If an individual doctor treated an individual patient in the way that our chief medical officers are treating all of society, that doctor should be reported for medical malpractice.
Imagine that your doctor kidnaps you, and confines you for months on end. He takes away most of your freedoms and much of what makes your life meaningful, but says it’s for your own good. It’s to protect you from a nasty virus that kills sick and elderly people in nursing homes who already have one or more serious illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and emphysema. Even if you yourself are not vulnerable to this nasty virus, you still need to lose your freedoms and human dignity, just in case.
Your doctor bans people from visiting you, and allows you to contact friends and family only by phone, zoom, email and the like. Whatever sports, entertainment, recreational, spiritual and cultural activities you loved and enjoyed are taken away from you. You cannot see your friends and many of your family members in person. You cannot go to the movie theatre, the gym, the swimming pool, the rink, or your house of worship.
You cannot play hockey, baseball, football, soccer, basketball, or any other team sport, nor can you join your fellow fans at a field or stadium to cheer on the professionals who play these sports. Nor can you cheer for your kids or grandkids at sporting events, because this doctor also prevents children from participating in sports, or in piano recitals, dance performances or school plays. You cannot go to parties, receptions, conferences, concerts, plays, or prayer meetings. Unless you are fortunate enough to work in the public sector, or to have a job that can be done entirely from behind a computer screen, you are prevented from working and earning money.
Of course your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing deteriorates during your forced isolation. You can no longer deal with stress, anxiety and loneliness by way of meeting with friends, or gathering the whole family together for birthdays, graduations, and cultural and religious events. .
Your doctor knows how harmful your social isolation is to your health and well-being. So he writes a brochure with tips on how to best manage your health while still confined by him. The doctor’s brochure explains how to minimize harm to your well-being when you’ve lost your freedoms. The brochure insults your intelligence, because the reason your mental and physical wellbeing is declining in the first place is because the doctor took your freedoms away.
No credible doctor would harm your well-being by stripping you of your freedom, your personal contact with loved ones, and your joy. No trustworthy doctor would prevent you from singing in a choir, participating in team and individual sports, going to the gym, or enjoying life in the manner you choose. No ethical doctor would harm your well-being and then give you a brochure explaining how to minimize the harms that he is inflicting upon you.
Tragically, Canada’s federal and provincial governments are behaving exactly like the unethical doctor described above. Politicians are harming your health on the advice of politically appointed chief medical officers, who are prescribing a useless and toxic “cure” for a virus that poses no significant threat to children, youth, and about 90 percent of the population.
Rather than protecting vulnerable seniors in nursing homes (a task at which politicians have failed miserably), our governments are steadily destroying the mental, physical, spiritual and financial wellbeing of 38 million Canadians. Politicians have not put forward any credible evidence to support their belief that lockdowns have saved lives. In contrast, there is plenty of evidence of devastating lockdown harms, spelled out in detail in other columns on this website.
Instead of stopping the harm they inflict, governments refer us to online documents which do not dispute the harmful nature of isolation and loneliness. For example: “Even when we cannot physically meet with friends, we can continue to feel supported by staying connected online or over the phone.
Well, no, actually. The government claims that we can achieve “social wellness” by connecting online or over the phone is contradicted by a large body of medical and scientific literature that posits in-person contact as crucial and essential to our health and wellbeing. Absence of in-person contact creates isolation, stress and loneliness, which are toxic for both our physical and mental health. Governments provide no evidence in support of their thesis that a computer screen is an adequate substitute for real social interactions.
Having made much of our in-person contact illegal, our government’s recommendation for “emotional wellness” includes brilliant gems like “Wrap your arms around you and give yourself a hug.” We are told by government that “we can look after ourselves and build a culture that prioritizes mental health.” Not true. We cannot build such a culture when hugs (with another person!) are illegal.
As for our “spiritual wellness,” the government tells us to “take time to connect with your faith-based or religious community” but then jails pastors who defy unscientific and unconstitutional health orders. It’s the same big lie: smart phones and computer screens are a viable and healthy substitute for in-person contact.
If an individual doctor treated an individual patient in the way that our chief medical officers are treating all of society, that doctor should be reported to the provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons for medical malpractice.
Sadly, I suspect that a College of Physicians and Surgeons would dismiss a complaint filed against the province’s chief medical officer. It appears that our provincial Colleges fully support the unscientific notion that harming the wellbeing of millions of Canadians is justified by the futile quest to contain a virus that poses no threat to 90 percent of the population.
Lawyer John Carpay is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca), which has taken several governments to court to challenge the constitutionality of lockdown measures.
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