Dr. Matt Strauss, a former Canadian intensive care doctor, is suing Queen’s University, alleging he was pushed out of his job for publicly opposing COVID-19 lockdowns and mask mandates. The National Post has the story.
When the frightening, frantic first waves of COVID-19 hit Canada in March 2020, Dr. Matt Strauss worked in intensive care at a Kingston, Ontario hospital, and taught at Queen’s University medical school.
He volunteered for extra shifts at Kingston Health Sciences Centre to help with the crush of patients, but a much less dramatic development now anchors his public place in the pandemic: He started sharing his thoughts about pandemic response.
He wrote short posts on Twitter and long form essays published by a British news magazine and Canadian news sites. He argued against wide lockdowns and mask mandates and in support of interventions focussed on people most at risk. Many of his thoughts were counter to official responses and prevailing medical advice.
He wrote colourfully, forcefully. He once tweeted, “I would sooner give my children COVID-19 than a McDonald’s happy meal.”
He sparred in the media and with the media.
A Toronto Star columnist called him an “anti-public health doctor” after Strauss was appointed the acting Medical Officer of Health for Haldimand-Norfolk, in southwestern Ontario.
In retort, Strauss wrote a piece of his own, published in National Post, dismissing the criticism as an attack by “left-wing media”.
Strauss became seen as something of a flag bearer for a side of the increasingly divisive pandemic opinion that did not have many strong voices within Canada’s medical community. It pushed him onto the stage of a strident public debate.
“I was new to all of this,” Strauss said in an interview this week. “I hadn’t been in a firestorm like that before.”
He didn’t grasp the gravity of the pushback until he learned his belongings had been cleared out of his university office and placed in a cardboard box, he said. His sudden office reallocation had the look and feel of being fired when he went to collect the box from a departmental secretary, he said, although he hadn’t been.
“It was a very tangible moment,” Strauss said. “Up until that point, it seemed to be irresponsible, anonymous Twitter accounts and then, suddenly, the administration where I was working was listening to those anonymous accounts.”
His published tweets and articles continued, and more than anonymous Twitter accounts raised concern.
It wasn’t that he was an utter rogue.
“I was a real vaccine booster. I got the vaccine rate up,” he said. “I’ve never promoted fringe therapies. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I’m extremely skeptical of conspiracy theories… I’m also skeptical of vaccine mandates.”
At that peculiar time, at least, there was little room for debate.
“We seemed to have forgotten how to agree to disagree. That kind of live and let live feeling seemed to be lost in the darker days of the pandemic,” he said. “And a lot of that division was predicated on what has now been shown to be the inaccurate claim that by controlling other people’s lives you can control the spread of COVID-19.”
Strauss’s interest in debate, scepticism and personal freedom extends beyond pandemic response and medicine. It moves him to share on social media about politics and economics in a way that allows detractors to place him as a firm conservative partisan.
He has drawn positive attention in social media by figures such as Joe Rogan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jordan Peterson. He is deeply critical of Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden and supportive of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and Alberta’s United Conservative Party.
For many of his detractors, those are confirmatory red flags. Strauss, though, said he sees mainstream public opinion shifting in his favour.
Meanwhile, Strauss has been working to settle another score induced by the pandemic, this time in a court of justice rather than the court of public opinion.
He is suing Queen’s University and the head of the school’s Department of Medicine, where he was an Assistant Professor of Medicine from July 2019 to November 2021. He claims he was pushed out of his job for voicing unpopular opinions about pandemic management.
He filed his statement of claim in October 2022. The school and its medical school head, Dr. Stephen Archer, filed their statement of defence this July, and Strauss, in turn, filed his reply soon after.
The lawsuit, through allegations and cross-allegations, highlights the depth of division and acrimony over pandemic responses, and raises issues of academic freedom and workplace behaviour.
Worth reading in full.
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WE haven’t forgotten anything. A part.of society won’t tolerate disagreement. Not just with covid but with climate change and race and gender issues and a growing number of topics.
Strangely as well, it doesn’t seem to be the issues as much as the people themselves. It seems to be that those who are intolerant about covid are also the same people who are intolerant about climate change and about “diversity”.
It’s the same horrible people over and over again.
Very well said – and that intolerant part of society may be summed up as the modern, Marxist Left.
And yet, in the soft and soggy centre too, whilst you will often hear pious exclamations over the intolerance of our day, these will give way immediately – but immediately – to censorious panic when its own tolerance for officially stigmatised thinking is tested.
It is as if a herd instinct has been harnessed and monopolised among centrist water buffalo by a pack of Marxist jackals – and indeed it has, for their moral coordinates are no longer those of Christianity but those of “progressivism”, in which the culture, the justified self-interest and the perpetuation of their own societies have been put beyond the pale.
This explains the mysterious cloud of taboo which has been settled over the matter of immigration, even as the left hauls it towards full throttle transformation. No issue of society or state is unaffected by it, from policing to housing but if it is raised in the course of discussion – as Lionel Shriver found – an icy disapproval wafts from the bien-pensants.
Being seen as “nice” seems to be the new religion of the “educated” middle class. As I seem to be a horrible selfish person, I have not been afflicted.
I’d add Ukraine to the list if I may.
It is horribly fascinating to observe how easy it is to get so many people to believe in, well, anyhing the BBC/Government propaganda machine tell them to.
I agree that it’s the same horrible people over and over again, their job being made easier now simply because people lack the ability to actually think.
And that is mainly due to our wonderful education system.
I have a feeling that these people have never been disagreed with in their lives. I am sure you have seen the little brats out in public spaces demanding things of their parents and screaming until they get their way, schooled through child-centred education and finished in permissive, safe-space universities. They have never grown up.
Well may the force be with this doctor because he’s courageous and principled enough to be taking on TPTB who indiscriminately persecute anyone they deem as a threat to their various agendas and who won’t be bullied into submission so as to toe the line; healthcare staff get hauled over the coals and medical licenses threatened, teachers get sacked for speaking up about safeguarding issues of kids or misgendering pupils, members of the public have their bank accounts cancelled if they step out of line regarding the woke cult or expressing political views which don’t jive with the narrative, etc etc, which brings me on to this rather excellent article which I think hits the nail on the head;
”Globalists are seeking to subjugate the world, and to do that they need to undermine the basic tenets of human interaction and understanding. They have allied with the political left in order to blitz the populace with chaos, keeping people distracted and off balance while the powers-that-be wrap their tentacles around every last vestige of private liberty.
Globalists view power in a similar manner to leftists, but they expand on the manifesto with the question “How can we convince others to give us control willingly?”
Woke useful idiots see power as something that must be stolen through intimidation or force. Globalists see power as something that is handed to them by useful idiots. In order to get that power, globalists spend the vast majority of their energy and wealth on the manufacturing of consent. It’s not enough to control the population, you have to make them believe that your oligarchy is THEIR IDEA. That way, they never try to fight back.
For example, look at the recent covid “crisis” and the draconian response that the majority of leftists supported. Also look at the hysterical climate change narratives and the calls for carbon restrictions that would inevitably lead to mass depopulation; once again largely supported by the political left.
Both agendas rely on the notion of an existential threat that requires people to sacrifice their freedoms on a micro-level. Yet, covid mandates suggest that we need to save the population from death while climate change mandates suggest that we need to kill most of the population to protect the environment. It doesn’t make sense unless you understand that diminishing freedom is the ultimate point. Covid was never about saving lives and climate controls have nothing to do with saving the planet.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/understanding-parasitic-cooperation-between-globalists-and-leftists
“Doctor Sues Canadian University for Allegedly Pushing Him Out of Job Over His Covid Opinions”I wonder why Out, Over, Him and His are capitalised – are these important words? – and not for or of.
One does not sue anyone for allegedly doing something. That is tautology.
https://titlecaseconverter.com/rules/
You can have any opinion, just as long as it’s the same opinion as the authorities’ opinion.