Zeitgeist

I haven’t mentioned income. I don’t know what you’re referencing or its relevance. I do know that the rich and powerful, including government leaders, are best positioned to escape the impact of restrictions to movement and in the workplace. They’re the freest people in our society, though I just consider them high ranking slaves.

Stop trying to pin all of our pandemic problems on the tiny minority of anti-vaxxers. They’re just not a big factor anymore in the spread of Covid and the mandates and restrictions imposed to fight it. That’s a chimera or straw man at this point. Death and severe illness due to Covid are now a minor threat. Persistent government control is the bigger concern now.

No, the staffing shortages are results of mandates and restrictions. People can’t work under these oppressive conditions.

Our government doesn’t believe in personal responsibility and discretion. We’re a totalitarian society of strict top-down control. Omicron symptoms are milder than Delta’s. Hospitalization times are substantially shorter for severe cases. It’s probably in our interest for Omicron to replace Delta as the dominant strain. It doesn’t matter. It’s about promulgating fear to assert control, not science or a reasonable balance between personal freedom and public safety. That’s gone now.

Yup that’s where we’re at. The Toronto Police aren’t enforcing possession of small amounts of any kind of drug anymore. The long term care strategy is to drug em and feed em on the way to a swift and painless death. “Get your assisted suicide kit today.”

Yes we have. Our judiciary, mainstream media, and dominant two political parties are basically mindless followers of CNN and WHO official-speak. Whatever you read in TorStar articles in your smartphone feed is broadcast on CBC and becomes Liberal Canadian policy the next day. It’s a parade of nanny overprotective fear-mongering, but Canadians don’t question authority or value their freedom enough. It’s really sad how we’ve sold out our democracy.

You’re tuned into what’s unfolding right now. People don’t realize that the world of being able to go to parties, travel outside the country for leisure, meet people at a bar and go dancing, and attend so many of the clubs and activities that brought people together and facilitated new relationships, is literally gone. So much has been lost to the fight against Covid, despite mass vaccinations. The costs of fuel, housing, and food are also ultra high. Of course all of this discourages reproduction. Close contact has become taboo. As the Sixth Extinction accelerates and the human birth rate falls, it’s a reasonable question to ask how long humanity has. Life will go on for quite some time without humanity, which is why we have to ensure that our policies are pro human. Right now we’re oppressing ourselves on a mass scale.

Exactly. The sadists are running the show right now. Working people and people who need to work to survive know this because they’re feeling the impact every day, if they can keep their jobs. It’s not just the unvaccinated workers feeling the pressure. Far from it.

The vaccinated are protecting themselves. It’s got nothing to do with the unvaccinated.

But even if 100% of the population was vaccinated, there will still be breakthrough cases and viral spread. Yes the prevalence would be lower, but the mandate enforcement would be violent. In Canada the Covid death rate wouldn’t fall much lower, as our population is mostly vaccinated. Covid is shifting to flu status as it spreads. We’re gaining the antibodies through infection or vaccination. As with the flu, vulnerable populations will need to be more careful. Boosters will account for new variants and treatments will improve. That’s it. We must lift restrictions and shift to acceptable risk and personal responsibility. We need to decide as a society whether to live in permanent fearful separation and masking or a normal social realm with reasonable caution. So far Canada has rejected freedom and reasonable caution. Many US states have shifted to acceptable risk and personal responsibility. Some might have higher death rates, but they’re freer societies and right now I know where I’d rather be. It isn’t Canada.

No you’re pushing your paranoid need for control on others unnecessarily. I’m fully vaxxed and I spend the day working in a mask. Do you? What you fail to understand is that, by assenting to making the fully vaccinated mask up even though we know that even a 100 percent vaccinated population won’t eliminate the virus, we are making restrictions permanent. Either we believe that vaccines work and that a population that is mostly vaccinated doesn’t need restrictions or we believe vaccines don’t work and masking is essential for all. You don’t get to support both contradictory positions. Put another way, requiring restrictions on vaccinated people proves the antivaxxer position. You don’t appreciate the impact of making people get vaccinated and obey restrictions with no clear end in sight. It’s extreme government overreach.

Totally wrong. The reason we have Charter protections for minorities is to protect their rights and prevent the stomping of their interests, as happened to the Jews in the Holocaust. Totalitarian governments eliminate all opposition. Hitler made all parties except the Nazi party illegal. Communist countries are also one party systems. ”I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it.” Voltaire

What we’re doing at this point to protect people from Covid is sick and sadistic. After providing free vaccines to everyone from vulnerable age groups who want them and getting an extremely high percentage of the vulnerable fully vaccinated, I can’t help but think that continued restrictions and mandates have nothing to with Covid. This is about control. Our continued assent to this level of control is the single biggest problem in our society.

I’m seeing the impacts of restrictions and mandates on the workers and families around me every day. I can’t even staff my workplace properly because of testing result upload mandates. The people who are doing everything “right” are burning out. To a person our workers and managers are upset and frustrated. It’s nothing less than fascism and slavery. None of this is necessary. If you’re still fearful after being fully-vaccinated and having the choice to mask up and stay away from people, your paranoia shouldn’t dictate the behaviour of everyone else. I feel sorry for our youth, who are being robbed of healthy school and social experiences for no good reason.

No we don’t have that freedom if we want jobs, income, and normal socialization. If our death rate rises a bit because some people who have freely chosen not to get vaccinated and/or wear masks die, that’s fine. At least we’ll retain our freedom. It’s well worth it to people who understand the value of a free society and healthy democracy. I also think that restrictions are causing many non-Covid problems that probably outweigh the impact of Covid at this point.

It’s fascism because it’s pseudoscience and disregards personal discretion. There is no reason to require vaccinated people to mask up, unless the vaccines are ineffective. Since vulnerable populations can be vaccinated, there’s no reason to impose mask mandates when the vaccinated vulnerable can freely choose to mask themselves. Stupid government policies for stupid gullible people who don’t value freedom. Most US states understand this. Canada is China. Top down directives imposed on powerless unquestioning people.

The main reason that this is happening is that Canada has been selected as the place for international resettlement. Since we refuse to beef up our military or push aside identity politics to address real problems in the world with realistic solutions, our main contribution to international affairs is taking refugees from the parts of the world where the superpowers have intervened militarily or manipulated local affairs. Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, etc. Trudeau is reckless on immigration and spending. It makes a mockery of his government’s climate change actions.

I assume you’re no longer working. Try masking and adhering to protocols all day and see how you feel. You may not agree with people’s reasons for not getting vaccinated, but that doesn’t give you the right to force vaccination on them. Many of this small minority of unvaccinated people have lost their jobs or are suspended without pay. They’re already excluded from mainstream social activities like restaurants and movie theatres. Enough is enough. Our healthcare system can manage any fallout at this point. Those who are vulnerable have the vaccines if they want them and can make the personal choice to take additional precautions. The fascistic government overreach has to stop.

Great points. The pandemic restrictions and mandates are unnecessary and disgusting violations of human freedom. The current “crisis” is manufactured. A lot of doctors where we live are barely going into the office. If these people don’t want to work, I suppose Covid can still be milked as an excuse.

Even though we know that Covid spread at this point, given the wide majority of vaccinated people, won’t overwhelm our healthcare system, we continue to make vaccinated people mask indoors and we apply extreme pressure on a small minority of people to get vaccinated. Why? It’s not going to make much difference to the spread of Covid at this point. This need to oppress and control is our biggest problem right now, not Covid. Remove all restrictions and stop the oppression of Canadians by fascist idiots.

The notion that any one or more ethnic groups has special and exclusive ownership or title to a specific territory or land, apart from the ownership of private property, in this day and age, is very difficult to argue and prove. Various peoples have warred and kicked each other out of lands for thousands of years. Apart from maintaining existing territorial privileges in the Indian Act and reserve system for those Indigenous peoples who insist on keeping them, I would discourage adding more land claims to this creepy apartheid system that creates two categories of citizens. Dividing Canadians, such that some get special benefits on the basis of their ethnic status, is wrong and hasn’t worked. It sows resentment. Either these groups are totally independent entities on totally independent territories or they are not. We’ve inherited this mess and have to manage it without adding to the problem. Federal money has skewed markets and maintained some unsustainable remote communities that could never survive in the modern world without such support. It creates cultures of dependence. The most successful Indigenous areas seem to be the ones that have to take most of the responsibility for managing their people and resources unto themselves. They get to benefit from tapping their own human and natural resources, but without collecting their own taxes and paying for their own infrastructure, hospitals, schools, etc., they are not truly independent, and everyone knows it. Calling Indigenous victims of colonialism is an oversimplification. Indigenous and settlers have been together for hundreds of years. Oppression occurred for sure, as all cultural groups have oppressed each other for thousands of years. Hopefully now we know better and can move on from oppressive practices, but substance abuse and suicide still exist in Indigenous run schools and you’re going to have some form of residential schools as long as small remote isolated communities exist. Sad but true. With regard to the impacts of high immigration on a society that doesn’t have enough transportation infrastructure to move people hastily and efficiently, enough housing to make it affordable, and enough places outside the biggest few cities that people actually want to settle, it’s important to consider the impacts of adding hundreds of thousands more people to the mix each year. Yes there are environmental impacts and there are impacts to social cohesion as some of these new arrivals don’t bother to integrate with Canadian society. Some don’t really value it. Outside Quebec we don’t really demand much assimilation or respect for existing Canadian culture. Part of the problem is that we have stopped valuing our own cultures. We slam the cultures of the main founding cultures of Canada, French and English, as “colonial” and oppressive without appreciating that these cultures were some of the most progressive of their day. They brought us common law, democracy, free universal public education, and much of what we consider essential to human rights. Indigenous cultures contribute to these foundations as well and we’re taking more time today to appreciate those contributions. I think we’re doing a few things wrong today. We’re throwing away democracy and freedom to pander to voices of fear and paranoia. We’re crushing working people with fuel and food prices because we think that hitting them with carbon taxes is going to save the planet when there are cheaper and more sensible ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as incorporating green energy into the building code. We’re also failing to see that some cultural values are more productive and healthy than others in the efforts to build and maintain a cohesive, thriving democracy. An emerging and dangerous trend is the turning over of responsibility for our organizations to systems or algorithms that have no inherent values. We become slaves to compliance in order to enjoy basic freedoms. I see this in our current public health Puritanism and the new puritanical fight against climate change. Canada could accommodate millions more people in the north without overwhelming our metropolitan areas in the south, but only if we have policies that encourage northern settlement. I don’t know why such a push to the North isn’t integrated into some form of immigration policy, such as a minimum period of residence outside certain regions prior to the granting of full citizenship. There could at least be a fast track incentive form of citizenship for this. There’s much that we could do to improve Canada cheaply and affordably, but our leaders often take the easy way out for political expediency, borrowing money and saddling future generations with debt to buy off voters and pay for dubious pet projects.

I just visited three US states during this short window before our government reimposes draconian testing and quarantine requirements that will make it nearly impossible for regular people and families to travel outside Canada. In these Great Lakes states no one has to wear masks indoors. Signs on some businesses say that unvaccinated people must wear masks but no one is enforcing it. In Ontario we all must wear masks indoors, whether or not we’re vaccinated, and we must show vaccine passports to enjoy basic freedoms like going to a restaurant or movie theatre. We’re simply not as free as Americans. I’m surprised at Ford. Our politicians don’t have minds of their own and follow the WHO directives from Beijing unquestioningly.

Omicron is just the latest excuse to continue restrictions indefinitely. The symptoms appear to be relatively mild. Vaccines appear to have some effectiveness. When will people wake up to the fact that we have to learn to live with Covid because no vaccine or treatment will eliminate it? We vaccinate and treat to mitigate the effects. Imposing and reimposing restrictions won’t make much difference to the Covid death rates, which are low. Restrictions are a totalitarian tool. China modelled their use and pressured international bodies like the WHO to encourage countries to impose them. You live under totalitarian capitalism. Democracy and freedom are done. Wake up.

End all restrictions immediately! You are being oppressed! Wake up!

Yup, the impulse to control and oppress in the name of public health purity is a close associate of the desire to eliminate the “inferior” in the name of a perfected race. We’re watching the same kind of twisted urge literally crush human freedom and mental health. Where is our perspective on the threat of Covid versus all of the other health and economic fallout from Covid restrictions? Our governments and peoples are under a frightening mass hypnosis comparable to the German peoples under Hitler. 100%. If you think that Citizen_2015 is a rare Manchurian Candidate, you only have to look to our government and mainstream media to see the mass hysteria at work. I think the directives come from China and are disseminated through the WHO, which is under China’s control. The US Dems and Liberals are totally naive and manipulated consumers of this messaging, which is literally destroying democracy and human freedom around the world. Covid is the least of our worries now. I used to buy into the official narrative. I was wrong.