Nate Cull
So now I understand what the Canadian Ambassador Bridge trucker protest is about (it's an antivax thing), so if you're in support of that, sorry, I'm blocking you.
Public health is good, pandemics that have already killed millions of people are times you need coordinated social response, and vaccine mandates save lives.
If you're on my timeline doing PR for mass illness and death, please feel free to unfollow me.
Caleb James DeLisle
@natecull
It's a little more complicated than that. What's needed is mutual trust and collaboration, that's not happening, and everyone's a bit at fault.
Public health authorities have been tragically inept at empathic communication. They could have united the people, instead they made a political circus.
Misinformation is a thing, and it's geopolitical. Bad Vlad never went away, and right now he's capitalizing on every stupid move that western politicians make.
1/
Caleb James DeLisle
@natecull
Their most mindbogglingly dumb decision was to basically forbid alternative opinions. I don't know what they thought they were doing, but what they actually did was make sure the only alternative message would be the one pushed by Putin's disinfo network.
Now it's pretty obvious from the level of coordination and lack of known civil society involvement, that Putin's team is coordinating the Freedom Convoy.
2/
Caleb James DeLisle
@natecull
Coming out of all this, we're probably about to see protests in the US and Europe, and while NATO is stuck in a traffic jam, Russia will attack Ukraine.
Trump will probably win in 2021, the left will plug their ears and shout that it's all hate an intolerance and they did absolutely nothing wrong.
But the biggest tragedy out of this whole event, is that anti-vax, which was previously a relatively small niche, will be a mainstream view for decades.
and weak men make hard times.
/end
Caleb James DeLisle
@natecull
But that Freedom Convoy itself is made of working class people who are afraid, the attitude of the politicians has been "we have the power to make you get vaccinated, haha cope"
Bodily integrity IS a human right, and should only be sacrificed temporarily and in the most severe emergency. Maybe 2020 was one, but now? I don't think so.
And if the situation is indeed so dire, politicians should begin acting like statesmen rather than a kid who just won a schoolyard fight.
3/
Nate Cull
Nope, I don't see how it's just or tolerable in a democratic society for 1% of people to cause mass death and for the 99% to just roll over and accept that.
I'm sorry. That just doesn't compute for me.
We have vaccine mandates here in New Zealand, we like them, we're using them right now to literally prevent mass death, they're working. Period.
Are a bunch of angry far-right agitators angry? Yes. Did a bunch of them get mass arrested yesterday? Also yes. Is that wrong? No.
meejah
@natecull @cjd Nobody is actually "mandated" to get a vaccine in Canada (you can get tests every 3 days instead). The "trucker convoy" is not about "vaccines" anymore (if it ever really was). At best it's a agglomeration of far-right groups that have seen an opportunity; at worst, it's externally funded disruption.
Caleb James DeLisle
@natecull
This isn't about you or me or what's moral for us to do. This is about policy decisions and what happens when you make them.
Intolerant Minorities are a thing, and if even 1% of the population is ready to fight a long war, you're going to lose.
There's no world where starting an insurgency is a smart way to help end a pandemic, and any policy maker with 2 brain cells to rub together should have known that vaccine mandates were going to have this kind of backlash.
Nate Cull
You're welcome to spread a highly contagious disease with lethal outcome among your friends, just not in places where my face is going to breathe the air. Your right to swing your fist etc. Well, if you're not vaxxed, your breath is a fist.
This is public health. It's a thing. It's how sewers and food health inspections got created. And we've done mandatory mass vaccinations before. At least if you were born before the 1990s; I don't know what happened to kids after that.
Caleb James DeLisle
@natecull
Even if we accept that the nature of the pandemic is such that right now, we must abridge human rights. It's not obvious that any particular policy is the right one.
In fact the entire 20th century is littered with big government policies which abridged human rights, because science said it was necessary, but it ended up being wrong and killing people.
It should be a hint that the most stable countries in the world are the ones structured to not be able to do these things at all.
Nate Cull
@cjd Now 938,000.
Nate Cull
I mean nearly a million people in the USA (932,000 at last count) have literally died of a communicable disease which is still spreading.
I don't know at what point the "hey this might be serious" penny drops if a million dead people doesn't do it.
meejah
@natecull @cjd (I'm certainly sympathetic to "body autonomy" type arguments, but the reality is that Canada has been _very_ careful, IME, to skirt that by always providing the alternative of "get a test". So, sure, that's inconvenient and expensive, but that's the price you pay to "do stuff in society" during a pandemic if you _also_ don't want to get a vaccine).
Caleb James DeLisle
@meejah @natecull
And when you have some sketchy extreme right people ready to take your side, and you're put in a corner, well guess what "enemy of my enemy" applies. Also foreign interference is almost certain at this point, and it's a tragedy because tone-deaf policy put the west into this weak geopolitical position. Also the fact that there's interference doesn't invalidate the protest, there was USSR interference in the Civil Rights movement and I hope nobody will try to invalidate that.
Caleb James DeLisle
@meejah @natecull
Stuff like "or get a test" goes a long way. You take as an example a guy who took the first shot and had a massive heart attack (it's rare, but it does happen). That guy is not going to want another shot of the same stuff, you can't change that. And if you make a law that he has to, he will be your enemy, and his family, and his friends, and his co-workers. Now instead of 1 guy who, honestly, probably shouldn't get the shot, you have dozens of people ready to take you to war.
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