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.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Er, covid was supposedly “novel” – that’s how they sold the “flatten the curve” and “hang on until we get a vaccine” nonsense. I think flu has been around for a while. Or is the plan to lock down for each new flu strain until some concoction has been fabricated that is marketed as a “vaccine”?
Er, covid was supposedly “novel” – that’s how they sold the “flatten the curve” and “hang on until we get a vaccine” nonsense. I think flu has been around for a while.
COVID variants worked beautifully as pretext to extend pandemic policies (to some degree) until January 2022 and almost worked (reportedly) in bringing us lockdown #4 in December 2021. Flu viruses are also viruses and they obviously also have variants. And the people who are convinced that their NPIs saved the planet (and who are also convinced that they had save the planet much better had they been allowed to continue forever) are really convinced of this. People don’t usually change their opinions just because they don’t make any sense. They prefer to disbelieve in facts contradicting them. Especially people who already started from an ideological base. Lastly, the license to govern without having to care for all these pesky laws and rights granting all kinds of stuff the underlings they really don’t deserve and will just be abusing, anyway, is still terribly useful for everyone who really wants to take his hobby horse to an extended ride, come what may.
For as long as the COVID perpetrators haven’t been brought to justice but quietly enjoy their various sineucres and honours, a repetition is always on the cards. After all, to them, it’s all gain and no pain. One can even have heady office parties in Downing Street while the nation’s in lockdown. What’s not to like?
I’d just quite like to get through a full year without hearing the word “virus” or “pandemic”. What do you think the odds are?
I think they’re good for 2024. Some people are doubtlessly still calling for the reintroduction of mask mandates at every opportunity. But they haven’t managed to escape from their personal version of Speaker’s Corner since last year.
OTOH, I’m afraid – and I mean afraid – that I will have to live through another instance of this nonsense if the people who drove it this time get as easily away with writing their own history as the US-mass-murderers (in all likelines) of 1918 – 1920.
You mean, afraid they’ll they make the same cock up, right? Coz it was all a cock up apparently.
Exactly. I think they’re going to repeat the same attempt at controlling viruses by aggressively micromanaging people despite it doesn’t work (that’s why it’s a cock-up).
The reason I disagree is, for that to be true, TPTB would have to assume that nobody has learned anything and hasn’t evolved in their understanding of what they’ve endured since early 2020. That’s quite the risk to take if you’re going to try the same trick again, especially when, this time round, you can’t rely on the all-important power of the PsyOp. I can see how they managed to hoodwink and brainwash people so effectively 3 years back, and even keep up the sham for some considerable time, but I don’t for a second think they can pull the same stunt again using the same tactics. There’ll always be a few dozy pillocks but the vast majority are gonna smell BS a mile off. They would be stupid also to not take into account the amount of people who’ve been harmed personally by the restrictions, whether it be financially, professionally, psychologically or health-wise, as too many have been stung and have wised up the hard way. This scam would never be tolerated again, is my opinion anyway, as there’d be considerable pushback if it were attempted.
I have zero concerns about this article and I’m not about to let one idiotic nutjob journalist who’s lost the plot and who is trying his bestest to whip up a bit of fear porn once more influence my thinking. China can and will do whatever the feck it wants because it’s China and the poor citizens are enslaved. To speak the word ”lockdown” in the context of the rest of the world, like some veiled threat, is just plain Looney Tunes City. Not happening. Let them try, but I smell a ‘nothing burger’.
I think they would not be able to sell this in the UK.
Yes I’m confident the vast majority of folk in almost all countries would respond with an “Up yours!”
I should chuffing well hope so after all that’s been endured and come to pass anyway. Only a flipping hermit wouldn’t be aware of the ‘Lockdown Files’ messages now, after all.
Only a flipping hermit wouldn’t be aware of the ‘Lockdown Files’ messages now, after all.
Playing Devil’s advocate: Of course, the Tories are awful and never really cared for a proper lockdown! We had fared much better with a Labour government dedicated to Zero COVID!
I like your optimism but – based on many bad experiences throughout many years – I think you severly underestimate the ability of people to interpret everything in line with their preconceived worldview which can at all be interpreted in this way, to ignore everything which really doesn’t fit into it and to dream up castles in the air to fill whatever gaps remain to be filled.
Most people are too stupid to think about anything. Most of the people who aren’t are too lazy to think about something they can neiher eat nor drink nor shag. Whoever remains will be trampled down by the herd once it starts running in some direction. Just as last time.
Oh no, RW…
Well we shall have to agree to disagree on our varied forecasts. I’d like to think people aren’t thick and have learned a thing or two these last few years. Only absolute certifiable weirdos who genuinely enjoyed being locked down and masked up ( I know these muppets walk among us ) could possibly comply with yet more of the same. I’m firmly of the opinion that we on here are no longer a tiny minority after so much time has elapsed, data gathered and knowledge acquired through lived experience and educating oneself. I refuse to accept I’m sharing the planet with a majority made of psychos, sadists and masochists. Even if you were so apathetic to not give a stuff about yourself what kind of individual doesn’t want to consider the needs of kids and the proven damage done to them? Doesn’t make any sense.
This here is stuff which is too complicated for a great many people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-of-check_to_time-of-use
Abstractly, the problematic algorithm looks like this:
1) Check that condition C is true.
2) If C was true, do something which depends on C still being true.
Everyday example #1:
1) Standing at a street, look around to determine if there’s a car approaching.
2) Close you eyes, wait a minute and step confidently onto the street because no car could be seen a minute ago.
[3) Get run over.]
Everyday example #2
1) Cyclist sees that there’s presently a small space between a moving pedestrian and a wall (or similar).
2) Cyclist accelerates to pass through this space while pedestrian keeps moving.
[3) Cyclist and pedestrian collide.]
#2 is really common.
The problem is that 1) and 2) are not atomic (technical term for this) but two independent operations and that some time passes between the check and the action done based on the outcome of the check. This means it’s possible that C becomes false after the check and 2) then fails in some more-less-catastrophic way because of this. Occasionally, I try to explain this to people who simply don’t get it but that’s completely pointless. Their brains just shut down and refuse to process this information.
I disagree. If my friends are anything to go by, the majority will barge each other out of the way in their rush to sign up as Covid Marshalls again. They will tell me that countless millions of lives were saved by wearing masks and enforcing the following of arrows and markers, so it works. A minority will refuse to discuss the matter, now they realise what really happened and their role in it, and will change the subject to I’m A Celebrity or the Test Match results or the weather. If pushed they will take the Emily Oster line, apparently convinced that they have the right to feel forgiven for their mistakes.
I think there’s a difference between not openly admitting it was all a big con and being happy to do it all again
” If it saves even one life…” is the mantra of the husband of one of my friends.
“It’s for the benefit of everyone…” is the mantra of the friend.
We see them much less often now.
And probably not most of the USA, other than Killafornia.
Indeed, China has been known to do some flavor of hyper-local lockdowns long before Covid. But fortunately, it didn’t catch on elsewhere–until Italy decided to copy them on that fateful day in February 2020, followed by that other fateful day exactly three years ago today. Then Spain, then France, and almost every other country in the world fell like dominoes, and as they say, the rest is history….
Wow. That’s why the whole entire concept of lockdowns, masks, and NPIs in general, needs to become completely eradicated, root and branch, lest it grow back sooner or later.
Worse, lockdowns, masks, and NPIs were the highly effective “gateway drugs” to the experimental gene therapy jabs masquerading as “vaccines”, and the mandates and passports for same, which in turn are “gateway drugs” to digital ID, CBDC, social credit scoring, and full-blown totalitarian technocratic dystopia.
Seriously, NEVER AGAIN!
Never Again.
Å gjøre noen en bjørnetjeneste…
To do someone a bear’s service…
The bear accidentally killed its master with one swipe from its paw, while trying merely to swat a fly from his master’s face.
But at least the bear had good intentions…
Why not simply let the people prepared to take the risk get on with their lives, and let the ones who want to lock themselves up for a few months get on with that.
There’s no need for government to intervene in this.
Absolutely agree and can only hope that would happen.
Incalculable means just that. The number of deaths saved by lockdowns cannot be calculated. It might have been none. Zero is a number. I am simply sad that the establishment never got its head around treating those who got very sick early enough. My protocol, sent on 1st June 2020 to Hancock, would if implemented immediately have saved a calculable number in the UK, around the 20-30,000 mark…
If you read the comments section of that WaPo article you would be forgiven for thinking that the battle is already lost and that more than likely we will be living in a self-imposed totalitarian collectivist state. Below an example:
“Actually we saw a demonstration of Darwin’s theory of evolution in real time. The common sense ideas of vaccination, segregation and personal hygiene were immediately adopted and used by the vast majority of people with the result that we did not see millions of dead stacked in the streets like something from the plague in the middle ages. But we did see people who for whatever misguided reasons, bravado, masculinity, political opportunism, crass economic greed, to name a few, decided not to take common sense precautions and most ended up in the graveyards and crematoriums. A tragic end of life confession often heard in the hospital emergency care wards was I wish that I had listened. So those members of the species who failed to adapt to change in their environment just ceased to exist. Unfortunately too many had already reproduced and whatever results from that failure to adapt are still with us in the population. As well as a number of the lucky few who did not encounter the virus. And so the next time we can expect further culling and winnowing of homo not so sapient.”
This guy on the WaShpo sounds vaccinated to me
Twats , the lot of them !
Re above picture. I’ve never died in the street (well not so far anyway) so have no experience, but when one does, does one fall directly backwards like a felled tree with one’s arms at one’s side as if on parade – it’s very military?
Just asking but the words Michael and extraction spring to mind.
Another day, another lockdown.
Helps to control the ‘peasants’ .