I have tried to be more moderate in my condemnation of my fellow citizens of southern Manitoba. But sometimes that is very hard.

 I have been writing about how distrust in government and its institutions can lead to serious harms, but what happens when distrust curdles into animosity?

When it comes to Covid-19 there really should not be any more surprises in the Southern Health District of Manitoba (where I live). If someone had written a novel with these facts it would have been dismissed as too ludicrous to be believable. The Winnipeg Free Press has reported that Dr. Donna Neufeld of Winker (no relation) said in her region of the district people gathered to set fire to boxes of KN95 masks the province was freely giving out to anyone who wanted them. These masks were in such high demand because we had been told they were the best and with the Omicron variant  we should use the best.  Even though others (like me) were anxious to get such masks, these people gathered like a cult and had a mask burning party.

The  masks  were in such high demand that the province quickly ran out of them. as a result, some of the citizens there decided to burn them so no one could use them. This was an act of much more than vandalism. It puts lives of others deliberately at risk. Dr. Neufeld also told the reporter about a person who smuggled Ivermectin (horse and cow de-wormer) into the hospital so it could be given secretly to a Covid-19 patient by someone who thought they knew a lot more about medicine than the medical team, presumably by virtue of conducting extensive “research” on line. Why bother going to medical school for 7 years training when a couple of hours on the internet will give you all the knowledge you need?  This of course was doubly dangerous, because doctors prescribing medications of course need to know what other drugs their patients take.  Little wonder that the medical community in Winkler has felt a “collective angst,” according to Dr. Neufeld. Wouldn’t you feel that if you lived here?

Of course, Southern Manitoba does not have exclusive rights to crazies. I heard recently that in the US people who are vaccine hesitant have been willing to replace Vaccines with urine. I kid you not. I am sure the Internet researchers will soon be advising the Pee brains of Winkler to drink that instead of injecting vaccines.

I have been preaching that the sleep of reason brings forth monsters, as Goya said. Does anyone disagree? Sometimes I think that someone raised the northern seaboard and all the nuts and bolts rolled down to southern Manitoba. What a place to live.