Large Fierce Mammal

The management has no official opinion on this product, real or imagined, express or implied, nor is it implicated in the shenanigans set forth below. It will, however, be explained if you can stay on the horse long enough. (Source)

Speaking for myself, the older I get, the more often I run into events and situations that get me thinking along the metaphorical lines of, “I’ve seen this movie before.”

Unless you’ve since decided to dig the proverbial hole that’s to crawl into and pull in behind, you’ll know that the past days of building protests against COVID-19 mandates appear to be having a sobering effect on even the daftest of governments. As I surveyed news reports yesterday from sources fair and foul, and watched the people participating in these still building protests characterized on a spectrum running from demon to hero, it didn’t escape my notice that the noble experiment in  “authoritarian lite”  is losing steam.

While it was the imposition of vaccine mandates for long haul truckers that was the trigger event for all this, its potential to happen, spawn new variants, and grow as it has should not have been unforeseeable. As the number of unemployed created by such mandates in other industries grew from punitive moves justified by the needs of the “Greater Good” (a euphemism for results of the latest public opinion poll), unvaccinated Canadians found themselves daily proclaimed as the reason for everything from bad breath to the Chicago fire. Government leaders and “experts” with medical and other academic accreditations felt emboldened to float trial balloons about vaccination becoming the magic key that might ultimately be required to unlock even the most basic and necessary of services. What made it possible for the trucks to roll on Ottawa and thereby become a catalyst for something much larger that has proven uncontainable up to now, was the forgetting of what can happen when you cast a group of productive, hard working people with families to feed into forced idleness.

Did you think they’d go sit in the parking lot of the nearest Tim Hortons nursing their “Timmies” and bruised egos through open truck windows because they have to show proof of vaccination to sit inside?

Fuck that, they took it personally, in a manner reminiscent in execution and effect of something I’ve quoted here before:

“The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference – the only difference in their eyes – between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.” ~ Quellcrist Falconer —
Things I Should Have Learned by Now, Volume II, Richard K. Morgan

Now, scapegoating and the casting of those scapegoats into his own Canadian flag wrapped pack basket of deplorables cum oubliette has characterized the problem solving strategy of Justin Trudeau and his government throughout its iterations, and is his preferred posture for teaching people he knows won’t vote for him the error of their ways. It’s a tried and tested system for him that, if it starts to look like it might blow up in his face, can quickly be converted to a heartfelt disingenuous apology.

This time though, he seemed blindsided, uncharacteristically freezing in place …

But then he rallied in that way he does like no other when he finds himself at risk of being hoist by his own petard:

Then, and very characteristically, came a bluff charge, normally applied (and better) by Bears to problems they’d rather just go away:

“Bluff charges are meant to scare or intimidate. When a bear bluff charges, it will have its head and ears up and forward. The bear will puff itself up to look bigger. It will bound on its front paws toward you (moving in big leaps), but then stop short or veer off to one side. Often bears retreat after a bluff charge, or they may vocalize loudly.”

The one I’m talking about came on Thursday, built atop Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly’s Wednesday disclosure that, “… the city is considering various options to end the disruption caused by the convoy protest — including requesting military aid from Ottawa … “ :

“There were questions a couple of years ago around military when it came to other protests that were blocking critical infrastructure. My answer then is consistent with my answer now: That one has to be very, very cautious before deploying military in situations engaging Canadians,”

“It is not something that anyone should enter in lightly, but as of now, there have been no requests, and that is not in the cards right now.”

If you’ve read that three times and you’re still pretty sure he didn’t at any point or stretch of imagination say that it couldn’t or shouldn’t be done, you can stop now because he didn’t, and he even left the story open to a sequel by ending on, “… right now.”

And then, little by little came reports of interesting movement from previously immovable places. For example there was this from CTV News just yesterday, titled Experts say vaccine passports can be reassessed, but urge caution in scrapping them:

“As several provinces toy with scrapping their COVID-19 vaccine mandates, medical experts allow it may be time to start reconsidering the policy — but caution against dropping the measure too soon.

“Prevalence of cases among both vaccinated and unvaccinated Canadians has led to calls to nix the vaccine passport system by some who question whether the shots make a difference in transmission.”

I personally found the shift in attitude expressed in that second sentence refreshing because notwithstanding some very creative number play on the part of Nova Scotia Public Health, this assertion is more than borne out here where among COVID-19 admissions, we have far more vaccinated people in hospital than non, and an embarrassing number who get admitted for other reasons but contract the infection only when under hospital care.

I’m reminded of something my old and very missed family physician once told me as he prepared my discharge from a week in hospital recovering from a stab wound to a kidney:

“I’m getting you out of here. The Hospital is no place for the sick and injured.”

Moving forward to yesterday’s weekly COVID-19 briefing by Public Health Canada, there was this unexpected shift from what we’ve come to expect from the lips of the stoically narrative hugging Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam:

“Canada’s top public health official said on Friday that the country needs to find a more ‘sustainable’ way to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and future variants of the virus.

“Speaking to reporters at the weekly public health briefing, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said all existing public health policies, including provincial vaccine passports, need to be ‘re-examined’ in the coming weeks because it’s clear now that Canada and the rest of the world will be grappling with this virus for months or years to come.

“Tam said the Public Health Agency of Canada is talking to its provincial and territorial counterparts to chart a path forward for a country exhausted after two years of enduring some of the most restrictive measures in the developed world. Together, she said, these agencies will review the current ‘suite of measures,’ including severe border restrictions and travel limitations.

“‘I think the whole concept is, we do need to get back to some normalcy,’ Tam said.

“Tam said it’s now clear that the primary series of a COVID-19 vaccine — the first two shots of an mRNA vaccine or a viral vector product like the AstraZeneca vaccine — do not protect against an Omicron infection. (emphasis added)” ~ The latest on the coronavirus outbreak for Feb. 4

That might sound like we’re going places, but I listened to the entire standard formula mind numbing drone-fest (so you don’t have to), finding that while she will now admit, “… the first two shots of an mRNA vaccine or a viral vector product like the AstraZeneca vaccine — do not protect against an Omicron infection,” she still clings to the mantra that a booster of a now admittedly ineffective vaccine will change things.

Over the years, I’ve dragged enough people kicking and screaming into accepting some necessary Truth to recognize the symptoms, so I naturally thought:

But I would expect nothing less.

Where this all goes is still unknown, although my bookie who is far more savvy in the arcane arts of statistical analysis than the average bluff charging bear touches the side of his nose and nods knowingly at me whenever we cross paths, but one thing is sure — every great clusterfuck deserves a theme song, and considering how stuck in my head this has been in the past 48 hours, this is it, along with a dose of history:

“Lydia Estes Pinkham (February 9, 1819 – May 17, 1883) was an American inventor and marketer of an herbal-alcoholic ‘women’s tonic’ for menstrual and menopausal problems, which medical experts dismissed as a quack remedy, but which is still on sale today in a modified form.

“It was the aggressive marketing of Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound that raised its profile, while also rallying the skeptics. Long, promotional copy would dramatise ‘women’s weakness’, ‘hysteria’ and other themes commonly referenced at the time. Pinkham urged women to write to her personally, and she would maintain the correspondence in order to expose the customer to more persuasive claims for the remedy. Clearly the replies were not all written by Pinkham herself, as they continued after her death.

“Pinkham and her ‘medicinal compound’ for feminine disorders became the subject of a bawdy drinking song, ‘Lily the Pink’, of which a sanitized version became a number one hit by The Scaffold in the United Kingdom.” ~ Wikipedia

In the spirit of cure-alls everywhere …

“It’s good for what ails ya, and if nothin’ ails ya, it’s good for that too.” ~ My Father

… here is the aforementioned Lily the Pink for your listening pleasure!