Juno News - Don't be afraid to speak out against the lockdowns

00:00:00.000 Don't let anyone try to tell you that you don't have a right to have a voice right now,

00:00:09.300 a say in the way we live right now, and the pandemic and lockdown restrictions that so

00:00:14.320 many of us across Canada are currently living under right now. You know, one criticism I'm

00:00:19.020 getting used to receiving when I post a column or commentary or what have you, someone will write

00:00:22.960 in and say, okay, Dr. Fury, are you an epidemiologist? What gives you the right to have a perspective?

00:00:28.640 Well, first of all, I'm privileged to speak to many infectious diseases specialists across Canada,

00:00:33.400 ICU doctors who are actually treating COVID patients. They really know what's happening

00:00:37.220 on the ground floor. But that's beside the point. Even if I wasn't speaking to those individuals,

00:00:41.920 even if I was just some regular Joe who had an opinion on what's going on right now,

00:00:46.140 would that not be my right as a citizen, as a taxpayer, as a parent when it comes to school

00:00:52.100 issues to want to have a say in what's actually going on in my society right now? Yes, there are

00:00:57.860 very technical questions out there. Things like genome sequencing or how many nurses do you need

00:01:02.700 to staff an ICU ward on a particular shift? Is it four? Is it 14? I don't know. It's a particular

00:01:08.960 question to that expertise. You defer to the experts on those. But the pandemic right now is not this

00:01:15.440 very niche public health issue. It has become a whole of society issue, a whole of society

00:01:21.100 conversation where so many voices matter. Every voice matters because the decisions we are making

00:01:27.520 are having an impact on every single person's life, more so really than any decisions governments have

00:01:33.860 ever been making about our lives in the past. So I find the argument that someone who is not

00:01:39.320 this particular medical specialist can't speak right now, well, I find that argument incredibly

00:01:45.260 troubling. I think there's obviously a huge role to play in the medical specialists running different

00:01:50.660 scenarios and numbers and presenting, you know, different possibilities and saying, hey guys, you know,

00:01:55.680 if you do this or that, we're worried that this situation will happen, this number of cases will occur

00:02:00.420 and so forth. And to really help people have the information that they need to make informed decisions

00:02:05.320 about the way we should be living our lives right now. But the idea that unless you are this medical

00:02:11.080 specialist or that medical specialist, you cannot be a part of the conversation, everyone else must not

00:02:16.960 just stay home, but zip it and shut up. That is not cool at all. And I think more people need to

00:02:23.200 need to push back about the idea that that they have no right to speak right now. You know, more and more

00:02:29.500 I'm getting different emails from business executives or someone who's an engineer or a scientist in a

00:02:35.720 non-epidemiological field. And they're saying they're looking at their specific industry, their specific

00:02:40.960 sector, they're running all the numbers, they're taking a look at the publicly available coronavirus

00:02:45.580 numbers, they're sitting down, they're doing their calculations, and they're saying, well, this is my

00:02:49.900 view about what should happen. These are very intelligent, informed, experienced people. And I humbly

00:02:54.720 submit that their voices matter, that their opinion matters, that your opinion matters. And don't let

00:03:01.300 anyone tell you otherwise.

Juno News - February 01, 2021