CARPAY: The sixth anniversary of lockdowns & how fear undermined our ability to think

John Carpay writes, "Daily and hourly media announcements about large numbers of 'Covid cases' kept most people in fear, for years on end."

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Author: John Carpay

John Carpay, B.A., LL.B., is President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca), the only civil liberties group in Canada that called for an end to lockdowns in May 2020. He is the author of the Amazon best-seller Corrupted by Fear.

The power of fear, as a tool for manipulation and control, should not be underestimated.

In mid-March 2020, Canada’s federal and provincial governments first started restricting our Charter freedoms of association, conscience, religion, peaceful assembly, movement and travel. The “two weeks to flatten the curve” dragged on for literally years, as lockdowns were followed by mandatory vaccination policies that punished Canadians who chose not to get injected.

Why did most Canadians submit to these obviously tyrannical measures? Why so much public support for human rights violations that, prior to 2020, would have generated widespread outrage and opposition? Why so little concern for vulnerable citizens who were driven by lockdowns into isolation, loneliness, depression, anxiety, unemployment, bankruptcy, poverty and drug overdoses? Why did Canadian courts accept mere assertions as persuasive evidence?

In one word: fear.

Thanks to daily and hourly media fearmongering, Canadians were terrified of Covid. Citizens were therefore willing to do anything to protect themselves and their loved ones from the virus, including giving up their basic rights and freedoms. After decades (perhaps centuries?) of complaining about how politicians are dishonest and untrustworthy, Canadians suddenly decided that government officials can neither deceive nor be deceived.

Today in 2026, we know that Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London wildly exaggerated the threat of Covid when claiming that Covid would kill as many people as the Spanish Flu of 1918. This false claim - that Covid would kill tens of millions of people -was repeated by politicians and media around the world as “the science” that all good people should believe. Without this false claim and its daily propagation, people would not have obeyed authority blindly.

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney was fearmongering when he claimed, in April 2020, that Covid would kill as many as 32,000 Albertans – a number higher than total annual deaths in the province from all causes combined. Like other politicians, Kenney accepted and propagated the false Ferguson claims about Covid.

Today, we know that PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing merely detects remnants of a virus present in the body, and does not diagnose illness. Today, we understand that the outcome of a PCR test depends on how many cycles are used to amplify a small sample of a viral remnant. We comprehend that our provincial governments were running PCR tests at 40 or more cycles, thereby generating huge numbers of so-called Covid “cases” that kept people in perpetual fear. We now know from the Gateway v. Manitoba litigation that at least 40% of the government’s “Covid cases” were people who were not sick with Covid.

Daily and hourly media announcements about large numbers of “Covid cases” kept most people in fear, for years on end.

Today, we know that the World Health Organization (WHO) changed its cause-of-death classification protocol in April 2020 to produce high numbers of “Covid deaths.” These inflated numbers vastly exceeded annual flu deaths in prior years, which in turn allowed media to continue spreading fear. Canada’s provincial governments used PCR testing as well as this new cause-of-death classification protocol to proclaim highly misleading numbers of Covid deaths.

In spite of taxpayer-funded media fearmongering, there were clear signs that something was wrong with the government-and-media narrative.

For example, prior to 2020 we understood that it was not possible to stop the spread of a virus. The initial goal of “flattening the curve” was to slow the speed at which the virus was inevitably spreading, to save hospitals from getting too many patients all at once.

In March 2020, no politician or health official claimed it possible to stop the spread of a virus. After a few weeks of daily and hourly media fearmongering, the government’s narrative changed to “stopping the spread,” an impossible goal. As time went on, it became patently obvious that lockdowns did not stop Covid from spreading to every Canadian province, territory, city, town, village and hamlet. Lockdowns didn’t stop the virus from entering nursing homes and shortening the lives of elderly, sick people. Lockdowns didn’t protect the vulnerable residents of long-term care facilities, who made up about 80% of Covid deaths.

While lockdowns were obviously not stopping the spread of Covid, fear-filled Canadians still participated in the futile quest of somehow “stopping” or “reducing” the spread.

In court actions that challenged lockdowns, no government witness was able to explain how, exactly, lockdowns were saving lives. Fear-filled judges readily embraced the assertions by governments that “lockdowns save lives,” and on that basis upheld the violations of our Charter freedoms of association, conscience, religion, peaceful assembly, movement and travel. Corrupted by fear, Canadian judges simply wrote the media narrative into their court rulings. Only fear would drive a judge to issue a very lengthy pro-government ruling in which he fails to offer any explanation as to why he saw the government’s evidence as superior to the evidence put forward by citizens asserting their Charter rights and freedoms.

Fear drove doctors to abandon their ethical duty to assess both the benefits and harms of a medical treatment. Doctors became aggressive cheerleaders for the futile quest of stopping a virus. Very few doctors have appropriate ethical consideration to the serious harms that lockdowns inflicted on their patients.

Alberta doctor Eric Payne wrote a 19-page letter outlining his concerns about the mandatory Covid vaccine, asking numerous questions and also supporting his assertions with numerous references. Neither the Chief Medical Officer of Health nor anyone at the College of Physicians and Surgeons responded to the issues he raised in this letter. Instead, the authorities commenced disciplinary proceedings against him, including for “misinformation” and writing select Covid vaccine exemption letters. Eventually, all investigations ceased, because nobody was able to point to a single statement that was factually incorrect. Rather, as the public data overwhelmingly continued to support Dr. Payne’s concerns, Alberta Health Services simply removed the public Covid data from its website. Such was the state of “science” in Alberta, and across the globe.

Like the doctors who abandoned their ethical duty, politicians abandoned their constitutional duty to weigh the harms and benefits of lockdown policies that violated Charter rights and freedoms. Governments admitted in numerous court actions that lockdowns did violate the Charter freedoms of association, conscience, religion, peaceful assembly, movement and travel. The Charter requires government officials (both elected and unelected) to weigh the pros and cons of health orders that violate Charter freedoms. They failed to do this. Instead, they proclaimed without evidence that lockdowns were saving thousands of lives.

Fear impairs our thinking, blinds us from seeing facts, and drives us to unquestioning obedience. Fear explains why so many Canadians unthinkingly complied with nonsensical and highly toxic policies that were not grounded in science.

An explanation is not a justification. We are people, not sheep. We should use our God-given brains to think. We should question authority, especially when authorities are violating our human rights.

Six years after lockdowns were first imposed, what frightens me in 2026 is how those who supported lockdowns still refuse to discuss these policies, on the flimsy pretext that “Covid is over.” Is there even one prominent lockdown supporter who will publicly debate the merits of these policies?

The next time the government assaults our Charter rights and freedoms, will Canadians once again believe whatever the politicians and the government-funded media tell them?