When the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, uses X—his 150-million-strong megaphone and one of just two dominant social-media platforms—to throw a “Sieg Heil”- style salute at a U.S. president who is a convicted felon and who has belittled Canada’s sovereignty, every Canadian policymaker and citizen should see the warning lights flash. Those theatrics are intents, and they are more than distasteful; they expose how profoundly Canadian public life is entangled with social-media systems designed, engineered, owned and ultimately governed by US oligarchs. The VAST (Virtual Access for Sovereign Technology) proposal offers a strategic path to reclaim Canada's digital sovereignty. This section details VAST's core objectives, its innovative features designed for public good, its collaborative governance model, and its ethical AI framework. VAST aims to be more than just a platform; it's envisioned as a foundational piece of Canada's digital public infrastructure, championing social democratic principles and offering a model for global AI democracy assistance.https://ohfilm.art/sovereigntechnology/
My cousin worked as a nurse during the Covid-19 pandemic in a hospital in Southern Alberta. She contracted Covid-19 twice during that service. But damnit, she'd pull herself together and got back to work working on the front lines of the pandemic.
She told me that one thing that she most looked forward to post-Covid-19 was never having to hold a tablet in front of a patient that her staff members were extubating, allowing the patient to say goodbye to their conference-call loved ones with their last breathes before they choked to death with ruined lungs.
Now newly retired, she and her husband by all reports are enjoying their retirement. She is one tough cookie and I will be in awe of her service as a Alberta Health care nurse.
The anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, history rewriters and political personal freedom sociopaths can fuck right off - I wish them nothing but chapped nipples from the ivermectin smeared across their chests, swigging their bleach water from sippy cups and may they joyfully keep inserting UV glowing buttplugs up their pig ignorant jacksies.
Shame some of their innocent spawn are going to get maimed or die from catching common vaccinated childhood infectious diseases - I don't applaud the deluded parents political health mythologies - I curse them for being negligent malignant stupid dopes.
This essay should be required reading for every new parent and every "wanna-be" parent.
Do not take our society that is / was mostly free from infectious disease, like measles, for granted. The reason that we were free from these diseases was constant vigilance. We must, constantly, guard against these diseases.
These viruses, infections, bacteria, never ever sleep. They are on the attack 24/7.
When one ignores this warning, all of society suffers.
A little late reading this article, but a short Covid story to share about my son.
He’s an ICU nurse up in Oregon. When it all hit, the providers were broken into teams. During 12 hour shifts they would rotate in and out of the Covid wing, all wearing bee suits ( hasmat). He never complained as he said he loves his job.
One night after a shift, he walked out into the staff parking lot and was followed by protestors to his car. He said they didn’t block the parking lot but some, slowly drove around just to slow things up.
He had never called me after work but that night he did. He said it’s the first time he ever questioned himself as to why he’s doing this. He settled down, though.
As a former spec Ed teacher for 25 years, I dealt with some of that shit from moronic parents, but after hearing that I was so pissed. Those little whiny assed bitches were the first to run to the ER once they caught Covid.
To the anti-vaxers, screw all of you. Please don’t run to the ER if you or your family aren’t vaccinated for preventative viruses.
And therein lies a Canadian dilemma. RN partner feels much as you do & I, bit of a policy wonk, struggle with how one articulates a governance regime wherein some get care and others don't based on "choices." Then I ponder "choice" and the impact of many different kinds of choices that impact our publicly funded system. We seem caught in an ever-widening chasm in which the guard rails are seen as barriers to freedom instead of means of safety. One can take that from obvious conundrums (preventative care) right down to the notion of requirements and standards (you must prove learning to get a grade, no you can't skim a website and pass it off as your own PhD work [tho that worked in today's climate for a senior exec]). The most nuanced and fraught extension might be the stigma about stigma wherein civility is lost to a child's right to feel good after doing something once described as wrong. Some slide into thinking that religiosity and authoritarianism is the answer, missing entirely that the current malaise is its own form of religiosity and authoritarianism. Are we at the cusp of finding a better way....or are we doomed to rinse and repeat, yet again?
Wow, I just burned one and tried reading through your post and sort of got lost. There’s always a dilemma in any argument. Working in the public school system all this time including home school kids in rural mountain areas of Northern California, I heard my share of beliefs and opinions. Always circular arguments so I bit my lip and stuck to academics.
However, I’ve been vaxed to the max including whatever the USAF pumped into me and I’m still kicking so I see it now as people can believe whatever they want. Thanks for the post.🙂
Bless you Heather, you've been through so much and still share your thoughtfulness with others. We Canadians have the most amazing country and health care in the world. Some shortcomings? Sure, it's not perfect, but it's saving lives every day. I'm immensely grateful.
Seeing many crippled children, I became terrified as a youngster that I, too, might contract polio. Everyone had that insensate terror around polio at one time; people were so helpless to do anything either to protect or to cure people!
"No," my mother was able to assure me. "YOU won't catch polio. YOU have been vaccinated. Those other children in braces, with criutches, with withered arms, in iron lungs ... They were born before the vaccine became available. But YOU are protected."
I have never forgotten the power of vaccines to make lives safer and better.
I did have measles, mumps and chicken pox; my sister had whooping cough (pertussis) - b/c we didn't have vaccines until decades after our childhood.
I agree BUT there are reasons the anti-science message is so popular in the US. Big Pharma (e.g. Johnson & Johnson https://newrepublic.com/article/194726/johnson-and-johnson-investigation-crimes-health-care-system) and big for-profit health care have had a large influence by eroding the American public's confidence in conventional medicine. Canadians are rightfully proud of our public health care system but will only remain so if we can maintain and improve the quality of our Medicare services. And let's not fool ourselves. The public pays most of big pharma's R&D costs with financial support for our publicly-funded universities. Big Pharma in Canada has to be reigned in through government regulations limiting the costs of pharmaceuticals and by the provision of government pharmacare. It is up to us as thoughtful Canadians not to fall for anti-science memes but to hold governments, medical industries and medical professionals to account.
Thanks Charlie! Best report I've seen on this whole mess. I'll be sharing widely. And just an FYI. The "Big Beautiful Bill" in Congress right now contains language to restrict Covid vaccines to people over 65yo and a few other conditions only if your DR says you need it. Here we go again.
Two things enrage me about the rise in preventable diseases:
First, the argument that currently living humans are the result of natural selection caused by millennia of surviving past disease outbreaks, and thus should be immune. Anyone who wants proof that this isn't so can go to any old cemetery, where they'll notice without much effort the large number of graves of children who died before the age of 5. They'll also note that these graves largely disappeared in the 1960s. (The precise year depends where you live, thus when vaccinations became commonly available.)
Second, most legal jurisdictions define a crime with a name similar to "criminal negligence causing death": basically, it's what happens when someone causes great harm that even a small effort to self-educate would have prevented. It seems to me that none of the many voices crying out that vaccines do more harm than good are, by ignoring the expert consensus, criminally negligent and criminally responsible to their disinformation and the deaths it causes. I've written to my MP to ask them to work towards implementing serious penalties for such crimes against humanity. At a minimum, they should be forced to admit their lies and deceptions publicly before the audiences they lied to. If you agree, write to your MP too, and ask your friends and family to join in.
Bonus third rage factor: The impact on citizens of developing countries is appalling when people like Trump destroy international agencies like USAID that provide vaccines internationally. The sheer evil of knowingly killing hundreds, thousands, or millions of these people boggles my mind.
This may sound cruel but lives are at stake here. I think if parents do not get their children or themselves vaccinated and they contact a preventable disease, they should have to pay the medical costs. If you do not want to follow the rules of a democratic society then pay the price. A society without rules is anarchy!!
I’m a Tuberculosis survivor! Born 1949 - first child. I ended up staying in a TB sanitarium in the Netherlands from the age of 14
months till I came out 16 months later. I read a book about a family that contracted the disease in Ontario in the early 40’s . 5 members had TB of which 2 died. One child spent 10 years in and out of a TB Hospital in Ottawa. It was located where the Royal Ottawa Hospital now stands. 1100 people alone in Ontario were infected with TB and in several TB hospitals in Ontario. Thank goodness a vaccine came out in the 50’s to basically eradicate the disease. However some cases still pop up now and again and we have further meds to help. I’m a big believer in vaccines!
My perceptions only; I don't expect others to agree with me. Along with the so-called, "American Exceptionalism" coupled with a lot of the self-serving tripe that they go on about down there, is their ongoing celebration of the individual, their 'pulling oneself up by the bootstraps' and 'triumphing over adversity.' Their whole cultural ethos minimizes group mindedness and collaboration. One can readily see this based on the manner in which countries who they demean as, "socialist" fared so much better during the pandemic. It also partially explains why they have yet to implement government funded, across the board, health care. Along with their superior attitude, in the context of other nations, they have a segment that is hyper superior. These are the right wing religious/political ideologues who will gladly embrace an Arch Felon who is intent on turning the clock back to a time and place where they ran the show. I would substitute Mr. Angus' word "complacency" in terms of vaccine reluctance with "arrogance" and/or "stupidity."
As my father put it, the American attitude is "Me first, and screw you." Except he used a 4 letter synonym for 'screw'. He was a US citizen at the time.
During the pandemic, in Canada we fared 2-1/2 times better than the USA, in terms of death rate. For all the reasons you mention.
I'm an American and I agree. This perfectly explains the current Republican party/MAGA and the oligarchs who've spent the last 40 years manipulating everything to get into control. They may be rich but they are lacking in common sense, intelligence and anything vaguely resembling the Christian religion most of them proclaim to follow. Both arrogance and stupidity are on full display on a daily basis!
If people want to reject vaccines on the basis of personal liberty and the right to their own (uninformed) opinion, then I wonder why they want post-infection medical treatment? Isn't medical science just as uppity about knowing what to do for disease as about knowing what to do to prevent it. Pick a lane, I want to say.
The sad part is it's the parents who are idiots and the children who pay the price. I remember measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. I had them all before the vaccines were available. Nobody should have to take those risks.
When the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, uses X—his 150-million-strong megaphone and one of just two dominant social-media platforms—to throw a “Sieg Heil”- style salute at a U.S. president who is a convicted felon and who has belittled Canada’s sovereignty, every Canadian policymaker and citizen should see the warning lights flash. Those theatrics are intents, and they are more than distasteful; they expose how profoundly Canadian public life is entangled with social-media systems designed, engineered, owned and ultimately governed by US oligarchs. The VAST (Virtual Access for Sovereign Technology) proposal offers a strategic path to reclaim Canada's digital sovereignty. This section details VAST's core objectives, its innovative features designed for public good, its collaborative governance model, and its ethical AI framework. VAST aims to be more than just a platform; it's envisioned as a foundational piece of Canada's digital public infrastructure, championing social democratic principles and offering a model for global AI democracy assistance.https://ohfilm.art/sovereigntechnology/
My cousin worked as a nurse during the Covid-19 pandemic in a hospital in Southern Alberta. She contracted Covid-19 twice during that service. But damnit, she'd pull herself together and got back to work working on the front lines of the pandemic.
She told me that one thing that she most looked forward to post-Covid-19 was never having to hold a tablet in front of a patient that her staff members were extubating, allowing the patient to say goodbye to their conference-call loved ones with their last breathes before they choked to death with ruined lungs.
Now newly retired, she and her husband by all reports are enjoying their retirement. She is one tough cookie and I will be in awe of her service as a Alberta Health care nurse.
The anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, history rewriters and political personal freedom sociopaths can fuck right off - I wish them nothing but chapped nipples from the ivermectin smeared across their chests, swigging their bleach water from sippy cups and may they joyfully keep inserting UV glowing buttplugs up their pig ignorant jacksies.
Shame some of their innocent spawn are going to get maimed or die from catching common vaccinated childhood infectious diseases - I don't applaud the deluded parents political health mythologies - I curse them for being negligent malignant stupid dopes.
I stood à long while meditating at thé grave of Camus. If you die before me Charlie, please be buried so I can do so at yours.
This essay should be required reading for every new parent and every "wanna-be" parent.
Do not take our society that is / was mostly free from infectious disease, like measles, for granted. The reason that we were free from these diseases was constant vigilance. We must, constantly, guard against these diseases.
These viruses, infections, bacteria, never ever sleep. They are on the attack 24/7.
When one ignores this warning, all of society suffers.
Thanks - great article - I must re-read The Plague (it must be fifty years since I did!)
A little late reading this article, but a short Covid story to share about my son.
He’s an ICU nurse up in Oregon. When it all hit, the providers were broken into teams. During 12 hour shifts they would rotate in and out of the Covid wing, all wearing bee suits ( hasmat). He never complained as he said he loves his job.
One night after a shift, he walked out into the staff parking lot and was followed by protestors to his car. He said they didn’t block the parking lot but some, slowly drove around just to slow things up.
He had never called me after work but that night he did. He said it’s the first time he ever questioned himself as to why he’s doing this. He settled down, though.
As a former spec Ed teacher for 25 years, I dealt with some of that shit from moronic parents, but after hearing that I was so pissed. Those little whiny assed bitches were the first to run to the ER once they caught Covid.
To the anti-vaxers, screw all of you. Please don’t run to the ER if you or your family aren’t vaccinated for preventative viruses.
Just die at home. Thank you.
And therein lies a Canadian dilemma. RN partner feels much as you do & I, bit of a policy wonk, struggle with how one articulates a governance regime wherein some get care and others don't based on "choices." Then I ponder "choice" and the impact of many different kinds of choices that impact our publicly funded system. We seem caught in an ever-widening chasm in which the guard rails are seen as barriers to freedom instead of means of safety. One can take that from obvious conundrums (preventative care) right down to the notion of requirements and standards (you must prove learning to get a grade, no you can't skim a website and pass it off as your own PhD work [tho that worked in today's climate for a senior exec]). The most nuanced and fraught extension might be the stigma about stigma wherein civility is lost to a child's right to feel good after doing something once described as wrong. Some slide into thinking that religiosity and authoritarianism is the answer, missing entirely that the current malaise is its own form of religiosity and authoritarianism. Are we at the cusp of finding a better way....or are we doomed to rinse and repeat, yet again?
Wow, I just burned one and tried reading through your post and sort of got lost. There’s always a dilemma in any argument. Working in the public school system all this time including home school kids in rural mountain areas of Northern California, I heard my share of beliefs and opinions. Always circular arguments so I bit my lip and stuck to academics.
However, I’ve been vaxed to the max including whatever the USAF pumped into me and I’m still kicking so I see it now as people can believe whatever they want. Thanks for the post.🙂
Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks for voicing my frustration.
You betcha
Bless you Heather, you've been through so much and still share your thoughtfulness with others. We Canadians have the most amazing country and health care in the world. Some shortcomings? Sure, it's not perfect, but it's saving lives every day. I'm immensely grateful.
Seeing many crippled children, I became terrified as a youngster that I, too, might contract polio. Everyone had that insensate terror around polio at one time; people were so helpless to do anything either to protect or to cure people!
"No," my mother was able to assure me. "YOU won't catch polio. YOU have been vaccinated. Those other children in braces, with criutches, with withered arms, in iron lungs ... They were born before the vaccine became available. But YOU are protected."
I have never forgotten the power of vaccines to make lives safer and better.
I did have measles, mumps and chicken pox; my sister had whooping cough (pertussis) - b/c we didn't have vaccines until decades after our childhood.
I agree BUT there are reasons the anti-science message is so popular in the US. Big Pharma (e.g. Johnson & Johnson https://newrepublic.com/article/194726/johnson-and-johnson-investigation-crimes-health-care-system) and big for-profit health care have had a large influence by eroding the American public's confidence in conventional medicine. Canadians are rightfully proud of our public health care system but will only remain so if we can maintain and improve the quality of our Medicare services. And let's not fool ourselves. The public pays most of big pharma's R&D costs with financial support for our publicly-funded universities. Big Pharma in Canada has to be reigned in through government regulations limiting the costs of pharmaceuticals and by the provision of government pharmacare. It is up to us as thoughtful Canadians not to fall for anti-science memes but to hold governments, medical industries and medical professionals to account.
Thanks Charlie! Best report I've seen on this whole mess. I'll be sharing widely. And just an FYI. The "Big Beautiful Bill" in Congress right now contains language to restrict Covid vaccines to people over 65yo and a few other conditions only if your DR says you need it. Here we go again.
Two things enrage me about the rise in preventable diseases:
First, the argument that currently living humans are the result of natural selection caused by millennia of surviving past disease outbreaks, and thus should be immune. Anyone who wants proof that this isn't so can go to any old cemetery, where they'll notice without much effort the large number of graves of children who died before the age of 5. They'll also note that these graves largely disappeared in the 1960s. (The precise year depends where you live, thus when vaccinations became commonly available.)
Second, most legal jurisdictions define a crime with a name similar to "criminal negligence causing death": basically, it's what happens when someone causes great harm that even a small effort to self-educate would have prevented. It seems to me that none of the many voices crying out that vaccines do more harm than good are, by ignoring the expert consensus, criminally negligent and criminally responsible to their disinformation and the deaths it causes. I've written to my MP to ask them to work towards implementing serious penalties for such crimes against humanity. At a minimum, they should be forced to admit their lies and deceptions publicly before the audiences they lied to. If you agree, write to your MP too, and ask your friends and family to join in.
Bonus third rage factor: The impact on citizens of developing countries is appalling when people like Trump destroy international agencies like USAID that provide vaccines internationally. The sheer evil of knowingly killing hundreds, thousands, or millions of these people boggles my mind.
Brother, you and I are singing in the same choir, from the same song sheet.
This may sound cruel but lives are at stake here. I think if parents do not get their children or themselves vaccinated and they contact a preventable disease, they should have to pay the medical costs. If you do not want to follow the rules of a democratic society then pay the price. A society without rules is anarchy!!
I’m a Tuberculosis survivor! Born 1949 - first child. I ended up staying in a TB sanitarium in the Netherlands from the age of 14
months till I came out 16 months later. I read a book about a family that contracted the disease in Ontario in the early 40’s . 5 members had TB of which 2 died. One child spent 10 years in and out of a TB Hospital in Ottawa. It was located where the Royal Ottawa Hospital now stands. 1100 people alone in Ontario were infected with TB and in several TB hospitals in Ontario. Thank goodness a vaccine came out in the 50’s to basically eradicate the disease. However some cases still pop up now and again and we have further meds to help. I’m a big believer in vaccines!
My perceptions only; I don't expect others to agree with me. Along with the so-called, "American Exceptionalism" coupled with a lot of the self-serving tripe that they go on about down there, is their ongoing celebration of the individual, their 'pulling oneself up by the bootstraps' and 'triumphing over adversity.' Their whole cultural ethos minimizes group mindedness and collaboration. One can readily see this based on the manner in which countries who they demean as, "socialist" fared so much better during the pandemic. It also partially explains why they have yet to implement government funded, across the board, health care. Along with their superior attitude, in the context of other nations, they have a segment that is hyper superior. These are the right wing religious/political ideologues who will gladly embrace an Arch Felon who is intent on turning the clock back to a time and place where they ran the show. I would substitute Mr. Angus' word "complacency" in terms of vaccine reluctance with "arrogance" and/or "stupidity."
As my father put it, the American attitude is "Me first, and screw you." Except he used a 4 letter synonym for 'screw'. He was a US citizen at the time.
During the pandemic, in Canada we fared 2-1/2 times better than the USA, in terms of death rate. For all the reasons you mention.
I'm an American and I agree. This perfectly explains the current Republican party/MAGA and the oligarchs who've spent the last 40 years manipulating everything to get into control. They may be rich but they are lacking in common sense, intelligence and anything vaguely resembling the Christian religion most of them proclaim to follow. Both arrogance and stupidity are on full display on a daily basis!
If people want to reject vaccines on the basis of personal liberty and the right to their own (uninformed) opinion, then I wonder why they want post-infection medical treatment? Isn't medical science just as uppity about knowing what to do for disease as about knowing what to do to prevent it. Pick a lane, I want to say.
The sad part is it's the parents who are idiots and the children who pay the price. I remember measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox. I had them all before the vaccines were available. Nobody should have to take those risks.
It's sad that I now know this is happening in real time. I always thought it was gone forever.