Concerned dad Tony Mckechnie is worried about discrimination and segregation that people who haven’t taken the COVID-19 vaccine are facing and believes attacking them is only creating more division in the community.
Mckechnie spoke during Prairie South School Division’s Nov. 2 board meeting and urged trustees to not contribute to the abuse against people because of their vaccination status. He also produced news reports and scientific articles to question the effectiveness of vaccines and discussed the pandemic’s overall negative effect on people.
“A growing number of citizens are concerned; they feel like their back is against the wall,” Mckechnie said. “Some feel their options are being taken away from them.”
Vaccination passport mandates are setting up society for failure since governments and health professionals don’t seem to recognize that fully vaccinated people can still spread COVID-19 to others, he continued.
Mckechnie has seen many hostile comments on social media about people who haven’t been vaccinated. This concerns him since he knows people who are unable to be jabbed because of pre-existing health conditions.
“To discriminate against (people) … is just wrong on all levels,” he said. “I invite you to remove the title of unvaccinated and replace it with some of the other prejudiced-type statements that we’ve been moving past in terms of race and gender.”
Mckechnie thought the media had created the term “unvaccinated” to cause anger and division in society. While he was unsure what other term to use, he noted that people could be considered protected based on antibodies or natural immunity to COVID-19.
Not every major organization favours vaccine passports, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Canada’s privacy commissioner, Mckechnie continued. A WHO report opposed passports for travel due to the vaccines’ effectiveness, while a privacy commissioner report indicated the passport system should be removed immediately once the pandemic is finished.
Mckechnie pointed to news reports showing that many people in other industries refuse to take the vaccine out of concern about its safety and bodily autonomy. This includes thousands of people in the United States military, in emergency services — police, firefighters, EMS and RCMP — in Canada and hundreds of Canadian doctors.
Furthermore, other headlines have indicated that about 35 per cent of vaccinated residents in Ontario have come down with COVID-19.
“It seems like there is a flaw in our provincial health guidelines. I understand that we’re (thanking) people … for doing their part. I get that,” said Mckechnie. “But are we not setting ourselves up for … a good percentage of the population (that) can still be infectious and transmissible? According to the guidelines, we’re not asking them to test (and) we’re not asking them to isolate.”
Besides COVID-19, mental health issues have also skyrocketed because of the restrictive pandemic measures, he pointed out. While governments have narrowly focused on having enough nurses and ICU capacity, a growing bubble of other health issues — “a scary thing” — needs to be addressed.
Furthermore, business experts predict that more than 227,000 businesses will close in Canada. That will negatively affect Saskatchewan’s economy and people’s livelihoods.
Mckechnie reiterated that blaming the unvaccinated for societal problems is unproductive and discriminatory.
Board vice-chair Darcy Pryor agreed with Mckechnie that “viral shedding” can occur in vaccinated people. However, she wondered if he had seen other evidence to back up his claims.
Mckechnie replied that the New England Journal of Medicine featured an article about breakthrough cases in health-care workers, while a recent news article indicated that students at Harvard University were forced to learn online for several weeks even though the entire campus was vaccinated.
“We’re no longer flattening the curve, but we’re heading down a dark road,” he added.
The next PSSD board meeting is Tuesday, Dec. 7.
