Belligerent atavism and anti-vaxxers
My wife and I were out to share lunch at one of our favourite restaurants on Victoria’s harbourside.
Both on our way there and on our way back we had the extremely unpleasant and, dare I say, personally dangerous experience of having to make our way through the crowd of anti-vaxxer protesters gathered on both sides of the street outside of the legislative buildings.
These people, in addition to being unmasked and refusing to practise physical distancing, were deliberately obstructing the sidewalk, particularly the access ramps, so necessary to persons such as myself, whose mobility is via a wheelchair.
As we threaded our way through these people, I was struck by the selfishly atavistic individualism of their rhetoric. It reminded me of the old saying that goes “’Every man for himself!’ cried the elephant, as he danced among the chickens.”
They seem to value freedom without any sense of social responsibility, let alone compassion.
Is it not time that they were confronted with the very real consequences of their selfishness? Is it not time that perhaps they should be faced with a starkly unthinkable choice — that to continue refusing to accept the advice and freely offered remedy of established medical science they ought to bear the ultimate consequence of forfeiting their right of access to universal health care?
Selfish atavism is corrosive of a civilized society, and perhaps deserves to attract the sternest of social constraint.
The Rev. Canon Dr. Kim Murray
Victoria
Stop the nonsense over vaccinations
One’s liberty ends where someone else’s starts.
Right now, 10-15 per cent of the population is holding hostage 85 per cent of the population where we could live more freely and have more liberty. Furthermore, our economy could be humming again.
Enough of this nonsense. Authorities should use the notwithstanding clause as provided in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Paul Tormey
Langford
Anger, delusions driving the protests
I had the utter disgust to listen to interviews with some of those who protested at various medical facilities.
Their irrational actions were selfish, self-serving and vulgar, especially in their attacks on health-care workers who have sacrificed so much to attend to those sick and dying from COVID-19.
Those interviewed praised themselves as freedom fighters, saving us all from tyranny. Let me be clear:
You are not protecting my freedom, you are stealing it. I freely choose, yes choose, to be vaccinated because I wanted to protect my life and others’ lives by helping all of us, including you, to achieve the 85-95 per cent vaccination target necessary to control the spread of COVID and new variants that have more killing power.
Only when the advance of COVID is halted will I, and we, be able to have freedom of movement and association.
Your deluded notions of freedom fighters are acting to prevent my freedom and prevent my movement to see my aging parents, my children and to go anywhere I want at any time I choose.
Your actions to not get vaccinated and wear masks are putting the rest of us in a prison and trampling on our rights by exposing us to sickness and perhaps death.
The people now in hospital with COVID are the unvaccinated. Hypocritically, they are calling on those same health-care workers that they abused during their protests to risk their lives to care for them.
And bless their good hearts and souls, the health-care workers will.
I would fully support your freedom to choose an unvaccinated and unmasked path that dramatically increases your risk of COVID sickness and death, if it did not steal my and other’s freedom to health and life.
I heard you talk about a conspiracy. The conspirators are you.
You ignore facts and science and you ignore other people’s rights and freedoms. It’s time to go home and put away your anger and delusions.
John Little
Victoria
Facing two choices: vaccinate or incubate
Activists at hospital rallies are carrying placards that say “My body my choice,” and “Freedom is the right to choose.” They think that vaccines and passports are a personal privacy and freedom issue.
They are wrong. Vaccinations are a public health issue; society needs vaccines to protect all its citizens — economically and medically.
Activists tout choice and freedom. There really are only two choices: Either reject the needle and offer your body up to the virus so it can spread and mutate; or, take the needle and stop the virus from spreading and mutating.
Boiled down, people have two choices: vaccinate or incubate.
There is an irony about protesting at hospitals when medical staff inside are at wit’s end trying to save the many lives of the unvaccinated who surrendered their choices and freedoms to the virus.
Brent Tilson
Mill Bay
Protesters, put your lives on the line
After Wednesday’s disgusting protests at hospitals across Canada, the time is right to ask all those people who saw fit to harass Canada’s most valuable and treasured health-care workers, to put both their money, and lives, where their misguided beliefs have taken them.
They should willingly sign a legally binding document that clearly states they have been offered a COVID-19 vaccination and have of their own free will turned it down.
They should further agree that should they become infected by the COVID-19 virus, at any time over the next 12 months, and require hospitalization, they understand that they will not be admitted ahead of any other patient who has done their best to protect themselves and society by taking a COVID-19 vaccination.
They will accept responsibility for paying 10 per cent of all medical expenses related to any hospitalization they may require to treat a COVID-19 infection.
I would also like to suggest we return to a daily 7 p.m. show of appreciation for all of our health-care professionals.
Bruce Cline
Victoria
When it is stupid, let’s call it that
I am sick and tired of the notion that all opinions have validity and must be considered in a considerate way. As a society, we abhor racism, and have no qualms about calling it out at the mere whiff of its existence.
Yet we quietly indulge stupid people who spout ridiculous arguments about why the steps being taken to stamp out a worldwide pandemic are stupid.
Stop it! When the morons gather and prevent patients from entering hospitals it is time to be blunt in calling out stupidity for what it is — STUPID!
Richard Mackenzie
Saanich
Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything
Here’s the thing about these “vaccine passports” — nobody is forcing anybody to do anything, so protesters should chill out and go home.
We are all free to not get vaccinated. If we choose to not get vaccinated we put others at risk, particularly the elderly, unvaccinated children and those with compromised immune systems.
Medical professionals and the government are free to protect those people who are at risk. The protection they have chosen is a vaccine passport app that, if done correctly, will not breach any medical privacy regulations.
It is an app that lets you “tap” your mobile device close to a device held by the service provider, just like contactless payment. If done correctly, and I suspect that it is, no medical information is exposed by the transaction.
The question is a generic “Is this person approved for entry? Yes or No.” If your medical record includes a record of vaccination or a doctor-ordered medical exemption, the response is Yes. If not, the response is No. Neither device knows the reason for the response.
That gives those who choose not to get vaccinated for a non-medical reason another choice. They are free to reconsider and get vaccinated, or they are free to stay away.
Blaming others for the outcomes of your own decisions is childish. Grow up.
Russ Bonny
Saanich
Don’t block hospitals for any reason
The protests against vaccination for COVID-19 were not shameful and ignorant of their own accord, but because of where some of the protests took place. It is just not acceptable for people to be blocking entrances to hospitals for any reason, period.
Protesting a health matter should take place at an MLA’s office, or a public square, not at a health facility where doctors and nurses are going all out to save the lives of people who have contracted the virus, vaccinated or not.
People have a right to be heard, but they do not have a right to interfere with the treatment of other people who are sick and desperate and struggling to breathe. Nor do they have the right to interfere with the treatment of other cases that the emergency department would ordinarily deal with.
It seems that these protesters are so maniacal about their own rights that they are willing to discount the rights of others. If this is “now,” then how much worse is it going to get? Unfortunately, I see something very ugly on the horizon.
Lesley House
Saanich
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