Government Goes Orwellian to Increase COVID Booster Rates

Health Canada the New Big Brother

THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO  ~~~~ January 1, 2023  (LSNews)  It seems that stilted, and sometimes weird, video ads, promos and posters (see above) are not enough when it comes to the Trudeau government’s near psychotic obsession to get everyone in the country—from babies, to teens, to millennials—vaccinated and boosted against COVID.

 

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), an arm of Health Canada, is getting ready to put together even more “messaging” to certain groups it feels just aren’t buying its previous brand of the COVID vaccine gospel. So it’s going to spend some $340,000 to hire* the UK-based company, Pulsar Platform, a social media ‘intelligence collection firm’ to monitor social media platforms to mine and analyze data on vaccine hesitant individuals who are participating in, and influencing, online conversations about vaccinations. To do this Pulsar will use a keyword-based ‘social listening tracker’ to capture social media conversations on Twitter and other social media platforms such as Facebook, Reddit, Blogs, Forums and News, along such themes as experiences with long COVID, previous vaccine side effects, and those engaging with misinformation and disinformation.

Pulsar will be collecting up to three years of historical data on these subjects. If you think all of this sounds a little Orwellian, you are not far off the mark, because, what PHAC is doing is, essentially spying on vaccine hesitant Canadians. It wants to obtain a breakdown of reasons for vaccine hesitancy from different regions and cities in order to get a segmentation of key audiences to include ‘demographics, interests, affinities, online behaviours, and the leading topics of vaccine hesitancy conversations, per each sub-community.’

The reports Pulsar will provide to PHAC, in these areas, are intended to give the Agency an understanding of the vaccine ‘‘conversation landscape’ online and the conversation participants.

*The tender notice description which was posted on Dec. 22 indicates the contract will be awarded to the UK-based Pulsar Platform if no other suppliers submit a bid meeting the tender requirements before the closing dates

https://www.pulsarplatform.com/

Once PHAC has gathered and reviewed this intelligence on vaccine hesitants, it plans to run a tailored messaging campaign targeted at ‘communities of interest’ such as Indigenous people and millennial males and any other groups it deems needs another prompt to take the jab. Such a group, for example, might be parents who are reluctant to get their children and babies vaccinated and boosted due to genuine concerns over vaccine safety for youngsters.  

Because, as this cringeworthy Christmas themed COVID promotion from our Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam and Mrs. Claus illustrates, PHAC is very clearly aiming its messaging at kids, telling them that keeping their vaccines up-to-date puts them at the top of Santa’s Nice List’. One wonders if they will ever just stop, but there is no better way to get to parents than by using their kids. 

Canada’s TOP Doctor uses Mrs. Claus to promote Covid jabs and masking on Christmas

Then there were ads produced by the City of Toronto, which have been pulled because there was a huge backlash from social media users who called them creepy, dystopian and propaganda, which wasn’t far off the mark. 

City of Toronto pulls series of ads regarding children COVID vaccines | Watch News Videos Online

Then there’s this disturbing meme from our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, talking directly to 4-year olds, telling them how excited he is, and how excited they should be, to know they will be able to get a COVID jab after they turn five! He then goes on to mention that vaccines will soon be available to kids under 5 too!

Trudeau says to a 4-year-old that vaccines will be made for kids younger than 5

Then there’s this older Government of Canada ad aimed at parents to encourage them to get their kids vaccinated, but it is still on the PHAC website.

Patty Hajdu @PattyHajdu

Vaccines are among the safest and most effective ways to protect ourselves and our families from disease, including #COVID19.

10:19 PM ∙ Feb 22, 2021

216Likes61Retweets

This hokey hockey ad isn’t aimed directly at kids, but instead is trying to convince more Canadians to get boosted, while also being a not so subtle reminder that, according to the Trudeau government, the pandemic still isn’t over. 

Justin Trudeau @JustinTrudeau

The best way to stay healthy – and to stay in the game – is to keep your COVID-19 vaccinations up to date. If you’re due for one of your shots, click here and find where and when you can get it: bit.ly/3GbBbN5

9:00 PM ∙ Dec 26, 2022

4,945Likes763Retweets

What is it with this government’s fixation on vaccines? From these ads to PHAC’s new deal with Pulsar Platform to literally spy on vaccine hesitant Canadians, it really does seem to be taking a page from Orwell’s novel 1984. Because we know, and the government knows, that vaccines and boosters neither prevent people from getting the virus nor do they prevent it from spreading. Everyday there are more and more people, who got vaccinated and boosted, but are still getting infected and reinfected with the COVID19. Despite the failure of the vaccines to do what was promised, the government’s manic push for people to get vaccinated and boosted, be it through mandates, messaging and fear mongering, has been very successful. So why are they still pushing so hard on this?

Some 50 percent of 5 to 11 year olds have had their two shots; 80 percent of 12 to 17 year olds; and 83 percent of 18 to 29 year olds. As for the rest of the Canadian population that is aged 30 plus, the double vaxxed account for 91 percent of the population, with virtually 100 percent of the 80 plus crowd vaccinated. Those are pretty good numbers, one would think. While only 3.5 percent of kids aged six months to four years old have gotten their two shots, vaccines for that age group were only approved by Health Canada in early December of 2022. No doubt, PHAC hopes that with more Big Brother type coersion and fear mongering, it will see that number rise as well.

What seems to have the Trudeau government in another vaccine frenzy now, is the low uptake on the boosters and particularly the second and third boosters. This is where the numbers start to drop off considerably, signalling to the government, that perhaps people, particularly young healthy people, are getting tired of this vaccine merry-go-round and they are jumping off, so to speak. In the under fifty age cohort, among adults the average percentage of those receiving the second booster is only around 12 percent, and among the teens aged 12 to 17, it is 3.4 percent, and for the under fives, it is less than one percent.

So given these low booster numbers, particularly around youngsters, it would seem some of this thinly veiled propaganda was designed to convince children to ask their parents to get them vaccinated or boosted by coercing, scaring or shaming parents to do so and now they are planning on producing more.

But why? The evidence is clear, and has been almost from the beginning of the pandemic, that healthy children and young people generally come down with mild cases of the virus, or are asymptomatic when infected, and have a near-zero risk of death from COVI-19. What is driving the Canadian government to have kids get all the jabs, when the arguments for vaccinating healthy kids carry very little water, compared to arguments against giving them the jab.

To Prevent Infecting Others: For starters, the premise that vaccinating kids to prevent others from being infected is very thin given children are simply not effective spreaders of the disease. According to a review of pediatric coronavirus, conducted by researchers in the United Kingdom, not a single incident, during contact tracing, could be found, where transmission occurred from a child to an adult. In Sweden, where schools remained open throughout the pandemic, teachers suffered no better or worse than other professions in contracting COVID19. Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist from the University of Edinburgh, stated that “it is extremely difficult to find any instance, anywhere in the world, of a child transmitting the virus to a teacher in school”. If teachers, who spend hours a day in classrooms with dozens of children aren’t catching COVID at any higher rate than other professions, the kids aren’t spreading the virus. So the claims that children must be vaccinated to stop transmission to adults are false, not to mention unethical and downright selfish to put children and young people at risk to protect adults. And once again, it is clear the vaccines don’t stop transmission anyhow.

Unknown Long Term Side Effects: While we are already becoming increasingly aware of some of the shorter term adverse side effects of the vaccines, there is the possiblity of long-term side effects of the vaccines that the current science knows nothing about. The COVID mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine based on a very different methodology than standard vaccines. As such, any medium and long-term safety data for these new vaccines is completely lacking. Given that today's children and young people have a remaining life expectancy of 55 to 80 years, any unknown and potentially harmful long-term side effects could be very serious for the young. Particularly given the fact that they are already at low risk of bad outcomes from COVID, compared to the elderly, where COVID can have tragic outcomes and thus make a risk-benefit analysis for them far more favourable.

Speaking of Risk-Benefit Analysis: Vaccine policies should, and do rely, on a risk-benefit analysis where the expected benefits of the vaccine must clearly outweigh the risk of adverse events from the vaccination. Based on all the preceding evidence this is clearly not the case for young people. For example there is an unusually high rate of reported adverse events following the mRNA vaccines compared with other traditional vaccines, and some are more common in the young especially myocarditis. Where potential harm exists from a treatment and little is known about it, the principle of ‘first do no harm’ must take precedence. For example, when it was discovered that the Astra Zeneca vaccine caused an increased risk of rare, but severe blood clots in recipients, it was no longer given to people under the age of 40. Why, because the increased risk of blood clots in younger age groups was greater, compared to their risk of death from COVID—a clear risk-benefit analysis.

Natural Immunity is Better: Contrary to vaccine advocates it is clear that natural immunity from any infection, including COVID 19 is far safer and more robust and effective for healthy children and young people, than vaccine-based immunity, especially when it comes to combating variants. Vaccinating children and young people is also not the best way to create ‘herd immunity’. After over two years of living with COVID, most people, including children, even very young children either have pre-existing immunity from other coronaviruses, have had COVID19, or have been vaccinated. 

Problems with Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) Trials for Youths: Given the low risk of bad COVID19 outcomes to the young and the mounting evidence for available effective treatment for the high-risk populations, many experts have maitained that the COVID19 vaccines should have never received EUA for children. This is just common sense, but there are other more critical reasons. The initial EAU for vaccinating teens aged 16 and 17 was not based on studies for safety and efficacy within this actual age group. Instead it was based on studies in adults on the pretext that teens were similar to young adults.

In the case of 12-15 year olds,vaccine manufacturers did not even adhere to their own protocols in testing the vaccine for this age group. Not doing so, however, produced a more favourable safety profile. It should be further noted that they also failed to report on adverse effects noted during the trials. https://www.hartgroup.org/child-vaccination-irresponsible/

Despite all of this mounting evidence that seriously calls into question the need to vaccinate children and youths, in Canada, vaccines are still available for kids six months and upwards and our government seems intent on forcing them on children by any means. This includes amping up the fear factor again, claiming new variants may be more lethal to children, while data does not support this.

Other Countries Are Bowing Out of Vaccinating Youths: Meanwhile a number of countries have begun advising against vaccinating healthy young people and children in particular. Denmark has banned vaccines for anyone under the age of 18 and under-50s can only get a booster with a doctor's prescription. The other Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden and Finland have also halted the further vaccination of younger age cohorts in their populations, after reviewing the risk/benefits analysis for these age groups. 

In June of 2021, the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization advised against vaccinating healthy children. They maintain that due to their intrinsically low risk from COVID, it would be better to let them get COVID, as their naturally acquired immunity woud better protect them from future infections than a vaccine.

Germany's Vaccine Advisory Panel, in November of 2022, announced that it was recommending that COVID19 vaccines for children from six months to four years old should only be given to those at risk of a severe disease from the infection. In other words, to children with other underlying severe health conditions that would compromise their immune system’s normal ability to cope with the disease.

Given the overwhelming rate of Canadians that got their first, second and third rounds of COVID vaccines, isn’t time the government let go of its vaccine fixation. Because it is no longer clear if it is even about the health of all Canadians given the growing arguments against vaccinating healthy children and young adults. The fact that PHAC has decided to take on the role of ‘Big Brother” intent on hunting down every vaccine hesitant person, young and old, to try to ‘persuade’ them to get the vaccine with new ‘targeted messaging’ is both dystopian and a clear sign of its inability to read the public mood.

Before it embarks this surveillance project PHAC might also want to check with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner to determine whether this type of data mining, on individuals whose identities would be known to PHAC through the collection process, violates privacy laws. How it intends to use this information in targeting certain groups to coerce them into getting vaccinated also has some huge ethical implications. PHAC seems to have  forgotten that it has already been involved in a data collection controversy in recent months when it was revealed it was analyzing the anonymized movement of millions of Canadians through the tracking of their cellphones, unbeknownst to them.

Canadians are tired of being monitored, manipulated, maligned and gaslit, for their very personal decisions about getting the COVID vaccines and boosters. The decrease in numbers for second booster and third boosters, particularly for children is a signal, to the government and PHAC that people are weary of the constant haranguing from the government on vaccines.

They should know this already given the results of a survey Health Canada conducted between March and July 2022. Quorus Consulting Group Inc. was contracted to present 45 separate focus groups with a series of videos on the topics of getting a booster and vaccinating children. The result was that focus group particiants felt the federal directives to get the jab were too “bossy’ and “authoritarian”. They also perceived the words “get vaccinated” as an order rather than a suggestion. Participants also reacted negatively to ads instructing children to get vaccinated with some seeing them as threatening. They also felt the messaging played on guilt rather than factual information by making people feel they are bad parents if they chose not to vaccinate their children.

Trudeau and company should take heed of the public mood on vaccines and the Health Canada survey results and let people make their own informed decisions, particularly on the matter of having their children vaccinated. They should be able to do this free of coersive ads, memes, gaslighting and fear mongering messaging.

#LSN_Health  #LSN_PublicSafety 

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I am a retired journalist who served with the Canadian Armed Forces and for the last 13 years of my working career was a Senior Emergency Planning Analyst with the RCMP. I am a wife, mother and dog, cat and intrepid explorer  An Intrepid warrior exploring issues in today's strange new world. Roxanne Halverson https://roxannehalverson.substack.com/

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