The creation of multiple COVID-19 vaccines in an astonishingly short period was a stunning achievement by the biotech industry. The vaccines were approved for “emergency use” in just a few months, rather than the eight to 10 years normally required of previous vaccines.
Most Canadians were more than willing to accept that risk.
According to federal government data, over 85 per cent of Canadians 12 and older are now “fully vaccinated,” including yours truly. This has been hugely important in reducing the dreadful carnage in care homes and deaths of others with weakened immune systems.
And yet, we’re not as far along as we had hoped to be. Just last spring, rapidly diminishing COVID infection rates seemed to indicate the pandemic was nearing an end. As summer turned to fall, however, the more contagious Delta variant gained a foothold. Soon, case numbers and hospitalizations were rising again.
That increase was widely blamed on the unvaccinated, creating a division that’s torn at the social fabric of our nation. These days, you’re either a vaccinated ‘good Canadian’ or a villainous ‘anti-vaxxer,’ forbidden from working in the public service, going to restaurants, gyms or sports events, or using public transportation.
In a flagrant violation of the basic Canadian rights and freedoms that we all cherish, the prime minister issued an edict forbidding air travel, even for those with a negative COVID test.
Increasingly, however, it’s becoming evident that the facts don’t justify a binary, zero-one distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated. As we double-vaxxed are learning, to our disquiet, vaccination doesn’t provide the protection against the virus we had counted on.
It’s now clear that fully-vaccinated persons are getting and transmitting the virus. A coach and 10 players of the fully-vaccinated Ottawa Senators hockey team tested positive for the virus. These players then infected their families.
Similarly, hundreds of Canadian soldiers who participated in a training exercise at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa had to be quarantined after a COVID-19 outbreak. A spokesman for the military said “everyone participating in exercise was fully vaccinated.”
And fully vaccinated singer Bryan Adams contracted the virus – twice.
Ontario’s Dec. 10 COVID report that the vaccinated accounted for 57 per cent of new cases confirms the stark new reality that vaccine passports are not only unreliable, they’re dangerous. When I began research for this column, I was puzzled as to why those ‘protected’ by being vaccinated would worry about catching the virus from the unvaccinated. Now it’s those vilified unvaccinated who need to worry about the reverse.
Yet the vaccination establishment powers on, with children as young as five being coaxed with candy into rolling up their sleeves – despite the fact that healthy children who contract the virus almost never get seriously ill.
Just 17 Canadians under age 19 have died of the virus in the past 18 months, and most had serious comorbidities. That number is roughly the same as the pre-pandemic 12-month average for the seasonal flu. And we don’t yet know the extent of more serious side effects, such as myocarditis. The virus vaccines were approved for “emergency use.” Where’s the child emergency?
Five facts all parents should know about the mRNA vaccines by the Canadian Academics for Covid Ethics
Meanwhile, startling new research, financed by Pfizer and published in the Lancet Medical Journal, found the protection level of the Pfizer vaccine administered to most Canadians drops to less than 50 per cent after just five months. Waning efficacy of vaccines has health officials authorizing a third and even fourth booster shot.
No one knows if the protection period will continue to wane, but it seems increasingly clear that trying to hold back the virus with vaccines sets up an endless booster-shot gerbil wheel.
If never-ending booster shots aren’t the answer, what is?
A study published in the journal Nature found that many people who have recovered from SARs-CoV-2 will make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. This ‘natural immunity’ effect is comparable to that developed for measles and other viral diseases. That explains why Germany treats recovered persons the same as fully vaccinated.
That begs an important question I believe health authorities need to answer: Since the vaccinated people who contract the virus experience only mild symptoms, why keep giving booster shots rather than letting the much more sustainable natural immunity effect achieve the ‘normal’ we all long for?
Clear evidence that vaccinated people can and do contract and spread the virus undermines the fundamental rationale of vaccine passports.
And yet, in never-never land, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – fresh from COP 26, where he pledged to lead the world off fossil fuels – has announced he intends to also lead the world out of the COVID pandemic with the creation of a “global vaccine passport.”
The 70 per cent of Canadians who didn’t vote for him might be hoping his quixotic global mission takes him a long way from our shores.
Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who has been a director of five global corporations.
Gwyn is a Troy Media Thought Leader. For interview requests, click here.
The opinions expressed by our columnists and contributors are theirs alone and do not inherently or expressly reflect the views of our publication.
© Troy Media
Troy Media is an editorial content provider to media outlets and its own hosted community news outlets across Canada.
