Juno News - Universities in the time of COVID and vaccine mandates

00:00:00.000 all right hello everyone welcome to our Civitas Canada digital salon this evening titled

00:00:11.280 universities in the time of covid and vaccine mandates this event is being produced in

00:00:16.560 partnership with true north my name is Lindsay Shepard I am a fellow with true north as well as

00:00:21.920 the administrator of Civitas Canada and I will serve as the moderator this evening tonight we

00:00:27.600 have four top-notch panelists who will be discussing the legal and ethical implications of vaccine

00:00:34.240 mandates on campus as well as how these new mandates are affecting the campus experience

00:00:39.680 for students and faculty our four panelists have each kindly prepared an opening presentation for us

00:00:46.480 of about 10 minutes in length and then I will have one or two questions for the panel at which point

00:00:52.640 we will then cut the recording and move into our private moderated Q&A session which will be for

00:00:57.920 Civitas Canada members only so if you are watching this right now on social media you know on youtube

00:01:03.600 or facebook check out CivitasCanada.ca for more information on how to become a member of Civitas

00:01:09.920 so that you can receive exclusive access to events like this one as well as Q&A sessions like the one

00:01:14.880 we're going to have tonight allow me to now introduce the speakers in the order they will be presenting

00:01:22.640 Dr. Julie Panessi is a professor of ethics at Huron University College which is affiliated with

00:01:27.840 Western University a video of her speaking out against mandated vaccinations went viral recently

00:01:34.080 where she explained how she had been placed on a leave from her university because she does not

00:01:38.400 want to submit to the mandate so I'm sure we'll get an update on that case tonight

00:01:44.080 Alison Pajovic is a lawyer at the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms who is representing two

00:01:49.760 students at Seneca College who are facing roadblocks to their education because they do not wish to

00:01:55.280 receive the COVID vaccination and showing a negative test is not an option at their college

00:02:02.160 Benjamin Gabay is a graduate student in music composition at the University of Toronto who is

00:02:07.760 acting as the voice for students at the U of T who are concerned with the ethical implications of COVID

00:02:12.800 vaccine mandates on campus and he has been advocating to his university administration on this subject

00:02:19.760 and last but not least we have Dr. Stephen Pelek who holds a PhD in biochemistry and is a professor in

00:02:26.080 the department of medicine at the University of British Columbia he has been voicing his concerns

00:02:30.880 about mandated vaccinations to the UBC administration and I'm sure we will be hearing more about that this

00:02:37.120 evening so let's get into our discussion tonight starting off with Dr. Panessi thanks Lindsay very much can

00:02:46.240 you hear me okay yes okay well hi everybody and welcome I thought I would start off with two stories

00:02:53.760 the first is my own experience with the university mandates as Lindsay said I recorded a video the first

00:03:00.160 week of September relaying my concerns about the mandate and in which I reported my dismissal and that

00:03:06.480 went viral and it was reported by all mainstream media in Canada and that by itself I think is an unusual fact

00:03:14.480 because in making a personal medical choice I only did what the last 40 years of medical ethics has

00:03:21.760 been established to support and what legislation in Canada including in Ontario's Health Care Consent Act

00:03:28.240 has been meant to protect on August 16th I wrote to my dean expressing my concerns with the campus-wide mandate

00:03:37.600 I got no response with the start of term quickly approaching on September 7th I wrote again to state

00:03:44.880 that I would not comply with the mandate and on September 16th I was terminated with cause so that's my story

00:03:54.160 the second story is a story of five Ontario university students Camilla Lebel Ferrell 19, Jacob Downey 18,

00:04:04.160 Rachel Ann Smith fourth year student all three of these were from Queens Francis Perrin 25 from Ottawa and

00:04:13.440 Farisa Navab a third year student from Guelph these are all previously healthy university students some

00:04:20.960 were athletes all passed away suddenly after a medical emergency or shortly after exercising we don't know if

00:04:30.960 these students deaths are linked to the vaccine mandates and we don't know if time will show that

00:04:36.880 they are or not what we do know is that deciding whether to mandate the COVID vaccines for university

00:04:44.320 students should depend on a very careful risk analysis and that's an analysis that I think we haven't seen

00:04:51.440 you will hear from my colleagues tonight about some of the concerns about the necessity efficacy and safety

00:05:00.480 of these vaccines and why they don't seem to be well balanced against the statistically small risk that

00:05:07.360 COVID poses to young people and whenever we're dealing with public health a really careful balancing needs

00:05:14.560 to be done between individual rights on the one hand and the collective good on the other hand and

00:05:22.480 I don't want to pretend that that balancing is easy or that our public health officials or university

00:05:28.320 administrators have had an easy one and a half years but that certainly doesn't absolve them of the

00:05:35.840 moral weight of their responsibility and one really important ethical consideration in public health

00:05:43.920 that I think has been largely ignored in our public discourse is that of disproportionate harms it's

00:05:50.000 probably the fundamental ethical principle in public health and it's the idea that a treatment should not

00:05:56.480 pose harms that are equal to or greater than what it is supposed to treat there was a recent journal article

00:06:05.840 in journal toxicology reports and it says there's a conservative estimate that there are five times the

00:06:15.360 number of deaths attributable to COVID vaccination than to COVID itself in the 65 plus demographic and the

00:06:25.120 risk of death from COVID decreases drastically as age increases right so it's important to be clear I think

00:06:34.240 that university mandates are by definition coercive immunization programs right they impose a serious

00:06:43.360 consequence on students who in the absence of the threat of the loss of their education would not

00:06:51.040 voluntarily make this choice so if the student would voluntarily agree to vaccination then of course the

00:06:56.720 mandate wouldn't be necessary right and the irony here I think and and the great harm is that

00:07:03.680 universities are supposed to be a safe zone a safe haven of autonomy and free thought and we might

00:07:11.760 say the fulcrum of critical thinking in society a safe arena where more so than anywhere else questions and

00:07:20.560 questioning are valid and valued and questioners are protected where even the most unorthodox idea is not easily

00:07:31.200 dismissed and it's the ultimate laboratory in which students can experiment with what they think and

00:07:38.480 who they are and who they'll become as many have said it is or was the greatest time of their lives

00:07:47.440 the feelings among today's university students though I think are well captured by a comment that I

00:07:54.480 recently heard from a student who said the world is growing darker all around you and basically no one

00:08:02.640 under 40 thinks that anything good will ever happen again that certainly wasn't my experience as an

00:08:09.120 undergraduate student right and I think across campuses in Canada right now we're seeing professors

00:08:15.840 name calling and shaming each other we're seeing students embarrassed to reveal their vaccination status

00:08:22.240 they're terrified that what will happen if they do and many who many are saying they got vaccinated not

00:08:30.080 because they thought it was the best choice for themselves but because they don't want to stand out

00:08:35.040 they don't want the hassle they don't want to risk their education or they just want all of this to go

00:08:39.920 away they just want life to go back to normal and universities across Canada we're seeing this stratified

00:08:48.400 student cohort the vaccinated and the unvaccinated the compliant and the resistant and the discrimination

00:08:56.400 that comes from any stratified class system we are I think losing our conscience our social consciousness

00:09:06.480 our civility our respect for one another and ultimately our humanity and I was thinking earlier today you

00:09:14.400 know what would it take to recapture these things and though and there's a bit of a false sense of

00:09:21.440 security among people who fall into the vaccinated group because they think well I complied therefore

00:09:26.560 I have all the rights I have all the freedoms I'm safe I'm okay right though it's currently only

00:09:33.520 the unvaccinated I suppose who feel as though they're losing a grip on their rights we should remember

00:09:40.640 the words of John F Kennedy who said the rights of all men are diminished when the rights of one man

00:09:47.840 are threatened one thing I think is very clear is that compliance is not a virtue you can't comply your

00:09:56.960 way into freedom and any right or freedom or benefit or luxury you get from compliance isn't real or stable

00:10:06.480 and it's fleeting instead of compliance I think we need vocal united non-compliance holding our beliefs

00:10:16.640 in the shadows will guarantee that we're about to enter a world that is unimaginably worse than the one

00:10:23.360 we inhabit currently and we have to hold those beliefs up and say this is how my actions are going to

00:10:30.080 change on the basis of them this is what I'm willing to risk this is who I'm willing to stand up with

00:10:37.760 we already know what one small voice can do you know the voices of Anne Frank or Rosa Parks or Greta

00:10:45.280 Thunberg or Malala Yousafzai another thing we know and this was an article published about 2011 in Science

00:10:52.720 Daily is that once an idea is adopted by 10 percent of the population that is the psychological tipping

00:11:00.720 point when ideas opinions or beliefs will be rapidly adopted by the rest so a vocal I emphasize italicized

00:11:09.920 vocal a vocal noisy 10 percent is all it takes to turn the tide to shift the balance of you know this

00:11:19.840 this oppression that so many are facing and so our freedom is perhaps not quite as far out of reach

00:11:27.600 as we might think thank you thank you so much all right uh shall we go with Alison next

00:11:40.480 hi there everyone thank you and thank you Dr Panessi I couldn't agree with you more

00:11:46.080 um just want to introduce myself again I'm legal counsel for the justice center for constitutional

00:11:51.760 freedoms in Canada we are a non-profit organization that defends Canadians constitutional rights and

00:11:58.240 freedoms and since the covid pandemic began Canadians constitutional rights have been eroded almost

00:12:05.040 overnight to the point where the simple act of gathering with friends at homes and parks could

00:12:10.000 subject people to fines schools were shut down and universities and colleges were forced online

00:12:17.120 young people in Canada have been robbed of the very best and most exciting experiences in their lives

00:12:24.000 I know that when I was in law school that was the most exciting time in my life going to sit in my in

00:12:30.320 class and debate issues with professors and other students around me having that competitive experience you know

00:12:38.480 going out after school to socialize spending weekends with my new friends that's all an experience that

00:12:46.960 is one of the best times in a young person's life and these young people who don't want to declare their

00:12:52.880 vaccination status today or don't want to get vaccinated they're being robbed of that experience

00:12:58.000 and I find that horrifying instead of going back to normal which is what Canadians were promised 1.00

00:13:04.080 once the covid vaccines became available and enough of the population were inoculated or recovered from natural

00:13:10.800 infection our governments and employers began to end the careers of people who don't want to take the vaccine

00:13:18.720 as I've said universities and colleges have banned unvaccinated students from campus

00:13:24.560 they are destroying their career prospects and slashing their dreams

00:13:29.200 in undergraduate I minored in English I took a course called classics of dystopian fiction

00:13:37.760 we studied George Orwell's 1984 and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and others I had never even heard

00:13:45.600 of a lot of these books before I was very young and we all discussed at great length once we read those books

00:13:53.200 how horrifying those societies were that were depicted in those novels and we expressed immense relief that

00:14:00.640 our lives in Canada were nothing like that I could never have imagined that those novels would be coming

00:14:07.120 to life around us today it has never been more important to stand up for our rights in this country

00:14:13.600 and to fight for the freedom to follow our conscience our religion to fight for the right to decide what goes

00:14:20.640 into our body without being coerced to fight for our privacy especially within respect of health

00:14:27.120 information and to fight for our right to be treated equally and not discriminated against based on our

00:14:32.960 medical history once we lose those freedoms they will never come back and Canada will be unrecognizable

00:14:40.880 at the Justice Centre we decided that as an organization

00:14:44.640 that amongst the hundreds of requests requests we've received each week

00:14:51.040 since this summer to assist desperate people we had to fight a post-secondary education

00:14:58.320 institutions vaccine mandate we chose to launch an action against Seneca College which was I believe

00:15:05.840 the first post-secondary education institution to announce a vaccine mandate in an interview with what I believe

00:15:14.000 was the Toronto Star the president of the unit of the college bragged about closing the doors on the

00:15:20.400 unvaccinated and that doing so was not about charter rights but about public health well the Justice

00:15:28.640 Centre we beg to differ with that we are preparing legal action to challenge Seneca's vaccine mandate on the

00:15:35.360 basis that it violates our clients charter protected rights of conscience bodily autonomy privacy and the

00:15:42.400 right not to be discriminated against our clients they're named Crystal Love and Marianna Costa are two

00:15:49.840 hard-working young women with children who were in the middle of their programs one in a veterinary 0.99

00:15:56.000 technician program and the other in a fashion arts program they received emails from Seneca College

00:16:01.680 over the summer advising them that they would not be permitted to continue with their programs

00:16:06.800 if they didn't receive the vaccinations our clients are open about the fact that they do not wish to

00:16:12.160 take these vaccinations for a variety of reasons number one the vaccines are experimental they will be

00:16:18.160 in clinical trials until at least 2023 therefore there is no long-term safety data number two they come

00:16:26.160 with Health Canada warnings on their labels for myocarditis pericarditis which are heart inflammation

00:16:33.360 conditions Bell's palsy which is a paralysis of the face and blood clotting issues number three these

00:16:40.560 young women are healthy and in the age group that has a 99.95 percent chance of recovery if they get

00:16:47.520 COVID number four the reported injuries in the U.S. from the COVID-19 vaccinations are greater in number than

00:16:56.320 the injuries reported in the last 10 years for all of the other vaccines combined

00:17:01.840 so these students want to wait until the clinical safety trials are finished before considering

00:17:10.720 taking these vaccines and until then they would rather choose the risk of getting COVID-19 knowing

00:17:17.200 how likely they are to recover from it they choose that low risk versus an unknown long-term risk from

00:17:24.880 taking the vaccines so how do we intend to legally attack this mandate well we're going to

00:17:31.760 bring a charter challenge and the charter of rights and freedoms as part of Canada's constitution

00:17:38.640 bringing a charter challenge involves two parts in the first part the onus is on our students our

00:17:45.840 clients to prove that their rights have been infringed and as I've said we'll argue that their charter

00:17:53.600 rights of conscience privacy bottle bodily autonomy and equality rights have been infringed through their own

00:18:00.320 sworn evidence which we will file with the court then Seneca College will have to show with strong and

00:18:08.560 compelling evidence that the infringement of our clients charter rights is justified this is a legal

00:18:16.160 test from section one of the charter specifically Seneca must show with compelling evidence that their

00:18:24.640 objective for imposing the mandates is pressing and substantial they'll have to show that the vaccine mandate is

00:18:32.080 rationally connected to that pressing and substantial objective they'll have to show that there's not another way to ensure campus safety other than a vaccine mandate

00:18:43.520 and they'll have to ensure that the benefits of the vaccines far outweigh the deleterious effects of the mandates

00:18:53.680 our answer to whether they're going to be able to justify these mandates under section one of the charter is a resounding

00:19:01.200 no the mandates from our perspective and from our experts research is that they are not justifiable in science

00:19:11.440 we are preparing and having experts prepare expert opinions on this from scientists and doctors

00:19:18.160 the latest peer-reviewed research and real world data from Israel the US and the UK shows that the vaccines do

00:19:26.080 not prevent you from getting COVID do not prevent you from spreading COVID to others do not prevent you

00:19:31.760 from having a serious outcome from COVID and young adults have an infinitesimally small chance of dying

00:19:38.720 from COVID the risks of taking the vaccine are greater for young adults than the risks of dying from COVID

00:19:45.040 there are viable alternative treatments and natural immunity is superior to vaccine immunity those are the

00:19:52.720 facts which we will present with scientific evidence for the court's review and consideration this case

00:20:00.160 will come down to a battle over the science which in our view is clear the vaccine mandates for college

00:20:07.680 students are unnecessary egregious potentially harmful and do not meet the strict legal test to justify

00:20:15.440 infringements of these students charter protected rights never has a fight been so important the

00:20:22.240 charter exists to protect Canadians from overreaching and unlawful government action we need the courts

00:20:29.360 in Canada to uphold the charter to reinforce its power and legal authority and to affirm that it still

00:20:36.160 protects people we must win these legal battles the charter must protect Canadians from these unlawful

00:20:42.560 mandates we look forward to this case and are confident that it will have far-reaching implications

00:20:48.400 for other post-secondary institutions we must win this case for our children's futures and the future of

00:20:55.920 our beautiful country thank you very much thank you allison this is definitely going to be the case to

00:21:03.200 watch um benjamin please go ahead uh yeah hi i'm benjamin gabay i'm a graduate student at the university

00:21:11.680 of toronto pursuing a master's in music composition uh like many of my colleagues i took a leave of absence

00:21:17.280 this year rather than bend to the institution's coveted policies and also i'm the author of an open

00:21:22.720 letter sent to uft in august in response to the introduction of its coveted vaccine mandates which

00:21:27.760 can be read at students for covetethics.org that's students for covetethics.org and i also helped

00:21:35.200 organize several social media groups for like-minded students across ontario so i'd say that the most

00:21:41.120 obvious evidence that these mandates are a political charade is how suddenly they were catapulted onto

00:21:46.720 students less than a month before the start of the academic year between the beginning of july when

00:21:51.680 almost no school was talking about mandates and the president of western university even told the

00:21:56.720 student that he didn't think they could legally instate them to the beginning of september when

00:22:01.200 virtually every school in ontario had the same mandates nothing changed in the science if anything

00:22:06.640 we had more evidence indicating that the vaccines were significantly less effective and much more harmful

00:22:12.240 than previously indicated so we wrote our first letter to uft on august 6 about a week after the

00:22:18.480 university came out with a very unscientific unreferenced press release announcing that they were

00:22:23.920 mandating the coveted vaccine for high-risk activities uh a week later august 11th no response

00:22:30.960 but the issue sorry the school issued another press release uh this time saying that they would require

00:22:36.080 everyone to show proof of vaccination just to set foot on campus it was only after we sent the follow-up

00:22:41.600 letter on august 19 and declared that we were going public with our letter that we received a response

00:22:47.600 from vice provost sandy welsh that response rather than addressing any of our concerns or any of our

00:22:53.680 more than 50 scientific references expert opinions or data sets contained just a single paragraph stating

00:23:00.640 that the university takes a different view to the issues we raised now i'm not a scientist i'm not even a

00:23:07.760 student of science i lean on the commentary of experts like dr byron bridal dr michael palmer dr peter

00:23:14.400 mcculloch dr robert malone so i can evaluate the science and form my own arguments like i do when i

00:23:20.480 write an academic paper but if i wrote a paper where my thesis rested solely on a view that i or anyone

00:23:28.560 else has taken without providing some academic references to explain how i came to that view or why

00:23:34.240 it's valid i wouldn't even get a passing mark then there are the exemptions the institutions always

00:23:40.480 make a point of saying well of course we're going to allow exemptions for those who can't be vaccinated

00:23:45.280 for grounds protected under the human rights code so what does that look like well there are two types

00:23:50.400 of exemptions there's the the religion-based exemption religion or creed based and there's the medical

00:23:55.760 exemption and in my network of over 250 ontario students i have not yet come across a single student who

00:24:02.640 was granted an exemption that they applied for some tell me they they know someone who knows someone

00:24:08.000 who got one got an exemption somewhere but that's just how unwilling these institutions are to grant

00:24:13.840 exemptions at uft they seem to be just handing out pre-written rejections i i saw four religion-based

00:24:19.760 exemptions denied with exactly the same response letter despite the students who submitting them

00:24:25.440 who submitted them being from completely different faiths i also know someone who was denied a medical

00:24:30.880 exemption despite having three letters signed by medical professionals saying that she was it was

00:24:35.600 unsafe for her to receive a coveted vaccine so my main point with all of this is twofold the first part

00:24:42.240 being that none of this is justifiable nor have these institutions even made an effort to justify it

00:24:47.680 in my letter i piled on peer-reviewed science and public health data from around the world to stress that

00:24:53.280 a whether or not you had one or two or three or none of these shots in your arm you can still get and

00:24:59.760 transmit covet and b the statistical risk of covet covet related death to the student population

00:25:07.280 is comparable to the lifetime risk of death from a car accident even less so if you're going to ruin

00:25:12.720 hundreds of students lives uh you'd better have some really compelling scientific evidence not just a

00:25:18.240 view that doing so is the only option for sparing society from disaster and of course they don't have

00:25:24.640 that on the contrary just a couple of weeks ago there was a study or a letter published in the

00:25:29.920 european journal of epidemiology so i'll try to show here but uh it states i quote um in the 68 countries

00:25:39.200 that they analyzed there appears to be no discernible relationship between percentage of population fully

00:25:45.040 vaccinated and new covet 19 cases the second aspect is that universities seem to treat students who don't

00:25:53.040 want to take the jab or disclose their medical information like they're a bunch of petulant

00:25:57.360 toddlers refusing to put on a jacket to go out in the cold or something they made it clear they

00:26:02.960 don't believe any student has a a good reason for refusing the covet jab not even a doctor's note so

00:26:09.440 they don't see anything wrong with blackmailing students into compliance that's a very patronizing

00:26:14.400 dangerous perspective that these institutions have taken because in reality students have a lot of good

00:26:18.880 reasons not to go along with this uh this is the study that the julie finesse mentioned it's called 0.99

00:26:24.880 why are we vaccinating children against covet 19 it's by uh ronald kostoff and the title is a little

00:26:31.680 misleading because as dr finesse mentioned it it discusses the cost benefit analysis for all age groups

00:26:38.240 and it finds an atrociously high cost for anyone except the oldest frailest sickest portion of the

00:26:43.680 population um so if anyone wonders why there are thousands of intelligent students who would

00:26:48.560 rather sacrifice their education than take a covet jab it's all it's all in the study it discusses

00:26:53.520 the myriad issues with the vaccine clinical trials the issues they fail to address all the likely and

00:26:59.360 unknown long-term risks of the shot especially to healthy young people and how all the short-term

00:27:04.080 adverse outcomes we're seeing are not only vastly underreported but also directly validate all those

00:27:09.040 long-term concerns even the ontario government uh shortly followed by sweden and denmark recently

00:27:14.720 revoked its use of the moderna vaccine for young adults because it was suddenly

00:27:18.160 apparent to them that the the damage outweighed the benefit particularly with the increased rate

00:27:23.520 of myocarditis but remember just a few months ago when any connection between heart inflammation and

00:27:29.440 the covet vaccines was being fact checked as a spurious affiliation and then the cdc admitted well

00:27:36.160 it's there but it's four in a million and then a study came out in jama cardiology in august to say

00:27:41.680 well it's more like one in a hundred thousand now the ontario government admits that it's more like one

00:27:46.480 in five thousand from moderna but thankfully it's still only one in twenty eight thousand for pfizer

00:27:53.440 mind you astrazeneca was suspended in canada for an adverse event rate of one in fifty five thousand

00:27:59.520 so what about next month when the number goes up to one in two thousand or one in two hundred

00:28:05.120 are our schools still going to demand every student take a job in order to attend class

00:28:09.840 so in conclusion these mandates were parachuted into our institutions without scientific justification

00:28:16.000 less than a month before the start of classes and the mandates remain in place even though we now

00:28:20.400 have data clearly demonstrating that there is no correlation between vaccine mandates and reduced

00:28:25.520 disease of the population level and those students who had the audacity to do some research and go

00:28:31.520 directly to the science something that these institutions taught us to do and made an informed

00:28:36.000 decision not to get the jab based on the advice of world-class experts in immunology and toxicology

00:28:41.840 those students are being treated like troublemakers and are having their lives ruined and their futures

00:28:45.840 upended just within my immediate circle at uft two students can no longer pursue their choose their

00:28:51.360 chosen career path because they're not allowed to participate in the necessary academic placements

00:28:56.720 one student had to drop her schooling entirely because she had already taken a leave of absence the

00:29:00.640 previous year and wasn't allowed another one a student who moved to toronto from bc just before his

00:29:06.000 exemption request was rejected and now can't even set foot on campus

00:29:09.680 and an international student whose entire living situation is now in jeopardy

00:29:13.520 because it hinges on university funding and rather than address the concerns that students have

00:29:18.960 or make any effort to rebut the evidence we presented to them the institutions either ignore

00:29:23.440 those students completely or brush them off with copy pasted rhetoric more than half of uft's 150 word

00:29:30.400 paragraph that they issued in response to our eight page letter appeared four days later verbatim in a

00:29:37.280 letter sent to uft from the council of ontario medical health officers four days later without

00:29:42.960 a single scientific reference in either case does that sound like a carefully thought out public

00:29:48.400 health decision that weighed all the costs and benefits or like something that was dropped into

00:29:52.960 the inbox of the president from some nameless higher up so they wouldn't fall behind on the political

00:29:57.840 trend that's why this is such a dangerous path to be on like alberta pathologist dr roger

00:30:04.560 hodkinson often says this is politics playing medicine and politics unfortunately don't budge no

00:30:10.640 matter how much science you throw at them even when those politics pretend to be scientific

00:30:15.680 bad politics only fall apart when people stand up for something or expose a lie or point to truth

00:30:21.440 that's why we have to be the the wall that stops this boulder from rolling any further because it won't

00:30:27.440 stop on its own thank you thank you benjamin i think we really needed a student perspective on this so

00:30:35.280 i'm glad that you you're here to do that um now dr pelek please go ahead well how do you follow those

00:30:44.480 previous statements um and say something actually that adds to it i mean my journey on this has been

00:30:53.280 really as a faculty member at the university of british columbia that also runs a biotech company

00:30:59.040 connexus bioinformatics and about 17 months ago when the sequences of the sars covg genome first became

00:31:07.600 known because we had this technology in our company that we could actually start to track whether or not

00:31:14.080 a person was developing antibodies against this virus we thought it would be very interesting to to put

00:31:20.160 that technology to use and to see if we can see just how far and wide this virus has actually been

00:31:26.640 spreading through our society and from that information um it became very apparent really in

00:31:35.040 the early spring of 2020 that in fact in the british columbia area at least in the vancouver area and this

00:31:41.600 has been published in peer review journal jci insights that have been participating in this project

00:31:48.320 that out of about 276 healthy individuals adults about 60 percent of them health care workers

00:31:56.960 that in fact they uh had antibodies that could recognize the sars cov2 virus now whether it's from

00:32:03.840 previous exposure to other cold coronaviruses we couldn't answer that at that time we now have a pretty

00:32:10.400 good sense that it is from sars cov2 and it's interesting that when we come back to the present day

00:32:16.480 in a matter of probably a week or so a number of health care workers here in british columbia are

00:32:22.960 going to basically be suspended on basically unpaid leave of absence that in a month that they don't

00:32:31.040 succumb to actually being vaccinated they will be fired at a time when we are now in another wave of the

00:32:38.720 covid 19 pandemic in terms of cases um so it really comes down to the question as has been expounded

00:32:48.240 earlier that you know what is your your rights as an individual with respect to whether or not you

00:32:55.120 should can or have to be vaccinated in order to carry out just your normal normal activities what you

00:33:01.440 you've you've trained for to be able to you know go university and get that education or afterwards to

00:33:08.800 practice that job that that but you've sacrificed years and years of um of commitment and endeavor

00:33:17.120 what's happening is that in my opinion the the threat of the virus is is nowhere near matched by the

00:33:27.120 response to the response to this virus in terms of the over activity and the excuse to deny human rights

00:33:35.840 um which you know on the eve almost well just after 75 years ago we had the nuremberg trials

00:33:42.960 where nazi scientists physicians basically tested subjects without their consent 0.54

00:33:49.760 uh with i'm sure in their own mind thinking this was better for humanity that we would learn these

00:33:56.000 things that we could protect other people in the future but nonetheless it led to the creation of

00:34:02.320 the nuremberg code of ethics and from that came helsinki uh rules and even within canada we had our

00:34:12.800 rights of human freedoms charter of rights which was really laws that were already in existence in the

00:34:19.680 the 1960s but the concern was that if you had a change in government they could change these laws

00:34:26.560 and that these should be enshrined in the basic um constitution of our country and so this is where

00:34:33.440 in fact the um okay charter rights and freedoms was created and the last person that was involved in

00:34:41.840 the creation of that um brian peckford he recently spoke it uh on this subject and was appalled at

00:34:49.040 basically what they had tried to craft to prevent these very things that are happening right now

00:34:55.040 uh are are in fact transpiring so to have such a loss of right to your body integrity um to for your

00:35:07.040 your uh confidential in terms of your your medical situation to have these removed so quickly on what

00:35:15.200 what strikes me as being very little basis in terms of when you really put the whole covid19 pandemic

00:35:24.400 with respect to the virus and its effects on our society directly being relatively small compared

00:35:32.000 to what the response has been which has been very dramatic and and draconian um it it it's just not

00:35:41.360 warranted now we've already heard from the other speakers about some of the actual risks you know

00:35:48.080 if you're if you're under um 18 years of age and of course university students are very close to this

00:35:55.120 your chances of being hospitalized in canada is but one in a hundred thousand but we've also heard

00:36:01.280 from some of those speakers as correct that now we recognize the risk of myocarditis is one in

00:36:06.960 five thousand i did a calculation based on center for disease control data publications that indicate

00:36:14.480 that you're about 40 times higher risk of actually being injured if you're under 24 from the vaccines

00:36:24.000 than you are from actually being infected with the virus in terms of going to hospital the death rates

00:36:29.920 have been very very low in young people so in terms of why are we protecting our elderly by by vaccinating

00:36:38.640 the entire population well there's really been any good evidence to support that and what's been cited

00:36:45.120 earlier with israel where we're in fact we're seeing that 90 percent of the people that are in hospital

00:36:51.520 in israel are actually double vaccinated clearly speaks to the failure of these vaccines in terms of

00:36:59.040 efficacy in a longer term and in terms of the vaccine injury as pointed out earlier like on the

00:37:05.360 vera system i've actually checked this myself and done the queries and in the last 30 years of reporting

00:37:12.480 in the vera system 40 percent of all of the reported injuries has been from the three vaccines

00:37:20.160 available in the united states which does not include the astrazeneca vaccine which is induced

00:37:25.360 is it was available in canada is due to these three vaccines now we have over 14 000 deaths recorded in

00:37:33.200 the vera system and those that study this system recognize that only about two percent of actual cases

00:37:41.360 are actually reported in that system so experts that use those numbers usually multiply them by 30 times

00:37:49.520 so we may in fact be talking about hundreds of thousands of deaths in the united states alone

00:37:56.080 that have been due to actually the vaccines and the total number of deaths in united states from the

00:38:02.720 virus has been 700 000 roughly so it's an appreciable number but we're in we're in the same magnitude

00:38:09.440 when we talk about vaccine injury so this is very serious now in terms of the campuses

00:38:16.240 i've been very fortunate i've been at the university of british columbia i am a senator there and there's

00:38:22.720 been a lot of pressure both from the student alma mater president from mandatory vaccination from the

00:38:29.280 president of the faculty association from mandatory vaccination from the the president of the unions of

00:38:36.560 the bc uh universities from mandatory vaccination and they're getting this information really largely from

00:38:45.280 they're getting from the mainstream media which has been heavily censored um julie and i know from

00:38:52.000 our experiences uh of being on the canadian covert care alliance and just trying to get out simple

00:38:59.520 fact-based information as press releases they will not be carried by the canadian newswire services or

00:39:06.000 any other services that we uh apply to that in fact disseminate information to radio tv

00:39:12.000 newspapers so those of you are probably well aware in the social media it's heavily censored

00:39:19.600 and it's censored even within organizations like cbc we have cbc reporters that want to write these

00:39:25.440 stories they can't it's being suppressed at the highest level so the general public

00:39:31.440 isn't actually getting the balance of information and the facts now the scientific literature

00:39:36.640 isn't quite as inhibited as that it's normal for scientists to publish their work as long as it's

00:39:43.200 scientifically sound in terms of the methodology and that your your conclusions are warranted based

00:39:50.320 on the data that you have you can publish this work and and the peer review is simply to make sure it

00:39:55.760 meets that kind of standard so the scientific literature is replant with all this information of

00:40:03.200 issues related to the efficacy the safety of these vaccines what the threat is from the actual viruses the

00:40:11.440 delta virus compared to alpha virus and and earlier strains and with respect to how many people are

00:40:18.960 actually dying from this at this time compared to a year ago when we knew much less about the virus and

00:40:26.400 anticipated that the death rates were as high as five percent or more of the entire population infected

00:40:34.000 could die from this virus when we now know those numbers are less than 0.2 percent in all risk groups

00:40:42.000 and certainly if you're in a younger risk group as our university students um your your your threat to

00:40:48.320 your life is is it's it's it's basically zero uh the number of people that will actually die that are

00:40:56.080 under 18 or 24 in this country from the virus now my own research that's involved looking over a thousand

00:41:05.920 people now has indicated that about 80 percent of the people that we actually check for antibodies against

00:41:13.840 the virus have natural immunity they've already got antibodies okay now this is very different from

00:41:22.240 the message that's coming across from the health authorities based on studies that were done with fax

00:41:28.000 with antibody tests that were very um the way they were done was problematic using dried blood spots uh in

00:41:37.120 addition to that using uh basically uh just one or two markers that were very insensitive in terms of

00:41:45.280 the amounts that were available with our tests we've been able to uh detect clearly people that a year and

00:41:51.840 a half after they've actually had covet 19 that they still have antibodies in their circulation against the

00:42:00.400 virus so contrary to what you've often heard that in the mainstream media that that natural immunity

00:42:09.600 isn't as good as the vaccine the reality is that the natural immunity is actually much better it's

00:42:17.440 broader against more of the proteins in the virus it has memory and lasts for years it's also the right

00:42:24.880 kind of antibodies because they're targeting the um at the site of infection with the type of antibodies iga

00:42:33.040 and ige antibodies igm antibodies rather than the igg antibody class which you tend to get from the

00:42:39.200 vaccine in your circulation so the protection that you're getting is actually much better and it doesn't

00:42:44.800 come if you've had coven 19 and recovered it doesn't come from the risks that that come with the vaccine

00:42:53.600 itself now your chances of getting really sick if you're younger with the covet 19 is actually less

00:43:03.440 than if you're vaccinated 60 plus of people who are double vaccinated have the same symptoms as people

00:43:11.760 who've actually had covet 19 and most people that have been infected with the virus don't actually have

00:43:20.160 symptoms it's very mild now that's not saying that there isn't people who can be very seriously

00:43:25.760 affected by this virus and many of the people that have been have had comorbidities or they have

00:43:32.000 risk factors that can predispose them but for the vast majority of the society this has not been a problem

00:43:39.200 and so why are our uh in universities in other provinces i'm in bc why they're mandating complete

00:43:48.320 vaccination makes no sense to me at the university of british columbia they've tried to make a

00:43:53.920 compromise and they if you're living on residence you have to be vaccinated if you're going to

00:43:59.120 participate in social activities sporting then you'll have to be vaccinated there is a mandate for

00:44:06.080 those that are in the health care to be vaccinated but that's not coming from the university per se that's

00:44:10.720 coming from the health authorities for for health care workers now at the university of british

00:44:16.800 columbia in senate we voted on this and 24 of the senators voted against mandatory vaccination

00:44:24.640 and 30 of them voted for it it wasn't enough to pass the motion but certainly what this demonstrates

00:44:32.080 is that we are actually very divided even within the mainstream of the university in terms of the

00:44:39.280 representatives that we have in the senate on whether or not we should be doing mandatory

00:44:44.160 vaccination i believe many of the people that are advocating it don't have all the information i

00:44:50.080 think if they had all that information they would uh think otherwise and so we are in this situation of

00:44:56.880 suppression of knowledge it's not getting out to the general public it it is available though you can

00:45:03.760 go to the canadian covet care alliance and at that website that um you know julie anansi and myself are

00:45:11.680 involved in and and we have over 700 members over 16 committees usually with a dozen people per committee

00:45:19.760 usually people that have mds phds and other health professionals and we vet through this material that's

00:45:26.640 in the literature and we post it on our website after it's very heavily vetted with peer review to

00:45:33.200 make it available to everybody else so they can make informed decisions themselves on whether or not it's

00:45:37.680 appropriate in their case to be vaccinated it should always be a choice and it should be a choice that's

00:45:43.840 made with informed um choice and unfortunately we failed on those fronts with informed consent

00:45:52.880 we were not getting the information out where the the the rules seem to change every week

00:45:59.440 and it's really as pointed out earlier it's really up to us as individuals to make a moral stand

00:46:06.000 on where do we fit in all this what do we believe as canadians should be the norm for us those rights

00:46:13.440 that you know we have to fight for remember that there's people who died for those rights in world

00:46:19.120 war one and world war ii and and other battles and you know we we should really stand up to at least the

00:46:28.240 pressures that these people were far greater pressured to really stand up for us

00:46:35.520 we have to stand up for each other and that's what we should do now thank you

00:46:42.720 thank you so much um so before we move into our exclusive civitas only component i'm just going to ask one

00:46:50.960 um teaser question for our social media audience here um so this panel i would say is all in agreement that

00:46:59.920 uh vaccine mandates are bad um and but there was an august 21 august 2021 ipsos poll um that said 72 percent

00:47:13.680 of canadians agree with a vaccine passport system to enter gyms restaurants and other indoor spaces

00:47:20.480 that percentage of the population goes up for other situations 82 percent support proof of vaccination

00:47:27.680 for air and train travel 84 percent uh support a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers so you know

00:47:36.400 what what can we make of that that it seems if we trust this poll and other polls like it that the

00:47:42.480 majority of our country actually is in agreement with vaccine certificates who wants to tackle that

00:47:48.480 one first i could tackle that because firstly when people aren't properly informed they can't make

00:47:56.000 wise decisions and that's a reflection of these polls is partly that the other is remember this

00:48:02.640 in in right now we're in a honeymoon period with our vaccines they were because of shortages of

00:48:10.640 availability of vaccines they really weren't disseminated in our population in any big way

00:48:16.480 till after may of this year less than 15 percent of the population was double vaccinated by that point

00:48:25.200 so we know that these vaccines do work for a short period and we're in that period in which

00:48:32.480 they are effective and we have low rates of death in basically in our country even though we have

00:48:39.520 higher case counts in this peak but my own thinking is that that that reduction in death is actually not

00:48:47.200 due to the vaccines per se to a certain extent but mostly because we have natural immunity throughout

00:48:54.640 our population including in the people who've been vaccinated a lot of people that that in fact got

00:49:00.320 vaccinated were probably already had immunity now the problem is this in in basically let's say israel

00:49:10.880 right now if you are not triple vaccinated you are not vaccinated anymore so all those people that

00:49:18.800 right now think that okay i've been vaccinated i'm fine and i have a passport that allows me to do all

00:49:25.360 these things well in a few months your your passport will expire and you will just be like everybody

00:49:31.920 else that hasn't been vaccinated or only vaccinated once or with your with a two-fold vaccination and

00:49:39.600 that's your triple vaccinated then you're no longer vaccinated and in a few months after that

00:49:47.280 it'll be the fourth vaccine and every time you have an extra booster shot you increase your chances of

00:49:53.920 more adverse effects and not just like double your chances with twice or triple your chances with

00:49:59.680 three times it's actually much more dramatic it's magnitudes more at risk that you pose for yourself

00:50:06.720 right now the risk of injury is probably one in 500 serious injuries from the vaccines and that will

00:50:12.800 increase and then you'll see a different change in attitude of the canadian population

00:50:17.200 um i will but uh dr panessi had her hand up first so i'll i'll be after her well i was just gonna build

00:50:29.120 on steve's idea and i think that he's right that there's this informational component in that if you

00:50:36.880 know the canadian public uh just heard that you know the 10 or 12 minute uh talk that steve gave you know

00:50:43.680 citing um you know the adverse events versus risk from covid uh that information would make a difference

00:50:51.440 on the one hand but i think the other element to this informational component uh and i'm getting this

00:50:58.480 this is sort of anecdotal evidence or talking with people um is that there is a an infallible trust in

00:51:06.480 our mainstream media right now and i think there's all there's a kind of outsourcing of our own

00:51:14.400 investigative research abilities um maybe because we're just overburdened and we have too many things

00:51:22.240 to cope with ourselves and we can't take that on as well maybe that maybe it's just become so pervasive

00:51:29.520 or insidious uh whatever it is um i don't see a genuine desire to engage with the kind of information

00:51:38.480 that steve just gave us right and so that to me is a is a bigger uh socio-political problem that will

00:51:46.000 not go away with the resolution of the covet situation um for me i i would agree with with what

00:51:59.280 dr finesse just said and and uh add the point that it goes back to when covid first arrived and um the

00:52:10.240 media and the governments were um providing us with so much information uh that was scary and and

00:52:20.000 frightening and um you know what's happening to people in wuhan what's happening to people in china 0.73

00:52:25.760 or millions of people going to die then you have those the modeling from neil ferguson in the uk which

00:52:30.800 turned out to be horribly wrong but it was inflating uh the projected deaths um to you know

00:52:40.320 vastly overinflated number but the damage is done when the media takes false information um and and

00:52:48.720 feeds it to the public who really have no idea what's going on 24 7. i mean you know you look at

00:52:55.840 your your news feed every day and it's either you know how many cases of covid it is today how many deaths

00:53:01.680 from covid um where can you get your vaccination you know we need to ban the unvaccinated from x y and z 1.00

00:53:08.560 and then you know throw in a sports story or a celebrity story but usually the top two stories are

00:53:13.920 covid cases and vaccinations and and the public unfortunately have been um fed a daily hourly

00:53:22.400 but minute by minute barrage of like constant information that's only um that only has one

00:53:31.760 message and that is that uh covet is terrifying and these lockdowns are necessary uh to save to save you

00:53:42.080 know older people but we have to sort of sacrifice our young people's rights for the older people 1.00

00:53:47.360 and that's the only way and then that the only way out of this is the vaccinations oh and by the way

00:53:53.600 the unvaccinated are dirty and they're um you know they're they're you know they deserve to be banished 1.00

00:54:01.360 from certain activities and from school because they could be you know killing my grandma that kind of

00:54:06.800 thing so when you have that that con that fear and and you try to introduce information to counter the

00:54:15.280 fear even if it's factual even if it's data based even if it's peer-reviewed research it's so hard to

00:54:23.920 change what somebody has been hearing in their head for months and and days and minute by minute it's so

00:54:29.840 hard to to get those to get the public to listen when they've already made up their mind because

00:54:36.720 of what they've been told by the media and and by the public health officials who you know when you

00:54:42.320 when you get right down to it what information do they have you know do they come on uh the news and

00:54:50.080 present the new information about the new peer-reviewed research and do they inform the public about the new

00:54:55.200 studies uh you know do they inform the public about the faults with the pcr testing do they they they

00:55:01.760 don't so you're only hearing the public's only hearing one side and it's just so difficult when

00:55:07.680 people have that fear that's now instilled over months to to get people to open their eyes and see

00:55:14.960 that there is another set of information that often contradicts what they've been hearing so really

00:55:21.520 it's it's it's it's an uphill battle and uh that's what we're hoping to combat with with the courts

00:55:29.840 is that you know the judge was not going we're not going to hear anything about conspiracy theories

00:55:36.640 these judges are going to have to reckon with the facts and that statistics peer-reviewed studies

00:55:42.960 no conspiracies facts and you know even if we if we are successful in our cases it's

00:55:49.280 it's it's getting the public to understand how you know governments may have got this wrong and why

00:55:59.600 and and and why why is the media only telling us you know that we all have to be terrified and that

00:56:05.840 that the unvaccinated need to be banished so it's it's really going to be an uphill battle but 1.00

00:56:10.400 the more information that we can present to people that's not conspiratorial but that is fact-based

00:56:16.080 um the better chance we have of of changing the pervasive view in canada that wait a minute what

00:56:26.080 we're doing here is not not necessary it's not right and it's not scientifically justified

00:56:32.880 so you know i think it that the media plays a gigantic role in this and most people

00:56:42.720 that i talk to were not in my close circle they have no idea that there's all these doctors and

00:56:49.360 scientists giving online presentations that contradict what they're hearing every day in the media

00:56:56.560 they have no idea because you know you can only find them if you go digging youtube sensors it within

00:57:02.320 five minutes you know facebook removes it it's fact checking and all that so it's we're really

00:57:08.160 fighting a war here of information and getting the facts to the people and that is critical

00:57:15.440 well on that note i'm going to wrap up the first part of our digital salon event tonight from this

00:57:20.640 point on we are doing a q a with the panelists here that is only open to civitas canada members so again

00:57:26.400 if you are watching this on youtube or facebook right now check out civitas canada.ca and maybe we

00:57:32.480 will see you at the next event and um thank you to our production team at true north for making this

00:57:39.200 event happen

00:57:46.480 you

Juno News - October 17, 2021

Universities in the time of COVID and vaccine mandates

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