COVID-19
Our dumb country: an update

Belated welcome to Canada, Sir. We’re like this sometimes
Posted with permission from Paul Wells
Here at the Paul Wells newsletter, we get results. It just always seems to take more work than it should. Today we have an update on Sir Mark Walport FRS FRCP FRCPath FMedSci FRSE, who was asked last summer by the government of Canada to look into Canada’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I have known this since several days after Sir Mark’s work began. (Sir Mark is one of the UK’s leading medical research administrators. Over ’ome, I learn, if somebody is both a physician and a knight you address them as Sir Or Lady Firstname, followed by the appropriate abbreviations for their credentials, not as Dr.) I waited until November for the government to announce it, and was surprised when this didn’t happen. In fact I assumed my source was mistaken. (My source didn’t even want to be a source, they were just somebody who knew stuff and was chatting with me.) I have a longstanding interest in the notion that governments, being the creature of fallen humans, can benefit from introspection. So I thought some outside eyes-on the COVID response might help reduce the casualty count of some future catastrophe. The most recent of several posts I wrote to that effect is here.
My source kept assuring me that the Sir Mark thing was a real thing, and the government kept keeping schtum, so in November I finally gathered up my courage and wrote to the health ministry to ask whether this thing that I knew was happening was, you know, happening. The finest modern communications strategists have now perfected the government’s communications to the point where if you ask the government any question at all about anything at all, a process begins whereby dozens of people Working From Home figure out a way to suck your brains out through your nose using a ceremonial ceramic straw, and indeed this is what happened here.
Twelve days and two follow-up emails after I sent my query, a process I detailed with a kind of heartsick fascination in this post from November, I received this response:
The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant and complex health, social and economic impacts on our society.
As the Government of Canada continues its transition out of the COVID-19 pandemic response phase, internal and external partners are undertaking reviews of their role in the government’s response to COVID-19 and are identifying strategies to strengthen Canada’s preparedness for future health emergencies.
This reply was a thing of terrible maddening beauty, like the planet-smashing robot in the second-season Star Trek episode The Doomsday Machine, and I stared at it helplessly, the way William Windom did when the whale-shaped automaton finally turned in space and descended on him with its immense glowing orifice. This response, built up layer after layer by nameless armies of the powerless like the Pyramids themselves, managed to acknowledge the accuracy of my request while providing no actual information. It was the sound of one hand clapping, performed by committee.
Well, that was it for me. I tapped out. I was done. But Cathay Wagantall, whom I don’t believe I’ve met, picked up the baton from my shattered grasp. Wagantall is the Conservative MP for the riding of Yorkton — Melville, in Saskatchewan. Members of Parliament are allowed to send written questions to the government, which is required to reply. At the end of Nov., as I noted at the time, Wagantall put the following question on the Order Paper:
You can click on that to read it in full, but essentially she asked: What’s Sir Mark doing, when will we hear more, what’s it cost and why haven’t you said so?
The thing about the House of Commons is, it does have some powers, and thus cornered by one of its members, the government finally relented. On Monday the government tabled Sessional Paper 8555-441-2022 in response to Wagantall’s question. Here it is!
In this reply we learn real things, without quite learning the answer to everything Wagantall asked. In August Health Canada, PHAC and the Chief Science Advisor (that’s Mona Nemer) asked for an “independent expert panel” to “conduct a review of the federal approach to pandemic science advice and research coordination.” Sir Mark is indeed the panel’s chair.
Note that his mandate is narrow. He hasn’t been asked to look at medical supply, pharmaceutical production capacity, quarantine practice, stay-at-home orders, curfews, the wisdom of in-person vs. virtual schooling, or all the myriad of other issues that are worth looking at. This is neither proper nor improper, it just is what it is. Did you hear much about the advice Dr. Nemer provided the government during COVID, in her capacity as Chief Science Advisor? I bet you didn’t, though she wasn’t secretive about it, it just didn’t get much attention amid everything else that was going on. Sir Mark will apparently mostly be looking into how to make this little-noticed corner of the pandemic response work better. As for all the other stuff a government could look at — maybe they’ll leave it in the hands of a future generation of political staffers who are, for the moment, baristas! Maybe there’s some other after-action process going on, but we asked for the wrong one! One never knows, do one!
Sir Mark isn’t getting paid much, and, mirabile dictu, his report will be made public within two months. I’ve got a hunch that wasn’t the original plan.
The response to Wagantall’s Order Paper question is signed by Mark Holland, the Minister of Health. I notice that, like many ministers who were moved in 2023, Holland inherited his mandate letter from his predecessor, Jean-Yves Duclos. I also notice that mandate letters no longer contain this paragraph, which appeared in every mandate letter to the original 2015 cabinet:
We have also committed to set a higher bar for openness and transparency in government. It is time to shine more light on government to ensure it remains focused on the people it serves. Government and its information should be open by default. If we want Canadians to trust their government, we need a government that trusts Canadians. It is important that we acknowledge mistakes when we make them. Canadians do not expect us to be perfect – they expect us to be honest, open, and sincere in our efforts to serve the public interest.
I guess that was then.
COVID-19
Trump’s new NIH head fires top Fauci allies and COVID shot promoters, including Fauci’s wife

From LifeSiteNews
“During the pandemic Fauci’s bioethicist wife, Christine Grady, offered nurses a choice: Get vaccinated, or lose your job,” noted The COVID-19 History Project on X. “Yesterday, she was offered a choice: Transfer to an office in Alaska, or lose your job. What’s fair is fair. Everyone deserves a choice,” explained the COVID watchdog account.
On day one of his new job as head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jay Bhattacharya removed four powerful agency heads, including Dr. Anthony Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, and others associated with the questionable handling of the COVID-19 shots.
Grady, who had served as chief of the agency’s Department of Bioethics, and other longtime Fauci allies in top posts at the NIH involved in the development and distribution of the untested COVID shots produced by Big Pharma were offered jobs in Alaska and other remote locales far away from the NIH’s sprawling Bethesda, Maryland, complex just outside Washington, D.C.
The purge came amid massive layoffs in health-related agencies under the umbrella of Health and Human Services (HHS), now headed by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement’s founder, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long questioned vaccine safety and American medicine’s focus on treating disease rather than preventing it.
A total of about 20,000 personnel – mostly bureaucrats – or about 25 percent of the HHS workforce have been or will be handed pink slips amid Kennedy’s realignment of the agency.
MAHA critics were quick to call Tuesday’s axing of Fauci confederates as “one of the darkest days in modern scientific history” fueled by Kennedy’s desire to exact revenge on Fauci’s former trusted associates who represent the antithesis of the MAHA movement.
However, the revamping of the federal government’s side of the health industry is no more harsh than the treatment meted out by those formerly in control who, at best, suppressed, and worst, punished those who questioned their iron grip on health-industry regulations and standards.
For years, Kennedy’s critics have dismissed his quest to revamp healthcare and his questioning of the efficacy of the COVID-19 mRNA jabs as anti-science, labeling him as an “anti-vaxxer” in order to suppress his messaging.
Dr. Francis Collins – whom Bhattacharya replaced as head of NIH – in an October 2020 email to Fauci condemned Bhattacharya as a “fringe epidemiologist” because he had co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized harmful COVID lockdown policies.
“During the pandemic Fauci’s bioethicist wife, Christine Grady, offered nurses a choice: Get vaccinated, or lose your job,” noted The COVID-19 History Project on X.
“Yesterday, she was offered a choice: Transfer to an office in Alaska, or lose your job. What’s fair is fair. Everyone deserves a choice,” explained the COVID watchdog account.
“We spend 4X more than Italy on healthcare — and live 7 years less. Dead last in cancer rates. This isn’t science — it’s a system profiting off sick kids,” explained Calley Means, RFK Jr. HHS advisor during an interview with Laura Ingraham following the NIH firings.
“Firing the people who oversaw this? That’s step one,” declared Means.
Other NIH officials who were offered reassignments were Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who succeeded Fauci as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Clifford Lane, a close Fauci ally who served as deputy director for clinical research at NIAID, and Dr. Emily Erbelding, NIAID’s microbiology and infectious diseases director.
Freedom Convoy
Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich, Chris Barber found guilty of mischief

From LifeSiteNews
Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters, an action a federal judge has since said was “not justified.”
Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have been found guilty of mischief for their roles as leaders of the 2022 protest and as social media influencers, a Canadian federal judge has ruled.
“The Crown has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Lich and Barber have committed mischief,” said Justice Heather Perkins-McVey, the federal judge overseeing the pair’s mischief trial, during the verdict hearing Thursday.
The Democracy Fund, who has been helping the defense in the case, also noted on X, “Mischief is proven beyond a reasonable doubt here. Both Lich and Barber are guilty of mischief.”
“When freedom of expression collides with the need to uphold public order is when the line is crossed,” the judge said during court.
Perkins-McVey seemed to agree with the Crown’s case that Lich and Barber’s influence on the Freedom Convoy constituted public mischief but did dismiss the Crown’s Carter Application accusing Lich and Barber of conspiracy outright.
The government’s “Carter Application” asked that the judge consider “Barber’s statements and actions to establish the guilt of Lich, and vice versa.”
A “Carter Application” requires that the government prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that there was a “conspiracy or plan in place and that Lich was a party to it based on direct evidence.”
Lawyer Eva Chipiuk noted that Perkins-McVey “acknowledged that there was disruption on Ottawa and said its citizens and that downtown was jammed, loud and busy.”
Court will reconvene later today for additional information to be revealed.
Lich and Barber both face a possible 10-year prison sentence. LifeSiteNews reported extensively on their trial.
The Lich and Barber trial concluded in September of 2024, more than a year after it began. It was only originally scheduled to last 16 days.
Lich and Barber were arrested on February 17, 2022, in Ottawa for their roles in leading the popular Freedom Convoy protest against COVID mandates. During COVID, Canadians were subjected to vaccine mandates, mask mandates, extensive lockdowns and even the closure of churches.
Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters, an action a federal judge has since said was “not justified.” During the clear-out, an elderly lady was trampled by a police horse and many who donated to the cause had their bank accounts frozen.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Lich recently spelled out how much the Canadian government has spent prosecuting her and Barber for their role in the protests. She said at least $5 million in “taxpayer dollars” has been spent thus far, with her and Barber’s legal costs being above $750,000.
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