Empiricism: Harsh but Honest
If you’re among the "follow the science" crowd…read on.
Note: This essay is not an argument for or against vaccines. If you wish to argue about vaccine efficacy, go elsewhere!
This essay is about the efficacy of the vaccine mandates. This essay is about empiricism — a classic liberal value with emphasis on reason, evidence, and the pursuit of truth.
And if you consider yourself among professional Agile coaches and practitioners, I’m confident you, like me, value experiments, retrospectives, and empowering teams to self-manage rather than imposing top-down mandates. You surely understand the counterproductive effects of coercion all too well.
I am writing this having been moved by today’s article from Blacklock’s Reporter: Parents Wary Of Covid Shots.
Early on, I expressed concern publicly that vaccine mandates in Canada would do more harm than good. A large portion of Canadians would have (and did) jump to be first in line. Another portion waited until the most vulnerable had been treated. And a small portion were skeptical. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) introduced mandates to boost vaccination rates and to pressure that small group of skeptics into compliance.
I argued that coercion would deepen existing divides in Canadian society and that the available data did not justify the mandates. Forcing compliance rarely changes minds; it entrenches opposition. If a government imposes policies that threaten a citizen’s livelihood or civil rights, it must have solid grounds to do so.
Yet, when I voiced these concerns, they were largely dismissed as “anti-science”. Now, the evidence is in. I was right. And the evidence paints a grim picture.
The evidence shows many Canadians quickly turned into rabid segregationists, dividing communities into “us” versus “them” and disinviting friends or family members from social gatherings. This was done on the false premise that vaccinated individuals would not transmit the virus to others. Yes, I said “false premise” because, despite politicians and journalists parroting the point, contemporary evidence showed the vaccines did not stop or even slow transmission.
Perhaps the most definitive indictment of the mandates comes from the Public Health Agency of Canada itself. Their data confirm that the mandates did not improve compliance rates. All the societal turmoil was, evidently, for naught.
And furthermore, recent evidence published by Angus Reid Institute shows that vaccine hesitancy, instead of shrinking, has grown in recent years and beyond just the Covid vaccines. Surveys confirm that parents are now increasingly hesitant to vaccinate their children against illnesses like measles and influenza.
For those who supported vaccine mandates and expected confidence and compliance to increase, the exact opposite has occurred.
If you were among the “let’s follow the science” crowd then, I hope your convictions are consistent. You ought to follow the science now too — even when the data reveal uncomfortable truths. The mandates failed. They did not achieve their intended goals and have caused lasting harm. A true commitment to science demands that we acknowledge these outcomes and learn from them rather than clinging to past decisions out of pride or stubbornness.
As I reflect on this, I’m reminded of the harsh lessons of empiricism. Data doesn’t care about good intentions — it lays bare the truth, whether or not we like what it reveals. In this case, the truth is stark: the mandates failed to achieve their goals and, in the process, caused harm that critics like myself had foreseen.
Moving forward, I hope Public health strategies will be grounded not only in evidence but also in a nuanced understanding of human behavior. Coercion is a blunt instrument, and when wielded carelessly, it backfires spectacularly.