Bruce Dowbiggin
If Vaxx, Masks and Lockdowns Resume Will Sports Go Along?
Quietly, stealthily, the same people who brought you Lockdowns & Vaccines from 2020 till early this year are back for more as summer ends and fall arrives. They’re whipping up the familiar stark warnings of viral death and depredation that subdued civilization and caused millions of deaths unrelated to the virus itself..
Just this week Rutgers university said it will admit no undergrads without mandatory vaccination. The CPC pep squad at the WHO is said to fear the spread of BA.2.86. “Yes, wearing masks during travel is advised, especially in crowded and enclosed settings, to minimize the spread of respiratory viruses,” advises some suit from the American Association for Respiratory Care.
Hospitals are again mandating mask wearing. Ludicrous, when even the American CDC has admitted the abject failure of the needles and masks to “stop the spread”. More of the same is set to roll out as media hustles stories of new viral strains that will consume our lives again (and restore their absolute power). There’s been no apology for the outright lies about 15 days to flatten the curve, PCR tests that showed 70 percent false positives, the hotel lockdowns, suspension of civil rights, anti-vaxx hysteria.
Just a brazen shrug of the shoulders and the determination to try again this winter to keep certain people in line. Key to intimidating the population into abandoning civil rights and freedoms were the pro sports leagues whose “bubbles” and enforced lockdowns cowed the public. They served as an example of abject compliance. Would they submit again?
As the curtain finally began to lift last May we counted the costs. “These are the first NHL playoffs since 2019 not completely blighted by the miseries of Covid-19 protocols. For the past two postseason sessions, the NHL— like its sister leagues— has been obsessed with the test-and-trace strategy recommended by the WHO, CDC, Health Canada and other regulatory bodies. (And by people like Jeffery Epstein’s pal Bill Gates.)
This resulted in “bubble cities”, draconian quarantine practices and the dreaded testing regimen imposed by PCR testing. By testing healthy young athletes at elevated cycles this produced a flood of minute samples of a virus that were, pace Bill Gates, a “kind of flu” that few could pass on to the general public.
The insane panic surrounding this process was exacerbated by the scribblers of the media who, currying favour with liberal authorities, rejected any alternatives. As a result, healthy players were locked up in hotels with nothing better to do than play games before empty arenas and then scuttle back to the hotel like mice retreating to their burrows. Or remain bunkered at home.
Even by 2021, when, test-and-trace was shown to be useless stopping a pandemic, the NHL and the rest of sports continued to play whack-a-mole with anyone who had a speck of the virus. Players were quarantined, teams played with depleted lineups, fans were not allowed to see games live.
None of which did anything to curb the death rate among those who were, as Gates allows, most vulnerable. So athletes, children and healthy adults were treated like a scurvy crew. To distract people, media ginned up stories about the exceptions to this pattern to keep their pals in the fear business happy.
Adding to the misery was the new autocracy of vaccines. First one shot, then two, then boosters, then more boosters. All pushed by government advertising that branded objectors as some form of vermin (see Justin Trudeau’s libel of the truckers convoy as he hid). The Maoist conformity this produced was backed up with travel bans and ostracization.
Anyone daring to present contrary evidence—or mention healthy athletes dying post-vaccine— was instantly made a non-person by the Theresa Tam health bureaucracy who’d taken their marching orders from the Chinese. Social media cancelled critics like Alex Berenson, the Barrington Declaration, Ivor Cummins and Dr. Robert Malone for injecting some doubt about the forced lockdowns and mandatory vaccine regime.
For much of 2020 and early 2021, when someone tried to point out that Sweden had taken a different course at far less social disruption they were labelled as killers and subversives by the Hollywood elite.
Eventually the absurd testing mechanisms and arbitrary suspensions to the “Covid List” grew too absurd for some. As we wrote last December, Detroit Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman finally said, enough is enough:
“At the end of the day, I think — and now I’m getting political — but at the end of the day our players are testing positive with very little symptoms, if any symptoms at all. I don’t see it as a threat to their health at this point. I think you might take it a step further and question why are we even testing, for guys that have no symptoms.”
This skepticism extended past hockey to, “…the NFL where games are being delayed because hundreds of players and staff— many of them asymptomatic— have tested positive using the NFL’s mandatory PCR testing. Tampa Bay Bucs coach Bruce Arians told reporters, “If you’re asymptomatic, you should be allowed to play.”
Slowly, the leagues pulled back, even as radicals in healthcare and media still shrieked about the deaths that stadiums and arenas full of maskless people would produce. The leagues made the call that the virus and its variants were epidemic and— as the data showed— highly unlikely to affect a demographic like trained athletes.
Yes, people in risk groups would still get sick. Some would die. But test-and-trace was ineffectual in halting any of it. So were masks on airplanes. As a result, the public’s unwavering trust in the white lab coats and the politicians who slavishly followed them was shaken. What if all the sacrifices meant nothing? What if, as Gates now allows, the official diagnosis of the Covid-19 panic was a massive over-reaction? Treating every demographic the same was madness?
What if vaccines sold as a panacea by governments across much of the Western world, were also a fraud imposed on citizens? After much effort to hide the truth for 75 years, Pfizer was forced to show that it knew their vaccine— one Trudeau is using to impose three-year travel bans on dissenters— only had about 12 percent efficacy in the short term. This when the CDC, Tam, Fauci, and all the Twitter doctors swore it was 95 percent effective. And that pregnant mothers were at risk of miscarriage, despite protestations from officials.
Likewise, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been withdrawn; the FDA cited Johnson & Johnson’s #COVID-19 vaccine due to risk of blood clots. Data from the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) shows vaccine injuries occurring regularly not only from Pfizer Vaccines, but from all the “benign” mMRV-2 vaccines sold by governments in advertising and directives.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. In the coming years we will learn— despite the strenuous efforts of the guilty— that elected officials and drug manufacturers hid far worse outcomes about their prescriptions. That they suppressed alternative treatments. They’ll reluctantly do this because all vaccine users signed off on their products as experimental. They can’t be sued— government saw to that.
Leaving only elected officials like Trudeau, whose government still labels its draconian measures as “life saving”. By then he’ll be in a cozy sinecure created for him by the World Economic Fund. Good luck extraditing him. And society will swear not to do this again. Till the Climate Hustle cranks up again”.
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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, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new 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 http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
This Ernest Hemingway gem from The Sun Also Rises has gotten a workout in this time of progressive economic policy. But it’s worth repeating in the case of Justin Trudeau’s Canada where the F word is fiscal. The “gradually” part of Liberal fiscal policy has now passed. Leaving the “suddenly” of $60 B deficits with no plan for recovery
You’d think that missing your deficit estimate by $40B might have cost the finance minister Chrystia Freeland her job. But no! In Trudeaupia it was the failure of Freeland to embrace even more wack-a-doodle spending plans by the prime minister and his brain trust of former groomsmen and climate acolytes. Yes, the cratering of finances is the ideal time to award a GST holiday and $250 cheques to much of the nation. It has been noticed.
You know how Canadians are always bitter that America pays no attention to Canada? (Doug Ford appeared Tuesday on @CNN which identified him as Premier of “Ontaria”.) Well, the Collapse By The Canal in Ottawa has brought much attention to the nation. Specifically, president-elect Donald Trump, the Shecky Green of presidents, has noticed the chaos. ““The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau,” Trump wrote, using his barb that Trudeau is not a PM but a lowly governor.
Adding for good measure, that Freeland’s “behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada… She will not be missed!!!” Three exclamation points if you get that far.
Certainly no-one with a memory longer than two weeks will miss the deputy PM who gleefully wiped out the personal finances and freedoms of the Freedom Convoy truckers. Or the cabinet minister who promoted a standing O in the Commons for a former Nazi soldier. Or the senior government official who demanded legal restrictions against voters shouting at her in public.
Or the feminist who stood aside while her boss Trudeau expelled an indigenous female finance minister for allowing the RCMP to investigate PMJT’s nefarious activities on behalf of his donors. Or who… never mind. Just look up Blackface.
No, the current version of Freeland is the plucky woman who was fired on a Zoom call by a man. A woman of integrity who then sent off a stinging letter of resignation in which she revealed she was being pushed aside for a Trudeau buddy Mark Carney. A fiscal warrior who resisted going $60B in the red (she was cool at $40B, however). And, BTW, could she please deliver the government’s financial statement before she’s fired?
See how it works? She’s now a victim. “She didn’t just quit. She said ‘f**k you’ to Trudeau on the way out.” This is another case of somethingvblogger Melissa Chen calls Schrödinger’s Feminist, defined as a woman who is simultaneously a victim and empowered. Until something happens and she collapses into one of either states, whichever is politically expedient for her circumstance.
Chen expands on the notion. “A major component of the angst that characterizes much of the modern dynamics between men and women today comes down to the fact that women have demanded equal rights but also wish for preferred treatment.” A week’s viewing of The View will serve to illustrate this concept.
One of The View’s textbook cases of Schrödinger’s Feminist was Kamala Harris. The treatment of the defeated Democratic Party presidential candidate was guard-railed between her brave quest to become America’s first menstruating president and, on the other side, her victim status as a woman, the unfair way she was treated. It was enough to make Joy Behar’s head spin.
Forget that everyone in the mainstream media from pollsters to networks to Hollywood stars was all-in on Kamala as a “joyful “warrior. Even though they knew she was losing they cooked the polls the whole way for her. She was a victim, the kind Hillary Clinton meant when she said all women should be believed if they’re trying to destroy Justice Kavanaugh. Or, like serial fabulist E. Jean Carroll, waiting 30 years to bankrupt Trump and disqualify him from the presidential race, with a Law & Order script. How could a woman ever invent a story about getting trapped in a change room at Bergdorf Goodman with Trump?
Oh, Kamala played the brave front as she blundered to her record defeat. (Still called “a perfect campaign” by her apologists.) But underpinning it all was her status as a woman, a woman for whom her followers on The View demanded a double standard. In the end, only the Schrödinger feminists in the Dems coalition stayed loyal to Harris, (Kamala Harris Did A Good Job!) explaining away her failure to tell the world that Joe Biden was koo-koo for Coco Puffs as her innate decency.
And so Freeland, too, is being gifted with Schrödinger’s Feminism. Having Justin Trudeau, the Trust Fund twit, as your antagonist sure helps. So does the Woke media corps now in Ottawa painting sympathetic portraits of your sacrifice. Your dubious resumé since donning Liberal colours is forgotten. You will receive the get out of jail free card .
Hell, even the leader of the opposition will give you a tongue bath. “Instead of taking responsibility, the prime minister told her that she should take all the blame,” Pierre Poilievre said. “The good old boys in the back room would protect themselves and make the then-finance minister take all the blame.” Trudeau, who rejects bankers in favour of poets, will take the fall.
Which summons up this nugget from F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”
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.
MLB has seen parity and proclaimed, “We don’t give a damn!” Okay, they didn’t say that. In fact they insist the opposite is true. They’re all about competition and smaller markets getting a shot at a title. But as the 2024 offseason spending shows, believe none of what you hear and half of what you see in MLB.
Here’s the skinny: Juan Soto‘s contract with the NY Mets — 15 years and guaranteeing $765 million, not a penny of which is deferred. Max Fried signed an eight-year, $218 million deal with the New York Yankees. Later, Nathan Eovaldi secured a three-year, $75 million contract to return to the Texas Rangers. Blake Snell (five years, $182 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and Matthew Boyd (two years, $29 million with the Chicago Cubs) added to the splurge.
There’s one more thing that stands out. MLB has no trouble with the financial big boys in New York, Los Angles, Texas, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago shelling out money no small market dare pay. In the MLB cheap seats, Tampa, Pittsburgh and Miami can’t send out quality players fast enough. But MLB is cool with that, too, as those paupers get a healthy slice of TV money.
So yes, they’re all about talking parity with their luxury tax system. But to keep the TV, digital, betting and marketing lucre flowing they have to have large media markets swinging the heaviest bats come postseason. The question is, do MLB fans care the way they used to about parity? It says here they don’t. More want to seed best-on-best more often. Which is brutal but refreshing.
Their sister leagues, married to draconian salary cap systems, are still pushing parity, even as they expand beyond recognition. In our 2004 book Money Players, legendary Boston Bruins coach/ GM Harry Sinden noted, “The problem with teams in the league, is that there were (then) 20 teams who all think they are going to win the Stanley Cup and they all are going to share it. But only one team is going to win it. The rest are chasing a rainbow.”
And that was before the expansion Vegas Golden Knights won a Cup within five years while the third-year Seattle Kraken made a run in those same 2023 playoffs. There are currently 32 teams in the league, each chasing Sinden’s rainbow of a Stanley Cup. That means 31 cranky fan bases every year. And 31 management teams trying to avoid getting fired.
Maybe we’ve reached peak franchise level? Uh, no. Not so long as salary-capped leagues can use the dream of parity to sell more franchises. As we wrote in October of 2023, “If you believe the innuendo coming from commissioner Gary Bettman there is a steady appetite for getting a piece of the NHL operation. “The best answer I can give you is that we have continuous expressions of interest from places like Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City, Salt Lake City, but expansion isn’t on the agenda.” In the next breath Bettman was predicting that any new teams will cost “A lot, a lot.”
Deputy commissioner Bill Daly echoed Bettman’s caution about a sudden expansion but added, ”Having said that, particularly with the success of the Vegas and Seattle expansions, there are more people who want to own professional hockey teams.” Translation: If the NHL can get a billion for a new team, the heck with competitive excellence, the clock might start ticking sooner. After all, small-market Ottawa just went for $950.”
It’s not just the expansion-obsessed NHL talking more teams. MLB is looking to add franchises. Abandoned Montreal is once more getting palpitations over rumours that the league wants to return to the city that lost its Expos in 2005. Recent reports indicate that while MLB might prefer Salt Lake City and Nashville it also feels it must right the wrong left when the Expos moved to Washington DC 19 years ago.
The city needs a new ballpark to replace disastrous Olympic Stadium. They’ll also need more than Tom Brady to fund the franchise fee and operating costs. And Quebec corporate support— always transitory in the Expos years— will need to be strong. But two more MLB franchises within five years is a lock.
While the NBA is mum on going past 30 teams it has not shut the door on expansion after seeing the NHL cashing in. Neither has the cash-generating monster known as the NFL where teams currently sell for over six billion US. The NFL is eyeing Europe for its next moves.
The question that has to be asked in this is, WTF, quality of competition? The more teams in a league the lower the chances of even getting to a semifinal series let alone a championship. Fans in cities starved for a championship— the NFL’s Detroit Lions or Cleveland Browns are entering their seventh decade without a title or the Toronto Maple Leafs title-less since 1967— know how corrosive it can be.
Getting to 34, 36, maybe 40 teams makes for a short-term score for owners, but it could leave leagues with an entire strata of loser teams that no one—least of all networks, carriers and advertisers—wants to see. Generations of fans will be like Canuck supporters, going their entire lives without a championship.
In addition, as we’ve argued in our 2018 book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports and How The Free Market Can Save Them, watering down the product with a lot of teams no one wants to watch nationally or globally seems counter productive. The move away from quality toward quantity serves only the gambling industry. But since when has Gary Bettman Truly cared about quality of the product? So long as he gets to say, “We have a trade to announce” at the Draft, he’s a happy guy.
When we published Cap In Hand we proposed a system like soccer with ranked divisions using promotion and relegation to ensure competition, not parity. Most of the interviewers we spoke to were skeptical of the idea. But as MLB steams closer to economic Darwinism our proposal is looking more credible every day. Play at the level you can afford. Or just watch Ted Lasso. Your choice.
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, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. 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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