I began writing this as soon as I finished with a zoom-in with the Zero Covid Canada Network. It was a very interesting experience. At times I thought my head was going to explode due to information overload.
In my own previous writings, I have noticed that there seems to be three sides to this struggle. You can read it here. There are the anti vaxxers, the ‘use the crisis’ people, and the public health scientists.
The antivaxxers are agents for right wing business interests who see any concession to the covid reality as harming their interests. The Public Health Scientists are doing what they are trained to do; protecting public health. It was their zoom room. They talked much more about the third force in this conflict.
The zero covid committee have come to pretty much the same conclusion as I have by a different path. They call this third force; “the people who just buy the government advice.” Their front line understanding of this conflict is enlightening.
They really do see themselves as being in full conflict with this force. They generally agree that all these incompetent administrators see them as their main rival, not the antis. The government side sees them as being as bad as Q-anon.
The Zero Covid people really resent this. Keep in mind that these are very well educated, qualified, experienced people. They know they are much less numerous than the antivax crowd, a small group trying to get scientific fact through to people.
People are often afraid to support them out of fear of being called ‘conspiracy theorists’. They get called ‘Alarmists’. But the alarmists have been consistently right about covid and they challenge people who are consistently wrong.
The zero covids remain somewhat puzzled by the ‘mother knows best’ crowd; another name they use. It is like a network that goes right up to World Health Organization. They are dedicated to controlling how covid is responded to all over the world.
Far from being conspiracy theorists they seem to have never got to something which conspiracy factualists like me have noticed. That is, the not so well hidden hand of Big Pharma, which provides WHO with most of its budget. There seems to be an effort to control the health care system from WHO headquarters down to the nurses on the ward, in the interests of the medical industrial complex.
Their theory about this incompetence is that it is a simple inability to admit mistakes. They think a fear of litigation may be behind this. As well, there is an inability to discard out of date ideas.
Principal among these out of date ideas are the six feet distance rule. Also the limited capacity rule. Travel bans are also long known to be useless.
The biggest thing frustrating the Zero Covid people is the refusal to acknowledge that covid is an airborne disease. That is, it circulates through the air like smoke. It is not carried on surfaces and does not project in droplets from people’s mouths to land nearby.
Thus, all the hand washing and surface cleaning have been useless. The chemicals used in these ritualistic performances can themselves harm health. Plexiglas barriers are useless and may even cause harm if they effect air flow the wrong way.
This anti airborne obsession directs efforts away from what is actually needed. People are wearing the wrong type of masks, open sided surgical masks, not sealed respirators. Attention is not paid to air circulation and filtration.
Lately, the ‘knows best’ crowd has admitted that covid is airborne. Yet they are quiet about it. They are not announcing it forcefully enough that people hear it and alter their behaviour.
The zero covids are frustrated that because of all this nonsense, people do not have the right information. Governments have unloaded tons of the wrong kinds of protective equipment, especially surgical masks, to vulnerable people. People get the bad message that they are okay cause the government gave it to them.
They are frustrated with the irresponsibility in hospital administrations. People visiting hospitals get told to take off good masks and put on the wrong masks. People have contracted covid in hospitals when they came for something else.
Some of the covid zeros agree that sympathetic people in key positions, especially hospitals administrations, and especially ones who have done some tweeting of their own about the problems, seem to disappear from their jobs. Unions seem to be totally useless at protecting such whistleblowers.
They had numerous anecdotes about corruption and incompetence in their own parts of Canada. A Quebec government minister refused to approve rapid testing, but has boxes of test kits at her home for her own parties. The BC Medical officer of health is cited as being particularly out of contact with reality, and the press will not call her out.
Huge amounts of equipment sits around unused. Vast quantities of Rapid Antigen Test kits, bought by the federal government at a steep premium, sit because provincial governments will not distribute them. About one hundred thousand elastomer respirators, which are reusable and intended to give hospital workers an alternative to surgical masks, were never distributed.
Canadian providers of equipment are shutting down because Governments will not buy their products, preferring to buy overseas. Quebec and Alberta are exceptions to this, wanting equipment made locally, apparently on the idea they are different and exceptional. There were some snide remarks that they also seem to have the idea they are living in a different pandemic, that biology works differently for them.
Most of this could be fixed by a stroke of a pen. Trudeau is a coward.
They are also unimpressed by the NDP. One described his frustrating attempts to get Jagmeet Singh and friends to bring something up in parliament. After going around in a circle for awhile, he was finally told “Well, nobody spoke up about it.”
Some are encouraged that the federal conservatives are starting to take this up. However, it was noted that the CPC is in a fragile state right now.
But mostly, they just keep telling politicians what needs to be done, and finding them unable to do it because they would have to admit having been wrong. For example, Trudeau and his family still run around in cloth masks, even though they must know by now.
The powerful know what to do, but will not do it. Perhaps at some point they will decide they want to get off the roller coaster. But oh, we can’t cancel Christmas!
The zero covid warriors eventually unburdened themselves about the toll the cause was taking on their own lives. They have had to reduce their circle of friends. They have learned that they need to get understandings from people before talking with them, making sure about how they will react.
It is also impossible for them to really protect themselves. It was made very clear that it is not the antivax whacks whose freedom is being restricted by covid. It is the people who know the danger who are forced to exclude themselves.
So now Omicron is coming on. There was contempt and indignation with the pronouncements of WHO about it. How does WHO say they have no data about the transmissibility of Omicron, but they have data on its supposed ‘mildness’.
Yes, covid will still kill people, cause long term and permanent damage to them, and blow out ICUs, but it will do it more ‘mildly’ from now on.
One zero covid trooper noted that Omicron will be a big downer for people who had the idea of letting themselves be infected with the Delta variant, so they could be immune. But now comes Omicron, which can put them through it all over again. So what was the point to deliberately getting Delta? So much for ‘herd immunity’.
The truth remains, that covid cannot be ‘lived with’. It will come in wave after wave, it will keep getting worse, it will keep reinfecting, until governments get serious about eradicating it. The zero covid people will finally have to be listened to.
In fact, I think these are the kind of people who should have been in charge all along. They are intelligent, well educated, and non arrogant. It is wonderful to hear peel with really good minds conversing.
I think these are the people who will eventually have to be put in charge of anticovid measures.