In Season 2 of Letters from a Contrarian, I sought to understand what went wrong with Canada's pandemic response, and what a more ethical, constitutional, and tolerable response would've looked like.

Bruce Pardy is a law professor at Queen's University. 

References for Pardy's claim that you're just as likely to catch COVID-19 if you've been vaccinated than if you haven't:

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0730-mmwr-covid-19.html

D. Jared Brown is a litigator and Bencher of the Law Society of Ontario.

References:

Section 3 of Manitoba’s Public Health Act: 

“If the exercise of a power under this Act restricts rights or freedoms, the restriction must be no greater than is reasonably necessary, in the circumstances, to respond to a health hazard, a communicable disease, a public health emergency or any other threat to public health.”

Transcript and YouTube Video:

eugenefernandes.com/letters-from-a-contrarian

Show-notes

2:51 How the JCCF tapped Brown to help represent seven churches and three individuals in Manitoba, and what their case was. The churches couldn’t gather, and the individuals couldn’t protest.

6:01 The Government argued that the infringements on rights and freedoms were justified.

8:46 Brown cross-examined Dr. Jason Kindrachuk, Lanette Siracusa, Carla Lipkey, Dr. Brent Roussin, Dr. Jason Bullard, and Dr. Joel Kettner.

10:38 Three revelatory insights that came to light in the cross examination: one, the Manitoba government had exaggerated the scarcity of hospital and ICU beds in the province during the Christmas season, along with their ability to expand the hospital system. Two, a positive PCR test result does not mean that the person is infectious.

14:29 Lastly, three - the government justified their measures on the basis that everyone else was doing it. No cost benefit analyses in sight.

16:47 This bandwagon defence (“everyone else was doing it”) might’ve been understandable at the pandemic’s start, but after 14 months, not as much.

22:11 The government does not have a legal obligation to justify their infringements up until someone challenges them in court. But the expectation is that they would justify the measures publicly. They didn’t. They used fear instead.

23:29 One consequence of using fear to threaten citizens into accepting public policy: vaccine hesitancy.

27:01 Are medical officers of health legally supposed to have the power and the role that they currently have? Thoughts about accountability mechanisms and a faith in democracy.

28:39 Rights and freedoms: easy to give up, bloodily difficult to get back. That’s why you don’t give an inch. Equality jurisprudence is developing far more than negative freedoms. Lawyers don’t seem to care.

31:55 Courts and discretion: Canada vs USA.

34:13 Brown was vilified by his peers and many others on social media in March 2020. Many lawyers are now changing their minds - if an emergency has lasted 14 months, then maybe it isn’t an emergency.

37:22 How Brown stood up to the pushback: say what you think, look at the reaction, and ask if it’s creating unnecessary conflict. Try to be minimally impairing. Have skin in the game by directing your energy towards the venues where it makes the biggest impact and where you’ll be heard. Instead of being a Twitter warrior, he took the opportunity to challenge the restrictions in this court case. And know what your principles are.

41:16 As a citizen who opposes the restrictions, write letters to your (provincial) elected leaders. Let them know you want to calculate your own risk and that their paternalistic attitudes aren’t welcome. Second, step forward to the JCCF or the CCF! They need volunteers to help challenge these Charter violations.

43:01 The possible costs of stepping forward for public interest litigation (some public shaming in court by lawyers, and it’s unlikely but you may have to pay too).

45:20 Safety culture eroding liberty.

Contact

Contact D. Jared Brown at brownlaw.ca or on twitter at @litigationguy

Contact Eugene Fernandes at eugenefernandes.com or on twitter at @eugenefds

Dr. Doug Allen is a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/GVsQdUa9_Ds

References:

Allen. “Covid Lockdown Cost/Benefits: A Critical Assessment of the Literature.” April 2021. http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/LockdownReport.pdf

Atkeson, Kopecky and Zha. “Four Stylized Facts about COVID-19.” August 2020. doi = 10.3386/w27719

Timestamps:

2:15   His original thoughts on the pandemic when it first hit, and then how his thoughts changed.

6:10   What were the four false assumptions economic and epidemiological models have?

14:38   Why did governments latch onto the Imperial College London epidemiological model when it was so immediately and obviously flawed?

17:10   Based on what Allen observes, their models are epidemiological curves. This explains why health modelling goes up and up and up.

19:05   What is “endogenous” behaviour, how do epidemiological models fail to include it, and why are economic models simply superior?

21:35   Atkeson's model looked like it correctly followed the actual death rate as soon as he adds in the endogenous assumption. How do we know that lockdowns don’t actually work? Different lockdown policies but the same curves?

27:35   What should the media be reporting?

29:31   How does Atkeson distinguish between government and human action causing COVID-19 policy?

31:25   Variation in policy lets us identify whether lockdowns actually work or not. Why did Sweden have so many deaths, and is it really a “precautionary tale”?

33:38   What Dr. Allen was doing in his OLS Regression/Table 2 of his pdf. He correlated stringency and death numbers.

38:00   What are the costs of lockdowns? They are hard to identify, how to measure them (or to measure “lost value”).

41:48   How do you measure the cost of lost civil liberties? One big cost: social trust.

43:40   Bryan Caplan’s thought experiment that measures life years which gets around the issue of measuring all of the primary, secondary, and tertiary costs of lockdown.

51:24   What if it were young people were the most vulnerable to COVID? How would that change Caplan’s thought experiment?

52:22   The feedback that he’s been receiving - 99.9% positive. Politicians, health professionals, teachers, psychologists have been all reaching out.

55:11   How does Dr. Allen deal with the frustration about the incompetence up above? Quick shoutout to Ron DeSantis

56:24   Is this incompetence a result of stupidity or malevolence? Politicians’ institutional constraints.

Please check out my website at eugenefernandes.com/letters-from-a-contrarian/ to read the full show notes for this episode, along with the transcript.

My e-mail: [email protected]

My twitter: eugenefds

Please check out my website at eugenefernandes.com/letters-from-a-contrarian/ to read the full show notes for this episode, along with the transcript. 

References:

The World Health Organization’s 2019 guide on Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza:

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf

Please check out my website for show notes, takeaways, and transcripts, at eugenefernandes.com.

Thanks!

References:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.625778/full

Forecasting for COVID-19 has failed. Ioannidis.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7447267/

Flying Blind. John Carpay, JCCF.

https://www.jccf.ca/published_reports/flying-blind-governments-hasty-decisions-to-lock-down-canadians-while-damaging-public-health-and-the-economy/

Here’s a detailed interview with David Redman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgm3Xjz6N7g

Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2772834

Edmonton Zone Pandemic Committee Q&A: https://edmontonjournal.com/news/insight/quashing-misconceptions-alberta-physicians-answer-the-20-most-frequently-asked-questions-about-covid-19

David Redman and Joffe’s commentary: https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-lockdowns-are-the-wrong-response-to-covid-19

The Committee’s response to Redman and Joffe’s commentary: https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-restrictions-and-vaccinations-will-see-us-through-covid-19-safely

My e-mail: eugenefds3 [at] yahoo [dot] com

My twitter: eugenefds

I'm back.

Table of Contents:

[0:00] The government and my fellow citizens don't seem to be responsibly balancing public health with our rights and freedoms. This makes me sad and worried. 

[0:40] The curfew in Quebec is unreasonable. I don't think it would pass the Oakes test. Walkthrough of all 4 steps. 

[7:54] My fellow citizens seem to be experiencing cognitive dissonance. They speak in favour of the restrictions, but break the law over and over again. More broadly, support for the curfew has increased during its duration.

[9:45] A personal crisis changed my mind about lockdowns and restrictions.

[12:10] A few people changed my mind: Viva Frei (David Freihert), John Carpay, Ari Joffe, Matt Strauss, Jonathan Sumption, and David Redman. 

[14:49] For the second season of Letters from a Contrarian, I'll be speaking with as many people as possible to figure out what the hell has happened to the fabric of our liberal democracy, and what's going on when it comes to our response to COVID-19. The hope: make the podcast evergreen and also light-hearted. The lens: one of political philosophy. 

Thanks for listening. 

Links Mentioned:

No proof for the efficacy of curfews

The curfews are used as "communication"

Approval for curfew increased from 68% to 74% during its duration

Should I visit Philippe? 

Connect with me:

Twitter: @eugenefds

Instagram: @fernandeseugene

Website: eugenefernandes.com

For our last episode of 2020, Ryan Elson, the host of No Humble Opinions, joined us. You can learn more about Tribe and No Humble Opinions by finding him on facebook. He's also pretty damn friendly, so make sure to say hi! Thanks for coming on Ryan.

www.employmeet.com

www.tribebelonging.com.au

www.nohumbleopinions.com

Dr Lang shares his concerns about overdiagnosis in breast cancer and prostate cancer screening, among other conditions, like ADHD. We chat about the incentives behind overdiagnosis along with some solutions to it too. Lastly, we chat about how Equity, Diversity and Inclusion applies in his work. You can learn more from the following websites:

You can reach Eddy on twitter at @eddylang1, and email him at eddy.lang [at] albertahealthservices [dot] ca.