Tuesday, May 09, 2023

It Was Never About A Virus

No matter how much you beat a dead horse, it's still dead:

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As punishment for donating $50 to the Freedom Convoy, a Windsor police officer will have to work unpaid hours after being previously convicted of discreditable conduct.
Const. Michael Brisco, who donated to the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa through GiveSendGo on Feb. 7, 2022, was on unpaid leave at the time because he didn’t meet Windsor Police Service’s (WPS) COVID-19 vaccination policy.
Brisco’s donation was made anonymously, but after GiveSendGo was hacked in February 2022, his name was found in a database of Freedom Convoy donors and made public.
At a penalty hearing on May 4, Windsor police lawyer David Amyot said that while Brisco’s donation was made from the “comfort of his home” when he was off duty, the action “carried significant, reprehensible repercussions” and brought the Windsor Police Service into “disrepute.”
During the hearing, lawyers submitted two different requests for the number of penalty hours Brisco would have to work. Defence lawyer Shane Miles asked for 40 hours, while Amyott requested a penalty of 140 hours.
“The public must be shown that the Windsor Police Service does not condone this behaviour,” Amyot said.
Brisco’s lawyer said the prosecution’s proposed penalty was “extreme” and reserved only for the worst offenders in the worst circumstances,” such as an officer convicted of excessive use of force.

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UCP Leader Danielle Smith apologized Monday after a video surfaced in which she compares Albertans vaccinated against COVID-19 with supporters of Nazi Germany.

 

But it's true:

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“Unvaccinated COVID patients do not deserve ICU beds.”

“I have no empathy left for the willfully unvaccinated. Let them die.”

In the no-holds barred world of Twitter, comments like these, where the vaccinated say the unvaccinated deserve what they get, are becoming increasingly common. But even in the minds of people on the street, these sentiments are swirling in collective thoughts as the fourth wave of infections intensifies and vaccination rates plateau.

According to a recent Angus Reid poll most vaccinated Canadians are indifferent to the unvaccinated getting sick with the virus, with 83 per cent saying they have no sympathy for those who choose not to get the COVID-19 vaccine and then fall ill. Anecdotally, patience is even wearing thin among health-care professionals.

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Vaccinated majorities in wealthy western countries are growing increasingly impatient with a science-denying minority being blamed for prolonging the pandemic and stretching critical care resources to the breaking point.

Governments are responding to that anger by turning up the heat on the unvaccinated with policies intended to inconvenience them, curtail their social lives, drive them out of the public square, make them pay or even criminalize them — measures Ravitsky said are "politically meant to appease the vaccinated majority."

Quebec plans to impose a financial penalty on unvaccinated people who don't have medical exemptions.

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With people in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley having to pause all social gatherings outside of their immediate households, many in the public are questioning how the latest COVID-19 rules will be enforced.

During a public health emergency under the Public Health Act, orders can be enforced by police or other compliance and enforcement officials. People who don’t follow the order could be fined.

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We have to put these fights aside and declare a pandemic amnesty. We can leave out the willful purveyors of actual misinformation while forgiving the hard calls that people had no choice but to make with imperfect knowledge. Los Angeles County closed its beaches in summer 2020. Ex post facto, this makes no more sense than my family’s masked hiking trips. But we need to learn from our mistakes and then let them go. We need to forgive the attacks, too. Because I thought schools should reopen and argued that kids as a group were not at high risk, I was called a “teacher killer” and a “génocidaire.” It wasn’t pleasant, but feelings were high. And I certainly don’t need to dissect and rehash that time for the rest of my days.

 

Oh, I think that you do. 

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Lubyanka at least had an air of dignified menace about it:

A former Niagara-area town councillor is facing multiple criminal charges in connection with his alleged involvement with the convoy protests in Ottawa last year, police say.

Harold Jonker turned himself in at a police station in Grimsby on April 29 and was charged with two counts of counselling an uncommitted indictable offence and one count each of mischief/obstruct property and intimidation by blocking or obstructing a highway, a spokesperson for Niagara Regional Police says.

He was subsequently released on an undertaking and is scheduled to appear in court in Ottawa on May 10.

 

 

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