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I'll quote my own comment on the trucker situation from a year and a half ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37450666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?i

I'll quote my own comment on the trucker situation from a year and a half ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37450666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37450666 > It's a story of everyone going way too far. > The government(s) went way overboard with Pfizer proof of purchase QR codes to get lunch. Especially when uptake was 80%+ > They also went overboard by locking down again over the holidays when everyone was already catching the most contagious Omicron. People not being able to go to a gym to stay fit, that already needed a barcode, swayed a lot of the public that things were going on too long. > But the obnoxiousness of the truckers also went too far for too long. The news of rifles and arrests in Alberta was (obviously) too far. > I don't have a citation on hand, but at one point more than a third of Canadians did support either the truckers explicitly or their aims, and that's a higher percentage than voted for the current governing party. Support was higher among younger people, sometimes over 50%. But this percentage decreased as time went on. > The government also completely failed to act diplomatically or to de-escalate the situation. Instead we had inflammatory rhetoric and a focus on some silly flags (which should be condemned, but a lot of people have doubts as to their sincerity, and I've seen some pretty gross signs against the unvaxxed too) > Some people, even in this comment section, take their rhetoric and opposition too far. > There is no doubt in my mind that the more time passes, the more we will look at Canada's response to the pandemic (especially in its later years) as a horrendous failure that harmed trust in public health, harmed social cohesion, and harmed our democratic and civil institutions. Everyone failed and everyone suffered as a result.

wsmith94333 2y ago
You mentioned specifically restrictions on lunch. Do you just mean that there are more office workers eating lunch because it is during the day? Or were the vaccine passport rules different depending on what meal or time of day?
- SpecialistK 2y ago
  It was just an example - in most places the vaccine passports were required for any sit down service where you have a server (not fast food or to go orders) Quebec did impose curfews, and overall had the strictest restrictions by a long way. Around the time of the protests there were plans to tax or fine the unvaccinated and big box retailers were already restricting access to all parts of the store save for the pharmacy.
cmrdporcupine 2y ago
I guess what I'm not getting here is this: the rage about the "everyone that went too far" doesn't seem to have extended to the people who actually did that. By which I mean our provincial governments, with their ad hoc dubious and last minute irrational responses. Specifically, Doug Ford who seems to have suffered not a bit in terms of support but enacted the most draconian of COVID restrictions and lockdowns, all at the last minute and after numbers were skyrocketing, not before... Meanwhile Trudeau did what... airports and borders. The feds influence here was not high. ArriveCAN was a debacle, obviously. But the trucker thing was US initiated. I don't think there's anything the feds could have done to head this off. They couldn't make the trucker vax thing not happen, not with Biden insisting on it. They had no control over what was happening in workplaces and schools across the country. Their biggest fault, I think, was being weak -- which the opposition took advantage of to create mayhem and try to bring the govt down. That the people organizing the protest were in part former oil industry lobbyists and had previously been involved in climate change denying anti-carbon tax protests should also make one pause about what the motivations might be and where the money might be coming from, as well? Regardless, I think we agree: by January with Omicron showing that it would transmit like crazy regardless of vaccine, mandates everywhere should have been dropped.
- SpecialistK 2y ago
  The protests in Ottawa and the two border crossings ballooned from just being about the trucker mandates (which really didn't impact that many people, since trucking industry reps reported rates of vaccination in line with the general population) to being an all-out protest against restrictions in general. I did see several protests in BC, including at the legislature. What the federal government could have at least tried, in my opinion, was to be humble and release the tension. Trudeau's sanctimoniousness manifested itself too strongly and only escalated the situation, which he had seen coming earlier in the year by calling mandates "divisive" - presumably before polling numbers showed that Canadians are mostly a compliant bunch who didn't have much time for tinfoil hat types (research by UBC and VCH later showed that those already disadvantaged, such as the homeless, were vaccinated at a lower rate than the general population and disproportionately impacted by mandates. I'd love to link citations here but finding 2-3+ year old studies and articles is painful) Instead, several of Trudeau's statements at this time, including "do we tolerate these people" became rallying cries for the populists.

wsmith94333 2y ago

You mentioned specifically restrictions on lunch. Do you just mean that there are more office workers eating lunch because it is during the day? Or were the vaccine passport rules different depending on what meal or time of day?

SpecialistK 2y ago
It was just an example - in most places the vaccine passports were required for any sit down service where you have a server (not fast food or to go orders) Quebec did impose curfews, and overall had the strictest restrictions by a long way. Around the time of the protests there were plans to tax or fine the unvaccinated and big box retailers were already restricting access to all parts of the store save for the pharmacy.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago

I guess what I'm not getting here is this: the rage about the "everyone that went too far" doesn't seem to have extended to the people who actually did that. By which I mean our provincial governments, with their ad hoc dubious and last minute irrational responses. Specifically, Doug Ford who seems to have suffered not a bit in terms of support but enacted the most draconian of COVID restrictions and lockdowns, all at the last minute and after numbers were skyrocketing, not before... Meanwhile Trudeau did what... airports and borders. The feds influence here was not high. ArriveCAN was a debacle, obviously. But the trucker thing was US initiated. I don't think there's anything the feds could have done to head this off. They couldn't make the trucker vax thing not happen, not with Biden insisting on it. They had no control over what was happening in workplaces and schools across the country. Their biggest fault, I think, was being weak -- which the opposition took advantage of to create mayhem and try to bring the govt down. That the people organizing the protest were in part former oil industry lobbyists and had previously been involved in climate change denying anti-carbon tax protests should also make one pause about what the motivations might be and where the money might be coming from, as well? Regardless, I think we agree: by January with Omicron showing that it would transmit like crazy regardless of vaccine, mandates everywhere should have been dropped.

SpecialistK 2y ago
The protests in Ottawa and the two border crossings ballooned from just being about the trucker mandates (which really didn't impact that many people, since trucking industry reps reported rates of vaccination in line with the general population) to being an all-out protest against restrictions in general. I did see several protests in BC, including at the legislature. What the federal government could have at least tried, in my opinion, was to be humble and release the tension. Trudeau's sanctimoniousness manifested itself too strongly and only escalated the situation, which he had seen coming earlier in the year by calling mandates "divisive" - presumably before polling numbers showed that Canadians are mostly a compliant bunch who didn't have much time for tinfoil hat types (research by UBC and VCH later showed that those already disadvantaged, such as the homeless, were vaccinated at a lower rate than the general population and disproportionately impacted by mandates. I'd love to link citations here but finding 2-3+ year old studies and articles is painful) Instead, several of Trudeau's statements at this time, including "do we tolerate these people" became rallying cries for the populists.