Unlike a lot of blog writers I in my 16 years of writing this I try to stay away from consensus topics.....but I just wanted to post this that I saw in the Internet...form your own opinions...
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I don’t ever post my opinion, more so as it’s a conflict of interest being a first responder, but this hits home. This isn’t about anti vax/mask, this is about choices on where you take your protest and right to freedom of speech. First responders and all the staff inside hospitals and patients shouldn’t have to deal with this. Unfair and selfish. People had to get out of vehicles and walk to their hospital appointment just so they could make it on time. Take your protest to the parliament building, run for MP if you really want to make a difference! But this isn’t helping the cause or getting support by blocking emergency routes to a hospital. You should be ashamed.
Written by a VPD member read on.
"For The Safety and Freedom of the People Protest," edition.
Ok, folks. I have taken 48 hours and copious amounts of rum to relax and feel much better about life and my disdain for humanity. So here we go....
Sorry….is gonna be a long one.
So, as some of you may know, I like to work protests. I do, despite what many people think, like people. Not a lot of them, but a couple. And one of the things that people like, and have a true and honest right to do, is to protest. And I have worked all sorts.
Anti-Olympic. Save the children. Hate the Nazis. Love communism. Hate the government. Love the hippies. Black lives matter. No lives matter. Save the whales. Eat the seals. I have worked them all. You know why? Because I swore an oath to uphold the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and one of those rights is Section 2..."the right to participate in peaceful demonstrations, protests, parades, meetings, picketing and other assemblies."
I will fight to allow you to do your thing, whether I agree with it or not.
And then wednesday happened.
What was supposed to be a couple hundred people who either don’t like masks, don’t want a vaccine and/or think that their personal beliefs are more important than those of anyone else, turned into a mass of about 5000 people who were adamant about a myriad of things.
“You can’t make me get a vaccine passport.” “You can’t make me wear a mask.” “You can’t make me get a vaccine.” “I hate the police.” “Wednesdays are the worse days of the week.” “Save Buddha (I actually saw that poster)”
I must stop for a moment and say this…..I am going to try REALLY hard not going to put in my own opinion about this here, because it doesn’t matter. That being said I am going to throw out a few facts before I get to the issue that really pissed me off…
1. You are correct. No one can force you to get a “passport.” But if a store, or business, or airline, or bar, or ferry company decides that you need to have a piece of paper confirming that you have the vaccines, they can deny you service. It is your right not to get a passport, but it is also their right not to allow you entry or service. It’s like “no shirt, no shoes, no service.” And, no. This isn’t like Germany in 1933, as I was yelled at. If those people didn’t have their “papers,” they were killed. If you don’t have your “passport,” you don’t get your latte. Is a little different.
2. You are again correct. No one can force you to wear a mask, but, like in fact #1, if the above mentioned places require a mask for entry, you don’t get to go in without it. No mask, no service. And yelling at some poor barista or $15/hour 18 year old kid standing at the door of the Apple store just makes you look like a jerk and does not help your cause. Try to remember, that 18 year old kid did not make the rule. Some manager said, “Hey kid, stand here and make sure everyone wears a mask.” If you walked into a hospital room where some kid was incredibly ill and the nurse said, “Please put on a mask,” I bet you would.
3. Once again, you are right that no one can force you to get a vaccine. It was funny that I saw a lot of people in the protest screaming “No to vaccines,” that were around my age and older. For all of you folks born in Canada before 1973, rub your finger on your left (usually) shoulder. That little round scar you have there was, strangely enough, from a vaccine. How has your recovery from small pox been?
4. As for the anti-police folks out there……yawn. You bore me.
5. I agree with you. Wednesdays suck
6. And finally, Buddha doesn’t need saving. You just need to be a better human
My only issue with this protest was that this group of people who put themselves out to be “marching for the people,” and for the “rights of everyone,” did not care about anyone but themselves. “My body. My choice.” Yes it is, but you are not the only one with a body.
At one point I was trying to direct traffic away from area of Cambie and W 12th Ave. These folks who were “fighting for the people,” decided to have their protest surrounding Vancouver General Hospital at first. I appreciate that these “social warriors” may not realize this, because none of them have ever been sick or injured, or know anyone who has ever been sick or injured...
(sarcasm - ˈsɑr kaz(ə)m - NOUN - the use of irony to mock or convey contempt)
...but the hospital is a place where people who are sick, injured and dying go to to stop that. To get better, to get fixed, and, if lucky, to not die.
But these protesters decided that hospitals, and the amazing health care workers who saved so many of us and worked their asses off under brutal conditions for a year and a 1/2, are the cause for the ills of their world.
And in surrounding the hospital because it is their right to protest, they denied others of their rights.
Ambulances and hospital transports, carrying sick, ill and injured people lost precious minutes and much longer trying to get through and/or around the crowd, if they were even able to get through at all. I doubt the people suffering in the back of the EHS trucks agreed with your rights to risk their lives. Also, there is a cancer treatment centre there as well. You know what happens to people suffering from cancer? They often die and the only thing that keeps them from demise and the terrible effects of cancer is regular treatments. These treatments and dreadful and brutal on the body, but it often beats the alternative. Through the masses of traffic stuck and immoveable because of this “protest for the people,” I dealt with no less than 10 (ten…TEN) vehicles with children or older folks suffering from cancer who were trying to get to the hospital for their required, necessary and life saving treatments. Trying to explain to a crying mother why their child can’t get to their treatment, while looking into the eyes of some poor kid who is terrified and suffering is not what I signed up for. But it was ok, because I was protecting your right to protest something you probably learned about from the internet.
(See - sarcasm again)
YOU tell that kid and his mother how important your cause is. Is your want to be heard more important than his right to live? “My body, my choice?” What about his choice? Oh, right. He doesn’t have one. He HAS to get treatment and you are making that difficult, if not impossible. I felt dirty and ashamed that I was protecting your “right to protest,” while you put the safety and, possibly, the lives, of these kids and elderly folks at risk.
Then, as your "parade of hope" marched downtown, I saw something that completely destroyed my faith in humanity (even more than directing traffic…and that is saying something).
At the intersection of Robson and Burrard St, I was on the south/west corner doing my cool motor officer thing when someone told me that a woman in a wheelchair had fallen over on the north/east corner. Mentally do a quick time line here. The woman falls over, this woman sees it, forces her way through the middle of this mass of moving people and such to where I was, then I work my way back through the crowd to her. Not long but probably a minute or so. It may not seem like much, but it is a VERY long time if you have fallen out of your wheelchair in the middle of a protest. Look at your watch. See how long 60 is. Luckily, I thought, there are all these people who care so greatly about the safety of others. By the time I get there she will probably already be up and good to go.
It appeared I was wrong.
This poor girl wasn’t just some chick whose chair had fallen over. She suffers from dwarfism combined with a terrible disease making her bones brittle. She was still laying under her heavy chair as these throngs of “the peoples saviours,” walked by without A SINGLE PERSON stopping to help. I get there and this lovely girl had smacker her head and explained to me what I needed to do to help and told me the best thing was to just sit with her, leave her in the position she was in and wait for EHS. Which I did, of course. We smiled and joked. I told her that there were easier ways to meet tall good looking cops on motorcycles and she laughed and cried and said she will work on making a better first impression next time.
At that second she became one of those rare “couple of people” that I like.
As a couple other officers came over to help me as I was sitting on the ground next to her, people in the crowd started yelling at me to help her and to stop making jokes and s**t like that. Screaming that the police don’t do anything to help people. Guess what that did? Scared her and pissed me off. Eventually she was taken care of once the medics were able to fight their way through the mass of people to get to her.
People?….not a fan.
Hang on…….mmmm, rum. Needed to take a breath before I wrap this up.
At the end of the day, if you want to protest what the government wants you to do, needs you to do, demands you to do, fill your boots. I swore an oath to protect your right to do so. That being said, you should all be ashamed of yourselves. You targeted the very health care workers who risked their lives, both mentally and physically, for you and all of us. Do you really believe some ER nurse or paediatric resident made the call about vaccines and passports?
And in protesting the fact that you don’t want, or believe in, the available treatment for Covid, you put the lives and health of people unrelated to your “cause” at risk. What about their “rights to life?” Is your decision not to wear a mask more important that a childs right to get cancer treatment? You didn’t even have the common decency to help someone in your midst who needed it. If you are going to protest, do it at the Mayors house. I will give you the address. Or how about City Hall? You know, where decisions like this are made. Or, if you are really dedicated and serious about your cause, you should get on a ferry and protest at the Provincial Legislature……they make all the big decisions there.
Might be hard to get to Victoria though, since you need to, at the very least, wear a mask to travel on the ferry.
No shirt, no shoes, no mask, no service. Don’t you hate when EVERYONE has rights?
Go hug a health care worker and say you are sorry. That is the very least you can do. They deserve it. And go donate to the Canadian Cancer Society. After what you did, you need all the good karma you can get.
Just sayin’
Thus ends the lesson.
This is woke me up this morning!!
Stay safe and healthy!!
Yashi Kochi!!
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