Covid Journal, April 27, 2021

Doug Ford, Failure

Ontario is suffering.

The much anticipated ‘third wave’ has hit Ontario like a tsunami.

After a year of learning what Covid is all about, you’d think we’d have some ‘best practices’ in mind.

We do. In Ontario, we have a ‘Science Table’ that offers up advice to Premier Doug Ford.

He has ignored them.

Paid sick days? No.

Intervention with retirement homes? No.

Termination of ‘clusters’ of cases? No.

A day after Ontario’s youngest victim DIED from Covid – a daughter of someone labeled as an essential worker – Doug Ford and his governmen has yet again against #PaidSickLeave.

This isn’t the first time it’s come up. It’s the TWENTY FIRST time that they’ve voted down paid sick leave.

The military is now being sent in to Ontario hospitals to help with case load and ICUs.

Doug Ford continues to show his ‘appreciation’ by blaming the feds for not acting soon enough.

The province of Newfoundland is now sending in emergency workers to Ontario to help with the load.

These are headlines that all have one theme: Doug Ford is a failure.

Can you implement a class action lawsuit against a Premier?

Bill Gates Rejects Public Domain for Vaccines

Bernie Sanders says backing the patent rights waiver for Covid-19 vaccines represents a sense of ‘common human morality’.

A petition is going around – signed by millions – to encourage President Joe Biden and other world leaders to make Covid-19 vaccines public domain.

According to a Data for Progress survey released last week, 60% of U.S. voters want Biden to support the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver, which is backed by more than 100 WTO member nations. The proposal would lift a key legal barrier preventing generic manufacturers around the world from replicating vaccine formulas.

“This event and the success of these petitions shows that not only is the TRIPS waiver the right thing to do to end the pandemic everywhere and stop vaccine apartheid, but that it is overwhelming popular,” said Ben Levenson of People’s Action. “At this point the only thing standing in the way of the Biden administration is their willingness to stand up to the greed of the pharmaceutical industry.”

With this context, Canadian Dimension does an excellent job of ripping a new one for Bill Gates after he basically declared ‘profits before people’.

Nick Dearden, executive director of Global Justice Now, one of the lead partner groups in an international coalition calling for WTO patent waivers at a crucial meeting of the world body next month, characterized Gates’ remarks—and the ideological framework behind them—as “disgusting.”

“Who appointed this billionaire head of global health?” asked Dearden. “Oh yeah, he did.”

While the underworld buzzes against Gates for stuff like controlling the narrative before there was an outbreak of Covid and declaration of a pandemic or becoming North America’s largest land owner or sponsoring ‘Event 201’ (a pandemic planning event that took place in 2019, paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), Gates continues to deny involvement with any of the above.

I’m past the point of caring about Bill Gates and what he has to say.

His Windows product sucked ass for decades and created a whole cottage industry: virus protection. How ironic.

And, for the record, I don’t think he’s QUALIFIED to determine the fate of vaccines on a global scale and decide unilaterally that pharmaceutical companies should be able to engage in profit maximization while the entire planet is shut down due to Covid-19 … or any other disease. NO ONE should feel they have this right to deny humanity basic rights in this respect.

That’s not conspiracy. That’s just simple fact coming from thousands of years of making the mistake of letting a small handful of people try to determine the fate of the rest of us. It doesn’t work.

With this in mind, my simple message is this: we need to stop empowering oligarchs.

On a global scale, we need a ‘super tax’ to help balance the books with wealth in the world. Call it the ‘Robin Hood’ tax. The ‘Great Equalizer’. The ‘FU, you’ve made enough money’ tax. I don’t care. Let’s just get it done.

You’ve made tens of billions. You get a trophy that says ‘yay, you won capitalism’.

But just like the game of Monopoly, at the end of the game, all the cash goes back in the box.

Furthermore, we need to implement a global public inquiry into all of the facts surrounding Covid, the outbreak and our collective response.

If we aren’t determined to learn from our history, we will be doomed to repeat it.