There are some suggestions that the Omicron variant could well end “the pandemic”. And that is a problem. It is a problem on two fronts. First, a variant that not only defeats the “vaccines,” but that also reduces the pandemic to a minor endemic phenomenon, is not one that can be exploited to generate profits for a transnational pharmaceutical giant like Pfizer, which has effectively captured the Canadian market and enjoys a near monopoly, plus a free sales-force (consisting of politicians, civil servants, academics, journalists, and many others). Second, any scaling down of illness removes the thin cover used by the state to centralize and maximize political power, under the pretext of an endless “state of emergency”.

First, what do we know about Omicron? Medical authorities in South Africa have already explained, and emphasized repeatedly, that the virus is following its normal course of evolution towards a strain that spreads easily and is far less lethal—indeed, its symptoms are very mild. Scientists elsewhere have concurred. In South Africa, Omicron has been accompanied by a reduction in hospitalizations, and deaths. Mild symptoms have been the worst of the Omicron experience there, and elsewhere. As of December 12, the WHO reported not a single death anywhere could be attributed to Omicron—after months of circulation in Africa. While fanning the flames of fear about overwhelmed hospitals in Canada and the US, in South Africa a published study found that persons with Omicron were 80% less likely to be hospitalized than if they caught another variant; compared to Delta infections, Omicron infections are associated with a 70% lower risk of severe disease. South African authorities are still wondering why Europe and North America are freaking out. (Answer: the freak out is calculated.)¹

South Africa reminded us of some very important facts that are overlooked too often: Africa, with a negligible percentage of people being “vaccinated,” has evaded the worst of the “pandemic,” a fact that somehow baffled First World scientists. There simply has been no pandemic in Africa, by any long-standing definition of a pandemic. This has brought forth another fact: the worst of the Covid experience has been primarily centred in First World countries, which had the strictest measures, states of emergency, lockdowns, and mass “vaccination” that has approached between 75% and 100% of their populations. More than that, countries that imposed or enforced few or no restrictions, have fared the best—in the Caribbean region, that was Haiti, which rejected the importation of “vaccines” and which could not or did not impose or enforce masking and social distancing. Haiti has fared the best in the Caribbean under Covid; it has done better than nearby Cuba (which has developed two vaccines of its own), but it has even done better than its next door neighbour, the Dominican Republic, where incomes are higher, the injection rate is higher, and serious restrictions were imposed and enforced. Sweden, Florida, and Texas might occupy attention in Western-fixated media, obsessively concerned with their immediate experience, but none of these are the real tests cases of what happens when places adopt diverse responses. The really important cases are instead to be found in Haiti and the African continent.

How could the Omicron variant end the pandemic? One way would be for Omicron to show that, like in South Africa, it is massively transmissible yet minimally dangerous—perhaps not even as bad as a common cold, from which it is practically indistinguishable. Yet, it would almost painlessly generate natural immunity on a broad scale. That would hardly merit new lockdowns, new or renewed states of emergency, mandatory “vaccination,” and the extreme social divisions deliberately constructed by the political class and their media collaborators. Another way Omicron could end the pandemic is by proving the irrelevance of existing “vaccines”. At present, all across Canada injections are being made mandatory for certain sectors of the workforce—and yet they are being injected with a product designed to counter a strain that has gone extinct and has already been replaced twice. The so-called “vaccines” were already being abundantly defeated by the Delta variant, rendered completely useless in achieving any goals of eradication or blocking transmission, and now Delta itself is being annihilated by Omicron.

Clearly, the mass of the population that voluntarily complied with getting injected, has been sold a flawed product. The new ad hoc social contract—where you get vaccinated, and they promised to return your lives to normal—has been completely torn up even before it was signed. An illusion of normalcy was based entirely on what the state permitted, and what the state allowed it could just as easily disallow—and it has. Businesses which collaborated with the state by enforcing “vaccine passports,” now see themselves either being reduced in terms of capacity or hours of operation, or they are being shut down altogether—after already losing business because of the pass system. Their customers were only and exclusively those who were “fully vaccinated”. If such establishments are now deemed “unsafe,” then this tells you everything you need to do know about the benefits and the promise of the “vaccines”.

(We can add this: those who assumed they were “fully vaccinated,” will soon be redefined as “inadequately vaccinated,” and have their QR code privileges revoked. The “fully vaccinated” are about to truly become the unvaccinated: i.e., those who fell out of vaccination.)

Omicron’s arrival in Canada is entirely the consequence of divisive, exclusionary, authoritarian measures that reserved air travel only for the “fully vaccinated”. Outbreaks have also occurred on cruise ships, with only “fully vaccinated” passengers on board. It was also “fully vaccinated” persons who carried Omicron into Canada, as much as the media and the state like to demonize the “unvaccinated”. Also, among the early numbers of those testing positive for Omicron in Montreal, 90% were “fully vaccinated”. In the US, about 80% of all Omicron cases are among “fully vaccinated” persons, and the CDC reported that 33% of these had received third doses. In Europe the young and the “fully vaccinated” have spread the majority of Omicron cases. Even The Atlantic is calling this “the pandemic of the vaccinated”. Whatever damage Omicron might do, it cannot be blamed on the establishment’s favourite scapegoat, the “unvaccinated”.

As for the “fully vaccinated” who are now leading in hospital admissions for Covid, who had been trained to stigmatize and demonize the “unvaccinated” for getting sick, many of the “fully vaccinated” now have to be counselled and consoled by the Washington Post that there is no shame in getting Covid.

What some medical critics have said all along—and you might have heard them more easily had they not been roundly censored and expelled—is that we will not be able to “vaccinate” our way out of this “pandemic”. These “vaccines” prevent neither infection nor transmission, and what little they do, they do even less with rapidly declining efficacy. It is impossible to eradicate Covid, due to the existence of natural animal reservoirs, and the fact that the misnamed “vaccines” offer no sterilizing immunity—thus “herd immunity” through “vaccination” is impossible. On top of that, the current rules violate the principle of never vaccinating during a pandemic, since that itself helps to drive mutations that escape the vaccines. People are now being urged to get “boosters” (designed for an extinct variant), and such “boosters” will always be, at best, one variant behind what is currently dominant. A permanent lag means an unending series of shots, each of which comes with known risks—hence a multiplication of risk, with little proven benefit.

All of this is terribly worrying for the authorities. Their only answer is the most predictable one: more of the same. The objectives? Protect the pandemic. Shield the vaccines. Keep the people at bay.

The Vaccine Gold Rush: Mining a Renewable Resource

For pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna, the production of injectable drugs (dubbed “vaccines”) has been a veritable gold rush—with one important difference: the resource that is mined is renewable. Unlike a gold vein that can be exhausted, a human vein can be drilled again and again, and the drill is just a needle. What renders human veins renewable, what turns arms into resources, is the constant renewal of fear that makes arms extend in anticipation, plus the evolution of new variants which, if properly controlled and exploited, can be immensely profitable. Big Pharma is ready to cash in on Omicron, with the aid of public fear and government mandates. Fear-mongering about Omicron has been enormously profitable already: “Big pharma executives and shareholders saw their wealth skyrocket in the week after the Omicron variant was discovered, with just eight top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders adding a combined $10.31 billion to their fortunes”. Of course there is always the problem that with a greater number of injections, a greater number of resistant mutations is developing.

We may think we have been sold “vaccines,” but reality is more complicated and opaque. As others have suggested, it is we who have been sold to the “vaccines,” or specifically their manufacturers. Public funds, public infrastructure, and public-sector workers have been seized by Big Pharma, and taxpayers pay for the damages caused by the injections. Our bodies and the fruits of our labour are transferred to pharmaceutical giants. We have been purchased, acquired, captured. In return, we receive a vaccine-based security which is no security at all. That is a great deal given in return for what by comparison amounts to nothing.

For the pharmaceutical companies—and their partners in government, academia, and the media—the ideal outcome would be permanent injectability. That would mean a life that cannot be allowed to live freely without being artificially sustained through a ceaseless expansion of problems targeted with vaccines, and a ceaseless series of boosters for each product. The result, a sickly and isolated population confined to bubble-like quarters, living in terror of the world outside the window, reality mediated by what is allowed on their screens, is the perfect outcome. Like the humanitarian industry to which pharmaceutical companies are closely allied, the ideal is not just a needy subject, one obsessively focused on preserving bare life, but a permanently needy subject.

Anyone touting the virtues of “natural immunity”—indeed natural immunity itself—must therefore be an existential threat to such a system. Note how the mandates of governments, hospitals, universities, and a range of occupations never once mention even the existence or possibility of natural immunity. Natural immunity is just factored out. This is therefore not “science”; it is anti-science, or the “alternative science” of pharmaceutical corporations, authoritarian regimes, and censorial media. When nature and the natural are so feared, even detested, the only “science” that can arise is a perverse distortion driven by megalomania and fantasies of achieving invulnerability and invincibility.

Permanently Needy, Permanently Secure, Formerly Human

Three turning points directly led to the situation we now face (I will expand on these points in the future). One turning point was September 11, 2001 and what it taught about invulnerability and invincibility. First, invulnerability: the fact that a small group of what appeared to be ordinary travellers could deliver such a shocking blow, was interpreted by the dominant apparatus and most of the population to mean that “the threat” could come from anyone, anywhere. Everyone was under suspicion. Security became paramount because the threat was generalized. Second, invincibility: no longer safe and secure in their homes, Americans and then many others in the global North accepted the notion that “we need to fight them over there, to keep them from fighting us here in our homeland”. Simplistic, dichotomous thinking prevailed—as it does again today. George W. Bush’s “You are either with us or you’re with the terrorists,” has become Michael Gunner’s, “If you are anti-mandate, you are absolutely anti-vax”. Fighting them over there has morphed into a call to push “vaccines” on Africa, where they are least wanted and least needed.

The financial collapse of 2008–2009 openly manifested not just the pure incompetence and corruption of the dominant elites, but it painfully reminded everyone of the vast and growing inequalities that prevailed. Corporate technocrats’ models were proven to be not only failures, but dangerous ones at that. Their esoteric, specialist knowledge was unmasked as little more than trickery. What became firmly acknowledged by almost everyone was the two-tiered nature of the “justice” system, with none of the culprits facing any convictions or time in prison. Out of this turning point, two powerful movements arose that worried the elites, one of which shrivelled up with time and the other growing into a serious electoral challenge: Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movement, respectively. As OWS declined, leftists left behind vital political platforms on the political playing field, which were then taken up by “the right”. As the “the left” lost its way moving down ever narrowing and subdividing corridors of identity politics, “the right” took up causes associated with the working class, national self-determination, free speech, and anti-interventionism in foreign affairs. The “right” became more leftist, while the “left” aligned itself with the agendas of billionaire oligarchs and became reactionary in its anti-populist posture. The rise of “populism” was the basis for the next turning point.

In 2016, first with Brexit and then with the election of Donald Trump, the ruling elites became terrified. Liberal democracy, until then, had existed as a means of pacification and control—it was never meant to be used as a tool for challenging the system. Now, liberal-democracy itself became a threat, to the extent that it opened the door to systemic challenges. Long-standing fear of the masses erupted into full view. From 2016 onward the elites resolved to destroy what they mockingly termed “populism” and to punish all those responsible for pushing “populist” agendas and winning elections as “populists”. Demonization would play a critical role by creating fear of dangerous Others, and automatically associating any of a number of sins—white nationalism, white supremacy, racism, misogyny, etc., etc.—with any of the Other’s positions. Anti-globalization? That’s easy: Racist. Self-determination? You mean: White supremacy. Anti-vaccines? You can guess.

Whether March 11, 2020, and what followed, were pre-planned or not makes no difference. What happened does not become any worse or better depending on whether or not the “pandemic” was pre-planned. In fact, “pre-planning” answers no significant question of interest here. Of course pandemics have been expected, and just as they occurred over the past century, they were expected to occur again—the existence of rehearsals, exercises, and planned responses is not surprising. What we do know is that what was brought to bear on “the pandemic” was what was already established and already in motion. What was already in motion was the elites’ war against populism. What was already established were firm historical foundations for authoritarianism: in the Caribbean, the history of slavery and the (quasi) total institution of the plantation became the backdrop for rulers’ responses, infecting their language, their measures, and their threats; in North America, histories of segregation, of denying civil rights, of Indian Schools, stern missionary traditions, “humanitarian interventionism,” and incarceration became the reservoirs for policy and practice; in Australia, its history of penal colonies came back to life in the form of the severest lockdowns and most absurd restrictions in the world; in Europe, traditions of fascism and socialist totalitarianism were reanimated—and so on, around the world, each nation putting forward its own traditions of oppression.

This is the Third World War. It was apparently not to be a war between nations of the world, but a war within nations around the world. The evident aim of those who launched this war is to save the pandemic from the people, at all costs.

What the “pandemic” furnished—and this was not realized by all or even most political leaders at first (a fact that undermines the pre-planning argument)—was a glorious opportunity to:

a) punish the people;
b) divide the people against each other; and,
c) discipline and control the people (i.e., the broad mass of the working population).

The “pandemic” is and has been a political phenomenon, first and foremost—a fact that even few critics seem ready to recognize. The only real relevance of “science” here is the degree to which it reveals this or that measure to be (in)effective or (un)justified given the officially stated goals. There is no path of “science” out of this crisis. We are not dealing with a problem of “uninformed” policy-makers and legislators.

What has (re)gained political capital in the course of this crisis is rule by state of emergency—a favourite tool of elected dictators since Adolf Hitler. It affords nearly absolute power to enact almost any fantasy. It is as desperate as it is ecstatic; worried and yet exuberant; awesome yet unsustainable. Rule by state of emergency today is not simply, as some may think, a reflection of a “public health threat”. There are many ways one can deal with a virus, and a state of emergency is not the most obvious one—in fact, all of the measures imposed under the “public health emergency” in Quebec are demonstrable failures. Emergency rule is instead evidence of the state’s lack of trust in the population, and the state’s willingness to blame the population for the spread of the virus (which makes as much sense as blaming the public for the flight of birds). Emergency rule is thus an antagonistic and belligerent position, a reflection of the state’s lack of confidence in its ability to convince and secure consensus. Emergency rule is an admission by the elites that they lack legitimacy. Thus the state and the dominant elites resort to psychological warfare, fear-mongering, behavioural manipulation, censorship, and threats. The aim is to reduce the population to a state of complete dependency on the state. The state thus appropriates a parental role in the name of “protection”. Rule under a “public health emergency” makes the state boss, doctor, father, priest, teacher, and babysitter, all in one. Conversely, the public is reduced to the status of wards, dependent on aid and tutoring, careful not to move without permission, and even then dressed according to the state’s dress code.

This emergent system based on permanently needy subjects under extended if not permanent states of emergency, results in the objectification and commodification of human beings. Humans are now reduced to arms. Government is now the art of “getting shots into arms”. With such reduction and dehumanization, we can only speak of the ex-human. The ex-human is that thing which has the outline of the former human being, now subsisting largely as an object used to carry a smartphone that leads ex-humans to wherever a QR code will permit. With information tightly restricted by media and academic outlets whose output resembles wartime propaganda, knowledge can be dispensed with altogether—“just Google it”. Ex-humans in ex-university classrooms are there only to make sure that everyone is correctly repeating dogma.

“The vaccine” is thus a useful lever, part of a machine well oiled by fear and programmed for “health”. Once “the vaccine” appeared as a quasi-magical solution—an instant technological fix—its foundation had already been laid by the imposition of a “health emergency” that demanded total “safety,” which meant absolute “security”. We have moved past the 19^th-century problem of Order that was the central object of concern for the new social sciences. Now the system can not only live with disorder, it thrives on disorder, it foments disorder. Disorder is an inherent feature of the discourse of Progress, which involves the destruction of traditions and never ending ruptures with the past. The problem now is not Order, it is instead that of Security. Emblematic expressions of this securitization of everything are gated communities, home alarm systems, surveillance of Canadians during lockdowns, and “safe spaces” on campuses. Anything deemed contrary is treated like an intruder who “triggers” an alarm. Ex-humans are thus reprogrammed to function as components of a social surveillance system, and experience teaches that they are all too easily “triggered”.

Megalomania: Manufacturing Fear, Selling Disease

For the clearest, most current examples of how “the pandemic” has been worked, one can examine what is presently happening with Omicron in Canada. The language used by the media and government officials, as well as media-selected academic “experts,” reveals what is undeniably a deliberate effort to promote mass fear (yet again). For the shrill-speakers, almost everything is premised entirely on the heightened mass terror of the “rise in ‘cases’,” as usual. Corporate and state media use “surging cases” to promote panic porn and to advocate for “stricter” measures, without the slightest concern for the vast range of damage wrought by lockdowns. The media’s agenda neatly dovetails with that of pharmaceutical companies which profit from disease mongering. The same is true of university-based medical “experts” predictably quoted by the media—academics whose research is either directly funded by the same pharmaceutical companies, or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or they work in hospitals and research centres funded by these entities. Fear is weaponized, playing on rising “case” numbers: a doom loop is created where fear drives people to get tested, which drives the numbers higher (when even asymptomatic people who believe they have been “exposed” to “contact” rush to get tested); as the numbers increase, so does fear, thus repeating the cycle.

In early December the WHO and “public health” authorities in Europe and North America all stated very clearly that it would take three to four weeks to seriously examine Omicron, before jumping to any conclusions. Initial statements by “public health” officials in Canada and the US—including Fauci—suggested that Omicron would be less severe in its effects than any of the previous strains, but more transmissible. Both its behaviour, and its effects, are hardly distinguishable from the common cold—a very light version of the common cold.

Clearly, this type of narrative was not satisfactory for the media in Canada, who fancy themselves as the fourth branch of government after the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and possibly second only to the executive. This is not an exaggeration. One has only to watch their televised programs, listen to their radio talk shows, or hear their questions at press briefings, to easily pick up their pointed, commanding, instructional tones. They do not want to know what will be done; they want to tell the authorities what to do. The Canadian media always fall on the side of severity, extreme judgments, hyperbole, unrestrained scare mongering, and even violent malevolence—more on this later. When it comes to Omicron, the Canadian media will have none of this “less severe…like a common cold” commentary from scientists.

Examine even just a sample of a day’s worth of media reports in Canada, and their recurring themes:

Inflammatory language: “Omicron is raging in the U.K.”; “The World Health Organization (WHO) also sounded the alarm”: “unprecedented”; “the Omicron figure paints a starker image”; “the threat of the Omicron variant of concern mounts”; “the dramatic upturn in numbers”. (This is still not as melodramatic as the acted out hysteria one found in a selection of just one day’s headlines from US cable news channels which, almost simultaneously, repeated their characterizations of Omicron as “frightening,” “terrifying,” “scary,” and “rampaging”.)

Turning a positive into a negative: less deadly Omicron displacing deadlier Delta “is seen as potentially problematic by infectious disease specialists”.

Expecting the worst: “…Bauld said, only a small number of people are in hospital with the variant in the U.K., but she expects that to change as it’s still very early in this outbreak”; “Surely, we have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril”; “could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems”; “the pandemic could spiral out of control”; “it would be ‘catastrophic’ to the health-care system”; “the prime minister recognized that this new surge in cases would be particularly difficult for families and communities given the time of year”; “We are preparing, unfortunately, for a significant rise in hospitalizations”; “we’re likely to see a substantial rise in hospitalizations”….“It’s about to start to be really challenging”; “it could cripple the Canadian health system”.

Training captive markets to freak out: “COVID-19: At least 7 schools currently closed in London, Ont”; “Two Montreal schools closed due to potential Omicron variant outbreaks”; “Feds formally advise against non-essential international travel amid COVID-19 case surge”.

Mystification: Signalling political goals, portraying them as the inevitable outcomes of Nature: “the pandemic is not yet over”; “if Canada does not respond with the proper restrictions, the situation could become disastrous”; “ If the measures are not put into place and used strictly…the toll the variant could take on the health care system would be severe”; “To those who are planning to travel, I say very clearly, now is not the time to travel. The rapid spread of the Omicron variant on a global scale makes us fear the worst for Canadians that may think of travelling,”; “avoid pre-holiday parties and gatherings…it’s really important right now to make a ‘collective effort’ and use caution”; “Trudeau and the premiers agreed that the key to moving beyond the pandemic is to ensure that as many Canadians as possible, including children, get vaccinated and have access to booster shots”.

ATOMICRON: A 100 Megaton Payload of Lies

This is clearly a game on the part of government officials and the media, with the rules invented by them and agreed upon by them alone, and with the referees appointed by them. None of their favoured “measures” have worked, and yet they want to see them reimposed or reinforced. Masks (for children too), social distancing, the injectable drugs they falsely claim are “vaccines,” their QR codes—nothing has or can stop the spread of a virus, and the present situation proves that. Trinidadian talk show host, Stephan Reis, has formulated one of the authorities’ main problems as follows: on the one hand, they have to tell the resistant that the “vaccine” works, and they should get it; on the other hand, they have to tell the rest of the population that the “vaccine” is not working well enough, which is why they need to get more. Both messages are stated nearly at the same time, in front of both audiences.

To sustain interest in their game, the pharmaceutical PR firms known as “the media” have initiated a new and more virulent round of disinformation. It is utterly transparent just how severely unscrupulous and unreservedly mendacious their dangerous propaganda has become. Not waiting for Omicron to overwhelm hospitals, Canada’s CTV News, following “public health,” rushed to invoke that spectre:

“Even with stricter public health measures introduced in Quebec, hospitals could be over capacity with COVID-19 patients as the fifth wave of the pandemic explodes, a new report published Wednesday predicts. The report from the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) paints a mostly worrying picture of the situation in the province, which has been recording back-to-back record-breaking case counts in recent days. The INSPQ says that if public health measures are followed, more people get their third dose, and people can get tested, ‘we cannot exclude an overrun of hospital capacities even if these conditions are met, given the uncertainty concerning the severity of Omicron’. Local hospital leaders reported Tuesday they may need to start cancelling surgeries and clinics”.

Now that Quebec has caught up to the UK and Israel, where the “fully vaccinated” constitute the majority of Covid hospitalizations and deaths, the narrative in Canada has changed: the “unvaccinated” are now “overrepresented” as a proportion of the “unvaccinated” population. Even before that, those with a “first dose” were being counted among the “unvaccinated” because they were not “fully vaccinated”—a brazen contradiction of past narratives from earlier this year that should have raised the ire of the populace. Thus this headline: “Quebec reports close to 1,000 new COVID-19 cases, 772 not fully vaccinated”. Of those newly testing positive, 78% received a first dose of the vaccine.

According to the new norm, those who have received just one dose, were no longer “adequately vaccinated” (when boosters become mandatory, two dose people will be deemed “inadequately vaccinated”). The impression one would get—if you have zero memory, or only now started reading news reports for the first time in your life—is that just one dose is tantamount to no protection at all.

Was that always the case? No, it most certainly was not.

On January 5 of this year, the media reproduced with approval these statements from a loyal doctor: “Research has shown that the Pfizer vaccine achieves 90% effectiveness two weeks after the first dose has been administered. The second dose is a ‘booster’ shot that enhances the already high level of protection”.

On January 11, Premier Francois Legault insisted, “the first dose does grant a fair level of immunity”.

Earlier this year then, a single dose was still deemed effective, enough that getting the second dose could be delayed by a dozen weeks, even more. The second dose was, after all, just a “booster” shot.

Indeed, the policy was to delay second doses, in order to “protect” the maximum number of people, because that is what we were told a first dose would do: protect. The delay in receiving a second dose simply did not matter: “Please rest assured that this change will not affect your health or well-being”.

The government of Quebec took to calling second doses, “booster shots”. It insisted that it would be fine to delay receiving the second dose, by 90 days.

Note how much just one dose mattered back then. Now it matters almost not at all.

Thus either the Quebec government and its alleged advice from so-called “Public Health” was again wrong, and imposed measures not grounded in scientific fact—or, it was the case that the so-called “vaccines” began failing from early on. If the former is true, then the government is either ignorant or incompetent. If the latter is true, then simply stating that X% of hospitalized people now are not “fully vaccinated,” is a way of masking the fact that what was asserted earlier, about the effectiveness of the vaccines, was and continues to be false.

With each passing day now, local headlines scream of “records being smashed,” and they are speaking only about “cases” (i.e., those testing positive). One headline blasted, “Quebec doctors warn hospitals may soon be overrun as health workers catch Omicron variant”. The “Health Minister” intoned, in a now familiar refrain: “the situation is critical,” with the Premier repeating the chorus line about “difficult choices ahead”. “The city’s hospitals are also struggling,” we are told, “with emergency rooms consistently over-capacity and 99 more people admitted with COVID-19 in the last week”.

And yet, a related article reports: “Compared to this time last year, before the province launched its vaccine campaign, hospital admissions are down 61 per cent, even as cases are up 92 per cent”. How can hospitals be struggling with reduced hospital admissions? Part of the answer lies in the fact that, just days before Christmas, the Quebec government fired 500 healthcare workers for refusing to undergo discriminatory and punitive testing (Alberta also laid off 1,650 hospital workers). The decision made no sense: anyone in the healthcare system, injected or not, can be infected and spread the virus—so why test only those who refused injection? Do they already possess natural immunity, given the high chance of that being the case in their line of work? The decision made even less sense given the announcement that, due to staffing shortages, Quebec hospitals were planning to let infected and even sick workers come to work.

Then we learned that the small number of new hospitalizations was not even caused by Omicron: “While Omicron appears to spreading rapidly throughout the province, and the rest of Canada, Quebec’s health minister said the variant’s effect has not been felt in hospitals. Most of the people who end up in hospital are affected by the Delta variant, he told a news conference”. That fact was repeated by hospital records.

Nonetheless, by juxtaposing articles intended to frighten readers about “surging Omicron cases,” next to articles about “hospitals stretched beyond capacity,” the impression that was conveyed—almost certainly by design—was that Omicron in Quebec had already started to overwhelm hospitals. Next to articles about record numbers of “cases” and the prevalence of Omicron, CTV News in “Surgeries, clinics could be delayed as COVID-19 cases rise in Quebec,” stated that it is, “the Omicron-driven fifth wave,” that “has halted any attempts to catch up on almost two years worth of delayed surgeries and clinical appointments”—even though most cases in hospitals were not Omicron-related. In “Emergency rooms in Quebec are overflowing: Index Santé,” CTV News deliberately creates the impression that Covid is to blame. However, we have known from