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KFLAPH & Greater Napanee Gymnastics Center exhibit disgraceful conduct towards a gymnastics coach!

Posted 10/27/2021

Dr. T. Hugh Guan is the Acting Medical Officer of Health for Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington Public Health (KFLAPH), a public health unit in eastern Ontario, Canada. He took on that role in June, 2021 but I find it startling to observe his apparent obliviousness to some very important facts regarding COVID-19, which will be detailed below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Letter of Instruction

 

On October 1, 2021, Dr. Guan issued a “Letter of Instruction” (LOI) to business owners, property owners and organizations participating in indoor organized sports within the KFLAPH vicinity. It instructs them that they must demand proof of vaccination from “volunteers, coaches and officials participating in or associated with indoor organized sports.”

The LOI goes on to threaten that anyone who fails to comply with the “additional measures” he has imposed could be fined up to $100,000 and imprisoned for up to a year. Non-complying corporations can be fined up to $10 million.

 

No Evidence that COVID is Spread through Coaches at Indoor Sports

Note that these measures are called “additional” because they are above and beyond the safety measures established by the provincial government in connection with such enterprises. The LOI even acknowledges that under Ontario law, proof of vaccination is not required for volunteers, coaches and officials engaged in organized indoor sports. Nevertheless, without citing a shred of evidence to suggest that even a single case of COVID-19 has ever been spread in this manner, Dr. Guan has arbitrarily imposed these additional requirements.

 

Dr. Guan’s predecessor in the KFLAPH job, Dr. Keeran Moore, vacated the Kingston position after being hired as Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health. In his new role, overseeing the entire province, Dr. Moore apparently did not feel it was necessary to demand proof of vaccination from volunteers, coaches and officials. Dr. Guan seems to have just dreamed this additional stuff up on his own, as though protecting sports participants in the Kingston area were somehow more problematic than protecting them in the rest of the province.

 


Has Dr. Guan Really Thought this Through?

Dr. Guan’s LOI trots out the flimsy excuse that volunteers, coaches and officials “will have close and prolonged contact with vulnerable individuals who may be unvaccinated.”

 

One has to wonder whether Dr. Guan has ever participated in indoor sports. It should be fairly obvious to anyone who gives a moment’s thought to the subject that volunteers, coaches and officials are not always in “close and prolonged contact” with the players participating in indoor sports. They may have no contact whatsoever, their contact may be at a distance of six feet or more, or the contact may be closer but very brief. For instance, does the referee in an indoor hockey game, or the volunteer who’s there to help with paperwork, have close and prolonged contact with anyone? Probably not.

 

The volume of air in a typical hockey rink is so enormous that being present in the rink is not significantly different to being outdoors, in terms of the potential for there being a sufficient viral load to transmit infection.

 

But more importantly, we now know – and even the CDC has admitted – that even double- vaccinated people can become infected with, and transmit, COVID-19. Therefore, it’s pointless to suggest that unvaccinated volunteers, coaches and officials should be prevented from participating in indoor sports unless you’re also going to suggest that double-vaccinated people should likewise be prevented from attending – leaving nobody at all who could attend.

 

COVID's Really Not Dangerous for Kids

Dr. Guan also seems to be overlooking the fact that COVID-19 has proven not to be a dangerous illness for the vast majority of people who become infected by it. It’s dangerous primarily to the very old, especially those in nursing homes, and especially if they are deficient in vitamin D and zinc. (These deficiencies could be easily remedied if people like Dr. Guan would do their real jobs and promote health.) It’s dangerous to those who are over 75 and have co-morbidities such as obesity and high blood pressure. Not many of these people are likely to be found engaging in indoor sports.

 

Moreover, the survival rate for the youngest group, up to age 19, is 99.995%. There are many experts who believe that the best way to deal with COVID-19 is to allow young people to become infected, in order to achieve herd immunity, especially because of all the recent deaths among vaccinated children.  And 81 research studies have confirmed that the natural immunity acquired by exposure to COVID-19 is at least as good as, and often better than, the immunity achieved through vaccination.

 

The seven scientists who authored this recently published study estimated that there are five times as many deaths from inoculation as there are from COVID-19.

 

What About the Unintended Consequences?

There are already people suffering as a result of Dr. Guan’s arbitrary dictum, but his LOI shows no signs of having done any cost-benefit analysis that would take this into account.

 

One example is a woman named Natasha (surname unknown to me) who is a gymnastics coach at the Greater Napanee Gymnastics Center, which lies within the KFLAPH catchment area. She posted a video of herself here on Rumble as she approached her workplace recently to attend for a scheduled 3-hour coaching session. Instead of being welcomed as usual, she was met by the club president, one Bill Pierson, and a female person (later referred to as "Linda") – possibly the boss – who demanded her “papers” and then denied her admission to the building when she did not produce proof of vaccination.

 

The female handed Natasha two envelopes, told her she couldn’t enter the building because of a regulation, and in a remarkable display of evasiveness and equivocation repeatedly refused to answer the question: “Will you be paying me for my time?”

 

Soon the OPP arrived, and at that point it was disclosed to Natasha that the unopened envelopes she was holding contained a trespass notice, prepared pursuant to section 3 of the Trespass to Property Act, RSO 1990, c. T.21.  

 

The police officer told Natasha – correctly – that having received the trespass notice, she was obliged to leave the premises.

 

However, the two disingenuous representatives of the Greater Napanee Gymnastics Center continued to ignore important questions that Natasha asked about how this would impact future shifts and whether she'd be getting paid. 

 

Attempting to Fire an Employee via Trespass Notice? 

 

This bizarre conduct on their part makes me wonder whether they think they can simply, in effect, fire an employee via trespass notice, without regard to Ontario laws governing employment. Do they think they can ignore the Employment Standards Act provisions regarding termination and severance pay?  Do they think their employee should be denied all of her legal rights because she has chosen not to vaccinate? At about 8 minutes into the video, they deny that they are firing her, but how else can a person interpret being escorted off her workplace premises by the police? 

 

If they were in fact intending to terminate Natasha’s employment that day in the video, why didn’t they have the courage to look her in the eye and just tell her the truth? Why did they hide behind the excuse, “The regulations made me do it”? Why was it so difficult for them to just say, “No, we don’t intend to pay you for the hours we are forbidding you to work?” Is it possible that they are still undecided about this? Or would they rather have their cake and eat it, too – keeping the employee permanently on tenterhooks and permanently available should they deign to call her back at some future time? Natasha has posted on social media that she has known these people for 20 years and worked for them, off and on, for about 10 years. Is this how you treat someone after that kind of history?

 

The 7,000-square-foot facility in which the Greater Napanee Gymnastics Club meets appears from the online photos available to have a high ceiling and lots of air volume. The comments I made earlier about hockey rinks and viral loads would apply here as well. Where’s the evidence that anyone has ever contracted COVID in a building like this?

 

 

 

With approximately 20% of the eligible population remaining unvaccinated, Dr. Guan (and those who slavishly follow his dictates instead of pushing back) are essentially casting out 20% of the vicinity’s volunteers, coaches and officials. Have they thought about the unintended consequences of this?

 

Have they considered the safety of indoor sports minus 20% of the personnel who normally oversee it? Will the participants have more accidents and injuries in the absence of a full complement of staff? Will kids get as much attention as they need to progress? Have they considered the impact of a coach’s absence on the kids who are fond of that coach – kids who’ve already gone through enormous disruptions to their lives over the past two years? Are they aware that depression, mental illness, and suicide have skyrocketed among all age groups due to all the recent restrictions? How do they know when yet another deprivation will push a kid over the edge into despondency? That seems more likely to me than a kid catching COVID.

 

Has Dr. Guan considered the consequences of his edict for coaches and officials? If they lose their incomes, they are also at risk of becoming victims of despair. And what about their children if mom or dad becomes depressed or even suicidal? There’s a ripple effect that Dr. Guan seems to have disregarded entirely before he cavalierly decided to shut people out of their workplaces.

 

The businesses and organizations who provide indoor sports facilities within the KFLAPH district (including Bill and Linda of the Greater Napanee Gymnastics Club) should band together and put these hard questions to Dr. Guan. Maybe he can be convinced, through rational argument, to rescind his irrational diktat before it does more harm.

 

The willingness of the Gymnastics Club personnel to simply cave in to irrational and oppressive regulations, without lifting a finger to defend the interests of a long-time employee, does not place them in a very flattering light. If I had a kid in that club, I’d be looking around for other options.

 

And Dr. Guan needs to take a good, hard look at his own conduct – not only what he has done, but also what he hasn’t done. He hasn’t taken a public stand to promote supplementation with zinc or vitamin D – something that would cut death rates and the severity of illness dramatically (and not just with COVID). He hasn’t pushed back against the suppression of genuine COVID treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, both of which are being widely used in other parts of the world with great success. He should hang his head in shame.

 

The KFLAPH unit is on Twitter at @KFLAPH. Feel free to let them know what you think.

 

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