Canadian doctor: ‘Lockdowns are draconian…no basis in evidence-based med

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Canadian doctor doubles down: ‘Lockdowns are draconian…no basis in evidence-based medicine’
'I take the Hippocratic Oath extremely seriously. The first line is do no harm, and that is what motivated my presentation'

Dr. Roger Hodkinson in an Oct. 2018 video

ALBERTA, Canada, November 30, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – A Canadian doctor who caused a firestorm of controversy earlier this month after blasting government-imposed COVID-19 measures at a public city meeting in Alberta is not only doubling down on his comments but is going even further.

“I take the Hippocratic Oath extremely seriously. The first line is do no harm, and that is what motivated my presentation,” Dr. Roger Hodkinson told The Epoch Times in a Nov. 24 interview in reference to a Nov. 13 speech he made to Edmonton city councilors in which he called it the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public” that lockdowns and masks were being used in an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19.

“If I see something going on that’s harmful, I feel as a physician that I’m obligated to stand up and say something,” he added before going on to call lockdowns that are spreading across Canada “draconian.”

Dr. Hodkinson, CEO and Medical Director of Western Medical Assessments, laid out his credentials at the beginning of his Nov. 13 presentation to city council.

“I’m a medical specialist in pathology which includes virology. I trained at Cambridge University in the U.K. I’m the ex-president of the pathology section of the Medical Association. I was previously an assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine doing a lot of teaching. I was the chairman of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada Examination Committee and Pathology in Ottawa, but more to the point I’m currently the chairman of a biotechnology company in North Carolina selling the COVID-19 test,” he said.

“The bottom line is simply this: There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians. It’s outrageous. This is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”
“There is absolutely nothing that can be done to contain this virus,” he said, adding: “This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS. It’s politics playing medicine and that’s a very dangerous game.”

Hodkinson called using masks to prevent the spread of the virus “utterly useless,” noting that “there is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever.”

“Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue-signaling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous,” he said.

The doctor’s comments on the ineffectiveness of masks is backed by recent peer-reviewed research that found that wearing a face-mask did not have a significant effect on the spread of COVID-19.

Hodkinson told The Epoch Times that government measures — lockdowns, restrictions on private gatherings, mask mandates— to try to stop the spread of the virus, from which the vast majority of people infected with it recover, do more harm than good.

“All of this is draconian … first of all because they have no basis in evidence-based medicine, and secondly because of horrendous consequences of that action,” he said.

“We’re talking, of course, about an enormous number of businesses—ferocious, hardworking, entrepreneurial people who are seeing their dreams disappear. We’re talking about delayed cancer investigations and treatment. We’re talking about cancelled surgeries. We’re talking about suicides and drug addiction,” he added.

“The consequence of all these measures is, and has been, absolutely catastrophic.”

The doctor said that the position he now backs regarding COVID-19 aligns with the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by almost 50,000 medical practitioners and medical and public health scientists, who have raised “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.”

“Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice,” the declaration states.

The declaration was authorized and signed in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on Oct. 4, by Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard University who is a biostatistician and epidemiologist with an expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, a professor at Oxford University who is an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University Medical School who is a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert who focuses on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.

Hodkinson said that his position on COVID-19 has resulted in an inordinate amount of negative attention where many have challenged his statements and even questioned his credentials. The doctor said in a Nov. 29 interview with Anna Brees that he has even received “death threats.” He added that nothing was going to stop him from telling the truth about COVID-19. 

Social media has cracked down on those who attempted to share the doctor’s message online as well as news agencies that were attempting to report on his words.

On Nov. 30, Youtube removed from LifeSite’s channel a video of the doctor’s speech and then slapped LifeSite with a penalty of not being able to upload videos for a week and issued the first of three strikes. If LifeSite commits two more offenses that result in strikes, it will lose its YouTube channel permanently. The video can be found on LifeSite’s Rumble account here.

Some Canadians have decided to resist the lockdowns that are spreading across the country in reaction to the so-called second wave of COVID-19. Last week an Ontario restaurant owner defied the Ford government lockdown order and kept his Adamson BBQ diner open. Police showed up and arrested Adam Skelly, taking him away in handcuffs. On that same day, Ontario Independent Member of Provincial Parliament Randy Hillier organized and attended an anti-lockdown protest outside the provincial legislature that was attended by an estimated 700 people. Police charged Hillier for organizing the event under the Reopening Ontario Act. He could face a fine of up to $100,000 and a year in jail.