Canadian Pastor Arrested For Holding Church Services During COVID Wins Legal Victory

Most of the narratives surrounding the covid pandemic and the lockdowns were illogical and faulty, based in propaganda rather than science and fear instead of reason.  One key issue that was never addressed by lockdown proponents was the question of “risk.”  Doesn’t every individual have a natural right to take whatever risks they see as acceptable when it comes to their own health?  If a group of people want to go to a church service and take the risk that they might get covid, don’t they have the right to do that?

Of course, lockdown supporters will claim that those refusing to comply with mandates don’t have a right to put “other people at risk,” but how much risk from covid is there really?

According to dozens of independent and peer reviewed studies from around the world, the actual “risk” of death from covid is limited.  Studies indicate that the median Infection Fatality Rate (or Ratio) of covid is between 0.23% and 0.27% of the population.  This is the contrary mainstream science that the media rarely talks about.

So, 99.7% of all people (according to the science) on average face no mortal risk from the worst variants of covid.  IFR is in most cases the most accurate statistic on the death rate of a virus because it accounts for asymptomatic cases.  Case Fatality Rate (CFR), the stat often used more by the mainstream media, does not.  Even the World Health Organization notes on its website that:  “The true severity of a disease can be described by the Infection Fatality Ratio…”

When comparing covid to a virus like the Spanish Flu, which killed over 50 million people worldwide according to the CDC, one would think that there would be a measure of apprehension when it comes to violating the freedoms of the public.  Nope.  The relatively low level of risk associated with covid made no difference to governments or global institutions.  They charged forward like bulls in a china shop breaking everything in their path and treating unilateral “mandates” as if they were laws. 

Luckily, the tide has been slowly turning back and resistance to lockdowns and vaccine passports has been more pervasive than many officials seem to have expected.  In most conservative states within the US, the lockdowns ended quickly, within a few months in many cases, once it was realized that covid was not the population killer that the media, the CDC and the WHO had made it out to be.  Leftist blue states and countries like Canada were not so lucky.  

Canadian Pastor Artur Pawlowski experienced the full brunt of medical authoritarianism first hand when, on May 9, 2021, he sought to hold a church service for his congregants only to be arrested along with his brother Dawid Pawlowski for “inciting an in-person gathering.”  

In October of 2021, a Judge ruled that the Pastor was in violation of a covid health order.  The punishment was bizarre and Orwellian; he was heavily fined, and whenever he spoke publicly about covid he would be required to recite a government-approved statement saying that “most medical experts support social distancing, face masks, and vaccines.”  When the court says “most experts,” they are of course referring to government paid “experts.”  There are many medical experts that disagree with the efficacy of the lockdowns and other mandates.  

Researchers, with over 18,000 studies and after four levels of screening, found 24 papers that would provide a stringent comparison of lockdown effects. They found that lockdowns reduced covid mortality in the United States and Europe by only 0.2 percent on average. They also looked at forced shelter-in-place, which reduced mortality by only 2.9 percent on average.

The researchers had this final conclusion:

“While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

This week an appeals court ruled that the Alberta Health Agency’s order prohibiting “illegal public gatherings” was “not sufficiently clear and unambiguous” in connection to the Pawlowskis.

“The Pawlowskis’ appeals are allowed. The finding of contempt and the sanction order are set aside. The fines that have been paid by them are to be reimbursed,” the three-member panel proclaimed in a 16-page ruling. 

Pawlowski grew up under communist rule in Poland and this is likely the root of his refusal to comply.  He’s seen all of this before, including the typical religious persecution inherent in communist societies. 

The legal victory is a clear reminder that the fear surrounding potential crisis events is often exploited and abused by governments to erase personal freedoms and legal protections.  It is these moments in history when individual rights are MORE important, not less, because whenever there is a crisis the worst types of tyrants tend to come out of the woodwork.