||| BY LIN MCNULTY, theORCASONIAN EDITOR |||
Monday, the last day in January, the weather was sunny-ish for this time of year, as a group of islanders gathered in the early afternoon at the Village Green in what was supposed to be a peaceful protest of COVID mask mandates. The march was in solidarity with a statewide take off your mask day for the kids, as well as with a massive truck convoy across Canada/ US borders where over a million people are gathered at Parliament demanding to end all mandates now.
To the righteous dismay of protest organizers, some in the group of 30-40 islanders were not in lockstep with the intention to walk peacefully through the Village of Eastsound. The group had been summoned to participate in the rally through posts on social media sites. Some demonstrators took it upon themselves to also enter local businesses — unmasked and disruptive — where they were asked by employees at Ray’s Pharmacy, at Island Market, and at the medical center to leave the building.
Although troublesome and disturbing, the demonstrations did not rise to a level wherein law enforcement was called to the scene.
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Thank you, Lin, for your fair, balanced, and succinct summary of exactly what happened.
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Yep!
And what do our eyes and ears tell us? Well our “scientists” now tell us the only effective masks are N-95/NK-95’s that just protect the wearer, NOT the environment, or employees, customers, or the fearful. The cloth fetishes worn for the last two years are and were always useless.
Equally useless were the lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limitations on gatherings that “contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” and that are, and were “ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.” As concluded in the Johns-Hopkins meta-analysis released last week and subsequently suppressed by the mainstream media.
Moreover our eyes and ears tell us states with stringent controls fared comparatively worse overall than those supporting individual choice / liberty, an observation that extends to recent revocation of such restrictions by the UK, Ireland, and the Scandinavian countries.
Global consensus appears to be one of accepting Covid as endemic, necessitating vaccine induced or natural immunity supported by therapeutic treatment. Rather than looking backward we need to look forward and initiate “Warp Speed II “to aggressively develop and deploy Monoclonal antibodies. That requires the peoples leaders to lead, absent that civil disobedience may be liberty’s only salvation.
1,000,000 at Parliament? Here’s what CNN has on their site: “Forget comparisons to January 6, 2021. The thousands of protesters here — police estimates on the weekend were 5,000 to 18,000 people, far short of the boasts of 50,000 trucks that organizers had claimed — are not just white, male and Christian. According to reports, they are of mixed ethnicity, a reflection of a heterogenous Canada, which admitted more than 1% of its population in immigrants last year.
BTW, the entire population of Ottawa is only about 945,000….
A reporter roaming the crowd on Parliament Hill described a “festive” mood — not just a gnarled, baying brigade of old-stock Canadians lugging a catalogue of grievance. She noted breathlessly that the leaders include a Jewish and an Indigenous Canadian.
Listen to what Dr. Fauci recommends. Wear your mask to protect yourself and others when appropriate. Get vaccinated and boosted. Be kind.
It’s not complicated.
Thank you, Lin, for boiling this incident down to its core. The issue here is that a small number of people took their grievances beyond a peaceful demonstration; choosing to trespass and cause disruptions in private businesses. Regardless of the severity of the pandemic or the effectiveness of masks and lockdowns, what they did was wrong. I disagree with the demonstrators’ beliefs about the pandemic and masks, but I support their right to assemble and express those beliefs. As I understand it, there were only a few of the protesters gathered who chose to be disruptive. It is these people who deserve to be called out and bear the consequences.
Seems to me the majority of us masking and vaccinating on Orcas are following real science, not that twisted version put forth by the “personal freedom” advocates. In the interest of public safety we have to wear seatbelts. It’s time to mask up in the interest of public safety instead of being selfishly “vain.”
Wow, barging without masks into the medical center and the pharmacy, specifically where sick people are trying to get better, is vicious. Yes, masks are ineffective…if you refuse to use them. So are facts.
January 6 repeated January 31 in Eastsound? This was, indeed, an assault. What are we coming to?
“Only a few went into stores”..
That is correct.
But whoever continued to march with them emboldened the behavior.
They are just as guilty.
I suggest that anti masking people who think having a robust immune system get together and see if they can be allowed to visit the sick with cover in hospital,( probably not possible) and find out for themselves how the unvaccinated and ‘free’ folks are doing. I had occasion to visit Peace Health in Bellingham because I thought I was having an ongoing attack of diverticulitis. It is a painful and scary condition. It was late as we arrived and there was as an emergency area, tents against the outside of the hospital. Every section of that place was full of sick people. I was lucky to even be seen. My sister with broken ankles had the same experience inside the hospital after she was seen and treated, and she was moved into the basement with a few others who were just needing a bit more time in hospital to heal before going home. The room had no windows…really quite used as any basement but now for patients. She said they needed her bed upstairs.
I just want the people who believe that we are being lied to about this virus, to realize that it is real. And that it has killed. And that if they want to get sick, and they do, pay for it then. It has overwhelmed the medical establishment. Those of us out here trying to avoid getting sick and making others sick, against their will, are trying hard to stay out of those hospitals. And trying hard to not pass along the infections.
Gretchen, Thank-you for your personal story. Covid misinformation is so destructive. A relative of mine in Colorado who was in vigorous health is intubated with covid. He never was vaccinated. He has a wife and young children who cannot visit him as he hovers near death. My daughter who caught covid in March 2020 before vaccines were available is still unable to work. It is called long covid. Between 10 and 30% of people who get covid will suffer from long covid.
Reading these comments a few days later heartily reinforces my pleasure (and relief) at being an Orcasonian, now going on 20 years.