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January 22, 2021

Open letter to Dr. Theresa Tam (Chief Public Health Officer of Canada) regarding the public health response to COVID:

Dear Dr. Tam,

RE: Request for a two-way public discussion with you about the public health response to COVID. 

Many people, both in Canada and worldwide, are critical of the public health response to COVID-19 (lockdowns, masks, PCR testing, treatment options, vaccine rollout, etc.). The Great Barrington Declaration alone counts more than 53,000 medical practitioners and medical scientists, as well as over 700,000 concerned citizens like myself who have tried to prompt a broader discussion about these measures. But for the past 10 months, our media, politicians, and health authorities have largely ignored our concerns or, worse yet, lectured and ridiculed us as conspiracy theorists or uncaring monsters who don't care about grandma.

Yet the collateral damage and unintended consequences of these health measures are growing exponentially, not just in terms of economic damage, but also measured in lives. We see strong evidence that the health measures have achieved nothing, or worse, are actually increasing the risks to our most vulnerable. And we are concerned that in an effort to do good, panicked governments worldwide are converting themselves into authoritarian police states that are trampling the rights and freedoms of their citizens. I have written about each of these issues in a series of articles, which you can read here, so you can understand my views and see that they are based on official publicly-available government data from around the world.

The questions we are raising are not going away. On the contrary, the evidence in support of our concerns continues to grow stronger by the day. And people are getting desperate. The list of horrors is nearly endless: poverty, suicides, non-COVID deaths caused by delayed or cancelled treatments, bankruptcies, children's educations compromised, mental health crises, jobs destroyed, broken marriages, seniors dying prematurely as a consequence of loneliness and isolation, repossessed homes, millions of people at risk of starvation worldwide, and generations of debt piled on our children. How much more of these horrors will it take before the issues raised by us critics are publicly debated?

None of these unfolding horrors are because of COVID; they are all a direct result of the government's response to COVID. The virus is real, but we feel strongly that the health measures are completely out of proportion to the risk and are unjustified by the government's own data. You warned our House of Commons about this last year, on January 29th, 2020, when you said, "the epidemic of fear could be more difficult to control than the epidemic itself" and that "any measures that a country is to take must not be out of proportion to the risk." 

There are many other risks and looming unintended consequences that are equally dangerous or even far more terrible than COVID. Life isn’t risk-free, but universal human rights are meant to give us the individual autonomy to navigate those risks as best as we can. By crossing the line from making recommendations to imposing laws, governments are denying people the ability to help themselves in the face of all the other risks in their lives. By imposing devastating lockdowns, government is sacrificing one group of people in an effort to save another. This is in direct violation of the fundamental principles of universal human rights and of the Hippocratic Oath taken by all doctors. If we still believe in the core principles of liberal democracy, then at the very least we deserve a voice in what is being imposed upon us.

But all the tools that typically give citizens a voice in our democracy have ceased to function. Normally the media is our first line of defense, but journalists worldwide have either been unwilling or unable to get answers to the questions we are raising. Health authorities and politicians are stonewalling our concerns. Our opposition parties won't address our concerns in Parliament - they simply fight over who could do a better job of implementing the same measures. Petitions are ignored. Protesters are smeared as "Covidiots", as though the tiny minority of attendees promoting nonsensical conspiracy theories like "COVID is 5G'' are equivalent to the thoughtful evidence-based concerns raised by the scientists and doctors who signed the Great Barrington Declaration. Some doctors have had their medical licenses threatened for speaking out. Social media frequently censors our concerns. In many countries, including Canada, protests are even restricted in size; protests limited to 25 people (or less) will never trigger a public debate or force a policy change. And police who are sworn to defend our constitutional rights are enforcing increasingly arbitrary and authoritarian decrees. In short, we have no voice. 


Section 1 of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees us the right to ask government to justify itself before placing limits on our rights and freedoms - they have not. And when measures have been challenged in court, the courts are simply siding with the government without giving the evidence a fair hearing because, in the words of one Alberta judge, "I must assume the restrictions protect public health." Courts and constitutional restrictions require evidence, not assumptions. Twisting laws to "make it legal" does not make it right. 

By any rational yardstick used to measure our rights and freedoms, this has nothing in common with a liberal democracy and increasingly resembles an authoritarian police state, regardless of the noble intentions of those in charge. Nor is Canada unique in this - the same forces are at work in democracies around the world, each country feeding off the measures taken by others, driven by the panic of their frightened citizens, and compelled by peer pressure to double and triple down on ineffective measures.

I am a firm believer that science, like democracy, only functions when there is honest public debate. The way to diffuse tensions, overcome panic, and avert catastrophes is to talk to one another and give each other a fair hearing. So, I am turning to you as my Chief Public Health Officer to request a public conversation with you about the health response to COVID-19. I believe it is our right under Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to, at the very least, have a respectful two-way public conversation about the collateral damage and about the evidence used to limit our rights and freedoms. 

I would like to present our concerns to you face-to-face (i.e. over Zoom, to be subsequently broadcast on YouTube and social media for all Canadians to access) and to discuss the evidence on points where our views differ. I promise to give you a fair hearing to try to understand why you see things so differently than we do and only ask that you do the same in return. 

What I am asking for is not meant to be a one-sided interview, nor gotcha-journalism, nor to be debate as sport like a Munk Debate with a winner and loser. I am simply a deeply concerned fellow Canadian asking you for an opportunity to talk. 

I know there are many who would appreciate for this long-overdue public conversation to take place with you. I sincerely hope you will consider my request.

Best regards,


Julius Ruechel




COPYRIGHT 2021 JULIUS RUECHEL

1 comment:

  1. Dear Julius.
    You have done an awesome job! However your perspective is totally unrealistic! Flu is caused by electromagnetic radiation fluctuations in our atmosphere and THERE IS NO VIRUS!!! Nobody has been able to proof the existence of such a thing as a pathogenic virus. Therefore masks are ineffective, contagion is NONE EXISTING and EVERYTHING we have been told is WRONG!!! https://learninggnm.com/documents/study_guidelines.html .
    Read Arthur Firstenberg's book >The INVISIBLE RAINBOW<, which proves the fallacy of the prevailing thought world wide. His research has over 2176 sources and continues to lead away from outdated postulates. Astronomy should be consulted about the shape of the earth's orbit around the sun, which would explain the seasonality of flu epidemics. The earth orbit is elliptical and I suspect a little off side, so that each flu season happens like clockwork. Since the sun is much bigger than the best brains and has a lot more power over the earth, I suggest we collectively start by looking to the sun for most of our so called climate and health anomalies. I do not want to belabor this post with a whole lot of facts, largely unknown by most people and leave it for future discussions, that are more person oriented.

    ReplyDelete

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