EDITORIAL: Six years later, we’re still sick of each other — Saviez-vous Que? — Tous les jours, découvrez de nouvelles infos pour briller en société !

Stores have reopened. The Plexiglas has yellowed in warehouses. The arrows taped to the floors have come loose. Masks now lie at the bottom of drawers alongside old receipts, dead batteries, and memories we’d rather not touch.

Yet, six years later, something has never reopened.

Us.

1. The pandemic is over, but the war continues

We thought that one day, someone would announce the end.

Not just the end of the public health emergency. Not just the end of the press conferences, the numbers recited every afternoon, the red maps, the lines outside pharmacies, and family dinners turned into political interrogations.

We thought that one day, the war would end, too.

That the vaccinated would stop looking at the unvaccinated as walking biological bombs. That the unvaccinated would stop looking at doctors as syringe peddlers working for a multinational corporation headquartered somewhere in a glass tower.

We thought time would do its work.

But time is not a doctor.

It doesn’t heal all wounds. Sometimes, it merely grows skin over the pus.

Six years later, families remain divided. Friends no longer speak to one another. Healthcare workers who remember the insults. Citizens who remember being excluded, judged, singled out, or treated like fools because they were afraid.

And in the midst of it all, there remains one question that no one really wants to face:

How did we manage to turn a health crisis into an emotional civil war?

We didn’t just debate a vaccine.

We decided who was smart and who was stupid. Who was brave and who was a coward. Who was protecting others and who was putting them at risk. Who was a responsible citizen and who was a traitor.

We stopped talking about medicine.

We started judging the moral worth of human beings based on what they had agreed to or refused to have injected into their arms.

And no public health statement can ever erase that.

2. People have died, even if the algorithm prefers to cast doubt

There are still people convinced that COVID never really existed.

Not that it was exaggerated. Not that certain measures were disproportionate. No. That it never existed at all.

As if the emergency rooms had been putting on a play.

As if doctors had rehearsed their lines in the morning before entering the ICU.

As if entire families, in dozens of countries at odds with one another, had staged the same funerals to please a pharmaceutical company.

The World Health Organization estimates that the pandemic was directly or indirectly associated with approximately 22 million excess deaths between 2020 and 2023. In Canada, tens of thousands of deaths have been officially attributed to COVID, while analyses of excess mortality show that it is impossible to reduce the catastrophe to a simple clerical error.

One can dispute the methods.

One can question the categories.

One can ask whether a person died from COVID or with COVID.

This is a legitimate question in some cases.

But when hundreds of thousands of families are going through the same thing at the same time, across multiple continents, sometimes we have to accept the least exciting explanation:

A virus emerged.

It spread.

It killed.

It’s not a story spectacular enough for Facebook. There’s no secret society, no red-lit basement, no billionaire stroking a white cat in front of a world map.

Just a virus, ill-prepared humans, and our eternal inability to recognize a danger before it’s already jumped at our throats.

An opinion can dispute a number.

It cannot bring a dead person back to life.

3. The vaccine was not a superhero’s armor

The greatest gift given to anti-vaccine advocates probably didn’t come from a conspiracy theory group.

It came from the authorities themselves.

We promised too much.

We spoke too soon.

We sometimes presented the vaccine as a kind of concrete wall against which the virus would crash and be stopped forever.

Then vaccinated people caught COVID.

Some passed it on.

Some were hospitalized.

And immediately, the verdict was in: the vaccine doesn’t work.

This is where we need to distinguish between disappointment and reality.

The vaccine was never a biological invisibility cloak. It never made anyone immortal. It never promised that no virus would ever enter our bodies.

Its primary role was to prepare the immune system to reduce the risk of severe illness, hospitalization, and death.

During the period dominated by the Delta variant, Canadian data showed that unvaccinated people were much more likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID than those who had received their primary vaccine series. Globally, a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases estimated that vaccination prevented millions of deaths during its first year.

These are estimates.

Not gospel truth.

Not numbers plucked out of thin air.

But even with their margins of uncertainty, the data tell a very different story from that of a useless shot.

The vaccine has protected many people.

Not perfectly.

Not forever.

Not against every infection.

But enough to prevent hospital beds from becoming deathbeds.

It is sometimes criticized for having “only” reduced severe cases.

As if avoiding intubation were a minor victory.

As if coming out of intensive care alive were just a footnote.

4. Science is not a church, and doctors are not priests

Being pro-science doesn’t mean kneeling before anyone in a white coat.

Science is not a religion.

It has no pope.

It does not require faith.

It requires evidence, methods, comparisons, acknowledgment of errors, and conclusions that can be corrected when new data emerges.

The problem is that, in the midst of a crisis, we wanted absolute certainties.

We asked scientists to predict the future like fortune-tellers with PhDs.

How long would the pandemic last?

Did masks work?

How many doses would be needed?

Were children really at risk?

Did the virus come from an animal or a laboratory?

The answers kept changing.

And every change was interpreted as a lie.

Yet science that never changes its mind is not science.

It’s a doctrine.

Nevertheless, we must acknowledge this: some authorities spoke with a confidence they did not possess. They sometimes confused education with paternalism. They said, “Trust us,” when they should have said:

“Here’s what we know. Here’s what we don’t know. Here’s why we believe this decision is the least bad option today.”

The public might have been more accepting of uncertainty if they hadn’t been fed certainty like thick syrup.

Citizens aren’t children.

When doubt is hidden from them, they end up believing that the truth is being hidden from them as well.

5. Yes, the vaccines carried risks

We must state this clearly.

Not just paying lip service.

Not hidden in a paragraph of fine print.

The COVID vaccines carried risks.

Rare cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been observed, particularly among some adolescents and young men following mRNA vaccines. Rare blood clotting disorders have also been associated with certain viral vector vaccines.

People have truly suffered.

Some felt abandoned by a system that had promised to protect them.

And when they tried to share what had happened to them, they were sometimes looked at as if their pain were propaganda for the other side.

That was disgraceful.

A person harmed by an adverse reaction should never become political collateral damage.

Recognizing these cases does not mean that vaccination was a fraud.

It means that no medical intervention is entirely risk-free.

An antibiotic can save a life and cause an allergic reaction.

Surgery can remove a tumor and lead to a complication.

Chemotherapy can prolong life while ravaging the body.

The medical question has never been, “Is it perfectly safe?”

The question has always been, “Which risk is greater in this specific situation?”

The risk from the vaccine?

The risk from the infection?

The risk of doing nothing?

Medicine doesn’t work with miracles.

It works with probabilities, blood, statistics, and human beings who never all react the same way.

6. Yet we entrust our children to these very same doctors

This is perhaps the hardest paradox to explain.

Our child wakes up screaming with an ear infection, and we want to see a doctor.

He’s having trouble breathing because of an asthma attack, and we want to see a doctor.

Bronchiolitis tightens around their little chest, their fever spikes, or a strange rash covers their body—and suddenly, the healthcare system is no longer a propaganda machine.

It becomes our refuge.

When our mother discovers a lump in her breast, we want a doctor.

When our father collapses with chest pain, we want a doctor.

When our arm breaks, when our appendix threatens to burst, when our mind grows so dark that we fear we won’t make it through the night, we want a doctor.

We ask them to look inside us.

To read our X-rays.

To interpret our blood.

To remove a tumor.

To open up our bodies, repair what’s broken, and close us back up, hoping we’ll wake up.

We literally entrust our lives to them.

But during the pandemic, that same doctor has become, for some, a collaborator, a sellout, a servant of the state, a puppet of the pharmaceutical industry.

How can someone be competent enough to remove cancer from your brain, yet too corrupt to talk to you about a respiratory virus?

Of course, doctors can make mistakes.

Some have been arrogant.

Some have applied the guidelines without nuance.

A minority may even have lacked good judgment.

But the vast majority hadn’t received a big black envelope filled with secret instructions.

They were trying to treat patients.

With knowledge that was constantly changing.

With exhausted teams.

With patients arriving faster than the answers.

7. Calling a nurse a “collaborator” doesn’t make anyone freer

During this crisis, we’ve seen healthcare professionals threatened, followed, filmed, and insulted.

Protests broke out near facilities where patients were simply trying to receive care.

Nurses were treated like prison guards.

Pharmacists like drug dealers.

Doctors as criminals in white coats.

You can oppose a vaccine passport.

You can argue that a curfew was excessive.

You can believe that certain requirements crossed a moral or legal line.

But insulting the person who applies a bandage does not repeal a law.

Threatening the person administering a vaccine does not topple a government.

Anger targeted the faces closest at hand because the real decision-makers were farther away, protected behind desks, government offices, and security guards.

A nurse was within reach.

So was a pharmacist.

So we vented all our helplessness on them.

As if the person at the end of the hall had personally decided to close restaurants, cancel weddings, and separate grandparents from their grandchildren.

It wasn’t courage.

It was often pain looking for a target.

And pain that strikes at random always ends up resembling the violence it claims to fight.

8. Healthcare workers were not the government

We must put each responsibility in its proper place.

A nurse did not decide on the curfew.

A family doctor did not close the borders.

A pharmacist did not create the CERB.

A patient care attendant did not impose the vaccine passport.

Governments made the political decisions.

Doctors made clinical recommendations.

Healthcare workers often enforced the rules within a system they had no more control over than we did.

Yet we’ve conflated everything.

Science.

Politics.

Morality.

Fear.

Power.

We turned every government decision into a medical prescription and every medical recommendation into an authoritarian decree.

That’s when the debate turned toxic.

It was possible to believe in the vaccine’s benefits while opposing the curfew.

It was possible to acknowledge the seriousness of COVID-19 while considering the vaccine passport socially destructive.

It was possible to support doctors while criticizing François Legault, Justin Trudeau, public health authorities, or pharmaceutical companies.

We’ve forgotten nuance because nuance doesn’t translate well on social media.

It doesn’t have a slogan.

It doesn’t fit on a sign.

It doesn’t give you that delightful feeling of being the only one who’s got it all figured out while everyone else is asleep.

9. Capitalism doesn’t shut down stores just for fun

The idea that a global economic elite orchestrated a pandemic in order to shut down businesses deserves some thought.

Not to mock those who believe it.

But to examine the logic.

Capitalism wants to sell.

It wants full planes, packed restaurants, workers at their posts, and credit cards running hot.

It certainly doesn’t dream of darkened storefronts, idle factories, broken supply chains, and millions of consumers locked in their living rooms.

Of course, some companies have profited from the pandemic.

Digital platforms have grown.

Delivery giants have thrived.

Pharmaceutical companies have made huge profits.

This warrants investigations, oversight, and healthy skepticism.

But profiting from a fire doesn’t prove you struck the match.

Reconstruction companies make money after a flood.

They don’t necessarily control the rain.

Governments shut down sectors because they feared the healthcare system would collapse.

Some closures may have lasted too long.

Some rules were absurd.

Some decisions seemed to have been written by people who had never set foot in a small business.

But the most likely explanation isn’t always a brilliant plan.

Often, it’s a government that panics, improvises, contradicts itself, and hopes no one will notice it’s driving through the fog.

Humanity has never needed a conspiracy to mess things up.

It manages just fine on its own.

10. The CERB Wasn’t a Christmas Gift

When the economy ground to a halt, the Canadian government sent money directly to millions of citizens through the CERB and other programs.

This was an extraordinary gesture.

But we shouldn’t turn it into a fairy tale.

The government didn’t become our grandmother.

It didn’t slip a bill into our pocket and tell us to go buy something nice.

It was trying to prevent the economy from collapsing.

A worker without income can no longer pay rent.

A tenant who can no longer pay rent puts their landlord at risk.

A consumer who stops spending puts businesses at risk.

A business that closes lays off its employees.

One crisis leads to another, and then another, until the whole structure crumbles.

The CERB was a safety net.

Flawed.

Costly.

Sometimes distributed too quickly.

In fact, the Auditor General identified billions of dollars paid out to people who may have been ineligible or required further verification.

There was abuse.

There was waste.

There were inadequate controls.

But we must also acknowledge the historical strangeness of the situation.

The very same institutions that have always been accused of knowing how to take our money but never knowing how to give it back suddenly began depositing thousands of dollars into bank accounts because citizens could no longer work.

Not out of kindness.

Out of necessity.

But sometimes, necessity compels even the coldest machines to act as if humans mattered.

11. No, Not Everything Was Handled Well

Above all, we must not write the history of the pandemic as if it were a government advertisement.

Quebec dropped the ball.

And sometimes, the ball fell on human beings.

Long-term care facilities were hit with a brutality that should still keep us awake at night.

Elderly people died in isolation.

Families were kept at a distance.

Workers were sent to settings that lacked staff, supplies, and preparedness.

The Ombudsman documented serious shortcomings in the management of the first wave.

Surgeries were delayed.

Cancers were diagnosed later than they should have been.

Patients waited in pain while the system focused its resources elsewhere.

Children lost months of socialization.

Teenagers spiraled into despair.

People struggling with addiction found themselves alone with their substances and their demons.

Entrepreneurs saw what they had spent twenty years building vanish in a matter of weeks.

This suffering is real.

It must not be swept under the rug in the name of science.

But it does not prove that the virus was a hoax.

It proves that a public health crisis can claim direct victims and that the measures used to combat it can also cause harm.

The real debate should have been this:

What measures?

For how long?

To protect whom?

At what cost?

Instead, we chose two positions that were as comfortable as they were dishonest.

Everything was perfect.

Or it was all a conspiracy.

In between lay reality: messy, confusing, contradictory, and full of decisions made too late by people terrified of making the wrong one.

12. The Five Major Theories—Without Mocking Those Who Believed Them

Conspiracy theories don’t always stem from stupidity.

They often stem from a wound.

From a government that has lied before.

From a company that has committed fraud before.

From a doctor who didn’t listen.

From a journalist who exaggerated.

From someone who lost their job and is looking for an explanation big enough to contain their pain.

Understanding this doesn’t mean accepting all the conclusions.

“COVID never existed”

For COVID to be entirely fabricated, it would require almost divine coordination.

Hostile governments.

Rival laboratories.

Doctors of all languages.

Mortality records.

Researchers.

Funeral homes.

Families.

Journalists.

Insurers.

The military.

Thousands of institutions, in countries that can’t even agree on the price of oil, would have managed to orchestrate the same lie for years.

It’s possible to imagine a conspiracy.

But the more accomplices it requires, the harder it becomes to keep it alive.

COVID existed.

That’s not the real question.

The real question concerns the exact extent of the risk, the best responses, and the mistakes that were made.

“The vaccine was useless since vaccinated people still got COVID”

A seatbelt doesn’t prevent an accident.

A helmet doesn’t prevent a fall.

Treatment for high blood pressure doesn’t prevent every heart attack.

A medical intervention is judged by its ability to reduce risk, not by its ability to eliminate death.

Vaccines lost some of their effectiveness against infection as the virus evolved and immunity waned.

That’s true.

But they continued to provide significant protection against severe complications, particularly among vulnerable people.

The problem, once again, was that a reduction in risk was marketed as an absolute guarantee.

When that promise failed, trust failed along with it.

“mRNA alters DNA or causes infertility”

Messenger RNA acts as a temporary instruction.

It enters certain cells, tells them how to produce an immune target, and then breaks down.

It doesn’t settle into the nucleus like a tenant who refuses to leave.

It doesn’t rewrite our genome.

There is no credible evidence showing a wave of infertility caused by mRNA vaccines.

That doesn’t mean all concerns were ridiculous.

Injecting a new technology into millions of people naturally raised questions.

But a question is not proof.

And a viral video is not a study.

“Vaccines Cause Mass Deaths and ‘Turbo-Cancers’”

The term “turbo-cancer” packs a punch.

It’s scary.

It gives the impression that a biological monster has been unleashed into the bloodstream.

But it’s not a recognized medical diagnosis.

Aggressive cancers existed before the pandemic.

Cancers were also diagnosed later due to delays in screening and care.

To show that vaccination causes a surge in cancers, one would have to demonstrate that these cancers occur more frequently among vaccinated individuals than among comparable groups, taking into account age, smoking, heredity, medical delays, and other factors.

A temporal coincidence can be tragic.

It does not automatically imply causation.

“Hospitals were paid to fabricate cases”

Hospitals received funding to deal with the pandemic.

They had to purchase equipment, reorganize units, hire staff, open clinics, conduct tests, and treat patients.

Receiving money to treat a disease does not prove that the disease is fake.

An oncology department receives money to treat cancer.

That doesn’t mean oncologists are making up tumors.

Fraud may exist.

It must be documented and prosecuted.

But accusing an entire profession requires more than a screenshot, an edited video, or the anonymous testimony of someone who knows someone whose cousin works near a hospital.

Anger warrants an investigation.

It does not necessarily warrant a conclusion that has already been written.

13. The Wuhan laboratory: Doubt is permissible; a verdict is not

The exact origin of SARS-CoV-2 has not been definitively established.

We must have the honesty to admit this.

The hypothesis of natural transmission from animals continues to be supported by various data and by a significant portion of the scientific community.

The hypothesis of a laboratory-related accident also remains under discussion, particularly because certain essential pieces of information have never been made fully available.

But we must distinguish between three scenarios.

A natural virus transmitted to humans.

A natural or laboratory-studied virus that accidentally escapes from a laboratory.

A virus that was manufactured and then deliberately released as a weapon.

These scenarios are not interchangeable.

Even if a laboratory accident were ever proven, that would not automatically prove a planned attack.

Accidents do happen.

History is full of them.

In the Soviet Union, the Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak was kept secret for a long time before a military facility was acknowledged as responsible.

Infections linked to laboratories working on SARS were also documented after the 2003 epidemic.

Humans handle dangerous substances.

They cut budgets.

They cover up their mistakes.

They leave a door ajar.

They forget a filter.

They lie to save their careers.

Then they discover, too late, that a microbe doesn’t give a damn about borders, flags, or official statements.

This scenario is plausible.

But plausible does not mean proven.

Skepticism can prompt an investigation.

It must not deliver a verdict before the trial.

14. The same technology that curbed COVID is now being used to track cancer

Here’s the paradox that should blow our minds.

The technology that some have described as a pointless experiment is now being studied to teach the immune system to recognize certain cancer cells.

Not to cure all cancers tomorrow morning.

Not to replace surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy with a snap of the fingers.

But to show our immune system a specific target and tell it:

“That one. Take a good look at it. When it comes back, attack it.”

Therapeutic mRNA cancer vaccines were already a field of research before COVID.

The pandemic didn’t invent them.

But it accelerated the technology, production, funding, and regulatory experience on a scale few would have imagined.

Trials against certain types of melanoma, pancreatic, kidney, and colon cancers have yielded encouraging results.

We must remain cautious.

These are still experimental treatments.

But we must acknowledge the irony.

A technology once scorned because it couldn’t prevent every infection is now being studied to help the body hunt down some of its own cells that have gone rogue.

And despite this, COVID is still circulating.

Is this proof that the vaccine was ineffective?

No.

It’s proof that life is more complex than our slogans.

Cancer hides because it comes from within us.

The coronavirus mutates because it replicates on a massive scale.

The former bears our likeness.

The latter changes its mask.

In both cases, our immune system must learn to recognize an enemy that never politely knocks on the door with its name written on a name tag.

15. The virus doesn’t think, but evolution works for it

SARS-CoV-2 isn’t intelligent.

It doesn’t observe us.

It doesn’t hold meetings.

It doesn’t choose to mutate to evade a vaccine.

But viewed from the outside, the result sometimes resembles intelligence.

Every time the virus replicates, errors can occur in its copy.

Most of them serve no purpose.

Some weaken it.

But a mutation that allows it to spread more easily or partially evade existing immunity can give it an advantage.

This version spreads more widely.

It replaces the others.

It’s not a plan.

It’s natural selection.

The virus doesn’t think.

Evolution works for it.

Coronaviruses have large genomes for RNA viruses and a unique mechanism for correcting some of their replication errors.

They can also recombine.

Add to that billions of infections—billions of bodies turned into replication factories—and you have an almost infinite biological testing ground.

That’s why a technology powerful enough to induce immunity against certain cancer targets doesn’t instantly wipe out a respiratory virus.

This isn’t just a battle between a syringe and a little spiky ball.

It’s a war of recognition, immune memory, mutations, variants, time, and probabilities.

We wanted a missile.

Science gave us an improved alarm system.

Then we blamed it for not keeping all the thieves out.

16. Conspiracy theories offered a story; institutions offered order

Conspiracy theories gained ground because they told a story.

A simple story.

There were villains.

A plan.

An intention.

A complete explanation.

Nothing was accidental.

Every contradiction confirmed the conspiracy.

Every lack of evidence proved that the traces had been erased.

Every denial demonstrated that the system was afraid.

It’s a narrative that’s impossible to disprove, because anything that contradicts it becomes further proof.

Institutions, on the other hand, offered guidelines.

Stay home.

Wear a mask.

Get vaccinated.

Don’t see your family.

Close your business.

Trust us.

All too rarely did they offer a human narrative capable of addressing fear, loneliness, and humiliation.

They scorned people who had legitimate questions.

They sometimes treated hesitancy as a mental illness.

They used shame when education was needed.

They let social media welcome those they had driven out of the conversation.

And social media responded:

“We’re listening to you. We know why you’re suffering. We’ve found the culprits.”

Sometimes that wasn’t true.

But it was more emotionally satisfying than a chart presented by a civil servant with a monotone voice.

The lesson is a harsh one.

You don’t fight a story with an order.

You fight it with a truer story.

17. We won’t heal by demanding that the other side kneel

I don’t believe we’ll succeed in healing this divide.

Some wounds have become identities.

Vaccinated people don’t want to acknowledge that certain measures were unfair, because they’re afraid that would prove all the conspiracy theories right.

People opposed to vaccination don’t want to acknowledge that it has saved lives, because they’re afraid that doing so would erase what they’ve been through.

So everyone protects their half-truth like a soldier protects his last piece of territory.

But a society cannot live forever in two parallel realities.

We must tell the whole story.

The virus was real.

It killed people.

Vaccines reduced serious risks and saved lives.

They also caused rare adverse effects that had to be acknowledged, treated, and compensated when a link was demonstrated.

Governments had to act.

They also improvised, sometimes lied by omission, communicated clumsily, and imposed measures, some of which deeply hurt the public.

Doctors tried to treat patients.

They are not infallible.

Not all those who were hesitant were stupid, selfish, or dangerous.

Some were afraid.

Some had already been betrayed by institutions.

Some asked good questions and received bad answers.

But respect does not mean saying that all claims are equally true.

To respect someone is to believe that they are capable of hearing a complex truth.

We won’t heal by forcing the unvaccinated to ask for forgiveness.

Nor will we heal by forcing healthcare workers to admit they were participating in an imaginary crime.

Perhaps we’ll heal the day we accept that most people were neither heroes nor monsters.

They were afraid.

They wanted to protect their children.

They wanted to keep their jobs.

They wanted to breathe.

They wanted to live.

Six years later, the pandemic has faded from our conversations, but it still lingers in our instincts.

It resurfaces every time a doctor speaks.

Every time a vaccine is announced.

Every time an institution asks for our trust.

The scar is there.

Hard.

Red.

Sensitive to the slightest touch.

I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to make it go away.

But I know this:

Contempt heals nothing.

Shame doesn’t convince anyone.

Lies don’t erase fear.

And a society that turns every disagreement into betrayal eventually ends up with no citizens.

Only camps.

So we’ll have to learn to speak differently.

Defend science without turning it into a religion.

Defend freedom without turning every collective responsibility into a dictatorship.

Acknowledge mistakes without inventing a grand secret plot behind every foolish decision.

Listen to those who have been hurt without letting their pain rewrite the facts.

And the next time we walk into an emergency room with a feverish child in our arms, the next time a doctor looks at an X-ray searching for a tumor, a fracture, or a worrying shadow, we may need to remind ourselves of something.

That doctor didn’t become our friend because we were afraid.

He didn’t become our enemy during the pandemic.

He was the same human being.