THE NANNY STATE
WHERE EPIDEMIOLOGY AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE REPLACED THE RULE OF LAW
By: Alex P. Keaton
“Life has become better. Life has become gay." - Joseph Stalin.
The rule of law has been replaced by the rule of epidemiology and behavioral science in Canada apparently.
Dr. Theresa Tam (yes, she's still around and bigger, badder, and better than ever) declared this past week that the epidemiological trends will guide us. (1) This is a euphemism for “letting the virus control us,” which is essentially what we've done since “flattening the curve.”
Fifteen days to flatten the curve. Two years to flatten everything else. And you're gonna be happy about it.
As we've seen, the Canadian courts have yet to reign in the extraordinary excess abuse from politicians and public health officials. They've shown themselves to be timid and cowardly stewards and protectors of the Charter and Bill of Rights and complicit accomplices in the “emergency” false narrative. The excuse used to justify their inaction? The courts assert they do not want to challenge the legislature. Except, that's the role of the judiciary, is it not? The courts have not in these past two years upheld the Charter or Bill of Rights, and this should be of concern to all Canadians. Why have laws if it's so easy to sidestep them?
How weak were our laws, ostensibly in place to protect our rights, if epidemiology and science can push them aside?
Alas, you're always at war with Eastasia.
The scientific-technocratic class seems incapable of adjusting to and accepting new data, and the cold hard fact that measures and mandates have been a catastrophic failure. They seem oblivious to the real-world consequences of the recommendations they espouse. A new trend that has emerged is for behavioral scientists to take the mantle of paternalism and explain to people exactly what to do to “live with the virus” because they’re obviously incapable of doing so on their own without the enlightened guidance of our “expert class.
In an email exchange with an unnamed member of the “expert class,” the paternalistic impulse among behavioral scientists is all too evident and clear.
She writes: “The problem is the lack of information, poor transmission of information, and the fact that many people lack the knowledge and skills to know how to tell the 'good info' from the 'bad.' I am an advocate for equipping the public with these skills, but it’s a tall task."
This echoes a recent comment by Dr. Veillette of McGill's Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences where he states, “People have been held by the hands for two years, but they haven’t been educated about how to act once it would be their turn to take care of it themselves.” (2)
We're infantilizing people. A top-down approach to such matters is a sure way to maintain medical tyranny. The message here isn't what measures are needed but how to govern and engineer the masses into a social habit conducive to what the experts believe should be. This goes beyond 'washing hands' and straight into how to direct our lives as they see fit.
In addition, they are being selective when it comes to employing empirical evidence to suit their recommendations. For example, the body of evidence revealing the ineffectiveness confirm what we've always known for decades about masks: that they are the weakest of the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI). Yet, somehow, 2020 would change all this? The onus was on those who promoted mask mandates to prove their effectiveness and they never have. They can't because the preponderance of evidence does not support them. We must keep pointing this out lest people start to believe masks are a difference maker, which they definitely are not.
Certain epidemiologists, the ones repeatedly called upon by the regime media to bless us with their fearmongering, continue to call for the same, stale measures that have been discredited, not only by the ever-growing literature, but by simple real-world observation. For example, in calling for lockdowns continuously since 2020 and government foolishly obliging, we’ve witnessed record unemployment, a contracting labour market, and business closures. More recently, inflation and the restricting of income has led to higher gas and food prices and supply shortages. This can all be correlated to lockdowns through our policies (Covid itself did not throttle the civil order. We did by choice and of free will. We decided ourselves to believe there were no other options. There are always options) often at the behest and hysterical demands of the scientific and medical class.
As if this wasn’t enough, they have also helped nurture a fractured society along medical status lines having helped to create conditions to scapegoat the unvaccinated. For example, misleading the public without proper context that there was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” led to mandates directly removing their basic civil rights to mobility, employment, and access to services. It even came close to taxing them. Now, the trend has reversed itself as we’re seeing the vaccinated making up most of the “cases” and hospitalizations. If the science and medical class along with the media had any sense of fairness, they’d call for a taxing of the vaccinated, would they not?
Of course not. Now we’re being told the latest variant and rise in “cases” is due to the decision to lift measures – that we’re “defenseless” without a mask mandate – masks that ostensibly have very little to no impact on mortality or transmission.
This all raises the question; how much responsibility do experts shoulder for the state of confused affairs we find ourselves in? That is, they seem to be disconnected from the fact that when they call for measures, they also signal people to be fearful. In turn, people then put pressure on elected officials to “do something.”
So, here's what we've got going in Canada. The quasi-Zero-covid policy goal is to keep cases down (good luck with that. It's not like we don't have plenty of evidence this is simply not practical or feasible) while still peddling stale and useless measures.
As if this wasn't enough, now the latest trend is to get people to accept the paternalism of behavioral scientists telling us we have no agency and that we must be guided by their enlightened hands. Mind you, for some people this is exactly what they deserve. Like whom? Say, people who still cling on to masks like Linus' blanket? None of these recommendations have proven successful or helpful. On the contrary, they have confused and misled people.
No matter. Dr. Tam will keep to her “models” - models that are under scrutiny in the United Kingdom as the SAGE now finds itself having to take responsibility for their excessive doomsday predictions as well as behavioral scientists who admit to having “nudged” people too far and hard potentially permanently damaging a portion of the population, at best only psychologically. (3) Epidemiology is not meant to be a means to an end in determining public health policy. It's supposed to be a guide, a tool. If we’re meant to follow their “science,” then we have to hope those select experts are endowed with common sense. Our so-called experts think this is the tool to guide us out of... well, no one is clear.
Nevertheless, get that regimen of boosters despite the complete lack of evidence of their safety and efficacy!
As the world drops mandates, it feels like this country doesn't want to change course. Canada is currently one of the very few countries in the world with emergency measures still in place, including mandates. Canadians, being the gullible and naïve sort, have confused obedience with virtue, exhibiting their own version of closed loop logic and the added feature of Stockholm Syndrome.
But it’s ok. Behavioral scientists will walk us out of the woods and into…
the forest.
--
1. https://twitter.com/CPHO_Canada/status/1492207266996658187
2. https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/quebec-urged-to-expand-testing-strengthen-messaging-as-sixth-wave-begins
3. https://bloombergcities.jhu.edu/news/meet-nudgers-pushing-behavioral-science-new-levels
https://lauradodsworth.substack.com/p/we-need-an-inquiry-into-nudge?s=r