The premier of Ontario, Canada, has kicked a provincial parliamentarian out of his political party for publicly questioning coronavirus lockdowns.
On Friday, Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) Roman Baber posted on Twitter an open letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford imploring Ford to lift the lockdown orders that he has imposed to one degree or another since last spring. The latest order, issued Thursday, “has effectively placed the province under a state of near-total lockdown,” reported LifeSiteNews.
Baber opened his letter with these strong-but-accurate words: “The medicine is killing the patient.”
“The Lockdown isn’t working,” he wrote. “It’s causing an avalanche of suicides, overdoses, bankruptcies, divorces and takes an immense toll on our children. Dozens of leading doctors implored you to end the Lockdowns.”
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“The Lockdowns,” he declared, “are objectively deadlier than Covid.” He then cited statistics to back up his contention.
Hours later, Ford officially booted Baber from the Ontario Progressive Conservative (PC) Party, of which both were members, and banned him from ever running for office as a member of the party again.
“Mr. Baber’s comments are irresponsible,” Ford said in a statement. “By spreading misinformation he is undermining the tireless efforts of our frontline health-care workers at this critical time, and he is putting people at risk. I will not jeopardize a single Ontarian’s life by ignoring public health advice.”
Apparently that does not include advice such as the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement signed by over 50,000 medical and public-health scientists and medical practitioners that calls on governments to end their lockdowns, which it says “are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.”
Ford went on to state, quite ludicrously, that “there is no room for political ideology in our fight against COVID-19” — as if believing in open-ended, totalitarian lockdowns were not an ideology in itself. “Rather,” he claimed, “our response has been and will always be driven by evidence and data.” Given the fact that jurisdictions with few to no restrictions have fared just as well as, or even better than, those with onerous ones, one wonders just what “evidence and data” Ford is basing his decisions on.
Besides, it’s not as if Baber made baseless assertions in his letter. Everything he wrote was backed up with news articles, Internet links, and so on.
The Toronto Sun, for instance, published an interview with Dr. Ari Joffe, a specialist in infectious diseases, in which Joffe said that, based on his own research, “the costs of lockdowns are at least 10 times higher than the benefits.”
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported in December that cancer screening levels at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Cancer Center are only at 60 percent of normal levels, with oncologists fearing a “tsunami of cancer” that has gone undetected, exactly as Baber wrote.
Baber also noted that the Canadian Medical Health Association (CMHA) had reported a fourfold increase in suicidal ideation among adults in September. While Baber didn’t state that lockdowns alone had caused this troubling trend, CMHA nevertheless felt the need to criticize him for “mischaracterizing” its report and even went on record as “unequivocally support[ing] provincial lockdown measures.”
Baber made claims about the condition of Ontario’s hospitals based on official numbers provided to him by the Ministry of Health. These numbers clearly show that average daily hospital and intensive-care unit occupancy rates are well in line with those of recent years and, compared to some years, are even lower — meaning that there isn’t a need to implement lockdowns to avoid overwhelming hospitals (even if they did slow the spread of COVID).
The Ministry of Health, too, felt compelled to distance itself from Baber’s sacrilegious statements, issuing its own statement supposedly countering them. However, even using the occupancy rate in the Ministry’s statement, Baber’s conclusion still stands. Other “corrections” in the statement were either nitpicks or disagreements that do not discredit the fundamental contentions of Baber’s letter.
Baber appears to have been unfazed by his ouster from the PC Party. After Ford announced it, Baber tweeted: “The Lockdown is grounded in false public health narrative, poor planning & bad data. While Doug only cares about re-election, Lockdowns are killing more than saving. I couldn’t watch the suffering anymore. I hope I encouraged other professionals to speak out.”
If they value their health and their economic well-being, Baber’s fellow Canadians should share his hope.
