Rescuing Family Members From Involuntary Euthanasia

"There's a huge demand. People want to get their pets back [to their  home countries], their cats and their dogs and their rabbits, and they just can't get them back via commercial routes."

"There is this new sort of wave of jet pooling where people come together and try to find a date and say 'right, we're going to go on this day'."

Chris Phillips, pet and medical charter manager, Air Charter Service

 

"We can't predict how the future's going to be ... every week we get another airport that's dropping the routes."

"Quite a few people [were looking at the option of hiring private jets]."

"The heartbreaking thing is ... [for] a lot of people, their dog is a member of their family, they're drawing the short straw by paying these extremely high rates."

Steve Pheby, senior consultant, Ferndale Kennels and Cattery

 

"Flights are frequently cancelled [at] short notice, which makes it really hard as the pets have to have their paperwork and vet checks done within a certain time frame relative to the flight."

Annett Schirmer, Hong Kong-based academic

Caviar flew from Hong Kong to the UK on a Dog Express jet in December and the pet travel company has three private jet flights scheduled in the coming months. Credit: Dog Express PST

"We were waiting for the pet cargo ticket for so long. Even if it's too expensive for us, it was a special experience." Expensive yes, but somehow people like Bianca Ho who saved 5-year-old Caviar by flying out with him on a private charter to the U.K. found it worth every penny. Flight on a commercial airliner just wasn't working for them, she had already waited for over six months. Her dilemma is one shared by many animal lovers suddenly finding themselves in an untenable position.

 

One faced by Hong Kongers finding the only way they could rescue their animals from the draconian position taken by health authorities to 'eliminate' potential danger from animals passing on the coronavirus to humans in Hong Kong living with beloved family pets to avoid having their pets gathered up by Hong Kong authorities and euthanized was to literally spirit them away, fly them out of the no-longer semi-autonomous area to remove them from the danger posed by new anti-COVID regulations.

 

A handful of hamsters were found to be COVID-positive, leading to a directive that all pet shops on the island close, and a thousand hamsters destroyed. Knowing their pets were next on the agenda, Hong Kongers have responded to the new pandemic restrictions that squeeze freight space on commercial flights, by chartering private jets. Zero COVID regulations have led to soaring cargo rates and flight cancellations.

 

 

The response was people grouping themselves for the purpose of leasing private jets with the fairly steep passage of roughly $31,250 for every owner with a pet. Passenger flights were banned by Hong Kong authorities from eight countries, representing a portion of the city's tough elimination policies for the coronavirus threat. Airline companies in attempting to keep pace with changing regulations have been cancelling flights.

 

Expatriates are now abandoning the city just as increasing numbers of locals join immigration schemes the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada have arranged following the political destabilization of 2019 in the Chinese territory. China's zero-tolerance for any potential vectors of the virus from any source has seen authorities taking to culling suspected animal species to avoid human contact and feared subsequent infections.

 

Even people found to have visited the now-shuttered 150 pet stores have been quarantined for fear of animal-to-human transmission. In the first half of 2021 Hong Kong's population was diminished by 1.2 percent. Now people who can afford the stiff freight are taking their pets with them, despite struggling with insufficient numbers of flights, which has led inevitably to a growing demand for private jets.  

Before the pandemic, explained Steve Pheby of Ferndale Kennels and Cattery, his business was generally balanced evenly between importing and exporting pets. In this new, evolving situation the situation is now 90-95 percent export-based. Hong-Kong based Pet Holidays arranged 18 private jets for pet relocation in 2021 for flights to the U.K. and to Canada, Taiwan and Singapore, whereas in 2020 there were none.

 

 

Another 20 private jets chartered for pets' escape representing roughly a third of clients moving from commercial flights to chartered services are anticipated for 2022. Dozens of flights were arranged last year by Top Stars Air, a business aviation sales company. Currently, the company receives about 20 requests daily. Its next flight, a jet to fly in from Dubai minus the crew disembarking in recognition of Hong Kong's strict quarantine requirements. 

An academic based in Hong Kong, Annett Schirmer planned to relocate to Europe in May and was focused on arranging a flight for her three dogs and cat, through social media. U.K. pet travel operator PBS International Freight working with private jet companies has seen "a large increase" in demand from Hong Kongers. 

COVID 'Lines of Fracture'

"Anything that lasts this long is going to create a sense of fatigue with people in terms of staying vigilant and doing what they were doing really well in the early days of this."

"But it's a lot harder to get people to continue to do it. And, when you see that many of the folks who make the rules aren't following them themselves, it makes it harder to justify continuing doing it."

David Coletto, professor of political management, Carleton University, CEO, Abacus Data 

"People are exhausted emotionally, physically, and many people are suffering economically. That weighs on an entire community, and we're now seeing some real lines of fracture that are quite different from what we saw in the first stage of the pandemic. There was a real united front then; everybody in this together, little questioning of decision-making, little questioning of the authorities and certainly what I would call a consensus among our political elites."

"But now, with the economic consequences and fallout, and just the length of the pandemic, we're seeing that it's starting to wear on everybody. And so now we're starting to see cracks in that sphere of consensus."

Josh Greenberg, professor, director School of Journalism and communication, Carleton University

In the previous 24 hours, the province of Ontario reported 61 additional deaths caused by the coronavirus and a one-day total, escalating day-by-day, of 3,945 new reported cases. In the capital Ottawa, 90 cases representing half of those identified, occurred among those aged 29 and under, 18 in children nine years of age and under, 28 occurring in ten-to-19-year-olds and 44 in people aged in their 20s. Dispelling the popular conception that only the elderly and immune-impaired are susceptible.

"Why are so many people living in, with such concern, in such dread, and taking such precautions for something, for a virus, a coronavirus, that is more like the common cold than it isn't?"

"I will not be silenced."

“I will always remain free, it is my life to enjoy not at the whim or discretion of others, it is my home to welcome those I choose. Never will the government determine who I can welcome into MY home, it is mine not theirs.”

Randy Hillier, independent MPP, Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston

Randy Hillier posted this photo to social media showing a large holiday gathering.

 

Back in November MPP Hillier was charged under the Reopening Ontario Act for organizing an anti-COVID-19-lockdown rally outside Queen's Park, the provincial legislature in Toronto. On December 17 he posted a family photograph with himself at home in his dining room surrounded by extended family members, irrespective of lockdown regulations promulgated earlier in the week. Just a jolly, happy family holiday gathering. He's not alone. Medical heads of hospitals, government legislators, people in authority have been jetting off to holiday locations, lockdown be damned.

Mr. Hillier's provocative messaging, arguing democracy is on trial with leaders avoiding debate and ruling by edict while he states his belief that risks the COVID virus poses have been overstated and measures to combat it have been the cause of infinitely more damage than the virus itself has elicited a response. While he is busy citing the economy, people's mental health, faulty testing, asymptomatic cases and deaths occurring for the most part among the elderly and those with chronic health conditions, a local physician in his riding has taken remedial action to dispel Mr. Hillier's contention that the virus is comparable to the common cold, or the flu.

 

A family practitioner in Sydenham, north of Kingston, Ontario in Mr. Hillier's riding -- Dr.Jeanette Dietrich -- has an online petition in circulation, now bearing close to 4,000 signatures. Among the signatures are those from numerous medical professionals. Dr.Dietrich accuses MPP Hillier of spreading misinformation, misusing scientific references, while urging others in the community and beyond to ignore what he has to say. 

 

"It's frustrating for all of us in health care who are working very hard to try to get the message out. I have patients saying to me all the time that they are doing their utmost to protect themselves and they do not want to get this disease -- so, yes, it's frustrating when you're trying to care for these people and you feel you're fighting against this other tide of misinformation, instead of everyone working together to encourage people to do the best they can to follow the guidelines and recommendations." 

On December 23, Ottawa had just 19 cases and was heading toward a zone that would have lifted the current lockdown imposed just before Christmas. Those restrictions, however, failed to persuade people to continue self-isolating, and during the holidays many followed Mr. Hillier's example, with the predictable result that new cases began popping up and Ontario began veering into the kind of case-heavy territory that would mandate even stronger responses, including following Quebec's example of enacting a curfew. 

Toronto saw 2,260 new cases, 641 in Peel Region, 357 in York Region, with a total of 4,983 people having died from COVID-19 effects in Ontario, and 215,782 testing positive for the virus throughout the pandemic's course. An alarming increase in hospitalization is taking place, with 1,483 COVID patients requiring treatment in hospital, and 388 in intensive care units province-wide.

Pfizer Vaccine   (Shawn Thew/Pool via AP)

"If we do not reduce the number of close contacts that enable COVID-19 transmission, our hospitals will not be able to maintain services, and the number of deaths will increase. This is a collective task, one where we need to support not blame each other through this darkest time", stated Dr.Vera Etches, Ottawa's medical officer of health. Grey being the highest tier of the province's colour-coded COVID-19 framework, involving full lockdown as opposed to 'control' measures in Red zones.