Canada ends vaccine entry rules, makes ArriveCan optional | Hacker News Reader

Canada ends vaccine entry rules, makes ArriveCan optional

bbc.com

22 pointspGuitar12 comments

If there's one thing we should learn from the last 2.5 years, it's how unscientific Canadian society has become.

Had even the basics of the scientific method been applied, and had our existing scientific knowledge been considered, none of the harm the country experienced would have happened.

There would have been no business/job/education/freedom-destroying lockdowns and other government-imposed restrictions.

There would have been no forced masking.

There would have been no coerced/forced medical procedures, and no "vaccine passports".

One truly disconcerting aspect of all of this is how the people who were screaming "trust the science" the loudest were typically the ones with the least scientific experience, and were the ones pushing for policies that had no scientific basis.

This wasn't about science, it was about political science. I think the lockdowns were not about "stopping spread" but actually a sort of test to see how populations respond to absurd orders in preparation for climate lockdowns in the next few years, per the WEF. People just accepted this "six-feet / two-meter social distancing" and forcing others to comply with this rule, which has never been demonstrated or proven by any sort of scientific fact. Anyone who questioned these orders was treated as a heretic. This collective trauma will be very difficult to recover from. Because I do not trust the WEF, I suspect the trauma, confusion, and hypocrisy is the point.

> I think the lockdowns were not about "stopping spread" but actually a sort of test to see how populations respond to absurd orders in preparation for climate lockdowns in the next few years

That's quite an assertion about intent. Sources?

> People just accepted this "six-feet / two-meter social distancing"

They accepted it because they assume good faith until proven otherwise and because it's highly plausible that a virus that is spread primarily by airborne means can rendered less transmissible by putting distance between infected persons and uninfected persons.

> This collective trauma will be very difficult to recover from.

I'm sure some are more traumatized than others. I imagine among the most traumatized are those who experienced the death of family and friends due to Covid-19.

> which has never been demonstrated or proven

Since it would be an exceedingly difficult study to control for, let alone perform, personally I've just continue to accept the basic biological plausibility of simple interventions such as distancing and masking. It does raise the legitimate question about what level of evidence is required to make a given intervention. At the same time, one person's trauma is another person's minor inconvenience.

All of that said, Canada's decision to drop some of the cross-border rules seems due.

Source isn't needed, though. "I think" means it's an opinion, which is fine. You are also allowed to opine in the opposite direction.

As for me in particular, I'm also inclined to think that the "pandemic" restrictions were less about the actual disease vs. a test on how much control can a state exert over its citizens.

It will be disconcerting, though maybe likely, that voters will not do a full sweep and put these politicians into retirement. Almost like the voters are comfortable in their cages.

Not for lying to the people and suppressing science. They'd probably need to something really racist like dressing in blackface a half dozen times. That would surely wake those voters up to the politician's hypocrisy!

> There would have been no forced masking.

Could you elaborate? I thought early experiments showed masks reduced transmissibility, and that finding holds up today?

For the last year, vaccinated Canadians were about as likely to get infected in Canada as anywhere else.

I suspect I got Omicron BA.1 last January two months after my first booster, but didn't have a test kit. The symptoms were mild: sore throat and headache for a couple days.

The proffered rationale for border controls was to keep out new variants. The problem is that it takes a few weeks for researchers to identify a new variant by which time it's all over the place.

An NY Times article suggests that people with long covid are variant factories in that they give the virus more opportunities to produce variants. That said the Delta variant seems to have been generated at the Kumbh Mela gathering of three million people :

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/30/kumbh-mela-how...

To know if you had it and developed antibodies, get the fingertip blood drop test at pharmacy. Then you will know.

I crossed the border into Canada 8 days ago and they didn't even ask me for my ArriveCan papers which I felt was odd.

I cross the border quite frequently, and they've never asked for it, but since my NEXUS + Canadian PR + ArriveCan are all linked, I assumed they had it already. The CBSA agent once told me as much.

I show them my US passport when I cross and then they automatically know that me and my kids are also Canadians... everything is linked (a border agent once told me because he thought that I didn't know because they were all born in the US (first generation born in the US is automatically Canadian too)).

They ask you so much information when you fill out ArriveCan that it isn't hard to figure out that you have it when you show them your passport.

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