The Black Rod

At the beginning of last December, the government announced it would start administering vaccines to stop the Covid-19 pandemic. Vaccine Bulletin, Dec.9,2020 https://news.gov.mb.ca/news/?archive=&item=50009 Manitobans would receive one of three expedited vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, Astrazeneca) that had been given provisional approval on an interim basis, two of which worked best for some age groups and not others. Vaccines were the answer, we were told. If enough people got vaccinated, the lockdowns, face masks, social distancing, and travel restrictions could be eliminated and society could get back to normal. The goal to reach herd immunity was as low as 40 percent of the population vaccinated by some estimates, but more often cited as 70 percent. "Trust the science," they said. ***************** "Screw the science," was the message delivered in early March , three months later, by National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) and here by Ma

There's a new challenger in town for the title of Fake News Champion. Stand aside Dan Lett, columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press and current holder of the belt. Your new competition is your colleague, Ryan Thorpe, who's been described by his alma mater as an  "investigative reporter who covers crime for the daily newspaper." This past Saturday Thorpe was responsible for a three-page spread headlined "SAFETY FIRST, everything else last." The thrust of the article is that the budget for policing (and the fire department and paramedics, but mainly the police) takes such a big bite (nearly half) out of the budget there's hardly anything left for other services. This Saturday he had a follow-up story arguing that Winnipeg spends too much money on police salaries when only 34 percent of reported crimes are cleared. To bolster his argument, Thorpe's both stories cited the work of Kevin Walby, "a criminologist and associate professor at the University