Discussions

Is it just me who doesn’t give a shit about this? You aren’t fighting for me. I’m not even sure what the message is, it seems to mean different things to people. What’s the final goal here? Have Trudeau stop the mandates, have him step down? There are lots of places pre pandemic that you had to have vaccines to enter that country. Nobody cared then. You have a choice, get the vaccine or don’t. But all choices have consequences. Of all the things we could protest……

I agree. We all knew that vaccine mandates were coming, necessary and the solution is simple enough, to get vaccinated.  
The law is in place now so they need to get over themselves, their selfish misgivings and think of the well being of others.  
I see the group has questions being raised about the direction of donated funds and has close ties to the maverick party which just about says it all.  
It’s a good thing that we can rely on the responsible majority of vaccinated truckers to keep everything moving.

Politically-driven seemingly in large part by some that would like to see USA hard-rightish bunk in Canada when as a country and wider population we’re better than that (see number of seats won by Peoples Party despite all the noise during last fed election).  
 
Canadian Trucking Alliance said it best when it made it clear that the majority of truckers are vaccinated and condemned the protest (vaccination rate in truckers closely mirrors the general public):  
http://cantruck.ca/canadian-trucking-alliance-statement-to-those-engaged-in-road-border-protests/  
 
Atlantic Canadian Trucking Association also strongly disproves:  
https://vocm.com/2022/01/25/atlantic-canadian-trucking-association-strongly-disapproves-trucking-convoy-to-ottawa/  
 
Feel bad for all of the science-respecting truckers that are having to hunker down through the divisiveness and noise of this one over these few days. I trust that the message has gotten through to the average person that this is not representative of a wider industry that's always so vital and continues to be so critical in getting what we need into and across the country... even moreso during the pandemic and the current supply chain issues of the past handful of months.

As far as vaccines, a reminder that the province has tons of vaccine resources at the link below including common questions and answers at https://www.gov.mb.ca/covid19/vaccine/index.html 

Health Canada has extensive resources at the link below including a very helpful "Ask the experts" video series that answers many common questions: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/vaccines.html?utm_campaign=hc-sc-covidvaccine-21-22&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=ggl&utm_content=ad-text-en&utm_term=health%20canada%20covid%20vaccine

We all want the pandemic to end, but as much as some regions are in different phases of Omicron the “get back to living” message that’s tagged along with this should probably be adapted to what we’re experiencing right now in this particular province. Over 700 hospitalizations as of yesterday’s report with the trend still being up.  102 people total in ICUs with a current capacity of 115 (pre-pandemic ICU baseline was 72).  Many doctors sounding the alarm at the risks we face in an extremely strained medical system. 

Based on the Omicron wave elsewhere it looks like there’s a very good chance of a different looking pandemic within a handful of weeks. We just aren’t there yet and to pretend we are shows a misunderstanding of the wave we’re currently working through in this province.

Really seems like just another way for the small (I’d feel comfortable suggesting < 10%) segment of the population with a confusing sense of what freedom is and misunderstanding of the vital role of public health and medical experts in the pandemic to look like a larger representation of the population than they are.  
 
Had to look it up and didn’t realize just how large the population working as truck drivers in Canada is. 227,000!  
 
For argument’s sake take 72 foot trucks for each of that 227,000 and stretch them bumper to bumper along the highway. Take something that impressively big and the distance starts to add up in a hurry. If you had all 227k of those truckers you get just under 5000km, enough to stretch all the way from the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver all the way past Ottawa and into Quebec not far from the Atlantic! I think I saw a reference yesterday to a convoy at 30km.  
 
Obviously you can’t draw perfect statistical lines from one to the other, but analogously in terms of more extreme views within a wider population I’d compare it to PPC party which got a little more than 840,000 votes last election in support of their particular views. Sounds like a big number until you consider it’s only 4.94% of the popular vote and that the other 16,500,00+ voters had other ideas.  
 
Now again you can’t draw a perfect straight line, but if for argument’s sake within frame of reference of this analogy you took that 4.94% and applied it to the 227,000 you would end up with 11,200 of that 227,000. 11,200 sure looks like a big number until you consider that more than 215,000 people are in the other group.  
 
In that sense it’s the same old same old that folks have seen playing out in comments below Facebook posts and news stories for the past two years. Very minority representation of Canada demanding priority over a large majority that trusts the guidance of public health and medical Professionals in seeing us to the other side of the pandemic phase of COVID and beyond.  
 
Irony in all of this is that it’s very possible that Covid looks very different in just a few short weeks after we get through this awful stretch of this wave. At that point it wouldn’t at all surprise me to see changes to restrictions and steps closer to normal, especially for those of us who have followed professional public health advice in getting vaccinated. But we get there when we get there when public health and medical experts (hopefully!) decide we get there, not when an outlier group tries to force the issue at just about the worst possible time from at least a Manitoba perspective.  
 
Further to a look at the size of the truck driver population, this map gives a rough visual representation to the approx size of a 30km convoy compared to a route that would have all 227,000 Canadian truckers stretched out starting with rear wheels of the first truck in the water at Horseshoe Bay off of Vancouver. Distance from Alexander to Brandon is approx 30km (sorry Alexander! No signifiance in picking you other than it shows the distance!). Zoom in close to see the red dot on the map just below Brandon and Alexander for where on that route 30km would represent. Double, triple, quadruple the size of the convoy if you want... the point is the same.