Juno News - Activists are pushing for another lockdown

00:00:00.000 I spoke about this on the show on Monday with Randy Hillier, who's an independent MPP or

00:00:15.720 the equivalent of an MLA in Ontario. And what happened in the response to that interview was

00:00:21.520 very great. I got emails from all sorts of people saying thank you for having him on,

00:00:25.200 people that have become big fans of Randy Hillier for being, in many cases, the one man opposition to

00:00:31.220 the politics of lockdown, which are not limited to one particular ideological group. And now you

00:00:39.080 have the special interest groups that are getting in on this, pushing governments to shut things down.

00:00:45.000 In particular, the Ontario Hospital Association has pushed a letter to the Ontario government.

00:00:50.860 And I'll tell you why this matters to people outside of Ontario in a moment.

00:00:54.100 But the Ontario Hospital Association pushed a letter saying there should be immediate restrictions

00:00:59.080 and shutdowns on non-essential businesses, such as gyms, dine-in restaurants and bars, nightclubs,

00:01:05.380 theatres, and restrictions on places like churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. So now you've got a bunch

00:01:12.520 of healthcare activists that are saying we need to shut down churches, shut down restaurants, shut down

00:01:17.800 all of these things. Basically go back to, I don't know if it was stage one or stage two, but go back

00:01:22.980 to one of the early stages of the initial lockdown and ban people from getting together. So this is so

00:01:30.760 ridiculous. And the narrative right now being pushed is that because we see cases going up, we've got to 0.90

00:01:35.840 shut everything down, even though hospitalizations are not going up, deaths are not going up. The cases

00:01:41.600 that we are seeing, and I mean, take for, you can't take for granted that case counts are an accurate

00:01:47.060 measure as we've talked about. But the cases that we are seeing are by and large from younger people,

00:01:51.840 a lot of house parties, some bars and nightclubs, but it's behavioral, it's not locational.

00:01:58.680 And this is the one thing that people need to realize. These transmissions that we are seeing

00:02:03.320 come down to how people choose to behave, not the opportunity that's presented to them by the

00:02:09.220 government or by any sort of business. I mean, the latest change in Ontario was shut down bars at

00:02:15.160 midnight. They have to do last call at 11pm. And I heard this, I'm like, well, this is ridiculous,

00:02:19.920 because I live in a student town. I live in a town where lots of people are at a university and

00:02:24.360 a college. So we've got a very vibrant nightlife scene. And I know that what happens already when

00:02:30.040 the bar is shut down at, I don't know, is it 2am they shut down at? This is how little I've connected

00:02:34.820 to that world in my life. I think it's 2am. Everyone goes to a house party and drinks from,

00:02:39.960 you know, two to four. So now the bars are shutting down at midnight. Everyone's going to go to a house

00:02:44.900 party and drink from midnight to four. And it's not really going to make a huge difference at all.

00:02:50.760 So this is where we're going. It's theatrical. It is theatrical in nature. When we see the hospital

00:02:56.820 association calling for shutdown of restaurants, I'm not aware of a single outbreak from a restaurant,

00:03:05.100 from someone dining in a restaurant. I'm not aware of any. In fact, most of the people that are going to

00:03:09.740 restaurants are the same bubbles as one another. My wife and I have gone out to restaurants. You

00:03:14.480 know, the server is wearing a mask. We sit down, we eat, we leave. There's no risk to that. We're

00:03:18.840 not having big 20 person parties there. And if we were, we'd probably be the type of people that

00:03:23.120 we're going to have a 20 person party in a home instead of in a restaurant. But churches, there have

00:03:30.520 been, I can count on one hand, the number of cases there have been linked to churches. And those

00:03:35.860 are anomalies in the sense that you could find cases linked to any marginally close contact

00:03:41.960 activity. But to say that shutting down churches is the way to go, we've been down this road. And there

00:03:47.940 was an outcry as there should have been from people saying, hey, you're actually violating our civil

00:03:52.760 liberties when you talk about shutting down places of worship, because they're non-essential. And I was

00:03:58.400 getting into a scrap with someone on Twitter about this the other day. I try to avoid scrapping on

00:04:02.760 Twitter, but it sucked me in. Because people who aren't of faith, people who don't have a religion, 1.00

00:04:07.500 they don't understand. They think that going to church is just like some silly thing that people

00:04:11.820 do as a hobby on the weekend. They don't realize that it's actually something that Christians are 0.98

00:04:16.120 called to do by God and people in other faith groups as well. I won't speak for them, but they are

00:04:21.660 called to do this. They are commanded to do it. They have to do it. And that's not to say you can't

00:04:27.000 adjust or amend the way you do it. You know, some churches were doing online services,

00:04:31.160 parking lot services, drive-in style. I get it. And some churches have just modified the distance

00:04:36.900 to go in and sit down in the pews and worship like you normally would. And the fact that this

00:04:42.380 happens safely, without issue, means that there is no license or justification to going back and

00:04:49.820 saying we are going to shut down places of worship. And it shows a profound disrespect that so many of

00:04:55.120 the same people who thought that 10,000 person Black Lives Matter rallies were okay are saying

00:05:01.420 that, oh, you know what, you got to shut down your church. That's not essential. I'm sorry,

00:05:04.420 if 10,000 people can get together and take a knee against police brutality or whatever they were

00:05:09.580 protesting, it changes each week. If 10,000 people can do that, then 100 people can go into a church,

00:05:15.860 a couple hundred people can go into a church, keep their distance, and that is not harming or

00:05:20.900 threatening anyone. But it's the disrespect that we see from so many people on the lockdown left

00:05:28.600 towards faith groups. And it's not like it's a conspiracy of, you know, they've been looking for

00:05:34.060 an excuse to shut down churches and now they've got one. But it shows a profound disrespect for the

00:05:39.800 importance of faith in people's lives. And we do see that manifest in other ways. We do see it manifest

00:05:45.560 whenever policy issues come up that are remotely related to morality or questions of ethics or

00:05:51.360 morals. But when we're seeing it in this context, the fact is they just think, oh, it's just like a

00:05:55.620 bar. The fact that they're lumping churches in with bars as being, oh, it's not essential. No one needs

00:06:00.360 to do that pretty much says what we need to know. So governments need to push back against this.

00:06:07.260 The reason I'm talking about the Ontario case is because that's where we're seeing, I think,

00:06:11.680 the most pivotal and critical discussion in that we have a conservative government that's saying

00:06:18.080 everything's on the table, threatening lockdown. And I'll say I ran as a candidate. I could have been,

00:06:23.300 I mean, I didn't come close, but I could have been theoretically a member of provincial parliament

00:06:27.500 in this government. And I'm glad I didn't have to be. I have a lot more fun doing what I'm doing now

00:06:33.540 than I would have if I were stuck in politics. That's not a reflection of any particular party.

00:06:38.220 But I share that to say that there are a lot of conservatives that I'm hearing from that are

00:06:42.520 saying that are thinking, OK, you know, I don't exactly like that. We have taken now this approach

00:06:47.720 to government that has very much targeted businesses who are not the sources of the problems.

00:06:55.460 And all of the lockdowns that we see tend to be theatrical. We flattened the curve. The curve is a

00:07:03.840 straight line. That was the whole thing. It was about it was never about preventing everyone from

00:07:08.300 getting it. And I know I've repeated this, but I'm going to say it again because it's so important.

00:07:12.200 It was never about zero cases, zero transmission, zero outbreaks. It was about not overwhelming the

00:07:18.920 hospital system. Hospitals are sitting empty. I don't know how many cities have done this, but I know

00:07:24.760 some have built entirely separate hospitals, field hospitals that have gone unused because there was no

00:07:30.960 surge. And we can be grateful for that. I'm not unhappy there was no surge. I'm actually quite

00:07:35.100 glad that we didn't have this overwhelming of ICUs. But the whole point of it was that we want to be

00:07:40.360 able to manage the cases. There was an understanding that everyone was going to get it. You wanted to

00:07:46.320 protect the vulnerable. And I am fully prepared. I'm not one of these pandemic truthers or plandemic

00:07:52.200 scandemic type people that thinks it's not real. It is. And I know that all these people in the

00:07:56.260 YouTube comment sections hate that. Tough luck. I think it's real. I think we need to protect the

00:08:00.720 vulnerable. But that's where the focus needs to be. Protecting the elderly in long-term care homes,

00:08:07.300 that's important. Preventing people who want to go from church, who are willing to keep their

00:08:12.220 distance when they go to church from doing that because it's not essential, that is not okay.

00:08:17.520 And the measured response that Canadians deserve is not happening. And we see it in provincial

00:08:24.280 governments that are feeling completely justified and emboldened in lockdowns. And we see it in

00:08:29.100 federal government now that the NDP and the Liberals think this is licensed to spend every

00:08:33.600 dime and every dollar of taxpayer money they've ever wanted to spend. Give me a break. If you enjoy the

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00:08:45.420 and click donate to support the work that we're doing and stand up for independent media.

00:08:49.840 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True

00:08:53.940 North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - October 04, 2020

Activists are pushing for another lockdown

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