The left-wing lockdown authoritarians are unhinged
Episode Stats
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161.55989
Summary
A province finally has stood up against the madness of endless lockdowns, media fear-mongering, and irrational paranoia when it comes to COVID. Candice talks to Dale Smith, a freelance reporter and member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, to explain why.
Transcript
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Canada finally has a province willing to stand up against the madness of endless lockdowns,
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media fear-mongering, and irrational paranoia when it comes to COVID-19.
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I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
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Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. So you probably saw this news last week. Alberta
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announced that it was lifting many of its remaining COVID restrictions, including forced
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quarantines and mask mandates. So Alberta's chief medical officer, a woman named Dr. Dina Henshaw,
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announced the province's new approach to the virus last week. She noted that Alberta will be dropping
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the forced quarantine requirements for those who had close contact with a COVID patient and that
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later this summer they will drop all quarantine mandates and many mask requirements. So in other
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words, they'll start treating COVID much like any other airborne illness. When you get sick with the
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flu, you stay home. Not because of some government mandate or government law forcing you to stay
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home, but you do, simply out of an abundance of caution, out of respect for others, and out of
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common sense. The government does not need to legally require you to stay home when you're sick.
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People do that on their own. People do that for every other illness, regardless of how severe the
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symptoms are or how contagious it may be. And while most Albertans probably let out a sigh of relief
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about these new changes, these measures were quickly condemned and demonized by the usual suspects in
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the authoritarian left-wing lockdown crowd. Check out this interview, which was plastered all over CTV
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News' website with the headline, Who Does This to Their Own Public?, featuring an angry emergency room doctor
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who apparently wants Canada to stay locked down forever.
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We're so confused as a population. Like, they're not going to be putting any protections in place,
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and they're not going to be testing for infections, and they're going to let people with COVID walk
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around. Like, when I tell people this story, their face is dropping like, that's not possible. You're lying to me.
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They can't be doing this. And I think it's this sense of incredulity that the people that are in place to
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protect Albertans are actually trying to make us sick. We're very confused.
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Doctor, the Premier is saying that the cases no longer equal high levels of hospitalizations,
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that the focus needs to be more on vaccines. We don't know that. We don't know that. Nobody's
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ever gone through a cycle of complete relaxation of restrictions through Delta. Nobody. It's insane.
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It's this incredible experiment to see how many people we can get sick, have long-term disability,
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and possibly die. Like, who does this to their own public? Who does this? Like, what the hell?
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Why was he wearing his ER scrubs? He was doing an interview from his own living room. I didn't get
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that. Well, anyway, this person's voice apparently is the voice that the media wants us to be listening to.
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And while countless journalists were expressing similar anger and outrage at the province of
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Alberta and at Chief Medical Officer Dr. Dina Henshaw and at the province's Premier Jason Kenney,
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and generally against the leadership in Alberta, some journalists took their aim directly at the
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people of Alberta. So this is Dale Smith. Dale is a freelance reporter who is based in Ottawa,
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and he is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. That's that very exclusive club in Ottawa
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that gets all sorts of unprecedented access to politicians and they get resources. It's a very
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exclusive club, and we're told it's only for very, very serious journalists who do very, very serious
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reporting. Dale is one of them. And so when he was trying to explain these measures to people who aren't
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from Alberta, apparently Dale is from Alberta, so he was trying to explain these measures to others.
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This is what he said. Now, I included this in my Toronto Sun column, and some of Dale Smith's friends
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or his fans on Twitter were accusing me of taking it out of context. So I'm going to read the entire
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Twitter thread here, just so that I'm not accused of taking it out of context, and I'll let you decide
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for yourself what he's saying. So the thread started this way. Supriya, who is a journalist in Toronto,
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she's actually fairly reasonable, or at least she used to be prior to COVID. She tweeted this out,
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and she said this, I need someone to explain Alberta to me. Ryan Jesperson, you up for the
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task, buddy. Ryan Jesperson is a former left-wing radio host up in Edmonton. So Dale Smith replied
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to this tweet. He said, what do you need to know? Supriya says, how does a province that has currently
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experienced this then decide to go ahead and do this while having the second worst vaccination rate?
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And so currently experiencing this, I guess it's talking about how there's the spike in the Delta
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variant, and then they decided to go ahead and do this, which is easing up all these lockdown rules.
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So this is what Dale said in reply. I'll read all the tweets again, just so I can't be accused of
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taking it out of context. So he says, the first thing you need to know is that Alberta was initially
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largely settled by Americans, that they are God's chosen people, and that it's their hard work and
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ingenuity that put the oil in the ground, and it's their hard work and ingenuity that pulls it out
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again. He goes on, with that in mind, they are more concerned about individual freedoms than the
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collective good. It's also why they are more concerned about low taxes and socking away resource
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revenues in sovereign wealth funds and preparing for the future. It's why, like Americans, they are
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more concerned with ending restrictions and masking than they are with actually combating the virus.
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That Hinshaw was shrugging off, allowing it to become endemic, because it would take too much
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human resources fits into these priorities. So there you have it. I won't add any commentary to
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what Dale put. He clearly has a pretty negative view of Albertans, which he compares to all Americans,
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even though clearly America is a very vast, broad country with lots of different people with lots of
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different views. And the province of Alberta is settled by a lot of different people from a lot
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of different backgrounds. That aside, that kind of gives you a little bit of a window into the way
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that the mainstream media views Albertans, but also views Dr. Hinshaw, the chief medical officer over there
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in Alberta. So while left-wing journalists were doing their best to demonize the province,
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Alberta Premier Jason Kenney pushed back against these agenda-driven lockdown advocates
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in the media. This is what Jason Kenney had to say about the media and their constant fear-mongering
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about COVID. We have seen the numbers come down dramatically in Alberta. We should salute that.
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You know, I think it's time, let me be blunt, I think it's time for media to stop promoting fear
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when it comes to COVID-19 and to start actually looking at where we're at with huge vaccine protection.
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We have crushed that third spike. COVID continues to exist, as I've said before. The virus will continue
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to circulate. Numbers will go up and they'll go down. But what matters most is that the widespread
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protective effect of vaccines is real. We should embrace the science. Hear, hear. But it isn't just
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the media and it isn't just the crazy activist doctors they promote. Left-wing politicians also
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wanted in on the action. So Calgary Mayor Nahid Nenshi similarly just lost his mind over the idea of having
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to live with COVID. He says this, it's inconceivable to me. It's the height of insanity, he said about
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Dr. Hinchot's decision to no longer have that government mandated forced quarantine. So many of
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the fellow travelers of these left-wing journalists and politicians decided to organize their own protests.
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This is what that looked like. These people are actually protesting for more government intervention.
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They're against government easing restrictions. So they went out there to demand more government
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control in their lives. Can you imagine? And remember how the media treated the anti-lockdown rallies?
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They called the protesters COVIDiots. They painted them all as far-right, sometimes even white supremacists.
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They ridiculed and mocked these protesters for daring to speak out against the lockdowns. Well,
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this is how that same mainstream media treated the pro-lockdown protesters. This is a tweet from
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a global news reporter. She says, a growing crowd at a rally in Edmonton spurred by Alberta doctors.
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Participants say they came here today to protest the province's changes to COVID-19 measures. The event
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in Edmonton mirrors another one in Calgary. So really, she's just sort of saying, you know,
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these people are guided by doctors. They're guided by doctors. And also, it's a growing crowd. So you
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can see that they have the media on their side cheering them on. And really, you know, it's remarkable,
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folks, how much the tables have turned. I'm old enough to remember, what, three months ago,
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when these same left-wing voices were hectoring the anti-lockdown crowd for daring to criticize the
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all-knowing public health officials. But now that a few of those public health officials have changed
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their tune and decided to ease up some of the lockdowns, that authoritarian lockdown crowd,
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including politicians like Nahid Nenshi, including activist journalists like Dale Smith, well,
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they've given themselves permission to condemn the same experts to their heart's content. Remember,
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when you do it, it is vicious and undermining trust, public trust in our system. When they do it,
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though, it's perfectly reasonable because they're fighting on behalf of what? Safety for all? Who
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knows? It must be nice to believe that you have the moral high ground no matter which side of the
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position you take. The global COVID pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns gave these busybodies a taste
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of unlimited power and control. And they liked it just a little bit too much to let it go. Ironically,
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by demanding more restrictions now, even for fully vaccinated Canadians, these left-wing doctors,
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journalists and politicians are actually undermining the case to get vaccinated. The reality is that
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according to data from the Public Health Agency of Canada, the COVID case mortality rate, which really
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is the only thing we should care about, we shouldn't really care about the number of cases. There would
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never be a news report reporting on the number of flu cases because it doesn't matter how many people get
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the flu. What really matters is how many people die from the flu. And so when we're looking at the COVID
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case mortality rate for patients who have had one dose, the death rate is 0.0027. And for those who
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have had two doses, those who were double-vaxxed, the death rate is 0.0018. You get that? That's about
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on par with the seasonal flu. In fact, the National Post had a very handy article today showing you all the
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things that are more likely to kill you than COVID-19 if you're fully vaccinated. And this includes
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car crashes, the flu, late-stage cancer diagnosis, Parkinson's, diabetes, and hepatitis. All of those
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things are more likely to kill you than COVID if you're fully vaccinated, and yet you have all of
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these activists demanding more lockdowns in Alberta. It is completely absurd. Compound the very low risk
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for vaccinated Canadians of dying from COVID with new information about the drastic impact
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that lockdowns had on mental health and the well-being of Canadians, and it makes Alberta's
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new approach seem like a slam dunk. I'm talking about a recent Statistics Canada report that showed
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that more than four times as many working-age Canadians died because of the lockdowns than because
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of the virus. So this is according to StatsCan. Between January 2020 and April 2021, 5,535 Canadians
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under the age of 65 died because of the indirect consequences due to the pandemic, while 1,380
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Canadians in the same age group during the same period died from COVID. The lockdowns were deadlier than the
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virus for most Canadians. It's time we stopped listening to the left-wing lockdown authoritarian
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crowd and started living our lives. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.