I noted a little while back that I was astonished how quickly the “Spanish Flu” epidemic slipped out of the historical record in the early 1920s, but having gone through the Wuhan Flu experience, I understood it far better. In the Spanish Flu era, the survivors needed to move on with their lives, while in the Covid era, a lot of people wanted to forget how they’d treated their friends, co-workers, and fellow citizens. Different motivations, but similar results. But we shouldn’t let the Covid years slip gently out of memory, because people in positions of power and journalists who should have reported honestly all elected to go full authoritarian and need to be held to account for it, as L. Wayne Mathison explains:
This was never just an American problem, and it was never just about Anthony Fauci.
Canada had its own version of the same institutional failure.
During COVID, too many journalists stopped asking hard questions and started treating government public-health messaging as settled truth. Canadians who questioned lockdowns, mandates, school closures, travel restrictions or changing mask guidance were often dismissed as ignorant, selfish, dangerous or conspiratorial.
Some people certainly did spread nonsense. That does not excuse treating every dissenting argument as misinformation.
Good journalism is supposed to challenge power, especially during an emergency when governments are exercising extraordinary power over ordinary citizens.
Instead, much of our media became emotionally invested in defending the institutions it should have been scrutinizing.
That creates a serious problem now. Admitting that governments, public-health officials or journalists got important things wrong means admitting that people were sometimes mocked, censored or socially punished for raising questions that deserved answers.
So the temptation is to defend the old narrative rather than examine the record honestly.
Canada needs a proper accounting of the pandemic response. What worked? What failed? Which restrictions produced enough benefit to justify their cost? What happened to children, small businesses, mental health, civil liberties and public trust? Where did officials communicate uncertainty honestly, and where did they pretend to know more than they actually knew?
I followed the rules. I got vaccinated. I took COVID seriously.
But I will never accept the idea that taking a virus seriously required switching off critical thought.
Science improves through questioning. Journalism exists to question authority. Democracy requires governments to justify extraordinary powers.
We should have demanded all three.
The covidiocy pointed out that north and south of the border, there are millions of trees crying out for people to be hanged from them.
Comment by Clayton Barnett — August 11, 2026 @ 04:47