"As readers will no doubt have heard, measles is back — especially in Ontario, which has reported 83 per cent of cases in Canada so far this year; and especially in southwestern Ontario, among largely unvaccinated Anabaptist communities, which Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, says account for 70 per cent of cases.
"As of April 26, Health Canada reported 1,506 measles cases nationwide, up from just 69 at this time last year; of those 1,506, only 74 infected individuals are known to have had one or the recommended two doses of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine, while 83 per cent are known to have been completely unvaccinated.
"According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) , between one and three children per 1,000 who contract measles will die from it, or from complications of it, notably pneumonia and encephalitis. And about 20 per cent of unvaccinated sufferers, of all ages, will wind up in hospital.
"It’s nothing if not frustrating. One might think the great success of COVID-19 vaccines would encourage people to appreciate better-established vaccines like MMR (mumps, measles and rubella), which has been around longer than I have been alive. Instead, by many accounts, the decline in routine vaccine uptake already occurring before the pandemic has continued to decline.
"As worrying as measles is, North America’s nasty flu season this year seems to have received much less attention. And it’s vastly more deadly.
"Around this time last spring, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated there had been in the United States “at least 34 million illnesses, 380,000 hospitalizations, and 24,000 deaths from flu so far.” Last year was considered a bad year for the flu.
"This year so far: “47 million illnesses, 610,000 hospitalizations, and 27,000 deaths.”
"At this time last year, the CDC reported that 164 children had died in the U.S. from the flu. This year, the number is 226.
"For comparison’s sake, the most American children who died from COVID-19 in any 18-week period was 944. So obviously COVID was much more dangerous, but the flu is no joke. COVID was all anyone talked about for two years; meanwhile, hardly anyone talks about the flu as a serious threat to life or long-term health, least of all among children.
"Canada is so allergic to data that it should carry an EpiPen; so we don’t have anything like as clear a picture of what’s going on here with the flu as they do in the U.S. — especially with respect to outcomes among children. But the picture we have suggests Canada has suffered more or less the same problem as the States, as you would expect.
"But Statistics Canada’s mortality figures tell an interesting tale: In 2020, 2021 and 2023 combined, 62 Canadian children are recorded as having perished from COVID-19 — and 103 from “influenza and pneumonia,” which is the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) code under which Canada reports flu deaths.
"During the pandemic, to compare COVID-19 to the flu was to invite the whole world to jump down your throat. And in many senses, indeed, they aren’t worth comparing: 47,000 Americans died of “influenza and pneumonia” in 2022, a year in which COVID-19 killed 271,000.
"But recall how often you heard politicians saying during the pandemic that we needed to lock everything down, close schools and playgrounds and skate parks for the sake of the children? Very early on in the pandemic, we knew that was a filthy lie: We were keeping kids home not primarily or even significantly for their own safety, but for their parents’ and especially their grandparents’ safety.
"Politicians knew that the saving grace of COVID-19 was that it didn’t target otherwise-healthy children for death. But they also knew that “think of the children” was the easiest way to sell restrictions on everyday life, and so that’s what they used.
"Now we have a flu season that may well be killing more Canadian children than COVID-19, and there’s absolute silence. No one called for schools to be closed, for Canadian Tire stores to be divided into essential and non-essential goods aisles, for bars and restaurants to be shuttered, for returning travellers to be locked up in hotels for society’s amusement.
"These are the sorts of contradictions, conundrums and failures that all the pandemic inquiries we’re not getting should be looking into. Because we clearly haven’t learned anything at all from the pandemic nightmare except that we’re better than Americans … and our superiority complex was more than big enough to begin with.
"How little have we learned? Moore, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, took some flak last month for daring to mention that the measles outbreak was hyper-concentrated in certain unvaccinated religious communities.
"Dr. Ninh Tran, of Ontario’s Southwestern Public Health District, warned that associating measles cases to certain communities might provide “a false sense of security for the general public.” As if Ontarians actually believe being Mennonite attracts the influenza virus.
“(B)eing part of any particular group or religion doesn’t put you at risk,” Tran told The Canadian Press; rather, your vaccination status does.
"Remember being told we shouldn’t wear masks because we’re too stupid not to let it provide us with “a false sense of security”? Remember being told we mustn’t associate diseases with certain populations, lest we succumb to prejudice and discrimination? Yeah, we’re back there. Zero lessons learned. Vaccination rates dropping. I just hope I’m already dead by the time the next pandemic comes along."
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