Western Standard - Airdrie lawyer says Canada needs to re-evaluate pandemic response

00:00:00.000 Good evening, I'm Melanie Risden with the Western Standard and we're just looking at some numbers

00:00:05.840 across the world where it comes to COVID cases and looking at some of the countries that have

00:00:14.360 moved away from the restrictions, moved away from mandates and seeing how they're faring right now

00:00:22.100 and joining me is Derek Frum, he's a lawyer out of Airdrie with Warnock Craft Anderson Law Firm

00:00:32.240 and Derek is speaking with us today just helping get an understanding of some of the context behind

00:00:41.240 these differing numbers where we're seeing a huge difference in case numbers in these countries

00:00:49.640 that have adopted very different policies from others so thanks for joining us Derek and

00:00:56.200 yeah fill us in a little bit we were specifically looking at Norway and how it's been a month since

00:01:03.440 Norway has done away with the restrictions in the country and they're seeing some significant

00:01:10.240 well a significant reduction in numbers compared to some of the surrounding European nations around

00:01:17.160 them yeah I guess the news out of Norway is that there is no news out of Norway and that from

00:01:24.400 what we're being told that that should be shocking but I think what's more shocking is that it's not

00:01:29.200 news it's not news and that's probably a good thing so what's happened in Norway is they've greatly

00:01:35.540 reduced the restrictions on the population there and from what we're told in the common narrative is

00:01:42.660 that we should expect an enormous rise in COVID cases and related deaths and other such things but

00:01:49.200 that doesn't seem to be happening at least not at this point now when you compare similar countries

00:01:55.860 it's always the devil's always in the details it's not easy to compare across jurisdictions for a number of

00:02:03.780 reasons there's different government policies in place different health care systems different cultures

00:02:08.760 potentially if they're at different latitudes seasonality might affect the way COVID acts

00:02:14.200 and Norway for whatever reason seems to be doing fairly well with the no restrictions pandemic response

00:02:22.000 at this point and yeah they seem to look I'm going to have to look away from the screen here for a moment

00:02:27.280 but but comparing to Latvia Lithuania Estonia other other countries in Europe it seems like Norway is doing

00:02:35.060 exceptionally well and that could be a number of things like for instance since most deaths from COVID

00:02:42.200 do happen in older populations it could be related to the fact that Norway has a different system for

00:02:50.660 for elderly care and it could be that their way of doing things which my understanding is they keep

00:02:57.860 smaller smaller smaller sorts of home settings more like a hospice there's fewer individuals and that

00:03:05.780 could result in less spread as opposed to what happened in Sweden early in the pandemic or there's large

00:03:11.460 facilities with many many seniors and large numbers of staff that sort of thing may actually make a

00:03:18.900 population prone to um to catching COVID and ultimately passing away from the disease right so interestingly

00:03:28.980 to look at some of those fine details as you mentioned um perhaps those are something you know other nations

00:03:35.860 can learn from I know especially here in North America you know our our elderly care facilities are massive

00:03:44.020 um with many staff and um you know hundreds and hundreds of of uh of elderly uh people in the care

00:03:53.540 facilities so perhaps there's something that can be learned there but um what else kind of strikes you

00:03:59.940 as interesting anything else in the uh in the details well I think it's also important to note that in this

00:04:07.620 particular uh uh study that Sweden seems to be doing fairly well again Sweden Sweden very early on took flack

00:04:16.260 from the entire world for following a traditional pandemic response for following the response that

00:04:21.620 actually the who recommended be taken and they did suffer greatly early on and uh that's not necessarily

00:04:31.220 due to the re the government's restrictions put on on the population I should say that that's an

00:04:37.460 assumption that people make that it could be more related to cultural differences it could be

00:04:43.060 related to things like prior flu seasons how much so-called dry tinder there was in the population

00:04:49.140 and but now looking at this data Sweden is actually still fair uh doing fairly well it's lower than many

00:04:55.540 places in this study um but you know right in there we have Norway right at the bottom of the pack

00:05:03.700 no news in Norway and there's no passport uh there's no mandates those sorts of restrictions do not seem

00:05:10.820 to be in place in Norway and uh it what what it tells me is that accepting a one-size-fits-all approach

00:05:18.660 across an entire population is foolish Canada is a vast country and healthcare is provincial and so

00:05:29.300 in some ways I think Canada is more akin to Europe in some ways because we have different jurisdictions

00:05:36.820 delivering healthcare in a different way different regional cultures Canada is more akin to that than

00:05:42.500 a large homogeneous nation and I would like to say that Canada's response should be more greatly tailored

00:05:50.180 to the particular circumstances of that region and this shows this clearly shows that it is very

00:05:56.980 possible to avoid the deaths associated with Covid without having the sort of restrictions that

00:06:01.940 we're constantly being told are necessary to protect people it doesn't seem to be any demonstrable causal

00:06:09.060 link between those two things and in my opinion what happens is as soon as you have a sort of

00:06:16.740 precautionary approach you get lax with your understanding of causation assumption assumptions slip into your

00:06:24.900 reasoning and you start to be a little easy on yourself demonstrating that your restrictions are

00:06:32.660 effective and so this is the the latest I think is very interesting that deaths don't seem to be

00:06:38.260 associated with these uh the lifting of restrictions in Norway but this in my opinion this should not be

00:06:43.860 unexpected because there was a study uh recently in the last six weeks out of the European journal of

00:06:49.860 epidemiology that surveyed now I think it was 68 countries relying on publicly available data from our

00:06:57.300 world and data and then close to 3 000 counties in the United States so it's very broad and there's

00:07:04.500 millions of people involved and they found there was absolutely no correlation no correlation between rates

00:07:12.020 of vaccination and Covid cases now cases are different than deaths but without cases you don't get deaths

00:07:18.340 and so this is fascinating because if the vaccine is actually preventing cases you would expect the

00:07:27.780 data to have a signal in it demonstrating its efficacy but that signal seems to be missing

00:07:35.140 and even though this is observational data and it's the sort of weak epidemiology that got us into a lot of

00:07:41.380 the mess that we're in right now I hesitate to even call this sort of observational data scientific because

00:07:48.340 it is weak but when your weak data clearly demonstrates there is no signal that should be a real wrench in the

00:07:57.220 gears for the the individuals who are pushing vaccines pushing lockdowns these sorts of things right and and of

00:08:05.380 course there's a lot of talk around the fact that the uh the vaccine's efficacy is waning over time uh

00:08:12.740 and this is sort of what health officials are speaking to when you're seeing results coming out of say

00:08:19.860 Israel where it's actually being found that more cases are are showing up in the vaccinated population now

00:08:28.820 again uh you know that's not saying that more uh vaccinated people are becoming hospitalized or deathly ill

00:08:37.140 but but again it's a case it's a transmissibility uh issue that I believe that you know at one point

00:08:45.300 the idea was that the vaccines were were to to prevent transmission um clearly that's been that's been

00:08:52.660 debunked um and and it is transmissible uh from both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated population

00:08:59.380 which we're even seeing those results in Alberta with higher case numbers in the vaccinated population

00:09:06.260 again you know many argue that there are more people vaccinated so of course you're going to see

00:09:11.620 more cases in the vaccinated population but again I I understand where you're coming from and I agree

00:09:17.780 that at some level there should be a marked um you know there should be marked evidence that these

00:09:27.860 vaccines are preventing um more of the cases or or but perhaps it's just they're not um they're not

00:09:36.900 capable of preventing transmission which I believe is what they're finding yeah I think that's very clear

00:09:42.660 it's very clear the vaccine does not prevent transmission there's there's no credible

00:09:47.300 person that says otherwise it's uh that is extremely clear and and regarding the Alberta context here

00:09:54.580 I think there there's it's a very good point that people make in response that well yeah of course

00:09:59.860 we're going to see more cases in the vaccinated crowd it's it's um 80 it's a higher number right

00:10:05.780 and yeah and that's true and but you know that's they've moved the goalposts again haven't they

00:10:12.420 because as you pointed out the point was that the vaccine was going to prevent transmission

00:10:17.300 and end the pandemic and that's clearly not the case that is they move the goalposts and that

00:10:24.260 that isn't even subtle that that's just blatant the the vaccine was supposed to get us out of the

00:10:30.100 pandemic was supposed to generate herd immunity and it's it's incapable of both so now the response is

00:10:36.020 well we need to get everyone vaccinated to protect from severe symptoms and while that that I I'm willing

00:10:42.500 to say at this point I don't know I haven't heard evidence to contradict that claim it seems like the

00:10:50.100 vaccine is does offer some protection against the severe symptoms of COVID certainly over the period

00:10:56.580 where it's found to be effective which is six months and with more frequent boosters that that period

00:11:04.820 seems to wane maybe down to 90 days uh but at that point again you know what we we've set ourselves on

00:11:12.420 a course that is going to be hard to get off it's um the sort of course that's going to require

00:11:20.580 indefinite boosters in order to maintain that protective element in the vaccine and we have no data

00:11:29.060 on whether or not that's going to disappear in time either and what what seems to be troubling now is

00:11:34.180 that data out of Israel who is ahead on the curve and has largely at least maybe exclusively even used

00:11:42.180 the Pfizer uh vaccine it doesn't seem to be working quite the way they had hoped in the sense that

00:11:50.420 individuals who have uh the waning immunity from the from the vaccine that once that's gone

00:11:59.380 individuals who have been fully vaccinated seem to be more susceptible to becoming a COVID case

00:12:06.740 now if you're protected from the severe symptoms of COVID and you're protected from experiencing

00:12:12.740 symptoms of COVID because you're vaccinated and you're carrying the same sort of viral load in fact

00:12:18.980 there's studies showing that people who are who are fully immunized or fully vaccinated that they carry an

00:12:24.980 increased viral load and they may not even realize it well we've just created a super spreader we've

00:12:31.540 created the super spreader that's going to keep the pandemic going indefinitely and so it it is problematic

00:12:38.660 i think it's it this is the problem with leaky vaccines this is a vaccine that doesn't confer

00:12:44.500 sterilizing immunity and it allows the individual both to become infected and to spread the virus

00:12:50.660 uh those sorts of vaccines have often when they've been caught have been stopped and i think we've uh

00:13:01.620 we've fully committed to a probably a foolhardy course of dealing with the pandemic norway seems to show that

00:13:09.940 dropping restrictions and not having this sort of uh vaccine mandate or the the heavy incentives that we're

00:13:17.380 dealing with here in alberta to become immunized uh it doesn't seem to be related directly to COVID deaths

00:13:24.820 that's unhinged at least in norway we need to explore why maybe we can do the same here

00:13:31.620 and we we look at the the other study with the the massive amount of data that was analyzed and that

00:13:39.300 vaccination rates do not signal any sort of protected uh protection against COVID cases across the

00:13:47.060 populations it it doesn't seem to be the case we would expect to see a strong signal so we're not

00:13:53.700 protecting against cases we're not protecting against deaths i think it's time to reevaluate the policy

00:14:02.340 so clearly the the the topic or the the concept of this being a pandemic of the unvaccinated your your

00:14:10.900 comment on that well i don't i don't have data particularly on that i do know that COVID is a

00:14:17.780 real disease and that people can catch it i do believe that we have a failing health care system

00:14:25.140 at the best of times and so that any increased load on that health care system particularly when staff

00:14:32.580 are being health care staff are being have their hands tied of actually treating COVID before someone

00:14:38.900 becomes a hospitalized case that's the sort of thing that's going to end in disaster and it doesn't

00:14:46.420 take COVID to do that when we're looking at it it's only how many people are we told in ICU that will

00:14:53.460 overrun our capacity less than 500 yeah that a disastrous event at a major like a major sporting event

00:15:05.060 could cripple our health care system just that easily this is how fragile our health care system

00:15:10.660 is and so COVID is real and it can cause bad consequences and i'm not convinced that this is a

00:15:18.420 an epidemic of the unvaccinated or vaccinated i think it's more of an indication of how how shoddy

00:15:27.060 and slapped together and on the verge of collapse our health care system is at all times

00:15:32.340 LESLIE KENDRICKS- Now you're supporting a number of clients in a number of ways with legal action

00:15:40.420 again on a number of fronts in your legal opinion then with the fact that the data that seems to

00:15:46.500 be coming out showing that there really is not a huge difference between the protection or efficacy

00:15:54.180 of a vaccinated person compared to unvaccinated how do you see that affecting the

00:15:59.620 like the potential for these mandates to be defeated or you know what are your thoughts

00:16:08.140 there legally well the the gatekeeper for all these arguments since the beginning of the

00:16:15.920 pandemic has always been section one of the charter and section one of the charter is that

00:16:21.760 moment where the government in court needs to justify its actions that have engaged or limited

00:16:29.100 the rights enumerated in the charter so for instance for religious freedom by by restricting

00:16:35.600 access to church services saying singing can't happen gathering can't happen you have to go to

00:16:42.520 zoom that is an obvious engagement of the right in the charter of religious freedom the question only

00:16:50.480 really remains for cases like that is whether that can be demonstrably justified that engagement or

00:16:57.020 restriction on that right and cases like this or studies like this show i think a number of things

00:17:04.780 a plausible and good argument can be made that look government you cannot rely on this precautionary

00:17:13.500 approach there's data now emerging from around the world showing that what you're trying to be

00:17:20.340 cautious of isn't actually going to obtain in the real world necessarily so for instance if people

00:17:27.900 gather in church and they're not vaccinated will that prevent the spread doesn't seem like it

00:17:33.840 um will it prevent uh you know if you if you force health care workers to immunize will that prevent

00:17:42.420 the spread probably not in fact it may have exactly the opposite consequence where you have your fully

00:17:50.500 immunized health care staff who are now super spreaders and in the health care setting that might be a

00:17:59.100 disaster right and and i did hear uh a doctor sort of reference that as well that these these immunized

00:18:07.700 health care workers um could be carrying covid and as you mentioned have little to no symptoms so not

00:18:16.180 even think that they're sick uh when they are carrying um you know a fairly substantial viral load that could

00:18:22.980 be spreading to patients and other co-workers so yeah there's there's definitely an issue there

00:18:28.660 yeah and so the burden for the government in light of evidence like this and there's there's mountains of

00:18:34.820 evidence like this the burden becomes very difficult for the government to satisfy that its restrictions

00:18:42.420 are the only way to deal with this pandemic to deal with the real threat posed by covid and in the

00:18:50.340 end that is the government's burden they have to defend the particular policy choices they've made

00:18:56.420 based upon data that they can demonstrate and it's becoming increasingly difficult for the government

00:19:02.660 to do so in my opinion well my guess is that as this data keeps coming out and unfolding um it's working

00:19:10.180 to your benefit with your clients who you're supporting and we will be hearing from you throughout

00:19:15.620 the week and in the coming weeks with regards to some of the uh court cases and um and claims that

00:19:24.100 you're going to be filing for your clients so thanks very much for for sharing your thoughts on this

00:19:29.860 topic with us derek and uh we will be touching base with you and as those uh as those studies continue

00:19:38.100 to come out i'm i'm sure that you're going to find uh find them helpful for your cases coming forward

00:19:43.460 um well thank you for the opportunity

Western Standard - December 09, 2021

Airdrie lawyer says Canada needs to re-evaluate pandemic response

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