Bruce Dowbiggin
The China Syndrome: The Cover-Up Catastrophe
A liberal wants happy endings. A conservative wants satisfactory endings. Liberal happiness usually involves great unhappiness. Conservative satisfaction usually means things that work.
In the Covid-19 crisis the West has sought a vaccine-powered happy ending where everyone goes to heaven but no one dies. As we see now, a more realistic end game— that conceded some death and hardship— was needed for a satisfactory ending. What produced the former and actively suppressed the latter was China.
As we wrote in April of 2020, only the Chinese knew what was happening on Covid-19: Repeat. No one but the Chinese knew anything till at least March (2020). (U.S. President Donald) Trump only knew what he was told by his crack science team of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Karen Birkx, Dr. Anthony Redfield and the armies of CDC and Health Department apparatchiks. Who said in March that masks were ineffective. But now science proves they’re boffo. (In D.C. opinions are like belly buttons. Everybody’s got one.)
Trump is not an epidemiologist. He’s a businessman, a salesman whose focus was on preventing a total collapse of the economy. So when the initial calming sounds from his advisors proved fatally wrong, Trump played for time. He mobilized supply chains, supplied states with ventilators, PPE and beds. Even his bitter enemy Cuomo, governor of New York, was forced to concede that Orange Man Bad had done alright by the people of the Empire State. His policies did “flatten the curve”, preventing an early meltdown of U.S. hospitals and their health system.
Likewise, Trudeau is not an epidemiologist. The PM got his talking points, largely, from his virus expert Dr. Theresa Tam (via the WHO). Reading from the Chinese script she scorned masks and the closing of borders. While Trump closed America’s borders and sanctioned China, Trudeau, Health Minster Patty Hajdu and senior public health officials insisted that the risk of transmission was low in Canada right up until early March.
“When the risk level suddenly jumped to ‘high’ on March 15, the government scrambled to impose an economic lockdown to curb the spread of the virus” reports CBC.ca.
Which is where we have been since the fabled 15 days in 2020 to flatten the curve— the first of many Orwellian bromides to deflect from the tragedy of executive overreach.Now we have an extensive article saying just that.
In the West’s abject panic over the virus, says Tablet magazine in The Masked Ball of Cowardice, the assembled political and health elites of the West took their marching orders from China’s carefully manicured script on how they beat a virus that most everyone now concedes they launched themselves. The script was a lie that launched an estimated 4.5 million deaths worldwide.
“At the heart of the lockdown madness was the collective fantasy of controlling a common respiratory pathogen—a feat the epidemiology profession had agreed was impossible and self-destructive just months prior.”
In The Masked Ball of Cowardice Michael P. Senger documents how the pandemic can be explained by initial gullibility on alleged Chinese treatment of the virus and the subsequent attempts by the West to cover their ass for being suckered. “…since “15 days to slow the spread”—from fear propaganda to masks to school closures and vaccine passes—has been a cover-up of catastrophe that was the original lockdowns and denial of insanity of trusting scientists and billionaires who treat information from China as real.”
A few samples from Senger’s blistering of the West’s elites. Starting with our favourite: the blunderbuss PCR tests.“Based on WHO’s guidance on COVID-19 testing, again citing Chinese journal articles, labs used, and continue to use, PCR cycle thresholds from 37 to 40, and sometimes as high as 45. At these cycle threshold levels, approximately 85% to 90% of cases are false positives.”
“The WHO’s PCR guidance was… quite possibly the deadliest accounting fraud of all time. According to coding guidance, if the decedent had either tested positive or been in contact with anyone who had, within several weeks prior to death, then death should be classified as COVID-19 death.”
Senger points out that in swallowing the Chinese prescription the West ignored the far-greater catastrophe of social costs. “In March 2020, the Dutch commissioned a cost-benefit analysis concluding that the health damage from lockdown would be 6 times greater than the benefit. The government then ignored it, claiming “society would not accept” optics of an elderly person unable to get an ICU bed.”
Figures from Trudeau to (now former) NY state governor Andrew Cuomo hopped on board the Zero Covid train early. As we wrote in April 2020: Justin Trudeau, has suggested that losing even one Canadian to the virus is not worth any economic benefit. In the U.S., the key health advisors to president Donald Trump talk about not being able to re-start society till the virus is stopped and no lives are in danger. This humanist position enjoys the approval of the mainstream media which has turned the Covid-19 death toll into a telethon of tragedy, bereft of context and precedent.
That implausible goal of crushing the virus at all costs has now resulted in a choked health-care system, untold millions dying or suffering from the isolation and desolation of lockdowns and, despite the buoyant stock market, the destruction of supply chains. To give just one example, August production of Toyota vehicles is to be slashed by 60,000 to 90,000 vehicles. Why? Microchips are impossible to source and petrified labour is staying home, not working.
We foresaw the supply-chain monster in March of 2020. One revelation that will not pass, however, is just how vulnerable North America’s indulged society is to events in China. The virus, which originated in Wuhan, has become the unwanted party guest who won’t leave till he’s soiled the carpets and broken the furniture as he plays air guitar.
But it’s also informed Americans and Canadians that almost all their prescription drugs and a host of other products come exclusively from China. Or near enough. So those high-blood-pressure pills we gobble— especially the generic brands— are 95 percent dependent on Chinese labs after successive governments in North America allowed the business to migrate eastward. And supplies are dwindling.
This dependence has been around for some time now, waiting to emerge. It just took the Covid-19 emergency to make citizens aware. You certainly didn’t hear it it discussed in media circles when the new North American trade deal was being discussed… We can see why now. Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau is too busy currying favour with the geopolitical swells to watch out for his nation’s vulnerability. Like ceding our sovereignty on energy to the Saudis or Americans, it was getting in the way of him winning a seat on the UN Security Council in his priorities.
As conservative radio host Jesse Kelly writes: I don’t understand. I was told repeatedly that you could just “pause” an economy as if it was Netflix. After all, someone got sick. Did “pausing” the economy and dumping trillions of unbacked currency into it cause widespread economic dislocation? Weird.
Weird indeed. And with Canada’s GDP dropping, about to get weirder.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
It’s fair to say everyone in hockey wanted the Winnipeg Jets back in the NHL. They became everyone’s darlings in 2011 when the Atlanta Thrashers, the league’s second stab at a franchise in Georgia, were sold to Canadian interests including businessman David Thomson. (Ed.: Gary Bettman’s try number three in Atlanta is upcoming.).
Yes, the market is tiny. Yes, the arena is too small. Yes, Thomson’s wealth is holding back a sea of inevitability. But sentimentalists remembering the Bobby Hull WHA Jets and the Dale Hawerchuk NHL Jets threw aside their skepticism to welcome back the Jets. The throwback uniforms with their hints at Canada’s air force past were an understated nod to their modest pretensions. It was a perfect story.
The question now, however, is will the same folks get dewey-eyed about the Jets if they become the first Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup since (checks his cards) Montreal and Patrick Roy did it in 1993. It would be helpful in this election year if something were to bind a nation torn apart by politics. The Gordie Howe Elbows Up analogy is more than shopworn, and Terry Fox can only be resurrected so often. So a Cup win might be a welcome salve.
But the approved script has long dictated that the Canadian team to break the schneid should be one of the glamour twins of the NHL’s Canadian content, the Edmonton Oilers or the (gulp) Toronto Maple Leafs. The Oilers and their superstar Connor McDavid barely lost out last spring to Florida while the Leafs, laden with superstars like Auston Matthews and William Nylander, are overdue for a long playoff run.
Hockey Night In Canada positively pants for the chance to gush over these two squads each week. When was the last time Toronto played an afternoon game so HNIC could showcase the Jets? Like, never. Same for the Oilers, who with their glittering stars like McDavid Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent Hopkins are the primary tenants of the doubleheader slot, followed by Calgary. Winnipeg? We’ll get to them.
But there’s going to be no ignoring them in the spring of 2025. The Jets in the northern outpost in Manitoba were the top team in the entire league in 2024-25. They’ll comfortably win the Presidents Cup as the No. 1 squad and have home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. They have the league’s best goalie in Connor Hellebuyck (an American) and a stable of top scorers led by Kyle Connor and Mark Schiefele. Because Winnipeg is on a lot of No Trade lists, they have built themselves through the draft and thrifty budgeting.
But will the same people who swooned over the Jets in 2011 now find them as adorable if they ruin the Stanley Cup plot lines of the Oilers, Leafs and Ottawa Senators? Will the fans of Canadian teams in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal not making the postseason take the Jets to their hearts or will they be as phoney as the Mike Myers commercials for the Liberals?
In addition, the Jets will be swamped by national media should they proceed through the playoffs. It’s one thing to carry the expectations of Winnipeg and Manitoba. It’s another to foot the bill for a hockey crazy county. We remember Vancouver’s GM Mike Gillis during the Canucks 2011 Cup run bemoaning the late arrivers of the press trying to critique his team as they made their way through the playoffs.
It will be no picnic for the Jets, however strong they’ve been in the regular season. No one was gunning for them as they might for the Oilers or Leafs. They will now get their opponents’ best game night after night. Hellebuyck has been a top three goalie in the NHL for a while, winning the Vezina Trophy, but his playoff performance hasn’t matched that of his regular-season version.
Already the injury bug that sidelines so many Cup dreams is biting at the Jets. Nikolaj Ehlers collided with a linesman in Saturday’s OT win in Chicago. Defenceman Dylan Samberg is also questionable after stopping a McDavid slap shot with his leg. A rash of injuries has ended the run of many a worthy Cup aspirant in the past. Can Winnipeg’s depth sustain the churn of seven weeks of all-out hockey?
As always for the small-market Jets time is of the essence. Keeping this core together is difficult with large markets lusting after your players. With the NHL salary cap going up it remains a chore to keep their top players. Schiefele and Hellebuyck are tied up longterm, but 40-goal man Connor is a UFA after next season while Ehlers is not signed after this season. Young Cole Perfetti will be an RFA in 2026. Etc.
So how much do Canadians love the Jets if they sneak in and steal the hero role by winning a Canadian Cup? Lets see Ron MacLean pun his way through that one.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Good news if you like the way Rogers Sportsnet covers hockey in Canada. You’re about to get a whole lot more of it. In a move that sums up Gary Bettman’s unique broadcast philosophy the NHL has awarded the Canadian TV/ digital/ streaming rights to Rogers for the next 12 years. The price tag? 12 billion U.S. dollars (about $16.B CDN dollars).
While the pattern in modern sports broadcasting rights has been toward sharing the wealth among competing bidders— the NFL has six distinct partners— Bettman the contrarian has opted for a different notion. He’s all in with one Canadian partner, and let his critics STFU.
As opposed to the previous CDN national monopoly awarded to Rogers in 2013 this one bestows national rights in all languages across TV, streaming and digital for all regular-season and playoff games, plus the Stanley Cup Final and all special events. This extends to coverage in all regions. There are some concessions for Rogers to sell limited cutout packages, such as the Monday Night Amazon package they’ve created.
Presuming Pierre Poliievre doesn’t get his way with CBC, Rogers will likely piggyback on their time-sharing agreement for Saturday Hockey Night In Canada to get CBC’s network reach. (There remain many hockey fans who still think CBC has the NHL contract. Go figure.)
Translation: there will be no regional packages for TSN to produce Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators or Toronto Maple Leafs games, for instance. But there will be regional blackouts, because nothing says we are proud of our product like denying it to a larger audience. Conn Smythe would be proud.
At the presser to announce the deal Rogers and Bettman were coy about how much they will charge consumers for the honour of being inundated by content in what now seems likely to be a 36-team league by the time the deal expires. Will costs be added to cable/ satellite packages? How much for streaming? With stories circulating that Rogers massively overbid for the package to get the monopoly it’s apparent that the phone company will be turning over every nickel to make it worthwhile.
Fans are apprehensive and over-saturated with hockey content already. For that reason, the NHL is now desperately looking for ways to lessen the tedium of the 82-game regular schedule with midseason content like the 4 Nations Cup or a World Cup format. In Canada’s hockey-mad environment Rogers will have a passionate market, but even the most fervent fans will only spend so much for their fix.
Already, Rogers is trumpeting its re-acquisition with commercials featuring Ron Maclean doing his breathy feels-like-home voice about how Sportsnet is the natural landing spot for hockey until many of us are dead. Bettman made cooing noises about Rogers’ commitment at the announcement.
But let us cast our minds back to 2013 when the last Rogers/ NHL deal was concocted. We were the sports media columnist at the Mop & Pail at the time and much was made that Rogers would be a technological marvel, re-inventing the way we watched hockey. There would be new camera angles, referee cams, heightened audio, refreshed editorial content etc.
As hockey fans now know Rogers dabbled in the brave new world briefly, blanched at the cost of being creative and largely went back to doing hockey the way it had always been done. Taking no risks. On some regional casts that meant as few as three or four cameras for the action.
But if you were expecting dashboard cameras and drone shots you were sadly disappointed. Similarly there was a brief stab at refreshing the pre-, mid- and postgame content. Hipster George Stromboulopoulos was brought in as a host to attract a larger female audience.
But pretty soon Strombo was gonzo, replaced by the anodyne David Amber (whose dad was once the leader of the journalist union at CBC). Women like former player Jennifer Botterill were brought in to change the gender balance on panels. They then acted pretty much like guys, chalk-talking viewers into numbness. Appointment viewing has become a fallback choice.
The move away for anything controversial came in 2019 with Rogers’ axing of Don Cherry’s Coach’s Corner in a flap over the former coach’s continuing ventures into political or cultural content. Maclean slipped the knife into his meal ticket and continued on the show. After time in limbo, doing location shoots, he was returned full-time to the desk.
As we wrote in June of 2022, the one exception to the standard “serious, sombre, even a touch grim” tone is former defenceman Kevin Bieksa. “Bieksa has been a moveable feast. His insouciance with media has become his ragging on the fellow panelists during intermissions that used to be as much fun as skating in July.” His banter with “insider” Elliotte Friedman is now a lone concession to wit on the show.
Intermissions are numbingly predictable, and Rogers’ stable of analysts and play-by-play announcers outside of HNIC is unchallenging to the orthodoxy of PxP being a radio call over TV pictures. Name one star beside Bieksa that has been produced by Rogers’ “safe” broadcast style since 2013. They’d fit in perfectly in a 1980s hockey broadcast. Now compare it with the lively Amazon broadcasts hosted by Adnan Virk and Andi Petrillo.
This leaves a lingering question. What happens to TSN? Many prefer the editorial and studio profile of TSN on Trade Deadline Day or Free Agent frenzy. TSN locked up its stars such as James Duthie and Bob McKenzie when the last deal was signed. But there isn’t enough live content this time to support keeping a full roster anymore. Who will stay and who will go? (TSN’s president Stewart Johnson is the new commissioner of the CFL).
And with Rogers taking full control of MLSE (Maple Leafs, Raptors, Argos, Toronto FC) TSN is left with the CFL and packages of NFL, golf, tennis, some auto racing and international soccer. Is that enough on which to float a network? There have been rumours that Bell, owner of TSN, is interested in divesting itself of the high cost of sports broadcasting. Should that happen— who has the money to replace them?— the effect will be seismic in Canadian broadcasting.
For now, watch how much pressure the NHL puts on Rogers to up its game. More importantly what will happen when Bettman finally retires and the league has a new vision since 1992? Rogers has sewn up its end. Will the audience go with them?
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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