In the bleak, grinding, early days of the pandemic – when it felt like the world might actually sort-of end – I wrote this:

“When times are this bad, we learn things about ourselves. We learn things about our leaders, too.

For this writer, few leaders are as inspiring as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. No adjectives, no spin, no homilies: in that New Yorker’s brusque dialect, Cuomo sits there every day, no notes, and simply offers up the truth.

He emotes honesty. He tells it as is; he does not give false hope.  And he seemingly knows everything.

More than once, I’ve been driving my Jeep – to locate toilet paper, to pick up some canned food my little band of survivors – and I’ve pulled over to the side of the road to listen to Cuomo. In the way that my grandmother told me that she and her seven children would stop everything, and gather around the radio to listen to Winston Churchill during World War Two. Giving hope, giving faith, giving a path forward.”

Was I wrong? Was I ever wrong. 

And I quote those words, here, to provide a reminder – to myself, and maybe to you – that we should stop having heroes.

Or, at least, having heroes who are in politics. Because they always seem to end up breaking our hearts, don’t they?

Cuomo’s story is, by now, well known.  He resigned in disgrace this week, chased out of office by dozens of complaints of sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct.

In the end, the Democratic Party establishment – of which he himself was once part – turned its back on him.  So, too, President Joe Biden, who said that Cuomo needed to resign for his appalling behavior.

And appalling it was.  He, a former champion of the #MeToo movement, felled by it.  A likely future presidential candidate, his career now in ruins. And deservedly so.

For me, Cuomo isn’t the only politician who fell from grace.  There was Sir John A. Macdonald, who I learned had called Indigenous people like my daughter “savages” – and who lamented the loss of “Aryan culture” in Canada. And who created residential schools to “kill the Indian in the child.”

There was Bill Clinton, who I once respected so much – so much so that a photograph of Clinton and I adorns the cover of my book The War Room. And who, I learned, destroyed the life and reputation of Monica Lewinsky, simply because he was a man and powerful, and she was neither.

And now Cuomo. Who I actually wrote “emotes honesty” – when all he emotes, now, is sleaze.

Who I said “gave hope, gave faith.”When all that he gives us, now, is an important reminder: to stop having political heroes.

Stop putting their names on the sides of schools.  Stop naming roadways and schools after them.  Stop regarding them as some superior order of human.

They’re not. They’re just mortals – and, sometimes, deeply flawed and dishonest ones.

Like Andrew Cuomo.

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Dear Unvaccinated People:

I’d love to say it’s nothing personal, but it is.

It’s really, really personal.

The fact that you refuse to get vaccinated, I mean. I’m sick of you, no pun intended. And I’m not alone.

The Globe and Mail commissioned a Nanos poll on it. My friend and former colleague John Ibbitson wrote on it. 

This is the question they asked: “Would you support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or oppose unvaccinated people being denied access to public gatherings like sporting events or indoor dining in restaurants?”

Wrote John, who has been a smallish-c conservative-minded fellow since we met in the Ottawa Citizen newsroom more than thirty years ago: “Seventy-eight per cent of respondents said they would support (59%) or somewhat support (19%) such a ban. Only 15% opposed a ban, and 5% were somewhat opposed. Two per cent were unsure.” 

That 20% — Team Covid, you could call them, and I do — neatly corresponds to the number of Canadian vaccination holdouts, which I wrote about in these pages, earlier this week.

And if they’re declining to get the jab because it might make things worse – like one friend of mine, who was paralyzed for months after getting a flu shot a few years ago – then, fine. That’s a bona fide reason not to get vaccinated against Covid-19. No one will get mad at you for that.

But refusing to get it because you think Covid “is no worse than the flu?” Or because you’re comparatively young “and in good shape?”

Or because you believe the basement-dwelling epidemiologists on Twitter — the ones whose handle is typically a Teutonic name followed by a bunch of numbers, alongside a picture of a wolf — over the men and women who, you know, actually went to school and studied viruses and disease and save lives every day?

Get your head out of your arse.

Because the rest of us are sick to death — pun intended, sorry but it fits — of you.

Yes, you.

Oh, and that Nanos poll Ibbitson wrote about? Don’t put on your pretend Poll Expert hat now, either.

Everyone is against you, pretty much, in every region of Canada.

Wrote John: “There was no difference in support between men and women. Regionally, support ranged from 7% in Atlantic Canada to 81% in Ontario.”

Now, nobody has deputized me to speak on behalf of the Silent Majority, Team Covid, but someone had to.

And, besides, while we are decidedly the majority, we are silent no more.

If you don’t want to get vaccinated because you’re an idiot, fine.

The Not-So-Silent Majority won’t force you to stop being an idiot. But we sure as hell don’t want to rub elbows with you anymore.

That’s what the July-August poll of more than 1,000 Canadians found, as well: the majority aren’t in favour of mandatory vaccinations.

But they, we, are in favour of making a few changes in our living arrangements.

That means, wrote the Globe, limits on “any public gathering that involves people being close together, such as workplaces, college campuses, hospitals, airplanes, public transit, gyms, shops and supermarkets.” 

Bottom line? Stay unvaccinated, sure.

But stay home, Team Covid.

Oh, and save us your lectures about freedom, by the by. Because “freedom” explicitly and constitutionally includes the freedom to “life” as well as liberty. It includes “security of the person,” too.

Your stubborn, stupefying refusal to get a little needle that will keep you healthy and alive — and keep healthy and alive those who for some reason still care about you — is dangerous. And it’s putting the rest of us in danger.

Get the shot, or don’t. But if you don’t, stay away.

Because for the majority of us, this has become really, really personal.

Sincerely,

Etc.

— Warren Kinsella was chief of staff to a federal Liberal Minister of Health

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To vaccinate, or not to vaccinate?

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With all apologies due to Shakespeare and Hamlet, that isn’t the question. Or it shouldn’t be.

Getting vaccinated — so, you know, you don’t get really sick or die, and/or so you don’t leave someone else sick or dying — shouldn’t be complicated. It should be easy.

But, for many, it isn’t.

Why?

The New York Times fronted a story about what it called “the unvaccinated” in Sunday’s paper. Above the fold, colour graphics, across three columns. Four bylines. Big story.

According to the Times, some 93 million Americans are unvaccinated. Given the fact that the satanic delta variant is rampaging across the U.S., sickening and killing those 93 million holdouts, the Times set out to answer the question: Why?

The 93 million aren’t a monolith. They are actually two groups in one.

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One group, unsurprisingly, are unrelenting in their opposition to vaccines. They are, the Times wrote, “disproportionately white, rural, evangelical Christian and politically conservative.”

Their opposition to vaccines isn’t about the vaccines per se. This constituency are against pretty much anything that is authored by government: Fluoridation, the metric system, bilingualism, seat belts, speed limits, you name it.

But there’s another group who are not so easily dismissed by the elites as backward, backwoods mouth-breathers. This second group, surprise surprise, “tend to be a more diverse and urban group, including many younger people, Black and Latino Americans, and Democrats.”

Democrats!

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This “diverse and urban” group aren’t as hardcore in their opposition. They aren’t saying “never” as much as “not yet.”

They have put off getting vaccinated or are waiting for more information. But therein lies a problem: The information they are getting is often bad.

Up here in the Great White North, too, government pandemic communications have ranged from incoherent to incomprehensible.

Remember our erstwhile federal minister of health demanding that we don’t wear masks? And then flip-flopping and insisting that we do? Or her insinuation that anyone who wanted to close our borders was a crypto-racist, and then reversing herself on that, too?

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Or the politicians and the alleged public health experts saying AstraZeneca was safe, then withdrawing it, then saying it was safe again, then withdrawing it yet again? All in a period of a few weeks?

With our leaders and experts so often publicly contradicting each other — and themselves — it should surprise no one that enthusiasm for getting a potentially life-saving jab would drop precipitously. Millions lack confidence in vaccines simply because they have lost confidence in the very governments who are pushing vaccines.

So, governments have tried all manner of tricks to encourage vaccination: Advertising, lotteries and tickets to special events. But millions of holdouts remain unconvinced and are still holding out.

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Plenty of other factors have contributed to our collective failure to achieve the elusive herd immunity. Geography, education, fear of deportation and lack of access to regular health care are all in the mix, too.

But conspiracy theories — as dark and despicable and dishonest as they are — have had an enormous impact on the attitudes of the unvaccinated. They’re everywhere, oozing up through dark corners on the Internet, persuading millions to take the risk of getting sick — or worse.

The conspiracy theories are myriad: That governments can track those who get a shot. That enough metal is being injected to make magnets stick to you. That they will make you infertile. That the U.S. government created COVID-19 as a “bio-weapon” to reduce their own population and defeat Donald Trump (seriously).

In Canada, we are finally doing better than the States in getting people fully vaccinated. But nearly 20% of Canadians still refuse to get a shot.

To vaccinate, or not to vaccinate? For millions, that remains a question, sure. But the answer is equally clear.

Get vaccinated. Please.

— Warren Kinsella was the Chief of Staff to a federal Liberal Minister of Health

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