This is another of our speaker preview podcasts for our upcoming FreeSpeechInMedicine.com conference in Baddeck, Nova Scotia Oct 28-30th.
When the pandemic first hit, most docs I knew were very nervous. I was very nervous. We were watching catastrophic news stories out of northern Italy, then NYC. Some of us quickly figured out that corporate media was not giving us a full picture. Maybe because they never really do? Maybe there was an agenda to create compliance through fear?
In any case, by April of 2020 it was already apparent that this was a disease of concern for elderly and infirm people. Most deaths were in nursing homes. Pediatric hospitals remained largely empty, and in fact some were commandeered to house adult patient overflow. Average age of COVID death was around 80, and the vast majority were very unwell.
But somehow, it was a firing offence to mention that children were at very low risk. I was attacked on social media for stating this, with my detractors saying “You’re minimizing the risk!” I had stated a (verified) statistic. A healthy child has far less chance of dying of COVID than they do of dying in a car crash. Yet we have created a climate where many parents are so terrified of COVID they will greatly restrict their children’s activities—activities that may have great benefits. These same parents will take their kids on a Sunday drive for no particular reason.
Despite the minimal risk, we locked kids in their homes. We shut down their sports, their music, their social activities. Some neighbours called the snitch line if too many kids were playing in the backyard. We poured sand in skateboard parks, put plywood over basketball nets, and arrested young people for playing pond hockey. We shut down schools, and when we did let the kids back, we forced them to mask all day.
Two years on, there are those who are still calling for restrictions. Just a couple of days ago Kieran Moore, MOH in Ontario, threatened that mask rules may be coming back soon if we don’t all behave.
Martha Fulford has been a voice of reason since the beginning of the pandemic. She saw the full picture before most of us. She saw that lockdown would be harder on kids, and that school closures would be a catastrophic mistake. She saw that universal masking had serious negative effects, and minimal or no benefit. But unlike many with these concerns, she spoke out. And she continues to speak out. And she will speak out again at our FreeSpeechInMedicine.com conference in Baddeck.
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