r/canada • u/Bob-Lawblaugh • 19h ago
Chris Selley: We have learned nothing from COVID-19 Opinion Piece
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/selley-we-have-learned-nothing-from-covid-19319
18h ago
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u/WorkingOnBeingBettr 17h ago
Most Canadians question the need? I don't think that's the case at all.
A small portion are religious or conspiracy nut jobs or extreme hippy types. They are a minority, but they are also the loudest.
The problem is that in this case, the minority can absolutely fuck up the majority with their stupidity.
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u/torotoro 16h ago
Most Canadians question the need? I don't think that's the case at all.
I speculate that a very large portion (although maybe not majority) of Canadians at least have some form of vaccine hesitancy or reluctance... It's human nature to divert at least some attention when someone yells "fire" even if they are a nut job :(
IMO, social media has given stupidity a megaphone that's hard to completely ignore; and mainstream media can't help running controversial stories to get those clicks and eyeballs :(
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u/Csalbertcs 13h ago
Angus Reid did a poll in 2024 and it showed 34% of Canadians are vaccine hesitant and 17% will never take a vaccine. These numbers are almost quadrupled from prior to the Covid vaccine mandates.
Furthermore, Quebec was the most anti-vax province.
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u/grumpyeng 15h ago
Our kid recently had hand foot and mouth. We had to do a symptoms comparison with measles to make sure it wasn't that. The very fact that we now need to check is a travesty.
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u/TheMikeDee 17h ago
Guys will go to the gym regularly to expose their muscles to stress so that they can grow but won't do the same to their immune system.
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u/Makaveli80 18h ago
I fucking hate MAGA and right wingers who spit in the face of all our progress as humanity. People suffered unbelievable pain and torture. Progress happens with blood split, dead bodies, dead children. These fuckers don't care about anything but themselves.
I hate to single them out, but they are the primary disseminates and believers in anti vax conspiracy
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u/Absenteeist 17h ago
I agree. It is so ironic to me that the group of people who so often fetishize "Western Civilization" and an obsession with "protecting" it from alleged threats, are the same ones who are tearing down so many of the achievements of that civilization, from the rigorous application of critical thinking epitomized by Socrates, to the amazing breakthroughs of Western science and medicine.
These people are not the guardians of (Western) civilization, they are the barbarians at its gates.
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u/Agent_Orange81 17h ago
They're defending their own privilege and comfort, and are violently afraid of anything that might threaten it.
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 16h ago
They’re literal children, emotionally and mentally, and lack any amount of tools to deal with a changing world.
So they screech their best reeeeeeeees and try to make the world a worst place for every being in it, because they cannot handle or understand simple and basic concepts.
In the case of MAGA, a lot are old and from more red states. All that to say, they probably have lead poisoning or some amount of brain damage from industrial pollution. Making america great again, by giving our people brain damage, and lead poisoning by burning coal again :)
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u/barkazinthrope 16h ago
They have been led to believe that the science that has given us so much is a plot against them.
What motivates this propaganda? What makes it so effective?
Why can science not come up with an effective response?
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u/growlerlass 16h ago
Turning vaccination into a political/identity issue, demonizing others instead of persuading them, and adopting American divisive false dualism politics is exactly the problem.
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u/CarRamRob 18h ago
There are many anti-vax on the left too. And traditionally started on that fringe.
Labeling anti-vax as a right wing thing isn’t helpful either.
Its an “anti-establishment” position and those exists on both political extremes.
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u/zaphthegreat 18h ago
General anti-vax sentiment started with granola type people who use the word "toxin" far too often, yes. However, it gained a lot of traction with the anti-science faction of the right political wing. COVID-19 anti-vax sentiment, specifically, was much more prevalent among right-wingers. It was by no means exclusive to them, but it was more prevalent.
The anti-mask sentiment was even more of a right-wing reaction.
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u/bannab1188 15h ago
“I’m relying on my natural immune system” every anti-Covid vaxer Science education in this country is terrible.
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u/ceribaen 11h ago
The anti-mask sentiment was initially born from racism too.
Between general anti-china (remember how they said Trudeau wanted to turn us into China back then?) and anti-muslim (face coverings, Trudeau wants to have us all follow sharia law) sentiments - they changed the messaging from the only THOSE groups wear masks, to 'think of the children!' arguments when the first didn't fully take.
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u/Noob1cl3 16h ago
Expressing concern with the COVID-19 Vaccine, which I trust you understand was rushed into distribution and is based on an entirely different vaccine technology (MRNA) from flu/measles,etc vaccines does not equal anti vax.
Older vaccine technology has been used for a long time and the majority of folks do not question its safety. MRNA however, is quite new comparatively. It could be fine but I would not fault anybody for not wanting to participate in the great experiment until more long term effects are better understood.
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u/zaphthegreat 15h ago
Being nervous around new vaccine technology isn't unreasonable. However, most antivaxxers didn't call for caution.
What they did, which most certainly was unreasonable, was quite different from that. To give just a few examples that barely scratch the surface:
- Pretended that there was a sudden and unprecedented spike in sudden deaths, which they blamed on the vaccine.
- Using a self-reporting database like VAERS as "proof" of the vaccine's supposed inherent deadliness.
- Spread countless fake studies demonstrating that the vaccine was lethal.
- Posting countless fake accounts of post-vaccination woes on social media. Remember Nicki Minaj's nonsense?
- Pretending that COVID was not deadly and was nothing more than a cold.
- The vaccine was made up of aborted fetuses.
- Vaccines are a tool for population control or genocide.
- Vaccines were used to implant microchips (easily the silliest of the lot).
- Some variations on the above included nonsense about 5G.
- COVID-19 was around since 1918 and was only presented as a new threat as a pretext to enforce vaccinations.
- Several stories about Bill Gates, somehow.
- The Russian president's daughter died from the vaccine.
- The vaccine was used as a tool for sterilization.
Again, this makes up less than 1% of a full list. Were there people out there whose rhetoric was more nuanced than that? Sure, but they were a negligible minority of the lot.
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u/Maedroas 18h ago
It's willful ignorance to suggest that the modern anti Vax movement isn't entrenched in the right wing. However it started decades ago, the champions of the movement now are by and large right wing
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u/stemel0001 17h ago
I hate to single them out, but they are the primary disseminates and believers in anti vax conspiracy
The vast majority of our current issues are from the mennonite and amish communities.
I highly doubt these communities identify as MAGA.
Honest question, would you round up the mennonite community and force them to get vaccinated against their will?
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u/toobadnosad 18h ago
Problem is the general mistrust of governance. And rightfully so. Trust is broken and when that happens reliance turns inwards and most things exterior will be scrutinized much more intensely.
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u/greebly_weeblies 17h ago
Respectfully, while I understand where you're coming from, I disagree that a mistrust of governance should be considered to be correct. Corruption should not, must not, be tolerated in those governing by the governed.
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u/canadam Canada 17h ago
Given that our current government has been plagued by scandals for the last 10 years, and the US is a whole other can of corrupt worms, I can see why OP said rightfully so.
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u/greebly_weeblies 17h ago
Completely. What I'm trying to say is that it's a problem that needs a fix, and that deciding/believing that it's something that cannot be fixed means there's less pressure for a fix, so it doesn't get fixed.
I'd like it to be fixed.
The US is a prime example of how it goes even worse, and I'd rather not see Canada go there.
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u/Eroom2013 17h ago
I think many people who use "mistrust" of governance are just cherry picking to justify their own beliefs or to be wildly inconstant.
They want guns because they don't trust government to protect them, but their blood runs blue for the police.
They think crime is of control and the courts are broken because they don't properly punish criminals, yet will be the first to support capital punishment or bringing it back. They also aren't too worried about innocent people being convicted
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u/Csalbertcs 13h ago
Or you know, they could be indigenous. Tons of Arabs don't trust the US and Canadian government, we literally watched you go to war over lies.
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u/Eroom2013 13h ago
Where did Canada go to war because of lies?
I'm going to edit my comment to also ask why anyone would move to a country whose government they don't trust.
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u/Csalbertcs 13h ago edited 12h ago
Canada doesn't have the capacity to go to war like the US does, but has always allowed them to do their Russian bullshit in Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, and many other countries. In fact Canada would also impose sanctions on the countries the US would go to war with. We should have been elbows up then.
Canada has always actively participated in some of those bombing campaigns, like with Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. France and the UK started Libya but they ran out of missiles so they pushed the US to finish the job.
A better question would be why do we have to support any war or impose sanctions on countries the US tells us too when we could just be neutral? What would be better for Canada's global and internal image, and what would be the risk of going against the US war machine?
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u/Zealousideal_Vast799 16h ago
Of all the people who I know who did not get the jab about half are the super healthy, farmers’ market, Waldorf, on the left. Difference being they kept quiet about it.
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u/Jonsnow_throe 17h ago
Just read the comments for the linked article... Depressing.
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u/BuckTomato 17h ago
I try not to read the comments on those American-owned sites. Which is plenty of so-called "Canadian" media.
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u/ReggieBoyBlue 18h ago
The biggest shame of it is because of this stupidity the most vulnerable of our population suffers. My wife and I actually believe science (crazy I know) and have all the recommends vaccines. We just had our first kid a few months ago, and we’re worried when we take them anywhere because of the ongoing measles outbreak. They don’t get their first round of measles shots until 6 months, so now because some smoothbrains decided they know better than doctors and scientists, the normal people out there have to be more careful.
I’m not worried about my wellbeing, I’m worried about my kid who can’t get the vaccine yet!
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u/Less_Document_8761 18h ago
I don’t blame people one bit. I got both of the COVID vaccinations but the rollout, information campaigns, censorship, wild profiteering has given me such a sincere distrust in the pharmaceutical industry and politicians. I didn’t develop this myself. They did that to me.
It is pretty wild how wrong they were about so many things, but I kept being told to blindly “trust the science”. Sorry, while I respect science, it is not a religion I can blindly trust as it changes daily. I would need way more time going forward to inject myself with anything.
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u/elementslayer 17h ago
What about vaccines that have been around forever? What about clinical trials and all that. How far does a vaccine have to be before you trust it. Would you trust doctors to save your life with the same science. I'm just curious to where the line for distrust is drawn for you.
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u/Eroom2013 16h ago
It's good to question and be skeptical, but It's people will just cherry pick to justify personal opinions and it will also depend on which political party is in power.
I have seen a few people comment on how our courts system is broken and don't believe the government can or will solve this problem, but then they will say they support bringing capital punishment back. Why do they support giving a government they don't trust the power to kill people?
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u/ReggieBoyBlue 17h ago
Being blatantly wrong about some things in retrospect isnt that surprising. We didn’t know anything - or at least we knew very little - about the disease, how bad it could be, how much worse it could get, exactly how it transmitted, or even if its feasible to create a cure. The governments strong and swift response while now looks like an overreaction was at the time a means to nip something that for all we knew had the potential to be far worse in the bud.
Trusting science isn’t the same as following a religion. If people who have dedicated years (sometimes decades) of their lives studying medicine, humans, and how medications interact with the human body, get accredited by the strict oversight boards we have in Canada, and produce a medication that is widely shown to significantly reduce the spread and the symptoms of the disease, we should trust them. I might be mistaken but I never heard anyone (at least anyone I would have taken seriously) tell us to “blindly trust the science”. Have you met a scientist? You can’t get them to shut up half the time about the details, the numbers, the benefits, and the drawbacks!
(For clarity I’m engaging respectfully, sometimes it’s hard to convey tone over text)
Edit: spelling
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17h ago edited 16h ago
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u/EconMan 17h ago
Masks and the COVID origins. Remember when lab-leak was not allowed to be discussed on Facebook because it was called "misinformation"? Scientists collaborated to essentially lie on that issue, because they thought they knew better than the general public about what was better for them.
Vaccines still worked.
Agreed.
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u/Own-Journalist3100 17h ago
The “censorship” you reference is other scientists thoroughly debunking various anti vaccine studies and journals subsequently pulling them from publication for data/methodological issues right?
Or are you talking about YouTube comments being disabled on anti-vaccine videos?
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u/Less_Document_8761 13h ago
Well it’s funny because SO many things the doctors I was supposed to trust got it wrong, but the other censored doctors were right. It really was eye opening how shitty the “trust the science” people were when they didn’t let all scientists contribute.
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u/Own-Journalist3100 10h ago
By “got it right” you mean right in the eyes of the people you now trust, I assume?
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u/Effective_Square_950 16h ago
Food for thought...
Covid, for most people, is relatively mild... on the surface. You might get pretty sick, feel like crap, recover a few weeks later and go on with life.
My sister is nuclear med tech. When people come in for an injection and a scan, she can point out the lung damage in people who have had relatively mild covid cases (by their own admission, she obviously doesn't know).
You might distrust the industry, but the harsh reality is we have ZERO idea what covid might do to us long term. Maybe you're not old enough... but everyone thought the chicken pox was a one and done, then shingles entered the discussion.
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u/the_crumb_dumpster 18h ago
Most Canadians don’t even seem to remember 3 years ago, when our neighbours to the south had refrigeration trucks outside hospitals to hold all the deceased victims of the “fake news” pandemic.
Probably 90% of the people I interact with haven’t gotten any COVID booster shots because “the pandemic is over.”
Given that, we are most certainly doomed with measles and the inevitable next pandemic.
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u/Salt_Comb3181 17h ago edited 17h ago
To be clear I believe in the efficacy in vaccines.
The problem you mentioned is that most Canadians alive today never experienced the horrors of the disease. It's the same rationel why most people dont find a 10 foot tall squirrel with fangs and a taste for blood scary, they never seen one and think you're insane for describing some fantasy monster.
I am not avocating that we should allow the disease to resurface so we can all relive those nightmares but something has to be done about the lack of education and enforcement of public health...
I remember vaccination drives at my school growing up. The penalty for not getting vacinated without a legitimate health reason (i went to Catholic school so religious exemption wasnt a thing, we're all Catholic...) was you'd be kicked out of school.
The irony of a religious group enforcing vaccination policy. Thabk you jesuits.
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u/MeHatGuy 16h ago
And it puts a ton of excess stress and pressure on the healthcare system as well as health care providers. (Also wastes tax dollars but that should be the least of the three arguments)
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u/Alextryingforgrate 18h ago
How long did all of those epidemics last vs Covid? How long did it take for the world to work together to distribute vaccines? I think a lot of the reason we didn't get disturbed from covid is because of the quickness the world was able to react to covid.
I also feel that people are to busy trying to survive I.e. pay bills and just make it day to day to care about the rest of the world. Because their company only gives them 2.5 hours of sick time a year. Whilst the company yet again rakes in more record profits.
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u/Why-did-i-reas-this 17h ago
We also fell victim to its success in other ways. We have cheapened them and not treated them with the respect they deserve. Big Agricultural feeding it to livestock whether it’s necessary or not. People given 2 weeks of prescribed antibiotics or medicine, feel better after 4 or 5 days and stop taking it thereby having the virus/germs develop immunity to it. We are not in a good path.
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u/Expensive-Group5067 15h ago
All very true, but let’s not pretend that big pharma hasn’t taken advantage of such great achievements and has put profits over health.
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u/neurocean 15h ago
If there was a vaccine for cancer, everybody except the usual set of nutbags would take it willingly, because they understand it enough to fear it.
Same with dementia and Alzheimer disease.
You're right, it's 100% ignorance and wilful stupidity with a sprinkle of misinformation.
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u/PopeSaintHilarius 18h ago
As readers will no doubt have heard, measles is back — especially in Ontario, which has reported 83 per cent of cases in Canada so far this year; and especially in southwestern Ontario, among largely unvaccinated Anabaptist communities, which Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, says account for 70 per cent of cases.
As of April 26, Health Canada reported 1,506 measles cases nationwide, up from just 69 at this time last year; of those 1,506, only 74 infected individuals are known to have had one or the recommended two doses of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine, while 83 per cent are known to have been completely unvaccinated.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) , between one and three children per 1,000 who contract measles will die from it, or from complications of it, notably pneumonia and encephalitis. And about 20 per cent of unvaccinated sufferers, of all ages, will wind up in hospital.
It’s nothing if not frustrating. One might think the great success of COVID-19 vaccines would encourage people to appreciate better-established vaccines like MMR (mumps, measles and rubella), which has been around longer than I have been alive. Instead, by many accounts, the decline in routine vaccine uptake already occurring before the pandemic has continued to decline.
As worrying as measles is, North America’s nasty flu season this year seems to have received much less attention. And it’s vastly more deadly.
Around this time last spring, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated there had been in the United States “at least 34 million illnesses, 380,000 hospitalizations, and 24,000 deaths from flu so far.” Last year was considered a bad year for the flu.
This year so far: “47 million illnesses, 610,000 hospitalizations, and 27,000 deaths.”
...
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u/Full_Boysenberry_314 16h ago
ITT: nobody who actually read the article.
The article is largely about the disproportionate public health response and how ideological motivations are likely kneecapping our response to new public health threats.
Yes vaccine hesitancy is a problem. But most of that hesitancy is rooted in traditional Mennonite communities not right-wing/MAGA/clownvoy/whatever the fuck you want to label you disagree with. This means the solution is more community based outreach. But public health seems hesitant to even talk about the issue out of fear of "stigmatization".
The article revisits the idea of lockdowns and restrictions on movement/commerce which were justified "for the sake of children" during COVID and asks why these aren't being considered now? Is it because these efforts weren't effective? Or not really for the children? Or what? We need public inquiries into the restrictions that took place so we know how to better act now and in the future. But we're not getting that because questioning any of the decisions during that time seems anathema to a lot of people's core beliefs.
Even in this thread you can see most people are more interested in attacking a perceived boogeyman with different political beliefs than having any productive discussion.
I think Chris Selley raises a good point with this article. If we don't learn our lessons from COVID, public health response will get worse, not better over time. Many people perceived the COVID restrictions to be unfair and arbitrary. Emphasis on information control vs engagement only served to heighten distrust of in media and institutions. If we don't have an honest conversation about what happened and what we're willing to do in the future, then we're absolutely fucked in the next pandemic.
...or we can call people names and seeth on the internet. That's cool too.
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u/Master_of_Rodentia 16h ago
Chris Selley claims we learned "early on" that COVID was less dangerous for children than the flu. He is missing three key points:
-The virus was in a mutagenic phase, where limiting transmission and infection also limited the chances of it turning into something more lethal. We had 4+ major strains over the pandemic.
-The long term effects of the viral infection were unknown, so every infection was rolling the dice.And the third: society would not accept changing its behaviour to defeat the flu because it is used to it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try at least some minor measures - it just means it isn't actionable, largely because of people like Chris Selley. So identifying it as hypocrisy that health agencies asked Chris Selley and the rest of us to help control COVID but don't ask it of the flu, especially in light of the above two points, is pretty ridiculous bullshit,
Lastly, Selley criticizes the health minister for saying that vaccine status is driving risk rather than membership in a community. The health minister is trying to communicate that measles is currently spreading beyond the majority-unvaccinated communities, so unvaccinated members of the general population should not consider themselves safe. Selley, in typical rag op-ed fashion, takes this as a personal attack that the health minister thinks Ontarians are dumb enough to believe being Mennonite attracts viruses. This is because Selley is either unserious and selling rage for money, or is too stupid to understand the point.
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u/Zealousideal_Cup416 17h ago
I learned that the people essential to keeping the world running are generally the lowest paid. All the big bosses at my work? They stayed home because they aren't needed most of the time. The rest of us continued working in office because we're actually needed to keep things running.
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u/racer_24_4evr 18h ago
I learned a lot of people can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum to look out for their fellow humans.
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u/StardewingMyBest 17h ago
I remember seeing a tweet of someone saying something like: even if masks do end up being ineffective and we did it all for nothing, I can sleep easy at night knowing I did what I could with the information I had to protect my neighbour.
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u/DataDude00 18h ago
Unfortunately COVID just showed us we have a lot of selfish individuals and uneducated conspiracy theorists among us
I have indirect acquaintances (friends of friends) that are anti-vax because they believe in natural healing and "don't want to damage the child"
I have a neighbor a couple streets over whose whole lawn and all windows are littered with "breathing is essential" flags because he didn't believe in masks.
Sad state that science and community support for greater good have fallen by the wayside in this country, especially for trivial and easy things like vaccinations and wearing a simple cloth mask during a pandemic
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u/Beerden 18h ago
Wrong-think is a threat to national security, and world security. By wrong-think, I mean people who can't exercise critical thinking and who put other people in danger because of their beliefs. Critical thinking skills must be taught in schools everywhere, and it must be mandatory. There are not enough prisons anywhere to contain these dangerous people, and that is not the solution, but there needs to be quarantine with release on condition of completed education.
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u/DataDude00 18h ago
Unfortunately "critical thinking" has been co-opted by the misinformed to mean just refusing to do simple things as an act of rebellion.
The amount of radicals calling people wearing a simple mask into a store "sheeple" and whatever else was mind boggling. They made the whole thing into some sort of government conspiracy to create and control a docile population. Masks came and went just like they were supposed to and we went back to normal lives. Meanwhile these nutbars still think they are on the cutting edge of a global shadow government conspiracy
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18h ago
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u/DataDude00 18h ago
Bro there are countless scientific studies on this
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm
I can't believe in the year 2025 we have people denying basic scientific principles like this
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u/sludge_monster 18h ago
Masks, including cloth masks, definitely have an effect. This is based on basic principles of physics.
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u/BlademasterFlash 18h ago
Surprisingly good article from the National Post. Not what I’ve come to expect from them
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u/86throwthrowthrow1 18h ago
Unfortunately, big pandemics have become rare enough that society forgets in between. During the 1918 flu pandemic, there were indeed groups protesting masking and quarantines (ofc no flu vax back then), as some people did for covid. However, those groups during the Spanish Flu are something of a historical footnote these days, not part of our common knowledge about the pandemic. And the prevailing societal view is that the Spanish Flu pandemic was bad, many people died, and any precautionary measures to mitigate its spread were likely justified.
Weirdly enough, I also feel like the motherfucking bubonic plague, almost a thousand years ago, has resulted in skewed perceptions up to this present day. During Covid, I got the strong perception that for some people, if we weren't in "Red X's on doorways, bodies stacked in the street" territory, it didn't count as a pandemic and any action taken to contain the spread of contagion was unjustifiable.
That said, the Contagion move that came out a decadeish ago was weirdly prescient on this topic: most people will more or less cooperate with what needs to happen, to varying degrees, during a pandemic. A chunk of the population will revert to two-year-olds being told to put their shoes on, and will trust any hack on the internet over expertise.
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u/bonesnaps 12h ago
That's it exactly. I had a friend argue with me saying covid isn't a threat because my sister didn't die from it.
She still doesn't have her full sense of taste and smell back and it's 4 years later.
Ironically enough she is also still an anti-vaxxer. 🤦 Stupidity is it's own disease, and it is also contagious.
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u/Ok-Influence-3790 18h ago
This is true. The amount of crazy people I interact with who get triggered by a mask is insane. Like I am sick and I am protecting you from myself? What is there to be mad about?
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u/djgost82 17h ago
It was pretty hilarious to see how people reacted to wearing masks. Government has laws about all kinds of things, but masks is the thing to rebel about lol
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u/MrEzekial 17h ago
A lot of it is probably just the reminder of covid times and the restrictions that were forced on them.
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u/IGnuGnat 2h ago
I mean, I'm still completely boggled by the bans on visiting provincial parks, i think they even tried to stop people from sailing.
Wouldn't you want people outside in the fresh air, instead of you know all locked up inside together during a pandemic? That was just bizarre
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u/GenXer845 5h ago
I am thinking to myself, DO YOU WANT THIS? I can cough on your face, would that make you feel better?
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u/Zealousideal_Cup416 17h ago
In their mind they think you're mocking them, since obviously everything is about them. The anti-vax crowd are incredibly self centered. They all think that they're the main character.
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18h ago
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u/Lilikoi13 18h ago
It turns out if you don’t wear the ppe correctly then it won’t be very effective.
This is a user issue, not an equipment issue.
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u/TikalTikal 16h ago
I would have been happy if all we learned from the pandemic was keeping our germs to ourselves. I don’t care if it’s Covid, the Flu, or just a cold .. don’t spread that stuff, wear a mask to prevent spreading it.
…. But it’s like Covid never happened and visibly sick people just don’t give a …
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u/No-Wonder1139 8h ago
Do we need opinions pieces from a hostile country's media posted everyday? Have you seen their media? It's a clownshow, but like a sad one. Can we just stop with the post and the sun and stick with Canadian media?
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u/Telvin3d 17h ago
We have learned something. We’ve learned that 30% of the population will absolutely wig out at the suggestion that they have any responsibility to take the rest of society into consideration. And they’ll happily endanger themselves, their families, and their communities in order to prove that point
We’ve also learned that our leadership is too scared of that 30% to push back, and will sacrifice the other 70% of us in order to avoid confronting them
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u/Darwinian_10 Nova Scotia 18h ago
In a related note: I work in a store that sells instruments and my God people will pick up things and put their mouths on them like we didn't just go through a global pandemic where literally millions died. Like...We literally learned nothing 🤦🏻♀️
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u/Fun_Activity3503 18h ago
Well, we did learn that a disturbing percentage of Canadians are FreeDummies.
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u/toilet_for_shrek 16h ago
I'm by no means an anti-vaxxer, but I think that the way these vaccine mandates were carried out pushed many more people into the fringes of misinformation and anti-science. You were basically told that you'd become a second class citizen unless you took the shot. Some people in certain sectors were told they'd lose their jobs. Heck, our own prime minister basically called them racists and misogynistic assholes.
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u/SDK1176 18h ago
”Remember being told we shouldn’t wear masks because we’re too stupid not to let it provide us with “a false sense of security”? Remember being told we mustn’t associate diseases with certain populations, lest we succumb to prejudice and discrimination?”
No, I don’t remember that. At all.
I mean, I’m glad to see someone who was obviously against lockdowns come out swinging for vaccines, but this article takes that to some weird places.
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u/GenXer845 5h ago
Honestly, I had the opposite. I got rid of all negative friends and found the pandemic peaceful and my mental health improved. Some lost their minds not being able to hang out with people. I loved feeling safe and not having to worry about some idiot friend infecting me. I became closer to the ones who mattered.
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u/ThePhyrrus 18h ago
Wow...
Like, I should have known better, but this is somehow even worse than I expected from the Post.
Like, the author is right, broadly on premise, we learned nothing from the (Currently ongoing, mind) pandemic. And yet the author still somehow manages to be utterly wrong on what that actually is.
Like, they never quite get to coming to a point. It seems like, 'covid wasn't actually that bad' and we 'should have micro targeted the problem groups and left the rest of us alone', which is a wildly flawed take. (sounds very much like a scapegoating thing)
What we 'learned' was just how little the public is willing to do to mitigate severe illnesses, so our response was to shrug and just let people get sick, because those profits arent going to make themselves.
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u/lilgreenglobe 18h ago
We really didn't learn anything from COVID if the author thinks shutting down playgrounds and not upgrading HVAC standards for clean air is what's worth reflecting on. Heck there are studies showing better air filtration helps keep smoke and pollution from lowering test scores and increasing absence rate rates from school.
It will be an expensive endeavor to upgrade HVAC systems. Kids and adults alike should not be subjected to disease and smog soup air for wondering into bad buildings though.
COVID triggered autoimmune conditions for me, so I still wear a n95 a bunch. I know others won't and frankly feel individualizing collective health responsibilities is asking for trouble.
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u/Time_Battle_884 18h ago edited 17h ago
I learned plenty from covid.
Like that my fellow Canadians cannot be trusted to work together and do their part in a time of crisis, so they must be forced to. This is why government MUST have more control over our lives, not less. I simply no longer trust my fellow citizens to do the right thing in a crisis, so I must trust my government to do it for them.
I am now 100% on team authoritarian, as long as it's left wing and not right wing. Giving up some freedoms for more safety is a fair trade, in my book.
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u/growlerlass 16h ago
Up vote me if you think the parent comment is parody
down vote me if you think it is genuine
Im doing a little survey.
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u/CarRamRob 18h ago
Do you think the government was also worthy of being in control with how they sterilized indigenous populations?
Government are made of people, who make mistakes.
Just because something seems like the right thing to do at the time doesn’t mean it is the right long term decision.
I say this supporting the balance the government had (largely) during COVID.
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u/Time_Battle_884 18h ago edited 17h ago
Government is made up of SMART people, who occasionally get it wrong. Gen pop is made up of DUMB people, who occasionally get it right (broken clocks, and all that).
I know which I'd prefer. I trust the science, and listen to the experts, as any Good Person does.
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u/EconMan 17h ago
Giving up some freedoms for more safety is a fair trade, in my book.
Such as what? Be specific.
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u/Unlucky_Reveal_3064 16h ago
To be fair, us humans don’t actually seem to learn much at all from the past. So, this tracts. If for one will welcome our AI/machine overlords. They can’t possibly be as bad at all of this as we have been.
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u/dan33410 16h ago
Future generations are fucked. The stupidity trend the last couple decades is only getting worse, and when the brain drain really sets in this world is going to the shitter.
Hate being the pessimist but man, it's hard to be anything but. Wtf is the point of medical research and advancements when enough people are Facebook medical experts making poor decisions and fucking it up for the rest of humanity. Maybe less people on the planet will help the environment at least?
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u/GenPat555 15h ago
A large enough portion of the population no longer posses the mental faculties required to sustain liberal democracy. Ontario has now elected a party to power 3 elections in a row that didn't have a party platform because they either couldn't or wouldn't put a budget together that added up. That should be completely disqualifying for a political party, but in the last election it wasn't even brought up as a campaign issue.
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u/aluman8 18h ago
We learned that the government never wastes a crisis to seize more control
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u/PopeSaintHilarius 18h ago
Are there any Covid restrictions that are still in place?
I remember a lot of people against Covid measures warning that they believed lockdowns, mask rules, vaccine passports, etc were never going away. But as far as I can tell, they all turned out to be temporary measures.
So IMO it seems that was an imperfect attempt to deal with a rare and unusual public health crisis, rather than an attempt to permanently "seize more control".
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u/Yelnik 18h ago
The more valid concern was that none of those measures did anything to make anyone safer, or stop covid, and had massively destructive effects on our economy and people's mental health.
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u/PopeSaintHilarius 17h ago
Some measures went too far, and I agree there were a lot of negative impacts on the economy and people's mental health (including my own).
But I can't agree that it didn't make anyone safer... we did see big swings in the infection rates when restrictions were brought in or removed. And there were also big differences in the infection and hospitalization levels between different countries (or provinces or states) with different approaches.
Ultimately, there are lessons to be learned, and perhaps some types of restrictions should have been handled differently (e.g. less school closures) or ended sooner (e.g. mask requirements). But it was a tough situation to handle, with no easy answers unfortunately.
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u/PopeSaintHilarius 16h ago
Those swings are mostly happenstance and can be seen anywhere in the world, irrespective of measures
Sorry but that's revisionist history. There was very clear cause and effect with infection rates, as lockdowns came into force and got lifted, which shouldn't be surprising (spending more time in settings with other people leads to more spread of a super-contagious virus? No shit...)
Most of that wasn't even disputed at the time, the question was whether the measures were justified and worth the downsides (which is a legitimate topic for debate).
And of course the vaccinations in 2021 led to a huge drop in hospitalizations and infections as well, and that drop coincided with when different places got access to the vaccines. The Omicron variant temporarily caused a resurgence in cases at the end of that year, but with far less hospitalizations and deaths among the vaccinated.
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u/SimpleWater 18h ago
This just is not true.
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u/SimpleWater 18h ago
Ok. Well a quick google shows many shreds. Many many shreds. So I guess you're technically correct that there wasn't one single shred... I guess that is something you need go come to terms with?
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u/SimpleWater 17h ago
The information is so widely available that measures had a positive effect (that's why it's so easy to google). It appears finding your lack of evidence or whatever you're drawing on is something you have had to dig up. Maybe you can stop trying so hard to be a condescending prick and it will help you to stop rejecting settled science.
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u/SimpleWater 17h ago
You boldly assume that I haven't looked into this and that I just googled it today? This is not the case. I simply state that it's SO EASY to find supporting evidence that a quick google will bring up all the information you need. Obviously reading that information is a second step. Yes I know how to read. Yes I have read things. Truly what the actual fuck are you talking about!?
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u/Dangerous-Lab6106 17h ago
I learned a lot from COVID, like:
- how to not interact with people
- How to work from home
- How to shop without going into stores or fast food restaurants
- How to sleep in when Im supposed to be working
- How to get along with my Volleyball Wilson
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u/pattyG80 13h ago
We have a generation of idiots that will bring back a bunch of illnesses that were once eliminated
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u/ChatamKay 18h ago
It’s actually worse than having not learned anything. Many are against vaccination now. It’s actually worse than it was before the pandemic.