Convoy for Freedom

We have all seen or heard about the convoy for freedom that is occupying Ottawa as well as causing some disruptions in Alberta and Manitoba. This started out as a protest of cross border vaccine mandates from Truck drivers crossing the border but has now grown to be a protest of that plus lockdowns, personal freedoms, mandates and many more grievances.

Personally I support everyone having to get vaccinated, but the real question is why do many of them not want to get vaccinated and believe these wild conspiracy theories and have such a deep distrust of government? Well I might have part of an answer to that.

Recently a golf friend of mine and I ran into one another and we started chatting about some of this and continued online. He would post things in support of the convoy and other matters. As he posted, others would also chime in and I would try to take a logical approach to this and explain it. No one wanted to accept what I was saying, and then it occurred to me why.

If you look at the start of the pandemic, the information being sent out was rather poor. Health officials started with it is not a threat, but then a huge threat. Initially they said it was not air born, but that was found to be totally wrong. Masks don’t help was what we were told at the beginning and then that changed. The Chinese are being transparent, everyone can get a test, lockdowns will work, vaccine will prevent Covid, all found to be BS. So right there people built a distrust because the information was constantly changing.

Then look at some of the decisions about closures. We close all gyms but leave air, train and ship travel open. We leave restaurants open but not pubs with little to no explanation as to why one business stays open but not another. Both business and the public have not been given any explanation about closures and I don’t think there is one. You can be on a crowded plane, but you cannot go to the gym makes no sense to me either.

Finally, of course is the transparency of data from the various health organizations and medical systems, which has been incomplete about hospitalizations and who is most susceptible. There has been this attitude by the levels of government that they must protect us from the information because the general population won’t understand, in short treating the population like children. HELLO, who is is paying the bill for the financial packages like CERB (what a joke) and hospitalization costs? The taxpayer and we should have a right to the info we are paying for given government is spending like a bunch of drunken sailors with no plan.

When I look back at what has happened and all of above, no shit people are protesting, they cannot trust the info coming out of government as government has not been forthright, so there is no trust in what it says. The people protesting are straight forward working people, like my golf friend, who are frustrated and feel no one is being honest with them. The distrust creates the opportunity for the BS train of social media to take over and people like Infowars Alex Jones, will use this to promote conspiracy of the vaccines and anything else on their websites and podcasts. They call out conspiracy while in the same breath hocking their vitamins to the public as protection from Covid.

If you know someone who every time they told you a “fact”, had to take it back and change the  narrative, time and time again, would you necessarily trust what comes out of their mouth? I would not necessarily trust what they say with that history. The people in this Convoy are straight forward hardworking individuals but they don’t suffer BS well and that is what they feel the government is trying to sell them…BS.

There is an old Scottish saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me” and that is how many of them feel. That the government under PM Photo Op, has not been honest, has acted as an authoritarian with mandates and has not trusted that people can understand and accept the information. I have a greater understanding and empathy for the protestors now.

The facts are for truckers to cross the border into the US the US side says they must be fully vaccinated to cross, just like any other person travelling to there. Even if PM Photo OP lifted the mandate for truckers the US won’t. So to truck back and forth into the US, they have to get vaccinated regardless.

The sooner everyone is vaccinated the sooner PM Photo OP and the provinces can all open up and the lower the chance of the virus mutating, but not a guarantee. The vaccine has been statistically shown to lower the chance of hospital admittance and death in those under 65 who are healthy to 0.9%. That will greatly help alleviate the medical crunch going on.

In my humble opinion, the hesitancy in vaccination by many is a direct result of the government’s way they disseminated information to the public and kept altering the protocols that we needed to follow. This created a distrust from the start and opportunity for those on social media with an agenda of their own, to exploit this distrust for profit in many cases.

I understand the hesitancy better. I don’t agree with it, as the vaccine is the best protection from the virus but with all the BS and misinformation, I understand why the protests are happening. Would it not be nice if PM Photo Op did?