VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Here on far-left coast of Canada, there haven't been any deaths attributed to COVID-19 since June 5, at the time of this writing. Yet, while hard-hit countries like France are now almost entirely back to normal, despite a couple of dozen COVID deaths per day, places like this westernmost province of Canada, which was mostly spared, are plagued with officials who have clearly not developed the resilience, borne of real crisis, to confidently return to normal despite the relatively low risk of doing so. Instead, officials here are still pretending to be stage managing a nonexistent crisis, while talking about its potential to arrive any time now.
The goal of "flattening the curve" has never been to have no new cases. That's an absurd concept, as no disease has a zero-infection rate, yet it seems to be the objective now in places like this one that were minimally impacted. More people kill themselves in any given year here than have died of COVID. The record high number of 170 illicit drug overdoses in this Canadian province last month alone is greater than all COVID deaths combined. In total, there have been 168 deaths from the disease here since counting began. Four sufferers are currently in intensive care.
Arriving from France - a country where there are still between 20 and 30 COVID deaths every day, over 800 cases in intensive care, and over 29,000 deaths -- the restrictions here are jarringly disproportionate to the impact of the virus in that any limitations still exist at all. Even more shocking is the complacency of the average citizen toward them. It might have something to do with the fact that the Canadian federal government is paying people not to work for the duration of the virus panic, to the tune of $2,000 per month for up to four months - a measure that could be extended.
Like in much of Canada and elsewhere in the world, COVID deaths are overwhelmingly among the elderly in care homes, but officials have people brainwashed to think that it's just as bad everywhere.
Many of us who were subjected to the two-month draconian lockdown in France, including government authorization to even emerge from your apartment, pushed back rhetorically on the government's handling of the crisis. French intelligence even detected the undercurrent and issued a memo one week into the lockdown raising the fear of post-lockdown radicalization of social movements.
Fear of revolt pressured the government to answer the call and shore up its resources so that it could contend with any potential resurgence of the virus without having to send us back into a general lockdown. Today, France is more confident and resilient than places like British Columbia and New Zealand, which are touted for having zero deaths - and which now can't seem to accept anything less. Both seemingly willing to sacrifice the day-to-day lives of an entire population out of fear that even one person may die. They've backed themselves into a bubble that can't be maintained forever.
By contrast, French President Emmanuel Macron expedited the country's unlocking back to near-normal last Sunday, after health experts had warned that an unlocking that was too slow now risked being more harmful than any potential health risk associated with it.
Today, French people are now freer than many Canadians because of citizens who pushed back against encroaching sanitary fascism. And France is barely any worse off now in terms of current COVID deaths, which have now plummeted everywhere in the developed world.
Here, elected officials are taking a visible back seat to public health officials, who are still give daily press conferences announcing no deaths -- but with a warning that the situation risks changing. Yeah, and a giant earthquake also might cause the whole place to crumble into the Pacific Ocean tomorrow. People can't be forced to stop living their lives for fear of risk.
It's time for the technocrats to fade back into the background and for elected officials to do their jobs and open the place back up, already. The excuse given for why people are limited to short appointments for the gym or swimming pool, but are permitted to gather to protest en masse, is that neighboring regions have more infections. So what? The death rate isn't a problem anymore, so it's time to get back to normal. Not the Orwellian "new normal" nonsense -- but the old normal.
The whole idea of restrictions was to make sure that people could get an intensive care bed if they needed one. Every country on earth has now had more than three months to ensure that standard. It's time to fully transfer risk management over to the citizens to make their own decisions about how to live their lives.