving medicine by giving some a placebo — part of any randomized trial, which is considered the gold standard approach to determine whether treatments are effective. “Are you a reembodied NAZI Josef Mengele?” he said one email read.”

There is no fury like the fury of the ignorant.

Ivermectin is being polarized, just as hydroxychloroquine was earlier by Trump and his followers. And of course, wherever there is ignorance or stupidity on steroids Fox News won’t be far away. As the Washington Post said,

“Fox News hosts such as Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson have also promoted the drug to large audiences, even as they sow skepticism of coronavirus vaccines as “experimental.” Carlson, who hosts the most-watched show on cable television, declared falsely last month that the vaccines “do not work” and in late June featured podcaster and former biology professor Bret Weinstein, an advocate of deploying ivermectin against the coronavirus.”

 

And if you think I am exaggerating or being unkind to call this stupidity here is what the Post said:

“Lisa VanNatta, a 61-year-old Texas rancher, maintained that the animal medicine is safe in the small doses she said she’s been taking monthly. Many others at the county Republican Club, where she is president, are using the drug in some form, she said. “They’re taking jiggers of it, drinking it,” VanNatta said of the people getting sick from ivermectin. “There’s always going to be some form of stupidity.”

 

Here is another example of strange logic:

“In Louisiana, 33-year-old Kortney Asevedo said she also fears the longterm effects of the vaccines, even after her unvaccinated mother died while sick with COVID-19 and taking everything that doctors prescribed, including ivermectin. “Me and my mom are kind of the same,” she said. “We wanted to wait and just kind of see.”

 

So, let’s get this straight. They wait and see for Covid-19 but not when it comes to ivermectin!  They are ready for that just because pundits on Fox News recommend it! Why? As far as I can see that is only because the government is not recommending it! If the government recommends it, then it must be bad for you.

 

We are living in a strange world—the result of the sleep of reason.

 

Not as Smart as Horses?

Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Moral Humility, The Sleep of Reason

 

I have been criticized by some for my use of intemperate words such as “idiots.” They say this doesn’t help to have respectful dialogue.  They are no doubt right. But sometimes it is hard to do the right thing.

Yet, we must face the problem of vaccine resistance firmly and up front. We can’t pussy foot around the issue either. Frankly, we are facing a serious health pandemic that is driven now by some very poor choices—namely the decision not to take vaccines that are obviously helping and beneficial. Such choices are unwise. I would say they are largely ignorant choices though some people cannot take vaccines for good reasons. We must accommodate them.

The evidence now based on actual experience and not just scientific studies is very clear. As Canada’s Chief Public Health officer said, speaking of the Covid-19 approved vaccines: “unvaccinated people are 12 times more likely to be infected and 36 times more likely to be hospitalized if they get infected.” Is that not enough evidence? What more does anyone need?

Surely now, one would think, people would be flocking to take the vaccines?  If one thought that, one would have thought wrong. Again, as I have been saying, it shows that anti-vaccine beliefs are as unshakable as religious beliefs.

Even though new scientific evidence, shows that

“New Modelling released by Tam Friday showed if the current rate of transmission of Covid-19 remains the same, Canada would see more than 15,000 new cases Canada was seeing on average at the height of the third wave, through so far hospitalizations are not rising as quickly as they did in spring’.

 

That tempering of bad news of course is because of the effectiveness of the vaccines. We would be doing much worse if it were not for the vaccines. It could also be much better if more people took the vaccines.

People who don’t believe in the vaccines are stubborn—as stubborn as horses. Are they smarter than horses?

So, what have people who don’t believe in science taken instead of the scientifically approved vaccines that have been shown safe and effective by the actual experience of more than a billion people?  The answer is astoundingly unbelievable—a medicine used to kill parasites in horses! Ivermectin. No science fiction writer could a have invented something so insane. Does this not qualify as stupid?

As reported originally in the Washington Post,

“Doctors and public health officials say they have spent the pandemic fighting rampant misinformation on top of a deadly virus, but the ivermectin craze is one of their strangest battles yet. Promoted by conservative talk show hosts, politicians and even some physicians as an effective treatment for COVID-19, the medication has soared in popularity this year despite having no proven anti-viral benefits — and also some clear harms when abused. Prescriptions of the anti-parasitic medication, used to treat river blindness and intestinal roundworms in people, have spiked during the pandemic and especially this summer, jumping from an average of 3,600 weekly prescriptions in the year before the pandemic, to more than 88,000 in one week in August, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

 

Who would take anti-worming medication approve for livestock instead of vaccines approved for people? Is it not fair to say ignorant people?

The Washington Post article reported the Food and Drug Administration was reported as saying:

“Health departments are warning of spikes in ivermectin poisoning and hospitalizations as people snap up feed store products meant for large animals. “You are not a horse,” the Food and Drug Administration felt compelled to declare last month. “You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

Can you imagine, some of the people were surprised that they got sick from taking the medication designed for horses and cows?

Is language that these people that are making choices that are “ignorant” or even “stupid” too strong?  I believe in humility and kindness, I really do, but sometimes it is difficult.

No More Bullshit

Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Politics & Religion, The Sleep of Reason

 

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.