The End of the Beginning?

by Maj (ret'd) CORNELIU E. CHISU, CD, PMSC, FEC, CET, P. Eng. Former Member of Parliament Pickering-Scarborough East We all remember the not so distant January of 2020 when the Covid pandemic started. At the beginning it was not taken seriously, some experts stating that it would not reach Canada from China. After listening to a lot of (pseudo-)"science" and a lot of "expert" advice, here we are in January 2022 with the Omicron taking charge. Despite assurances that vaccinations will stop the pandemic, it seems that Omicron is defying the science gurus and running its course. If we recall the Spanish flu pandemic, it seems that our scientists and politicians have not learned anything at all. Let's remind them about the stages of the Spanish flu which attacked our ancestors more than a hundred years ago. The pandemic is conventionally marked as having begun on 4 March 1918 in the United States, despite there having been cases as early as January 1918. By 11 March 1918, the virus had spread widely in the United States. Failure to take preventive measures in March/April was later criticized. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared officially the pandemic on 11 March 2020. Does that sound familiar today? The first wave of the flu lasted during the first quarter of 1918 and was relatively mild. The second wave began in the second half of August 1918. The second wave of the 1918 pandemic was much more deadly than the first. The first wave had resembled typical flu epidemics; those most at risk were the sick and elderly, while younger, healthier people recovered easily. October 1918 was the month with the highest fatality rate of the whole pandemic. In January 1919, a third wave of the flu hit and we must presume that there were two sub waves; one in the spring and one in the fall. By 1920 the last wave and the virus that caused the pandemic had become much less deadly and caused only ordinary seasonal flu, practically dying out. A hundred years later we see a very similar pattern in the course of the Covid-19 with of all its variants, and Omicron the most transmissible but less dangerous than the previous variants. So, by the historic example of Spanish flu, will this be the end of our modern pandemic? The question is, at least for Canada; where was the medical establishment and the political leadership on this issue? Did they learn anything from the past? And if not, why not? Who takes responsibility for the deadly mistakes which could have been avoided with a little common sense? But let's continue to scrutinize what is going on right now, under our own eyes. Canada has lost sight of the true size of its pandemic, with the number of people infected with COVID-19 now a mystery, as the highly infectious Omicron variant overwhelms testing capacity across the country. The distribution of personal rapid test kits on a large scale, when the labs are unable to conduct real time PCR confirmatory tests is frustrating many Canadians. Handing out the rapid tests to people may have provided politically advantageous photo ops, but proved useless in the monitoring of Omicron with haphazard access to confirmatory testing. As the disarray in the corrupted data used by medical experts for modelling comes to light, the public can't help but wonder where the truth lies…..Who is to be believed anymore?? When stark admissions of overwhelm and helplessness by our so-called experts and leaders clog mainstream media reports. "We aren't able to test the majority of people anymore who are symptomatic. We stopped testing those who have been exposed. We have significantly reduced any type of asymptomatic testing," said Dr. Dominik Mertz, an infectious diseases physician and associate professor of medicine at Hamilton's McMaster University. "The case numbers become even more meaningless." So then how do we track the impact Omicron is having across Canada? And how will we know whether public health restrictions are working if officials aren't collecting accurate data? What a great mess those well paid experts and officials are stirring. Who cares about real people, their livelihood and their families? As to the vaccines... People obeyed the rules and got vaccinated to avoid viral contamination and/or spreading the virus. Now a new preprint study from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) in Toronto, which has not yet been peer reviewed, found two doses do not provide adequate prevention against Omicron infection and three doses were just 37 per cent effective - but the vaccines still protected well against hospitalizations. Is it fair to punish the few left unvaccinated when Omicron seems not to discriminate? and politicians are very sensitive at the word discrimination. What about the vaccine passports? Are they significant anymore? Are they used to control people, as a kind of carding? Is the establishment continuing to monitor people's movement by their cell phones? Is the collection of metadata about people to control their lives is now accepted by the privacy gurus in the name of the 'collective interest' and salvation from evil? Still putting 'hospital capacity' first in trying to justify their draconian measures, after two years of doing nothing to increase that capacity, the political leadership needs to rethink its priorities. The focus should be on developing effective treatments, putting people first. Omicron seems to be giving a harsh lesson to both the medical and the political establishments and maybe it is a time for radical change. In the end, the only optimistic evaluation is that Omicron will end by itself, but the budget is still left for working Canadians to balance, and it will be painful. Remember, the budget will not balance itself. Let's hope for the best in 2022 and judge for yourself!